The weirdest moments in Oscars history

Marlon Brando refuses his award
While Patton actor George C Scott was the first person to refuse an Oscar (Scott didn’t feel acting should be a competition, describing the ceremony as “a two-hour meat parade”), Marlon Brando’s Oscar snub is the one everyone remembers. Brando’s decision to send a stand-in to refuse his Oscar has become one of the most iconic moments of the Academy Awards.

When Brando’s name was called as Best Actor for The Godfather in 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather, an actress and president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, took the stage in his place.

Refusing the award from presenter Roger Moore, Littlefeather told the audience Brando “very regretfully cannot accept this generous award” in protest at the mistreatment of Native Americans by the film industry and the ongoing siege at Wounded Knee.

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Brando had given Littlefeather a 15-page speech to read but the producer threatened to have her arrested or physically removed from the stage if she spoke for more than a minute. Despite jeers and boos from the audience, Littlefeather earned the applause of some with her very gracious speech.

Littlefeather later said John Wayne was backstage and “he became very upset,” by her comments.

As a result of the incident, proxy speeches were banned at future awards ceremonies.

Debby Boone and the not-deaf children
When the song You Light Up My Life was nominated for an Academy Award in 1978, the producers thought they had a cute idea for singer Debby Boone’s performance.

Inspired by a mother who taught a class of children the song using sign language for her hearing-impaired daughter, they decided to replicate this for the ceremony, with 11 girls singing behind Debby.

However, it soon became apparent to viewers that the 11 girls on stage were signing different songs. It was also screamingly obvious to hearing-impaired viewers that 10 of the girls were just spelling out random words; only one of them was deaf and the rest had only limited knowledge of sign language.

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Host Bob Hope told the audience the girls were “affiliated with the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf” (named for the son of actor Spencer Tracey) but their only affiliation was that a doctor from the clinic had chosen them and they were in fact students of a local elementary school.

A spokesperson for the Academy later defended their actions by saying,
"nobody said the children were really deaf.”

I cannot find this beautiful masterpiece on the internet so we will all just have to use the power of our minds to imagine what this train wreck might have looked like.

David Niven meets The Streak
I don’t know what was in the water in the 70s (LSD?) but public streaking reached epidemic proportions and it really hit the mainstream when a man’s genitals gleefully bounced across the stage at the 1974 Academy Awards.

As David Niven announced the next presenter, a naked man came running behind him flashing both the peace sign and his untamed crotch to the crowd before disappearing off screen.

Raquel Welch reportedly shouted, “Streak, honey, streak!”

The crowd roared with laughter and Niven famously remarked that, “probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life was by stripping off and showing his shortcomings.”

It was reported that streaker Robert Opel had sneaked backstage posing as a journalist and then hidden inside a piece of scenery, but there was speculation that the show’s producer had orchestrated the stunt. This theory is borne out by the fact that Opel, (a well known streaker and gay rights activist), spoke to the press in the area reserved for Oscar winners instead of being ejected by security.

Asked why he did it, Opel said, “it might’ve been an educative thing to do. You know, people shouldn’t be ashamed of being nude in public. Besides – it is a hell of a way to launch a career.”

In a sad and unrelated twist, Opel was murdered in 1979 in a robbery of his art gallery.

Hattie McDaniel’s bittersweet victory
Actress Hattie McDaniel made history in 1939 as the first African American to win an Academy Award, taking home the Best Supporting Actress honour for her role as Mammy in Gone With The Wind.

Presenting the award, actress Fay Bainter said the acknowledgement of McDaniel’s work, “opens the doors of this room, moves back the walls and enables us to embrace the whole of America.”

In her acceptance speech, McDaniel described her win as “one of the happiest moments of my life.”

But the door of diversity in the film industry was not so much flung open, as Bainter’s speech implied, but merely cracked ajar.

Ironically, what should have been a triumphant moment for McDaniel was soured by the fact she was forced to sit at a segregated table at the back of the room, away from the rest of the cast. She and her escort were the only people of colour, aside from wait staff, in attendance.

Segregation laws had also prevented McDaniel from attending the premiere of Gone With The Wind in Atlanta. Her co-star Clark Gable threatened to boycott the film’s opening if McDaniel could not attend, but the actress reportedly persuaded him to appear.

Vanessa Redgrave’s fighting words
Vanessa Redgrave is an actress never afraid to speak her mind and her acceptance speech at the 1978 Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress for Julia almost incited a riot.

Redgrave had financed a documentary called The Palestinian and her support of the Palestinian cause upset the Jewish Defence League. Outside the ceremony, an effigy of Redgrave burned as JDL members picketed the awards.

In her speech, Redgrave thanked the Academy for failing to bow to the pressure of the Jewish Defence League, who had called upon the Academy to reject her nomination.

She described those who protested against her as “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums” who were an “insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”

Of course, all anyone heard was ‘Zionist hoodlums’, which drew gasps and boos from the crowd.

Redgrave’s stance would impact her career, but in an interview with the Telegraph in 2012 she said she did not regret a thing.

“You do what you feel is right. People get it or they don’t. I did what I thought was right – and whether that would have any effect on my career or not was quite beside the point.”

When Rob Lowe met Snow White
One of the most catastrophic opening numbers of the Academy Awards was so bad that it jinxed the careers of almost everyone involved.

"I still am seeing a psychiatrist over it," Rob Lowe joked to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in 2009.

At the 1989 Academy Awards, actor Lowe and Snow White danced and sang for 12 minutes as Hollywood’s elite looked on in horror.

Academy Awards numbers were often kitschy but this performance reached another level of absurdity, people dressed as tables and chairs gyrated while giant glittery stars (both the sparkly, pointy kind and the celebrity kind) danced. The low-light was a reworked version of Proud Mary sung by a squeaky voiced Snow White and a vocally-challenged Rob Lowe.

The next day, Disney sued the Academy for using Snow White’s likeness without their permission and several celebrities, including Julie Andrews, Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, attached their names to an open letter complaining about the campy performance, calling it “an embarrassment to the Academy and the motion picture industry.”

It was a miserable experience for Lowe but it was a career killer for Snow White; actress Eileen Bowman fled Hollywood the next day. Producer Allan Carr (‘Grease’) never worked in the fickle town again before his passing in 1999.

Bowman later revealed that her Snow White dress “was bought for $23,000 by someone involved with the production who was buried in it. It was a man. I'm leaving it at that.”