Via azcentral.com: Tara Taghizadeh interviews author and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne. Here's a snippet:
Q: Do you think that the Academy Awards have been much more receptive to smaller, independent films in recent years?
A: Yes, much more. At some point, the major studios so controlled the industry that it was very hard for an independent film – except one released through United Artists, which was a pretty big company – to get attention because the big studios did control the Oscars. They also controlled the theaters – they owned the theaters so they often didn't book independent films and certainly didn't give them a lot of push. There was a time when, in order to make big money, you had to win the Academy Award for best picture.
If you look at the top-grossing films in the early days, it was always Gone With the Wind, From Here to Eternity, Lawrence of Arabia – all those that had won Oscars. Because people went to see those movies that had won Oscars. Once things like Star Wars came out, or say, Dumb and Dumber, things like that that could make big, big money without an Oscar, that became less relevant to the process. And now what Oscar does is a great help to independent films because an Oscar endorsement of an independent film can get it bookings in theaters around the world….
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And this is an oldie: The Nation's Oscar slide show. One of the films listed is It Happened One Night. The photo caption reads:
"The first film to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay), Frank Capra's screwball comedy causes a sensation with its ribald humor and the presence of a shirtless Clark Gable (pictured with co-star Claudette Colbert). The Nation's William Troy is charmed, describing the film as 'exceptionally well put together from almost every point of view.'"
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On a whole different Oscar season note, author Allan Ellenberger has — quite beautiful — images of the tombs of Oscar winners now getting some much deserved rest at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Among them:
- Janet Gaynor (right, with Charles Farrell in 7th Heaven), the first best actress winner;
- Peter Finch, the first posthumous winner in one of the acting categories;
- best actor winner Paul Muni;
- Cecil B. DeMille, whose The Greatest Show on Earth was the best picture winner of 1952;
- Gone with the Wind director Victor Fleming;
- best director/screenwriter winner John Huston;
- screenwriter Dudley Nichols, the first person to refuse an Academy Award, back in 1935;
- Douglas Fairbanks, who was given a posthumous honorary Oscar in 1939.
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i love bob osborne