Bloopers were not outtakes
Envelope-gate wasn’t the first big mistake for Oscar — or even the only one Sunday night.
In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr. was presenting the Academy Award for Best Music Score when he was handed the wrong winners envelope.
Davis first rightly ticked off the contenders for the category. Then he opened the envelope he was given — and read from it the name of a person who hadn’t even been mentioned in the group.
There was polite applause, and then Davis was told of the mistake.
“They gave me the wrong envelope? Wait till the NAACP hears about this!’’ he quipped as the audience roared.
The correct winner of the category, Andre Previn, was eventually announced and took the stage for a short acceptance speech that didn’t mention the flub. Previn won for his work on “Irma La Douce.’’
The mistake mirrored Sunday’s glitch in which Best Picture presenter Warren Beatty was given the wrong envelope, but without the wrong “winner” having to take the stage.
Earlier Sunday night, Oscar producers committed another sin in the show’s tribute montage to those who died in the past year.
Instead of showing a photo of Australian costume designer Janet Patterson, who died in October, the Academy ran a snapshot of Australian film producer Jan Chapman alongside Patterson’s name. Chapman is very much alive. “I was devastated,” Chapman later told Variety, adding that she was a close friend of Patterson’s.
“I had urged her agency to check any photograph which might be used and understand that they were told that the Academy had it covered.”
Actress Patricia Arquette also was furious that her late sister, Alexis, who was transgender, was omitted from the tribute.
“It’s really unfortunate that the Oscars decided they couldn’t show a trans person who was such an important person in this community,’’ Arquette told Vanity Fair referring to her sister, who died from HIV complications in September.