OSCARS: THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

Last year’s nostalgia-laden Oscar telecast ran a little long. It is said that by the time the show ended, most UCLA film school seniors had graduated summa cum Mercedes, learned how to spell “remake,” and become apprentice moguls.

The program, aired by ABC, lasted 3 hours and 45 minutes. It provoked much thought on ways in the future to silence windy winners. Musketry, chloroform and trap doors were often mentioned.

“We’ve got all three this year,” says Larry Gelbart, co-producer and sole writer of tonight’s 57th annual Academy Award ceremonies. ABC will televise it live from the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, starting at 6 p.m. PST.

Gelbart, former executive producer of CBS’ “MASH,” seemed mildly surprised when told that Oscar ’85 is scheduled to run two hours, 58 minutes and 4 seconds. But he says he “would like the show to be shorter” than even that.

Ah, to dream the impossible dream.

Oscar winners tend to thank everyone from Mom to the producer’s third assistant nephew. But this year’s attempt to tighten the show and its oratory includes measures that Hollywood might consider cruel and unusual punishment.

To shorten introductions of people who need no introductions, the program’s 10 celebrity co-hosts will be presented en masse to the multitudes early on. Where there is a possibility of multiple winners in a category, nominees will be encouraged before show time to pick one spokesperson, to avoid three or four successive verbal salaams.

Lastly, the major weapon: a red light that starts flashing after 30 seconds of oratory and stays on at the 45-second mark. If the winner persists after that, the forecast calls for orchestral music followed by scattered commercials.

Gelbart says nominees have been asked to confine their remarks to 45 seconds, and most probably will, although there may be “an overgrateful person” or two who tries to defy the red warning bulb. A horrible fate awaits those miscreants.

“They’ll never see their car again,” he warns.

All this show-tightening was devised by Gelbart and his co-producers--Gregory Peck, director Robert Wise, and academy President Gene Allen--to avoid a recurrence of ratings sag, which afflicted last year’s exercise in on and on.

According to A.C. Nielsen audience estimates, Oscar ’84 was seen in 23.4 million American homes and was easily the big ratings winner in the April week it aired. But that was 6.2 million fewer homes than tuned in for Oscar night in 1983.

Various theories have been offered for the drop--a long, boring show; lack of interest in the contenders and perhaps even cosmic forces so powerful that one might say it was as if an occult hand had hurled a raspberry at Hollywood.

Whatever the reason, Gelbart & Co. are out to make things right. And regardless of the ratings results, there’s no question that Oscar night remains a big night beyond the confines of Tinseltown and even the United States.

Jack Springer, an ABC sales executive in New York, says broadcasters in 77 countries, up one from 1984, will air tonight’s show. “It’s the highest figure we’ve ever had,” he says. But only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela will get the show live, he adds.

The others will get a 90-minute taped version of tonight’s proceedings. They include Britain, Germany, Italy, and, for the first time in Oscar history, Poland and mainland China, Springer says. All those customers will get what you’d call Essence of Oscar no later than 48 hours after the last winner has stolen that extra bow--or tried to.

Unlike many in Hollywood, Gelbart has no theory of why last year’s Oscar show was, well, slightly to the left of whoopee.

“I was happily out of the country last year,” he says. “And I may wish I were happily out of the country after tonight.”