Friday, May 1, 2009

The Youngest


1. Shirley Temple at age 6 was the youngest person to receive an Oscar®. Temple was presented with an honorary (non-competitive) miniature statuette in 1934.

2. Justin Henry at age 8 was the youngest person to be nominated Best Supporting Actor, for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1980 and Timothy Hutton at age 20 was the youngest person to win Best Supporting Actor, for Ordinary People in 1981.

3. Tatum O'Neale at age 10 was the youngest person to be nominated and win Best Supporting Actress, for Paper Moon in 1974.

4. Keisha Castle-Hughes at age 13 was the youngest person,to be nominated Best Actress, for Whale Rider in 2003 and Marlee Matlin at age 21 was the youngest person to win Best Actress, for Children of a Lesser God in 1987.

5. Jackie Cooper at age 9 was the youngest person to be nominated Best Actor, for Skippy in 1931 and Adrien Brody at age 29 was the youngest person to win Best Actor, for The Pianist in 2003.

The Oldest


6. Gloria Stuart at age 87 was the oldest person to be nominated Best Supporting Actress, for Titanic in 1998 and Peggy Ashcroft at age 77 was the oldest person to win Best Supporting Actress, for A Passage to India in 1985.

7. Jessica Tandy at age 80 was the oldest person to be nominated and win an Academy Award® for Best Actress, in Driving Miss Daisy in 1990.

8. Richard Farnsworth at age 79 was the oldest person to be nominated Best Actor, for The Straight Story in 2000 and Henry Fonda at age 76 was the oldest person to win Best Actor, for On Golden Pond in 1982.

9. Clint Eastwood at age 74 was the oldest person to win Best Director, of Million Dollar Baby in 2004.

The Firsts


10. Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Academy Award®, for Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1940. Dorothy Dandridge was the first African-American to be nominated Best Actress, for Carmen in 1955. Sidney Poitier was the first African-American to win Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field in 1964. Halle Berry is the first African-American to win Best Actress, for Monster's Ball in 2002.

11. John Singleton was the first African-American and at age 24 the youngest person to be nominated for Boyz N The Hood in 1992.

12. Haing Ngor was the first Asian American to win an Academy Award®, for Best Supporting Actor in The Killing Fields in 1984.

13. Ang Lee was the first Asian American to win Best Director, for Brokeback Mountain in 2006.

14. Lina Wertmuller was the first woman to be nominated for Best Director for Seven Beauties in 1977. (No woman has ever won for Best Director.)

15. Isaac Hayes was the first African-American to win a non-acting Oscar®, for the theme song to Shaft in 1971.

16. Marlee Matlin was the first deaf person to win an Academy Award® in 1987 for her role in Children of a Lesser God.

17. Rita Moreno the first female Latino to win an acting Oscar®, for West Side Story in 1962.

The Most


18. Bob Hope has hosted the Academy Awards® ceremony more than any other person, an unprecedented 18 times. (He had never won a competitive Academy Award®, and often joked about it.)

19. Walt Disney has received the most Academy Awards® of any other person, winning 24, receiving 4 honorary, and racking up a total of 64 nominations in all.

20. Meryl Streep has received the most acting nominations, a total of 14. Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson are tied for second place with 12 nominations each.

21. 1959's Ben-Hur, 1997's Titanic and 2003's The Lord of the Rings have all won the highest number of Academy Awards®, 11.

22. The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985) have both received the most "no win" Oscar® nominations, an impressive yet disappointing 11.

The Longest

23. The 74th Academy Awards® in 2002 was the longest ceremony, timing in at 4 ½ hours.

24. Charlie Chaplin received the longest standing ovation in the Academy Awards® history, lasting five minutes, when he accepted an honorary award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century" in 1972.

The One and Onlys


25. Midnight Cowboy, awarded Best Picture in 1970, is the only X-rated movie to win an Academy Award®. The X-rating is no longer used, and in 1971, the film was given the new "R" rating.

26. Only one Oscar®-winning individual has also been a Nobel Laureate. George Bernard Shaw is the only Nobel Prize winner to also win an Academy Award®. He won Best Adapted Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938.

