Oscar trivia: The envelope, please! - FUNFARE by Ricardo F. Lo

The awards season is over and done with, with the Star Awards, the Urian Awards, the FAMAS and the FAP Awards – and the usually fabulous Oscars, too – having accomplished their annual parangal.

Still nursing a hangover from counting all those trophies – hundreds of them – given away, how could I have guessed that the pasalubong (from the States) I would get from Shirley Kuan (manager of, among others, Joyce Jimenez) was a book called The Envelope, Please (described by its author, Arnold Wayne Jones, as "The Ultimate Academy Awards’ Trivia Book").

As usual, I’m sharing with you some of the juicy items between the covers, to wit:

• Who was the first Asian to be nominated for an acting Oscar?

Depending on how you define your terms, Miyoshi Umeki (for Sayonara, 1957, Supporting Actress) is the first Asian to be nominated and to have won. Arguably, Yul Brynner (Best Actor, The King and I, 1956) and Ben Kingsley (Best Actor, Gandhi, 1982), who were both born in Asia (on an island off Siberia and in India, respectively) and of at least one native parent, might also qualify. The only other Asians to have been nominated for an acting Oscar are: Sessue Hayakawa, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, Supporting Actor); Mako, The Sand Pebbles (1966, Supporting Actor); Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, The Karate Kid (1984, Supporting Actor); and Dr. Haing S. Ngor, The Killing Fields (1984, winner as Best Supporting Actor).

No Asian has ever been nominated in a leading category. Perhaps Asia’s greatest star, Toshiro Mifune – who appeared in the Oscar-winning Japanese films Rashomon and Seven Samurai – was never nominated, nor did he ever receive an honorary award. He died in 1997.

• Who was the first person playing an openly homosexual character to be nominated for an Oscar?

This is a more complicated question than it implies. Laurence Olivier received a nomination for playing Richard III in 1956 – a historical figure known to be gay, but whose sexual orientation is not mentioned explicitly in the movie. A frank depiction of gay characters was not permitted in the days of the Hays Codes – the censorship arm of the industry until the 1950s – so many implicitly homosexual characters, such as Professor Henry Higgins (played by Leslie Howard in Pygmalion, 1938), probably don’t count.

Lots of times, code words were used to convey the same thing, so "spinsterly aunts" like Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), "confirmed bachelors" like Clifton Webb in The Razor’s Edge (1946), an androgynous people like the emcee played by Joel Grey in Cabaret (1972) really don’t qualify. Two of the earliest film performances to suggest the homosexuality of a major character are those of Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with its images of male-on-male sadomasochism, and Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which contains several references to him not being much of a lover boy, as well as an abortive attempt at lovemaking.

One of the first characters to participate, at least lightly, in gay sex is probably Joe Buck, the Midnight Cowboy (1969) played by Jon Voight. He’s a street hustler who hits on women, but he goes home with a male pickup (and then beats him up). The question remains whether he continued to hustle men. The "winner" of the award for "first," though, was finally settled in 1971, when Peter Finch in Sunday, Bloody Sunday was nominated as Best Actor. The British film, about a love triangle where the object of affection is a bisexual man, was also the first mainstream movie to feature a kiss of a sexual nature between two men.

For an American-made movie, the winner is a tie: Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon, both nominated for their performances in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Pacino plays a gay man who robs a bank in order to finance boyfriend Sarandon’s sex change operation. Pacino plays it mostly straight (forgive the pun), but Sarandon’s one scene is a touching interchange between a cross-dresser and his loving but disturbed partner.

Other nominated portrayals of characters whose homosexuality or bisexuality is not genuinely in dispute include: John Hurt, Midnight Express (1978, Supporting Actor); Bette Midler, The Rose (1979, Best Actress); James Coco, Only When I Laugh (1981, Supporting Actor); John Lithgow, The World According to Garp (1982, Supporting Actor; actually, he’s a transsexual); Robert Preston, Victor/Victoria (1982, Supporting Actor); Tom Courtenay, The Dresser (1983, Best Actor); Cher, Silkwood (1983, Supporting Actress); William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985, Actor); Margaret Avery, The Color Purple (1985, Supporting Actress); Whoopi Goldberg, The Color Purple (1985, Actress); Bruce Davison, Longtime Companion (1990, Supporting Actor, the first nominated performer to play an AIDS-afflicted character); Tommy Lee Jones, JFK (1991, Supporting Actor); Stephen Rea, The Crying Game (1992, Actor); Jaye Davidson, The Crying Game, Supporting Actor); Tom Hanks, Philadelphia (1993, Actor); and Greg Kinnear, As Good As It Gets (1997, Supporting Actor).

• Who delivered the most beautiful acceptance speech?

Laurence Olivier in 1978 (the same year he was nominated as Best Actor (for The Boys from Brazil) when he accepted an honorary award, after an introduction by Cary Grant:

Oh, dear friends, am I supposed to speak after that? Cary, my dear old friend for many a year, from the earliest years of either of us working in this country. Thank you for that beautiful citation and the trouble you have taken to make it and all the warm generosities in it. Mr. President and governors of the Academy, committee members, fellows, my very noble and approved good masters, my colleagues, my friends, my fellow students. In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation’s generosities, this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it – the prodigal, pure human kindness of it – must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament, which shines upon me at this moment – dazzling me a little, but filling me with the warmth of the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow. From the top of this moment, in the solace, in the kindly emotion that is charging my soul and my heart at this moment, I thank you for this great gift, which lends me such a very splendid part of this, your glorious occasion. Thank you.

• (And) who delivered the shortest acceptance speech?

Joe Pesci in 1990 when he won as Best Supporting Actor for Goodfellas. He simply said, "It’s my privilege. Thank you." (Pesci later explained that he expected Al Pacino to win for Dick Tracy, and he was unprepared.)