It’s Oscar night, April 2, 1974.
My wife Gail and I navigate our way to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, slavishly following the designated route prescribed by the Academy. Our special windshield sticker allows us to pass through various checkpoints, until we join the long line of limousines pulling up in front of the theater.
About three dozen scarlet-vested valet parking attendants stand ready to spring into action, but most of their time is spent helping stars disembark from their cars without tripping over their long gowns. Parking valets in Los Angeles are better-looking than valets anywhere else; most of them are out-of-work actors. Every once in a while they are unexpectedly rewarded when a high-profile producer lets them park his custom Mercedes. They exchange happy glances when we pull up in my forest green Alfa Romeo convertible, and two of them compete to see who can get to open Gail’s passenger door first.
We have come to expect such reaction, as LA is, quite understandably, a car-crazy town. None of the valets know that my shiny Alfa Romeo is a rental, courtesy of Marc Vogel, who runs Budget Luxury Rent-A-Car on La Cienega. “If you want to catch some big fish, get some big bait,” Marc advises me. In Hollywood in the ‘70s, an Alfa Romeo is big bait.
Gail tucks the parking stub into her evening bag. She is dressed for the occasion in a tastefully glittering floor-length gown, and she assures me that I look splendid in my tux. We are all in black tie, leading man, action hero, newspaper reporter, providing the perfect foil for all the glamorous women on our arms. We stroll down the carpet, which is red, but won’t become The Red Carpet, as we now know it, for another two decades, when will an unlikely mother and daughter team change the face of show business history.
Army Archerd with Robert Stack & wife Rosemarie
A few yards away, on a raised podium the size of a small boxing ring, Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd personally welcomes arriving stars so that the hundreds of fans in the bleachers, many of whom have camped out overnight, actually get a chance to see them for more than a second. Their cheers for their favorites are captured only by one local TV station. For most of Hollywood’s media, Oscar night is business as usual, only more so.
We take our time sauntering down the red carpet, and when we get to the entrance, Gail and I agree on a post-telecast meeting place, after which she crosses the marble lobby and goes into the theater. I stay out front for a few minutes, drinking it all in.
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson was once asked by a reporter why he attended the Oscars every year, whether he was nominated or not.
“Because,” Jack replied, “I love looking at movie stars.”
There’s a lot of that going around tonight.
I make my way to the back of the building the Artists Entrance. After I get the green light from Security I get into the elevator with a clutch of other black-tied journalists. The elevator operator assigned by Security reminds us that we have access only to the pressroom and its surrounding lounges. We file out of the elevator like schoolboys on a day trip.
Our desks are jammed together in a surprisingly orderly fashion. I’m wondering who will be sitting on my left. I don’t see many familiar faces in the crowd. I think I see Roger Ebert, but I’m not sure, because I’ve never met him, and he and his fellow Chicago critic Gene Siskel are about six months away from making their debut as a TV duo.
Rex Reed
Rex Reed and Shirley Eder are sitting with famous friends in the theater; no fourth estate slumming for them. I scan the press room for Canadians, but I can’t find any.
I’m so busy rubbernecking that I smell her before I see her. Her scent is a soft caress of Chanel No. 5, and when I turn I’m standing face-to-face with the current queen of celebrity gossip, Rona Barrett.
Rona Barrett is the stuff of Hollywood dreams — or, depending on who you talk to, nightmares. Rona Burstein was a chubby, overweight Jewish girl in New York until she decided, at a remarkably early age, to reinvent herself. By the time she was 13 she was the nationwide coordinator of Eddie Fisher’s fan clubs. Her date for her high school prom was another singer, Steve Lawtrence. She came to California and got a nose job, and somewhere deep in the Hollywood Hills there is a iron-fisted masseuse who, according to legend, reshaped Rona’s body by pounded the fat cells out of her three times a week..And presto! … Rona Burstein became Rona Barrett.
Rona Barrett
Hedda and Louella are footnotes in Hollywood history, but Rona will endure for decades. “Pick your enemies carefully,” she advises, “or you’ll never make it in Los Angeles.” Now 37, Rona has made it in Los Angeles, mostly on her own terms. Her autobiography, Miss Rona, which will cause a flurry a few months from now, begins: “Just an inch, Miss Rona, just let me put it in an inch!” as Hugh O’Brian (a.k.a. TV’s Wyatt Earp) attempts to deflower her. But tonight she is still glowing like a newlywed, which in fact she is. She married Bill Trowbridge last September, a marriage that will last until death does them part. And she’s all dolled up in a slinky evening gown because she’ll be attending the A-List Governors Ball immediately following the telecast. Rona didn’t invent the A-List; Joyce Haber did. But Rona’s on it, and in Hollywood, being there is more important than how you got there.
A woman who once described herself as “a pussy cat – with an iron tail,” Rona has an inside track to most of Tinsel Town. And she already has a scoop on tonight’s shenanigans. Seems Oscar show director Marty Passetta has made one final plea to Barbra Streisand: “Even if you’re not going to sing, please come to the show. You don’t have to sit in the audience. We’ll hide you backstage, When they call your name, you can walk out. Because that’s tomorrow’s page one picture on every newspaper in the world.!” But will Barbra show? Who knows? In the meantime, Rona confides, in the last few days she has detected a groundswell for, of all people, Joanne Woodward. Which perplexes her. “I mean, it’s a charming film and all that, but NOBODY went to see it!”
