Oscar Wins Are Talk of the Town

When Halle Berry sobbed through her acceptance speech as best actress, attorney Erica Teasley and her sister, Laura, watching at their parents’ Baldwin Hills home, cried with her.

“As soon as they announced her name, just seeing her reaction--that was enough to get you started,” said Teasley, western regional counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

When Denzel Washington strode up to the stage to receive his Academy Award for Best Actor, Darren Price shouted for joy at a friend’s house in North Hollywood.

Earlier, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar and thanked all the black actors who came before him. “I can sit here and cry just thinking about it again,” said Sheila Frazier in her office at Black Entertainment Television, where she is assistant director of network talent.

On Monday morning, Frazier and her friends included the historic Oscar wins in their 7 a.m. prayer line, a daily conference call among black men and women of varying ages and occupations.

“One of my prayer partners said, ‘What’s your dream, Sheila? What’s your dream? If last night taught you anything, just do it,’” said Frazier, who had roles in “Super Fly” and “California Suite” in the 1970s.

“So I ran out with my head shots--which I had been slow in getting reproduced--and went to Anderson Graphics and said, ‘I want 500 pictures,’” she said. “I am inspired to act again.”

Inspired or just elated, many African Americans on Monday were savoring the Oscar wins of Berry and Washington.

The historic awards were the talk of morning radio--with comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey scoring the biggest coup when he got Washington to call his show for a live interview.

“Even in ‘The Color Purple’ years, it wasn’t like this,” said Ken Johnson, who just got laid off from Boeing. “I write screenplays myself. Now I’ve got time to hustle them around town. Maybe I’ll be up there in a few years getting an Oscar.”

As attorney Lynda Sheridan waited on a bench with her client outside a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, they took a moment to acknowledge the Oscar victories. Sheridan’s client flashed the front page of The Times, with pictures of Berry and Washington, and smiled at her attorney.

Later in the day, the Oscar wins were dissected in coffeehouses.

“It’s a complete buzz,” said Bobby Ross, who works in film and music, sitting outside a Starbucks in Ladera Heights.

“Denzel goes to my church,” Ross said. (That would be West Angeles Church.)

“I didn’t think he had a chance. I thought Russell Crowe would win again. Thirty years ago, Diana Ross lost--”

“‘Lady Sings the Blues,’” his friend, Gregory Barmore, interjected, recalling the film that earned the former Supreme a nomination for best actress.

“I thought maybe she would win then,” Ross said. “I didn’t have any idea that Halle Berry would win.”

From this Starbucks, you can walk to Pann’s Restaurant, where Halle Berry--who won the Oscar playing a waitress in “Monster’s Ball”--practiced waitressing.

“My father was in there,” said Kevin Boyd, a TV writer. “He called me and said, ‘Get down here, Halle Berry’s serving pancakes!’”

Of course, the wins by Berry and Washington were celebrated by people of all colors. “When I looked at the way Julia Roberts hung herself around Denzel Washington, that said it all,” Frazier said.

Much of the talk, whether over lattes or radio airwaves, was about how Berry and Washington were recognized for their work, not for being black.

“I wouldn’t want to overshadow their work by saying, ‘It’s a black thing.’ Denzel was well overdue,” said Sheridan, who lives in Ladera Heights.

There was also some angst over what the awards signified.

On one radio talk show exchange over Berry’s film role, “People were saying the Academy honored her in that role because they were willing to honor blacks in derogatory roles,” Sheridan said.

“When you don’t get anything, you complain,” she said. “When you do get something, you complain about how you got it.”

Deconstructing the win was part of the intense though good-natured debate among the regulars at the Starbucks.

“The only reason he got it was because Russell [Crowe] was acting up in the last few weeks,” said Tami Hamilton, an administrative assistant in a venture capital firm. “I don’t even think Denzel was expecting it.... I think it was just a token thing.”

“You think Russell Crowe’s performance was better than Denzel Washington’s?” Boyd asked her incredulously. “Just because he was playing a bad cop? I think he deserves some credit because he was so believable. We’ve never seen Denzel in a role like that.”

If Washington’s role in “Training Day” sparked discussion on the Starbucks patio, Berry’s in “Monster’s Ball”--which features her in an explicit love scene with a white man with a racist past--triggered even more talk.

“There was a lot of controversy about whether she should have done the role,” Hamilton said. “Honey, that’s a whole other story.”