Some Thirty-Six Enchanted Evenings

Note: Times staff writer Kevin Thomas has an Oscar run any studio would envy; he’s attended 36 straight Academy Award ceremonies, with No. 37 on tap for tonight. During that time he’s seen a streaker on stage, protests at the podium, a cake fight in the balcony and three generations of Hollywood stars. We asked him to flip through his Oscar memory file for some of his favorite moments.

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There’s nothing quite like being at the Oscars--those lights, those cameras, that action! The truth is, as is often told, that you get the best view on your TV set, whether of the glittery arrivals or the show itself, but there’s nothing like being there in person, in the thick of it.

I was sitting not far from the late Lila Kedrova, a wonderful character actress, who leaped out of her seat and rushed down to the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium when she heard her name announced as the winner of the best supporting actress of 1964 for her performance in “Zorba the Greek”--and I’ve been hooked ever since.

It’s hard to believe that when I go to the 72nd Academy Awards presentation tonight that I will have attended more than half of the Oscar ceremonies. For 36 years I have laid whatever critical faculties I possess aside in the name of getting into the spirit of the occasion. I put out of mind any disappointments I may have that a certain film or actor didn’t get nominated, never worry about whether the show will have dull stretches or run overly long, root for my favorites to win and look forward to the elegant Board of Governors Ball, where you have a chance to catch up with old friends and new acquaintances, and to offer congratulations and condolences.

This wide-eyed attitude never fails; for one night of the year I summon a childlike excitement at all that glamour, suspense and spectacle that continues to captivate the imagination of movie fans the world over.

To look back over 36 years of Oscars is of course to bring back a flood of memories, but what sticks in my mind most vividly are not those emotion-filled thank-yous of the winners but those occasions when the unexpected occurs, often out of sight of the TV cameras. My most unforgettable moment happened some 20 years ago when perennial starlet Edy Williams entered the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center and zeroed in on me as the one familiar face in the lobby crowd gathered before the awards show.

Edy loved to show up in some sort of skimpy attention-getting attire, often accompanied by some wild animal on a leash. This year she was wearing a leopard-skin coat over a leopard-skin bikini; presumably, she had already parked the leopard or ocelot or whatever outside. Naturally, she held her coat open to make sure everyone knew how little she had on underneath it.

In any event, she made a beeline for me. Wouldn’t you know I would be in conversation with the late Rouben Mamoulian, the esteemed innovative director, and the late Robert Vogel, longtime head of MGM’s foreign publicity, and their wives. Rouben and Bob were stalwarts of the academy’s foreign-language committee and were Hollywood aristocrats in the finest sense. They and their wives, who surely had seen it all in their long experience in show business, could not have been more gracious to Edy had she been the queen of England, which made her attire seem all the more inappropriate. I cringed inwardly in embarrassment for Edy, of whom I am fond, yet realize in retrospect that she was well beyond being embarrassed.

Still, Edy surely took such exhibitionism far more seriously than did Robert Opel, who streaked the Oscars back in 1974, just as David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor as one of the presenters. I did not know Opel at the time but subsequently became acquainted with him. He was a likable, unpretentious man involved in the arts and the peace movement. Some five years later he called me to tell me he was about to open an art gallery in San Francisco and to drop by when I was up there. As it happened, I would be in the Bay Area in several weeks, but by then Opel had been fatally shot in an apparent robbery attempt at the new gallery he was so proud of.

Speaking of Taylor, I once escorted her down the grand staircase at the Dorothy Chandler before the show, though I had never formally met her. She was attending the Oscars with director George Cukor, who started to introduce me to her on the mezzanine-level balcony and then got distracted by some people who approached him.

I offered my arm to her, and off we went down the steps! She looked at me pleasantly, trusting in her director--this was around the time she and Cukor were making “The Blue Bird” in Russia in the mid-’70s. Taylor looked absolutely gorgeous up close, was stunningly gowned and the epitome of serene mega-star composure. People noticed her and smiled. She smiled back, but there was no big fuss: This was an industry crowd, after all.

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Whether the Oscars are being handed out at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, as they were in the ‘60s, or at the Music Center or the Shrine since then, there’s much that’s the same from year to year, although the crowds have grown bigger and the security heavier. You can count on miles of red carpet, cheering fans in the bleachers, demonstrators with placards (a fixture since the Vietnam War), scores of uniformed guards, police, academy officials, paparazzi, TV cameras--and of course, all those car attendants. This is Los Angeles, after all.

