MOVIES - March 29, 1990

Italian-Americans Didn’t Laugh: Two Italian-American organizations found little humor in comic Billy Crystal’s Italian joke during the Academy Awards ceremony, and complained to ABC about it. Crystal, host for the 62nd annual awards ceremony broadcast on ABC, quipped that the proposed purchase of MGM by an Italian businessman meant the famous lion would no longer roar at the start of the movie but instead plead the Fifth Amendment. “It was a cheap-shot joke against Italian-Americans,” said a release from the Coalition of Italo-American Organizations. “There is a fine line between ethnic humor and negative stereotyping. We feel (Crystal) crossed that line.”