Thursday, April 14, 2011

1968 Oscar Winners

Tonight in 1969 was a night of firsts at the 41st Annual Academy Awards ceremony.
For the first time, the happenings at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles were beamed to TV audiences worldwide. Appropriately, a foreign (British) film was honored as Best Picture: Oliver! (John Woolf, producer), which also won for Best Director (Carol Reed); Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (John Box, Terence Marsh, Vernon Dixon, Ken Muggleston); Best Sound (Shepperton SSD); Best Music/Score of a Musical Picture/Original or Adaptation (Johnny Green). And, for the first time, there was a tie for Best Actress. Barbra Streisand picked up her statuette for her starring role in Funny Girl, and for the second year in a row, Katharine Hepburn was honored as Best Actress, this time for her performance in The Lion in Winter.
Other veteran actors received their first Oscars this night: Cliff Robertson for his Best Actor role in Charly; Jack Albertson for his Best Supporting Actor role in The Subject Was Roses and Ruth Gordon for her Best Supporting Actress role in Rosemary’s Baby.
Even the Best Music/Song award was presented for the first time to Michel Legrand (music) and Alan and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics) for the song The Windmills of Your Mind from the The Thomas Crown Affair. Other great 1968 films that were Oscar-winners or nominees: 2001: A Space Odyssey; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; For Love of Ivy; Planet of the Apes; Bullitt; The Odd Couple; Romeo and Juliet; The Producers; Rachel, Rachel.

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