In the present rush of talented Negroes to demand more than a quota representation in plays, movies, television commercials, and general advertising, coloured people begin to pop up on the screen in jobs they would dearly like to land in life. Last night Hollywood gave a boost in this movement to help life imitate art by crowning a Negro, Sidney Poitier, as the best actor of the year.
The top two awards, for the best actor and actress, had never crossed the colour line until Mr Poitier, who in The Lilies of the Field taught German nuns to speak English, came forward in the Santa Monica auditorium last night and, as thousands cheered, smilingly admitted that “it has been a long journey to this moment”.
It had been even longer for Melvyn Douglas, a white man if ever there was one, who aged in 33 years from playboy to patriarch before the academy at last made official his long-standing with the immortals. He received the Best Supporting Actor award for his incorruptible rancher in Hud.
From the same movie the academy also confirmed the professional view of Patricia Neal as an actress’s actress by plucking her to receive the annual accolade. The mellowing producers also acknowledged, and solved, a problem that for decades has denied the Oscar to those among the screen’s most expert and dependable entertainers who do not happen also to possess a breathtaking profile.
Miss Margaret Rutherford surely dithers to mind in this context, and the cheers for her taking the Best Supporting Actress award [for The VIPs] were as grateful as any the Hollywood in-group has ever unloosed.
It almost went without saying, in an offhand announcement by Frank Sinatra, that the best film for any country would be Tom Jones, by Tony Richardson. This film has taken America by the eyes and ears, with permanent effects on cinematography and the habits of the young.
Suffice it to say that its roving eye camera technique has set documentary producers to banning the tripod, and nubile schoolgirls to leaping with an equally free-wheeling motion across the lawns and cloisters of the better boys’ schools.
Cleopatra also managed to snag Oscars for photography, art direction in colour, costume design (Miss Taylor in a bath towel), and special effects (Taylor v Burton). It prompted Jack Lemmon to the thought that if the 10 statuettes were melted down they might go some way to defraying the costs of the motion picture industry’s first, and possibly last, $42m movie.