The show starts. Liza in red silk, flanked by giant two-storey Oscar statuettes, strutting and selling it.
Liza Minnelli
OS-car …
Everybody loves ya, OS-car …
Okay, maybe not quite everybody. But in this town, at this time, everybody loves Liza. The glittering crowd is completely enthralled. Even the press room is quiet, listening to her, rooting for her, the way they did for when she won her Oscar last year for Cabaret.
Minutes later, arms wind-milling, she winds up to the big finish.
And guess who’s going home with OS-car …
Truckin’ on home with OS-car …
Goin’ home with OS-car ….
TOOOOOOOOOOO – night!!
The Academy has four traffic-cop hosts this year – John Huston, David Niven, Diana Ross and Burt Reynolds. Unlike his co-hosts Burt has never been
Burt Reynolds
nominated for an Oscar, but he does have a new claim to fame: A Playboy-spoof nude centrespread in Cosmopolitan magazine that has raised eyebrows all over the world. When Cosmo queen Helen Gurley Brown asked Burt if, as a lark, he would be willing to bare all (well, almost all,) his friend and lover Dinah Shore advised him to take a pass. But the idea made him laugh out loud, and he couldn’t resist. Now he’s wishing he had listened to Dinah.
The gift-giving begins. Presenters for technical awards stop by to say hello so we have something to write about. We’re grateful for the sparks they provide in our stories.
Tatum O'Neal
Ten-year-old Tatum O’Neal becomes the youngest actor to win an Oscar, stealing the show from her dad Ryan in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon. Hurray, we’ve got a headline!
As the bigger stars come out to play, the quotes get juicier. We are all madly typing, interviewing, phoning. We’d love to dash off a few well-chosen words on our computers and wing them directly to our editors via the internet, but high school drop-out Steve Wozniak won’t invent the Apple computer for another two years. It will be another year before he and his fellow high-school drop-out buddy Steve Jobs launch Apple. But hey, no problem. The internet as we know it hasn’t been invented yet either. We file our stories a paragraph at a time, dictating over the phone during the show we are watching on a dozen television monitors around the room. During commercial breaks we scramble to interview winners and presenters, trying to find the angle that will make our Oscar reportage unique.
Katharine Hepburn
Some presenters don’t come up to the press room. Katharine Hepburn gets a standing ovation when she makes her first and only Oscar appearance to present The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her longtime friend Lawrence Weingarten.
“I’m living proof,” she says,” that a person can wait forty-one years to be unselfish.” Some members of the glittering audience are clearly beside themselves. This is the first time they have seen a legend in the flesh.
The Academy has a peculiar problem with this year’s Best Picture presenter. Traditionally the presenter appears in the press room with the winners to whom he/she presented the Oscar, mostly for window-dressing. But regardless of who wins Best Picture this year, the Academy fears they will be completely overshadowed by the presenter, and consequently ignored by the press. So they bring the presenter to the press room an hour or so before she goes on camera.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” says our Academy host, “do you have any questions for Elizabeth Taylor?”
Well, we do and we don’t. This is a surprise visit for which we are ill prepared – and by which we are more or less gob-smacked. La Liz is almost swarmed the moment she enters the room, resplendently zaftig in a chiffon lavender evening gown that compliments her legendary lavender eyes. Her traffic-stopping beauty is everything we’ve read about and more.
Elizabeth Taylor
“Do you have any questions for Miss Taylor?” And suddenly right in front of all of us, deftly blocking our access, are three old pros – veteran Hollywood scribes Jim Bacon, Bob Thomas and Vernon Scott – who lob a steady stream of softball questions at her. These guys have been interviewing the now-infamous Ms Taylor since she was a little girl. Together they form an almost protective phalanx around her, and she is both pleased and grateful to see them.
“What do you think of the show so far, Elizabeth?”
(They would never address her as ‘Liz.’ She hates that.)
“Oh I’m just having the best time, Jim!” says the former multiple nominee and two-time Oscar winner. “I just want everybody to win.”
“Is it easier to be a presenter when you’re not nominated yourself, Elizabeth?”
“Oh, Bob,” flashing her zillion-kilowatt smile, “it’s always nice to be nominated!”
After she leaves someone notes that three of Eddie Fisher’s ex-wives – Connie Stevens, Elizabeth, and Debbie Reynolds – are all in the house tonight. Eddie’s the only one who isn’t here. I want to ask Rona what she thinks of that, but she’s vanished, ostensibly to “powder her nose.”
Oh sure. Like we believe that. And while we’re at it, got any swamp land to sell?
Donald O'Connor & Marvin Hamlisch
Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor hand Marvin Hamlisch the first of three Oscars he will win tonight and Marvin looks as genuinely delighted as he should be. Marvin is currently composing the music for a new Michael Bennett musical about auditioning for a Broadway show. Two years from now he will win a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize for A Chorus Line. But tonight he’s just really happy to be recognized by Hollywood’s music community.