They’re all focused on the arriving guests, winnowing out the celebrities to be greeted by Army Archerd amid screams from fans, while the rest of us are nudged politely to keep moving, keep moving. Lots of industry and media types swear they loathe the Oscars and attending the ceremony even more, but I wouldn’t miss being part of all that hoopla for anything.

When I started attending the Osars, I was lucky enough to watch part of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Not so long ago you could expect to see the greatest stars of them all--Cary Grant, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, even from the very early days, Lillian Gish and producer Hal Roach--participating in the ceremonies, either as presenters or recipients. Nowadays there are precious few major survivors from the pre-World War II era, and you’re hard put to think of anyone still alive outside Anita Page and Loretta Young who actually had leading roles in silent pictures. Thank God for Sophia Loren.

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The high point of the Oscar ceremony in 1972--and the most dramatic Oscar moment I have ever witnessed--was the appearance of Charles Chaplin, ending a long exile from Hollywood to accept a special Oscar to tremendous, overwhelming acclaim. Scores came by Chaplin’s table at the Board of Governors Ball to offer congratulations. He was still beaming the next day, as he continued to receive good wishes from friends and strangers alike as he held court at the Polo Lounge during the luncheon hour.

By contrast, Jane Fonda’s “Julia” friend and co-star Vanessa Redgrave, upon winning the 1977 best supporting actress award in the title role of the film from a Lillian Hellman memoir, spoke out against “militant Zionist hoodlums” for protesting her activism on behalf of the Palestinian cause. It was one thing to witness this on TV, quite another in person, I am sure. The moment of silence that greeted Redgrave in the Dorothy Chandler was absolutely electrifying.

As the years have passed, stars using the Oscar ceremony to speak out in behalf of various causes have become almost commonplace occurrences. A young Native American woman calling herself Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in traditional garb to reject the 1972 best actor Oscar in behalf of Marlon Brando for “The Godfather,” reading his statement protesting the treatment of American Indians in the entertainment media. As startling as it was, it did not have quite the same impact as Redgrave’s speech did five years later; Brando’s statement would have been much more powerful had he come down and made it in person.

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The most mysterious moment I ever saw occurred when one year I was sitting in the back row of the first balcony at the Dorothy Chandler and a woman, dressed in a waitress’ uniform--she may well have been an actual waitress at one of the Music Center restaurants--entered, spotted a man sitting down the row from me and angrily threw, with perfect aim, into his face a large cake, complete with icing. (I was close enough to have a taste of the cake; it was good.)

She never said a word, he never said a word, and he calmly started wiping himself off. Whatever provoked her anger--surely, it had to have been more than failing to leave a tip, if in fact she really was a waitress--or who her victim was, I will never know.

You cannot attend the Oscars year after year without being impressed by how hard legions of people have worked to make the event proceed seamlessly. I think in particular of the contributions of the late set decorator Jerry Wunderlich, who year after year made the Board of Governors Ball sparkle with his resourceful decor.

Think of all those hairstylists, dress designers and makeup artists who make all those actresses dazzle. The outlandish and the risque outfits grab the media attention, but what lingers in the memory are those timelessly beautiful and classy ladies I have seen up close over all these years--the Audrey Hepburns and the Sophia Lorens, who have given the Oscars their special glow. A number of younger actresses follow in their paths, but perhaps none so exquisitely as Nicole Kidman, who has the posture and the gowns of a princess. No screen image of Kidman can match the impact of her beauty, up close and in person.

By the time Oscar turns 75, the Academy Awards presentation should be well-ensconced in its own home, when construction of its theater and surrounding complex is completed. The project is now well underway, at Hollywood and Highland, once the site of the long-gone Hollywood Hotel and a focal point in the early days of the film industry. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has long been too small; the Shrine is of fine size but considered by many out of the way. With this move, the Oscars will have at last come home, just down the block from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, whose Blossom Room was the site of the first Academy Awards presentation so long ago.

For me the Oscars are the icing on the cake, for unlike much of that global audience, I am aware that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a year-round operation offering special programs and exhibitions celebrating the art of film and a splendid research library that draws film scholars from everywhere. Not surprisingly, the academy has a large and highly trained staff who take pride in their work--Otto Spoerri, the academy’s longtime controller as well as Jim Roberts and Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive directors, past and present, respectively, immediately come to mind.

From its inception, the academy has inspired generations of top film professionals to dedicate much time in serving on its Board of Governors and its various committees. I cannot think of the academy membership without thinking of writer Fay Kanin or director Robert Wise, both past academy presidents, who have volunteered decades of service. When you think of their contributions and those of so many others, it’s easy to get into the spirit of what is still the world’s most glittering evening.