MASTERS OF CEREMONY
The hosts can make or break Academy Awards
If you scrutinize the nature of the job of Oscar host over the years, they invariably fall into one of three categories.
There are “feel good” hosts, whose job it is to make academy members feel better about themselves.
There are “edgy” hosts who try to make it real, usually prompting next day hand-wringing among academy members with hurt feelings. (Although, seriously, no Oscar host has ever brought as much bile as Ricky Gervais repeatedly has to the Golden Globes.)
And there are combinations of co-hosts thrown together by people on magic mushrooms (James Franco and Anne Hathaway, come on down).
For decades, comfort was all that was on offer, the backslapping hosts invariably being “one of the boys” — none more so than Bob Hope, who hosted or co-hosted 18 times. His classic killer line: “Welcome to the Academy Awards. Or — as it’s known at my house — Passover.”
Johnny Carson — who took over as Oscar host in 1979, the year after Bob Hope’s last stint — provided a similar fit in his five times at the podium. He was a comfortable presence who had welcomed the nominees on his talk show couch in front of millions.
His Oscars were simply constructed: monologue, presentation, B-roll and hit the bar. Lengthy acceptance speeches still routinely pushed the show to the near fourhour mark.
Carson being edgy: “I see a lot of new faces here tonight, especially on the old faces.”
But the archetypal “edgy” host was supposedly David Letterman, who didn’t show proper respect to the likes of Oprah Winfrey (“Uma — Oprah — Oprah — Uma,” a silly non sequitur that survives the ages).
It was more his tone that rankled, a New Yorker/outsider vibe that suggested he was pointedly mocking the Hollywood establishment as ridiculous.
I remember being at an Oscar party where his gags were getting great laughs (vividly recall the bit that had the movie Eat Drink Man Woman being about Arnold Schwarzenegger asking Maria Shriver out on their first date). Imagine my surprise the next day to read that he was a disaster.
But that’s OK, because the following year, they brought in Whoopi Goldberg, who was gently lowered to the stage dressed as Queen Elizabeth and opened with an obsequious speech about the value of every film and of Hollywood philanthropy.
The most talented comfort host — Billy Crystal — is also second on the all-time list after Hope, with nine hosting gigs. Crystal was fast on his feet. And the behind the scenes writing performance made the career of wordsmith Bruce Vilanch.
Still, the Academy Awards felt compelled every so often to think outside the comfort box. Which is how you ended up with Chris Rock in 2005. Rock was back again last year — the infamous #oscarssowhite year — somewhat defanged after 11 years.
Another “edgy” choice that blew up was Seth MacFarlane in 2013, the voice of Ted the teddy bear and Peter Griffin on Family Guy. His opening number, We Saw Your Boobs — which he sang to every actress in the audience who’d ever done a nude scene — set an uncomfortable tone for the night that never went away.
As with Letterman, McFarlane was followed by the safest, cosiest host the academy could find — Ellen DeGeneres, who took the infamous Oscar selfie of superstars, and broke the Internet by putting it online.
And then there were the just-sayno-to-drugs, psychedelic choices, which usually involved more than one co-host. The year 1983 is burned in my brain for the co-hosting foursome of (ahem) Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore, Richard Pryor and Walter Matthau. Did I hallucinate that? No, incredibly it happened. And it was one of two years (1976 as well) where the academy acceded to the kids’ demands to see Walter Matthau sing and dance.
Then there was the 2011 Academy Awards, co-hosted by Hathaway and Franco (who apparently lit up a bong in the dressing room just before curtain). And as is the academy’s wont, they called in Crystal for one last hosting stint the next year, to perform damage control.