Billy Crystal steps in as Oscars host

Billy Crystal stepped in Thursday to host the 2012 Academy Awards, replacing Eddie Murphy who bowed out after producer Brett Ratner left the show under a cloud of controversy.

Word of Crystal’s appointment came just 90 minutes after telecast producers Brian Grazer -- who replaced Ratner on Wednesday -- and Don Mischer said in an interview they had not settled on a host and were mulling five candidates.

“Am doing the Oscars so the young woman in the pharmacy will stop asking my name when I pick up my prescriptions. Looking forward to the show.” Crystal said via Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

“Bringing Billy back home is a good thing,” said Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Tom Sherak. “He’s funny. He’s a comic by trade and he’s an iconic Oscar host.” Sherak said the deal happened fast. “It happened today after [Grazer and Mischer did a round of press] calls, Billy’s people called and said he’ll do it if we want him. ... We called ABC and we’re doing it.”

“Don and I both feel that comedy is the common denominator,” Grazer said in the interview. “We really want a host who’s gonna have a sense of humor and who is interested in pleasing the audience.”

Crystal is a veteran of the broadcast, having hosted the show eight times between 1990 and 2004. At 63, Crystal will be a dramatic shift from the 2011 emcees, actors James Franco and Anne Hathaway, who were chosen in part because of their supposed appeal to younger viewers.

Meanwhile, Sherak said Thursday that he hoped the Ratner episode wouldn’t cause the academy lasting harm, and he pledged to work “really hard getting the tarnish off.”

Ratner, director of such popcorn films as “Rush Hour” and the newly released “Tower Heist,” was touted as someone who could jazz up the program and draw a bigger audience. But he came under fire after a Q&A; session last weekend following a screening of “Tower Heist,” during which he uttered an anti-gay slur. He then went on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show Monday and talked explicitly about his sex life.

On Monday, Ratner apologized for the slur, calling it “a dumb and outdated way of expressing myself” and said that “as a storyteller, I should have been much more thoughtful about the power of language and my choice of words.” Sherak on Monday called Ratner’s remarks “inappropriate” but said the academy didn’t plan to remove him from his Oscar-producing position. But Ratner ended up stepping aside Tuesday.

Sherak said Thursday that he was unaware of the Stern broadcast when he issued his initial statement of support for Ratner.

“I didn’t hear Howard Stern until that night. I don’t listen to that show. I’m not a listener. I think I’m out of the demographic. I got an email, ‘Have you heard Howard Stern?’ ” Sherak said. “Later in the day I went home. I put it on and I started listening to it. ... I knew why I don’t listen to Howard Stern. I felt appalled. Oh, my gosh, oh, wow. Thank God my wife didn’t hear it. I was appalled.

“Brett called me the next day. He said, ‘Tom, I need to resign.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Sherak placed a call to Grazer, who was in New York promoting his film “J. Edgar” and about to board a plane. “The minute I heard Tom’s voice, I said, ‘Absolutely,’ really,” Grazer said. The official offer came a few hours later, when Grazer had landed in L.A.

Sherak said he got many phone calls plus about 50 emails from members angry about Ratner. “People were upset,” he said. “They had a right to be upset. It’s their organization, and people need to speak out when they are upset.”

Asked whether he regretted hiring Ratner, Sherak said: “Not at all. Not one bit. Would I do it again? The answer is, I would have done it again based on the interview I had. ... I believed and so did [academy Chief Executive] Dawn [Hudson] that he would give us a great show. ...He brought us someone who gave us a lot of press with Eddie. Think about that, we were talking about the Academy Awards in August.”

Grazer, who is a friend of Ratner’s and who also produced “Tower Heist,” said he has no ill feelings toward Ratner. “I took him out to dinner last night,” Grazer said. “We’ve been friends for 22 years, and we’re gonna be friends for another 22 years.”

As for whether the entire episode has tarnished the reputation of the academy, Sherak said: “Someone the academy hired to perform a very important function messed up, messed up badly. He’s done everything he can, but this is him. The academy did what it needed to do by accepting his resignation when he offered it. Does it tarnish it? I hope not. If someone feels it does, then we will work really hard getting the tarnish off.”

The first order of business is producing the show, which airs live on Feb. 26. “We are still ahead of where we were last year with the show,” Sherak said Thursday morning. “We didn’t have a host last year until 21/2 weeks later than now.”

“For producers, we do our best in putting together the most exciting and emotionally meaningful show we can, but we have absolutely no control over nominees, winners or acceptance speeches, which are three of the ingredients that most affect the success of these shows,” said Mischer. “Remarkable, emotional acceptance speeches are uplifting and memorable. They’re talked about the next day at the water cooler. Unfortunately, we don’t get to write those. [Recently deceased Oscar producer] Gil Cates used to say, ‘The Oscar gods either smile on you or they don’t.’ If they smile on you, you get those moments.”

Crystal appeared on the 2011 Oscar show presenting a tribute to another veteran host of the Academy Awards, Bob Hope. During an August appearance at the Aero theater in Santa Monica, Crystal admitted that he got “itchy” after the cameo and said that he’d be ready to talk about a return to center stage at the gala.

“It got to be too much after a while and the sameness in my life,” he said in August. “That’s why I pulled back. And then when I thought I might want to do it again, they were on to other people. It’s always fun. It’s really hard, but maybe one or two more times? I don’t know. They know where I am.”

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nicole.sperling@latimes.com

rebecca.keegan@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times staff writers Steven Zeitchik and Geoff Boucher contributed to this report.