Surprise! an Oscar Entertains Out of Africa Is in, and the Color Purple Is Blue

By Gerald Clarke

Complaining about the Academy Awards has become a springtime tradition, like taking down the storm windows and groaning over income tax forms. But this year Hollywood disappointed: the Oscar ceremonies were unpredictable and, to almost universal astonishment, entertaining. There were genuine surprises, moments of old-fashioned sentiment and flashes of humor.

"Only four more awards to Jack Valenti--so get ready," warned CoHost Robin Williams in a small jab at the head of the Motion Picture Association. Cher, whose sense of humor can only be described as epic, wore a giant feather headdress--and not a great deal more--to present one award. "As you can see," she said, "I did receive my academy booklet on how to dress as a serious actress."

The night's chief winner was Out of Africa with seven awards, including Producer-Director Sydney Pollack's Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. After seven previous nominations, Geraldine Page, 61, finally made it for her role as an aging woman returning to her roots in The Trip to Bountiful. William Hurt was named Best Actor for his portrayal of a homosexual prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman. The awards for Best Supporting players went to Anjelica Huston, who was a Mafia princess in Prizzi's Honor, and Don Ameche, 77, for portraying the rejuvenated geriatric in Cocoon.

Steven Spielberg's controversial The Color Purple, which had received eleven nominations--the same number as Out of Africa--won no awards at all. Based on Alice Walker's novel, Purple is a saga about rural Southern black women in the first decades of the century. Some blacks claimed that it insulted black men by depicting them as child abusers and wife beaters; others defended the film as a breakthrough for blacks in Hollywood. The argument was complicated when Spielberg failed to gain a nomination as Best Director--a sign, said his friends, that the industry establishment envied his commercial success.

The controversy continued last week. The Hollywood branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People accused the Motion Picture Academy of racial discrimination for ignoring the picture, while the Coalition Against Black Exploitation said that the academy had displayed courage in not honoring an "odious and degrading" movie. If history is any guide, neither race nor anti-Spielbergism had a part in the voting, however, and other much nominated pictures have fared equally badly. The Turning Point, for instance, which also received eleven nominations, walked away empty-handed in 1977.

If that does not console the Purple people, one of the evening's best musical numbers might. While Irene Cara sang what was called a hymn to the losers, a list flashed on the screen of other motion pictures that had failed in the Best Picture category. They included Citizen Kane, Tootsie, The Wizard of Oz and, alas, Spielberg's own E.T.

With reporting by Mary Wormley/Los Angeles