41st Academy Awards

41st Academy Awards
DateApril 14, 1969
SiteDorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles
Produced byGower Champion
Directed byGower Champion
Highlights
Best PictureOliver!
Most awardsOliver! (5)
Most nominationsOliver! (11)
TV in the United States
NetworkABC

The 41st Academy Awards were presented on April 14, 1969, to honor the films of 1968. They were the first Oscars to be staged at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles,[1] and the first with no host since the 20th Academy Awards.[2]

Oliver! became the only Best Picture winner to have received a G-rating prior to winning, the ratings system having replaced the old Hays Code on November 1, 1968 (though a number of Best Picture winners have received the rating retroactively). It was the last British film to win Best Picture until Chariots of Fire in 1981, and the last musical to win until Chicago in 2002.

The year was notable for the first—and so far, only—tie for Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand shared the award, for their performances in The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl, respectively.[3] Hepburn became the second actress and third performer to win an acting Oscar two years in a row (having won for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner the previous year), after Luise Rainer in 1936 (The Great Ziegfeld) and 1937 (The Good Earth), and Spencer Tracy in 1937 (Captains Courageous) and 1938 (Boys Town). She also became the first to win three acting Oscars in lead categories (an achievement later matched by Daniel Day-Lewis and Frances McDormand).

Stanley Kubrick received his only career Oscar this year, for Best Visual Effects as special effects director and designer for 2001: A Space Odyssey.[4]

Cliff Robertson's performance in Charly, which had received a mixed-to-negative reception from critics and audiences, engendered controversy when he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Less than two weeks after the ceremony, TIME mentioned the Academy's generalized concerns over "excessive and vulgar solicitation of votes" and said "many members agreed that Robertson's award was based more on promotion than on performance."[5]

A few people griped over the failure of Paul Newman to get an Academy Award nomination for his direction of the film Rachel, Rachel, despite him receiving a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.[6]

Also notable this year was the only instance to date of the Academy revoking an Oscar after the ceremony: Young Americans won the award for Best Documentary Feature Film, but on May 7, 1969, it was discovered that it had premiered in October 1967, thus making it ineligible. Journey into Self, the first runner-up, was awarded the Oscar the following day.[7][8]

A minor controversy was created when, in a sketch on The Tonight Show, which was recorded three hours before the awards ceremony, Johnny Carson and Buddy Hackett announced Oliver! as the winner for Best Picture and Jack Albertson as Best Supporting Actor.[9] Columnist Frances Drake claimed that most observers believed Carson and Hackett "were playing a huge practical joke or happened to make a lucky guess".[10] Referring to it as "The Great Carson Hoax", PricewaterhouseCoopers stated in a 2004 press release that it was "later proven that Carson and Hackett made a few lucky guesses for their routine, dispelling rumors of a security breach and keeping the integrity of the balloting process intact".[11] Carson would go on to host the ceremony five times.[2]

  1. ^ Champlin, Charles (April 15, 1969). "Streisand and Hepburn Tie; Robertson Voted Best Actor". Los Angeles Times. p. 1.
  2. ^ a b "Every Oscar Host in History: See the Full List From Douglas Fairbanks to Jimmy Kimmel". Oscars.org. January 22, 2024. Archived from the original on May 27, 2024. Retrieved May 27, 2024.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Oscars1969 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Internet Movie Database. "Awards for Stanley Kubrick". IMDb. Archived from the original on January 7, 2009. Retrieved September 6, 2009.
  5. ^ "The Trade: Grand Illusion". TIME. April 25, 1969. Archived from the original on September 14, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  6. ^ Wallechinsky, David; Wallace, Irving (1975). The People's Almanac. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 845. ISBN 0-385-04060-1.
  7. ^ Breznican, Anthony (January 29, 2014). "'Alone Yet Not Alone': The OTHER Oscar nominees who lost their bids". Entertainment Weekly.
  8. ^ "'Journey Into Self' Wins Oscar After Ineligibility Ruling". Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections. Oscars.org. Archived from the original on June 26, 2024.
  9. ^ "Carson Names 'Oliver!' Long Before It's Official". New York Times. April 15, 1969. p. 40.
  10. ^ "Hackett, Carson On Inside Track?". Galveston Daily News. April 21, 1969. p. 7. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
  11. ^ "PricewaterhouseCoopers Celebrates 70th Anniversary Managing Academy Awards(R) Balloting". February 12, 2004. Archived from the original on March 1, 2014. Retrieved March 1, 2014.