In the backgound, on the TV monitors, Miss Peggy Lee starts singing The Way We Were. I strain to hear her. I can’t. My colleagues are not impressed.
“Streisand should be here to sing that song,” says one of them. “That’s her song.”
Little do they know thar Rona has it on very good authority that Streisand has arrived and is now tucked away in a private dressing room above the stage.
Groucho with Erin Fleming
When Groucho Marx gets an honourary Oscar, one of the younger reporters approaches me almost stealthily. “Is he one of the Marx Brothers?” he whispers. Still, I tell myself, he knows enough not to embarrass himself by asking out loud. So there’s still hope for him.
We FINALLY get to the Best Actress award. Is this show eight hours long? Or does it just seem that way tonight?
Meanwhile, inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Gail is scanning her glossy Academy program. Oscar winners Susan Hayward and Charlton Heston, who both won their Oscars the same year, more than a decade ago, are scheduled to present the Best Actress award tonight. Hayward was nominated five times before she finally won, and she is a huge favourite in Hollywood.
Sitting in the first balcony in the theatre, Gail can see what we cannot see in the press room. During a commercial break Susan Hayward is gently, gingerly brought onstage by Charlton Heston. “He was almost carrying her,” Gail will report later.
Charlton Heston & Susan Hayward
The ravishing screen siren leans into Heston until the lights come on again, when she suddenly snaps to attention. She is wearing a dazzling gown, and the wig atop her head is an exact replica of her famous auburn locks. She looks gorgeous. She looks like Susan Hayward. She looks like she’s ready to party all night. She isn’t. She is dying of brain cancer. This will be her last appearance in public.
She and Heston read the names of the nominees for Best Actress. When they reads Barbra Streisand’s name, we see a still photo of Barbra in The Way We Were. When they read Joanne Woodward’s name, we see her sitting in the audience, beautifully coiffed and gowned, beside her doting husband Paul Newman.
“And the Oscar goes to …”
Heston opens the envelope, and blinks.
“—Glenda Jackson, for A Touch Of Class!”
The press room falls into stunned silence.
On the TV monitors we see a shot of Joanne Woodward applauding. She turns to Paul Newman and seems to be mouthing the words “Glenda Jackson?!?!?”
Rona is as stunned as the rest of us She immediately launches her own independent poll. “All right, who picked Glenda Jackson for Best Actress? Raise your hand if you picked Glenda Jackson for Best Actress! I want a show of hands!”
Glenda Jackson
No hands are raised. Rona throws her programme down on her desk. “Glenda Jackson?!?”
Glenda Jackson is not in the house. She’s home in England. Yes, yes, the nomination is all very nice, but why would she fly all the way back to California when everybody knows Barbara Streisand is going to win? So Glenda decides to take a bath – have a good long self-indulgent soak in the bathtub. And that’s where she is where she hears the news, over the radio, that she’s won the Oscar.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the whole shootin’ match is almost over. A handful of Oscar-losers are quietly slipping out of their seats and heading for their limousines. Then David Niven, one of the evening’s co-hosts, comes out to introduce Elizabeth Taylor. He gets halfway through his paean of praise to La Liz – “”a very important contributer to world entertainment” –when a naked man streaks by him, causing an impromptu crescendo of gasps, spluttering and laughter.
Robert Opel & David Niven
Niven, who poseeses one of the sharpest minds and wittiest tongues in the business, pauses briefly to acknowledge the streaker, then keeps on going. “”Isn’t it fascinating,” he quips, “to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?”
The naked man is Robert Opel, a gay sometimes-activist, who ends up giving his own press conference that night. Oscar show producer Jack Haley, Jr.is accused of staging Opel’s streak as a publicity stunt, a charge he emphatically denies. Opel will be a celebrity for at least 15 minutes; producer Allan Carr will later ask him to streak at a party for Rudolf Nureyev, who is in town dancing with the National Ballet Of Canada.
Four years from now Robert Opel will open a San Francisco gallery of gay male art. Five years from now he will be dead, murdered during a robbery at his gallery.
David Niven finally gets to introduce Elizabeth Taylor, and the crowd cheers.
Elizabeth Taylor
“That’s a pretty hard act to follow!” she says, still laughing, and reads the list of nominees.
“And the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of the Year goes to … The Sting!”
Half an hour later I meet Gail in the lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The crowd has dispersed, the army of fans has thinned out, the limousines have almost all departed, transporting their luminous cargo to private post-Oscar A-List parties in Beverly Hills. I’m not invited to any A-List parties. Not yet. I don’t have that kind of clout yet. But I’m working on it.
“Hungry?” says Gail.
“Starving,” I confess.
We had arrived at the Dorothy Chandler at 5 pm. It was now 10 pm, and neither one of us had eaten. The parking valet spins our rented Alfa Romeo to the edge of the red carpet, so all his buddies can see how he looks behind the wheel.
Hotel room service, we agree, has seldom looked so good.
We over-tip the parking valet, shift gears, and drive off into the night.
Hooray for Hollywood.
-/-
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