27. Warren Beatty and Orson Welles are the only people to have been nominated in the producer, directing, writing and acting all in the same film. But Warren Beatty has achieved that feat more than once, 1978's Heaven Can Wait and 1981's Reds.

Tough Acts to Follow



28. 1934's It Happened One Night set a high standard when it won Academy Awards® in the following four categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. Only two other films have ever achieved such a feat: 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and 1991's The Silence of the Lambs.

29. There have only been two instances where sisters have been nominated within the same category in the same year. In 1941 Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland were both nominated for Best Actress. (Joan Fontaine won the Oscar®.) In 1966 Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave were both nominated for the Best Actress award. (Neither of the sisters won the award.)

30. There have only been 5 instances of an Academy Award® tie. Wallace Beery (The Champ) and Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) tied for best actor in 1932. (March had one more vote than Beery, but Academy rules at the time stated that anything within 3 votes would be called as a tie.) In 1949 A Chance To Live and So Much for So Little both won the Documentary (Short Subject) award. In 1968 Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Streisand both won the Best Actress award. In 1986 Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got and Down and Out in America both won the Documentary (Feature) award. In 1994 Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life and Trevor both won the Short Film (Live Action) award.

Memorable moments


Amidst Hollywood's most exciting and entertaining night of the year, there are surprising, suspenseful and sometimes emotional moments that catch everyone off guard. Tell us whether these moments are memorable or forgettable.

1. At the 46th Academy Awards® in 1974, co-host David Niven was upstaged by Robert Opal who ran naked across the stage, streaking the audience, including millions of TV viewers. Niven, the usually stiff upper-lipped British actor joked to the audience "The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping ... and showing his shortcomings."

2. In 1973, Marlon Brando attempted to make a political statement on behalf of Native Americans, by refusing to accept his Best Actor award for his role in The Godfather, and sending Sacheen Littlefeather, an activist, in his place to read a speech he had prepared.

3. Jack Palance didn't merely give an acceptance speech when he won Best Supporting Actor in 1991 for City Slickers, the then 73-year-old actor also gave a show of strength, by doing one-armed push-ups on stage.

4. Sally Field gave one of the most memorable, and often misquoted acceptance speeches when she won the Best Actress award in 1985 for her role in Places in the Heart and gushed "... I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" The speech is usually parodied with the one liner -"You like me, you really like me!"

5. After recently suffering a debilitating spinal chord injury, a wheelchair bound Christopher Reeve, who once portrayed Superman on screen, made a surprise visit to the Academy Awards® in 1995. When he took the stage to introduce a clip about films that deal with social issues, the audience gave him a very moving standing ovation.

6. Angelina Jolie raised a few eyebrows with her public displays of affection towards her brother, James Haven Voight, at the 2000 Academy Awards® where she won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Girl, Interrupted. During her acceptance speech she declared, "I'm in shock. And I'm so in love with my brother right now, he just held me and said he loved me..."

7. An exuberant Roberto Benigni leapt over chairs and audience members, including Steven Spielberg, to make his way to the stage after being announced Best Actor for Life is Beautiful at the 1999 Academy Awards®. His excitement didn't end there as he exclaimed to the crowd, in broken English "I am not able to express all my gratitude because now, my body is in tumult because it is a colossal moment of joy ... I would like to be Jupiter and kidnap everybody and lie down making love to everybody because I don't know how to express, a question of love."

8. When Will Rogers announced the winner for Best Picture at the 1934 Academy Awards® by exclaiming "come on up and get it Frank", and excited Frank Capra went up to the stage, only to find out that it was Frank Lloyd who had won. Capra was able to live down his embarrassment by winning Best Director the following year for It Happened One Night.

9. At the 74th Academy Awards® in 2002, Halle Berry became the first African-American woman to win Best Actress. She delivered a tearful speech in which she said, "I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. ... It's for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened." The night took on even more significance as Denzel Washington was awarded Best Actor for Training Day and Sidney Poitier, the first African-American male to win Best Actor 39 years ago, was awarded an honorary award.

10. In 1989 Rob Lowe performed an opening number for the 61st Academy Awards® in which he sang a medley of tunes, including "Proud Mary" and performed a dance routine with an actress dressed like Snow White. The campy spectacle caused TV viewers to cringe and Disney to threaten a lawsuit.