MOVIES - March 30, 1990

House Comes Down on Crystal: Billy Crystal is getting more heat for his Oscar night quip about Italians purchasing MGM, this time from the U.S. House of Representatives. Fifty-two House members, including 36 of the House’s 38 Italian-Americans, signed a protest letter sent to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Karl Malden that charged that Crystal “soiled the reputations of the thirty-eight members of the United States Congress, who are descended from Italian parents and grandparents as well as 26 million citizens of Italian heritage who live throughout this free and loving land.” The letter requested that Crystal publicly apologize for his “racist, meanly offered sick joke.” Crystal said MGM’s lion would no longer roar at the start of movies, but plead the Fifth Amendment.