These days it’s hard to imagine anything truly unexpected or unplanned happening at any Academy Award ceremony due to the incredibly high security and tightly scripted evening which allows for no guerrilla street theatre or bizarre on-stage behavior – Jack Palance dropping down and doing one-arm pushups was the rare highlight of 1992 Oscar night. In fact if anybody tries any funny business this year or at future Oscar ceremonies there’s a good chance they’d be clubbed to death by security or subdued with a taser or jailed under the Patriot Act. And we have the ’70s to blame for all this because it was a time when actors started using the podium to champion their favorite political cause or instead of showing up sent a really bizarre representative to accept their award.

My favorite moment occurred at the 46th Oscar ceremony when co-host David Niven was interrupted at the beginning of his introduction for Elizabeth Taylor who was going to present the Best Picture award. He had barely started to speak before the audience began roaring in unison. Behind him a naked man was running across the stage. It was all over in seconds but Niven quickly noted, “Just think….the only laugh that man will ever get is for stripping and showing off his shortcomings.” The streaker was Robert Opel and his brief moment of fame, oddly enough, got him a guest spot on “The Mike Douglas Show,” invitations to streak at parties for dancer Rudolf Nureyev and composer Martin Hamlisch and other gigs. His behavior also provoked the Daily Variety enough to write, “The incident was a most unfortunate lapse of judgement on the part of the Academy people responsible for the show, for they destroyed in a few seconds a forty-six year history – often characterized by pomposity but nevertheless marked by propriety.” Indeed, anarchy came to dullsville for a brief moment. If only such absurdity could still explode on the stage every once in a while to liven things up.

The streaker, Robert Opel, was active in the emerging gay art scene at the time, and had been a photographer for The Advocate (his press credentials allowed him to sneak into the Oscar ceremony) and later opened an art gallery, Fey-Way Studios, that championed the work of such gay artists as Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland. In Opel’s opinion, his nude run across the Academy stage was an “art happening.” A few years later Opel’s life took a weird turn in 1979 (here’s a link to a more comprehensive profile of him (http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/06/yes_they_called.html). He was murdered in his gallery by two drug dealers who apparently were owed quite a bit of money by Opel.

But back to the 46th Oscar ceremony. The streaking was a strange surprise but some of the category nominees were a bit oddball as well. How weird was it to have child actress Tatum O’Neal competing against adult actress Madeline Kahn in the same movie, PAPER MOON, plus the other contenders included Linda Blair for THE EXORCIST? CRIES AND WHISPERS was in the running for the Best Picture Oscar when normally you’d expect a foreign language title to run in its own category. But the foreign language category that year featured Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (the winner) and four titles that most people have no familiarity with today – THE HOUSE OF CHELOUCHE STREET (Israel), L’INVITATION (Switzerland), THE PEDESTRIAN (West Germany) and the very nasty TURKISH DELIGHT (Netherlands) which was between softcore exploitation and hardcore art film. Featuring Rutger Hauer in an early role as a rebellious bohemian artist, TURKISH DELIGHT, directed by Paul Verhoeven, revels in lots of uninhibited sex, bodily functions, anti-social behavior (nose picking, vomiting, wallowing in food, etc.) and activities that rarely get a movie nominated for an Oscar. If any scenes from this movie had been shown on that Oscar night on April 2, 1974, it would have aroused the same response the streaker received.

Another favorite Oscar embarrassment happened just a year earlier at the 45th ceremony when Marlon Brando won the Best Actor Oscar for THE GODFATHER but…..didn’t show up to get it. Instead he sent Sacheen Littlefeather in his behalf to not only refuse the award but to deliver a speech….one of those jaw-dropping moments where the entire ceremony comes to a screeching halt as a big WHAAAATTTT? hangs in the air. Brushing Roger Moore aside as he tried to hand her Brando’s statuette, Sacheen turned to face the audience and read her prepared message: “Hello. My name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I’m Apache and I am president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech which I cannot share with you presently because of time but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry…and on television in movie reruns and also with the recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will, in the future, in our hearts and our understanding meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando.” Surprisingly, no one booed as Sacheen was led off to the press room but the stunned murmuring reaction of the audience was as good as it gets for one-of-a-kind acceptance speeches. Brando later wrote in his autobiography that his refusal of the award was “a little payback for years of [Native American] defamation by Hollywood.” He also added, “I don’t know what happened to that Oscar. The Motion Picture Academy may have sent it to me, but if it did I don’t know where it is now.” As for Sacheen Littlefeather, her few minutes of Oscar fame, like Robert Opel’s, led to some career opportunities. She was offered and accepted film roles in THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN, THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK, and FREEBIE AND THE BEAN to name a few. And more famously appeared nude in a Playboy spread in 1973.

Brando wasn’t the first actor to refuse to accept an Oscar however. George C. Scott was the first to start a tradition by refusing his Best Actor statuette for PATTON in 1970 before the night of the ceremony. Allegedly he told a reporter just a few hours after the nominations were closed that he would refuse the award if he won. So on Oscar night no one was that surprised when he didn’t show up. He later said he missed the ceremony because he was watching a hockey game. But his opinion of award ceremonies was well known and he was quoted as saying “The ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.” Almost a year later I was in New York City with some college friends and we scrapped our pennies together to go to the Copacabana nightclub (at the original location of 10 East 60th Street) to see Don Rickles. We sat at a back table, safe from Rickles’ line of sight – how he loved to heckle audience members – and noticed George C. Scott sitting several tables away on our left.  As soon as Rickles realized Scott was there, the actor became his target for the evening. He gave Scott unmitigated grief over his Oscar refusal, imitating the actor in baby talk protesting “I won’t compete. It’s undignified” and then roaring, “If you don’t want that Oscar, give it to me!” Sweating profusely through his entire standup act,, Rickles kept stealing looks at Scott, saying “Georgie, you know I’m just kidding ya. Look at the guy, he wants to kill me!” And from our table we could see Scott’s reaction to the whole thing. He never laughed once though he occasionally smiled or maybe it was a grimace. Apparently he and Rickles were friends in real life – Scott even appeared as a guest on “The Friars Roast of Don Rickles” – so maybe the whole thing was an act. If so, George C Scott really did deserve that Oscar. 

There are other favorite embarrassing moments in Oscar history but I prefer to let some of the other Morlocks share theirs. In the meantime, I say, more streaking, less award giving.