by Nick Madigan
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Since its first, relatively humble outing in 1929, Oscar night has grown into the most gargantuan entertainment industry event anywhere, the most-watched glamour show on the planet, the King Kong of kudos.
It's not easy to stop such an inexorable force in its tracks.
Sure enough, within days of the Sept. 11 tragedy, and not long after the Television Academy announced the first of two postponements for the Emmy Awards, the Motion Picture Academy declared that the show would definitely go on next year, on March 24 as scheduled. But while no one likes to think about the prospect, postponing the Academy Awards does have historical precedent:
- In 1938, the show at the Biltmore Hotel was bumped from March 3 to March 10 because of massive floods in the Los Angeles area. The raging waters damaged studios and stranded many people in their homes, including Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences president Frank Capra. The floods also sent a huge rubber whale from the Warner Bros. lot sailing down the furious Los Angeles River. Several Hollywood stars sought medical treatment for minor injuries.
- In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis on April 4 prompted the Academy to move Oscar night to April 10, two days after it was initially scheduled at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and one day after King's funeral. As riots spread across the country, Sammy Davis Jr., who was to sing during the Oscarfest, said on "The Tonight Show" that he had asked Academy president Gregory Peck to postpone the awards "to show that someone cares". The Governors Ball was cancelled and host Bob Hope's remarks were rewritten "to conform with the dignity of the occasion", Peck told reporters.
- On March 30, 1981, the day the Oscars were to be presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a deranged man shot President Reagan and three of his retinue in Washington, D.C., just hours before the Oscar ceremony was to start. Unsure of the extent of Reagan's injuries, Academy president Fay Kanin, show producer Norman Jewison and ABC execs elected to move the show to the next day. Reagan, the first Hollywood actor to occupy the Oval Office, watched the telecast from his hospital bed, including a one-minute statement of welcome that he had taped for the show 10 days earlier.
Now, with the country still reeling from the attacks on Sept. 11, and ample evidence that the real world is all too capable of intruding upon Hollywood's fantasy factory, there exists the nagging possibility that another catastrophe could once again severely disrupt Oscar's big bash.
Such postponements require an enormous logistical turnaround involving thousands of people -- not just nominees, guests and presenters but technicians, musicians, florists, dressers, caterers, cooks, waiters, hairdressers, hotel managers, limo drivers, security officers and journalists. Any change in all those schedules throws months of planning out the window and sends discernible -- if short- term -- shock waves through the Los Angeles economy.
The phenomenon was particularly pressing in 1981, when the decision whether to go ahead with the Oscar show had to be made almost immediately, since many of the principal players were already preparing for the big night and would need to be told not to bother.
"It took three or four hours before we could get our act together and decide what to do," recalled John Pavlik, who was then the Academy's executive administrator and is now director of communications. "At first, we didn't know if Reagan was going to survive. That would have affected whether the show was cancelled altogether, because, if he'd died, it would have been weeks before the country got back on its feet."
Four hours before curtain time, a verdict was reached -- come back tomorrow. It fell to Pavlik to tell the media and the fans outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, some of whom had been there since midnight. They weren't happy.
Meanwhile, Kanin, Jewison and a phalanx of Academy employees hit the phones -- a monumental task given the number of people involved in putting on an Oscar show. All performers, presenters and nominees had to be confirmed for the new date, a frantic exercise in logistics that required contacting talent, agents, managers and producers all over the country. For some of the guests, however, word of mouth and media coverage of the postponement would have to suffice, it was decided.
"I called Johnny Carson, the host," Jewison remembered. "He said, 'That's great -- my first 10 minutes is Reagan jokes.'"
Jewison, who directed 1968 best-picture winner In the Heat of the Night, said he tried "to keep everyone calm", including Luciano Pavarotti, who was scheduled to sing in Florida the next day. The tenor was persuaded to remain in Los Angeles, and ABC covered the cost of his canceled Florida performance.
The only person not able to stay over was presenter Kris Kristofferson, who was required on the New York set of Rollover: He was replaced by Jack Lemmon, a best-actor nominee for Tribute. And one nominee in the foreign-language category, whose visa only extended through the original night of the show, needed intervention from the Academy's friends in Washington to get an extension.
For Kanin, news of the Reagan shooting interrupted a vital Oscar tradition. "I was having my hair done, and there was a buzz around the beauty shop," she said. Later, Kanin asked Dolly Parton, who was to sing "Nine to Five", whether she'd mind staying another day.
"'Oh, no, he's my president too,'" Parton answered, according to Kanin, who to this day remains impressed by the cooperation she encountered.
"It was quite remarkable that all those people changed their plans, it really was," she said. "There were scores and scores of them."
Academy workers agreed to work through the night to dismantle the Oscar set -- a job that usually takes a full day -- so that the Los Angeles Philharmonic could begin their rehearsals at 10:30 a.m., as scheduled.
A pricklier problem involved the Intl. Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton, which the Academy had booked for the Governors Ball on March 30 but not the following night, when the American Film Marketing Assn. was to be there.
The two organizations reached a compromise: AFMA would leave the ballroom by 10:30 p.m. to allow hotel staff to clean up the tables in time for the Academy's party for 1,500 people at 11 p.m.
"It was just pandemonium," Jewison said of the experience. "I couldn't believe it. When the president of the country is in the hospital, I don't think it's time to have this great celebration. In most countries, if the head of state is shot, they play nothing but martial music on TV and everything shuts down."
© 2001 Reuters/Variety REUTERS