The Oscars is Hollywood’s biggest night, and the gala has generated some remarkable moments in its more than 90-year history — some funny, some moving and some confounding. The following is a look at some of the most unforgettable moments in Oscars history:
AND THE BEST PICTURE GOES TO ... OOPS
The most memorable moment in recent Oscars history happened in 2017, when the Academy’s top prize was briefly handed to dreamy musical La La Land, when coming-of-age drama Moonlight was the actual winner.
Photo: AFP
It turns out accountants for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm responsible for tabulating and safeguarding Oscar votes and results, had handed presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope.
They ended up with a duplicate of the best actress envelope — a prize that went to Emma Stone for La La Land — instead of the one that had Moonlight winning for best picture.
The embarrassing mix-up, the worst snafu in the history of the Academy Awards, came to be known as “Envelopegate.”
Photo: AFP
“It was a heartbreaking fiasco,” Entertainment Weekly critic Jeff Jensen wrote at the time.
“You felt embarrassed for Dunaway and Beatty, who clearly knew something was amiss when he opened the envelope but didn’t know how to proceed.”
POLITICAL PROTEST
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In March 1973, the legendary Marlon Brando won the best actor prize for his work in mob epic The Godfather, besting a remarkable field of contenders — Michael Caine, Peter O’Toole, Laurence Olivier and Paul Winfield.
But Brando did not attend, and Apache actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather took the stage in his place. When actor Roger Moore offered her the golden statuette, she held up her hand in refusal, and he and co-presenter Liv Ullmann stepped back as she began to speak.
Before a stunned audience, Littlefeather said Brando “very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award” as he wanted to protest the movie industry’s treatment of Native Americans. Her statement was met with applause, cheers and a few boos.
IT’S A TIE!
There have been a handful of ties in Oscars history, but one that earned a lot of attention came in 1969, when Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn both won the award for best actress.
“The winner — it’s a tie!” exclaimed presenter Ingrid Bergman. Streisand earned the honor, her first Oscar, for her performance as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, while Hepburn — the all-time leader among actors and actresses with Oscar wins at four — triumphed for The Lion in Winter.
Only Streisand attended the ceremony.
“Hello, gorgeous!” she said, looking at the golden statuette.
LIP LOCK
Of course, actors are thrilled when they join the hallowed pantheon of Oscar winners, but in 2003, Adrien Brody definitely took it a bit too far when he picked up the best actor statuette for The Pianist.
When he took the stage to accept his award from the previous year’s best actress winner Halle Berry, he stunned the audience — and Berry — when he swept her into a brief but passionate kiss on the lips.
“That was not planned. I knew nothing about it,” Berry said in a 2017 interview, explaining she was caught totally off guard.
But she confirmed she just “went with it.”
For his part, Brody said in 2015 that “time slowed down” for him in the moment, but that the stunt almost cost him his chance to make a speech.
“By the time I got finished kissing her... they were already flashing the sign to say ‘Get off the stage, your time is up,’” he said in an interview at the Toronto film festival.
WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?
Sixty years ago, Rita Moreno won the best supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of the feisty Anita in the original film version of West Side Story — and history could repeat itself Sunday if Ariana DeBose wins for the same role.
“I can’t believe it! Good Lord. I leave you with that,” Moreno said in the briefest of speeches after accepting the golden statuette from Rock Hudson in 1962.
The Oscars win — the first for a Latina — was Moreno’s first step on the way to achieving rare EGOT status, as the winner of competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. There are only 16 EGOTs in history.
This time around, DeBose is the heavy favorite to capture the Academy Award for her new take on Anita in Steven Spielberg’s reimagining of the classic musical.
“She was fabulous, she was divine,” Moreno said of DeBose in an interview.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
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Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless