Streakers, X-Rated Movies and LSD: The Craziest Tales in the History of the Oscars

Showbiz folks have a flair for the dramatic, so it makes sense that Hollywood’s biggest night (a.k.a. the Academy Awards) has yielded some wild moments over the course of its (nearly) 100-year history.

Sometimes, a 73-year-old will just drop and give you 10 push-ups, Air Force-style, right there on the Oscars stage. Sometimes, a naked man will come out of nowhere and disrupt proceedings. And other times, actors won’t show up at all, preferring to send activists in their place to publicly rebuke their industry’s highest honor. That’s Tinseltown, baby!

On the eve of the 97th annual Academy Awards, let’s revisit some of the craziest things that have ever gone down in the name of the little golden man over the years — from acts of God to acts of actors, and also some old-fashioned production mishaps. Some are hilariously funny, some are utterly tragic, but they’re all pretty wild.

73-Year-Old Jack Palance Celebrated His 1992 Oscar Win by Doing One-Armed Push-Ups Onstage

Beloved movie tough guy Jack Palance may have been 73 years old when he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as gruff cowboy Curly Washburn in 1991’s City Slickers, but he was eager to demonstrate his physical fitness for the audience. Perhaps he was emboldened by the fact that the host that year was none other than his City Slickers costar Billy Crystal. Immediately after arriving onstage, he quoted one of the more colorful lines from the movie, saying he could “crap bigger” than the diminutive Crystal. Then he launched into a story about how the insurance agents at the studio were worried that he wasn't healthy enough to act in such a rigorous production given his age. Palance claimed he allayed their fears by performing a series of one-armed push-ups — which he then demonstrated onstage, amid loud cheers from the crowd.

The moment became a running gag throughout the remainder of the telecast, with Crystal offering comedic updates that Palance was "backstage on the StairMaster,” bungee-jumping off the Hollywood sign, or preparing for spaceflight. According to Crystal’s memoir, when the two costars met up at the afterparty, the freshly-anointed Oscar winner placed his statuette on Crystal’s shoulder before chuckling, “Billy Crystal ... who thought it would be you?!" Crystal accepted the moment as an expression of gratitude from Palance for co-writing the film and advocating to cast him, thus helping him finally bring home the gold after two previous nominations 40 years earlier.

“It was his really funny way of saying thank you to a little New York Jewy guy who got him the Oscar,” Crystal recalled during an appearance on Inside the Actors Studio.

The pair re-teamed at the Academy Awards the following year for the broadcast’s introductory sketch, which featured Palance dragging a giant Oscar statue onstage, with Crystal (again the host) riding it.

Related: 'South Park' Turns 25: Series Creators Talk Being 'Fearless' and Whether They Have Regrets

South Park Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker Attended the Oscars While Tripping on LSD in 2000

When their song “Blame Canada” from South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut unexpectedly earned an Oscar nod in 2000, the countercultural televisual icons had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make their unique mark on Hollywood’s glitziest night. “We talked about [going in] big duck outfits,” Parker later said. “And then we thought, ‘If we go with big duck costumes, then they have a reason not to let us in. But if we’re wearing what other people are wearing, then they really can’t say we can’t come in.’”

Technically the nomination went to Trey Parker, who co-wrote the song with lyricist Marc Shaiman. When Parker invited his South Park partner Matt Stone to be his date, Stone initially wanted to wear a dress and pose as a fictitious European model. The idea morphed a bit from there, and ultimately the pair both opted to go in drag — with Parker wearing a painstakingly recreated replica of the low-cut Versace gown that Jennifer Lopez had worn to the 2000 Grammys a few weeks earlier, and Stone donning a dress modeled after the pink Ralph Lauren number Gwyneth Paltrow had worn to collect her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love the year before. "Some people were stoked when we showed up at the Oscars in those dresses. Michael Caine being one," Stone told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. "But I remember Gloria Estefan was super pissed."

Their attire wasn’t the most far-out thing about their appearance. The pair had wanted to find a way to “go, but not go” to the ceremony. According to the 2011 special 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park, their solution was to take sugar cubes doused with LSD just before showtime. (“It’s so crazy now to think [about], “ Parker later admitted.) Red carpet reporters naturally had a lot of questions — and they answered each one by repeatedly saying, “It’s a magical night tonight.”

Unfortunately, their comedown was made extra harsh when they lost the Oscar to Phil Collins’ Tarzan track, “You’ll Be In My Heart.” When a reporter asked them if it was still a magical night after this bitter disappointment, Parker replied: “It doesn’t matter because losing just makes it horrible. It’s terrible to lose to Phil Collins especially.”

Tom Hanks’ Controversial Acceptance Speech for His Philadelphia Oscar Inspired the Plot of a Hit Movie

When Tom Hanks accepted his Oscar for playing a homosexual lawyer dying of AIDS in 1993’s Philadelphia, he took a moment during his acceptance speech to thank his former high school drama teacher, Rawley Farnsworth, referring to him as one of the “finest gay Americans.” The tribute had the unintended side effect of launching Farnsworth into the media spotlight, with headlines like “OUTED AT THE OSCARS.”

Related: Tom Hanks Wouldn't Do 'Philadelphia' Today Due to 'Inauthenticity of a Straight Guy Playing a Gay Guy'

In truth, Hanks had called Farnsworth three days before the ceremony and asked permission to disclose his sexuality in the speech. The pair hadn’t spoken since shortly after Hanks graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif. In 1974.

“I don’t know if you’ll remember me,” Farnsworth, then 69, recalled Hanks saying, “but I’m an old student of yours. I’ve got a ticket to the Academy Awards, and if I win, I would like to use your name in regard to the content of Philadelphia.” Farnsworth, who had been private about his sexuality during his 30-year teaching career, said he would be thrilled.  “I thought, ‘I’ve been retired for 12 years. What harm can it do?’ ” he told PEOPLE at the time.

While many were mistakenly aghast on Farnsworth’s behalf, the man himself was deeply moved by Hanks’ speech. “I didn’t know exactly what he was going to say,” he admitted, “but it was just overwhelming.” The experience motivated Farnsworth to join an organization of gay teachers, and later that year he served as grand marshal in an Atlanta parade for children with HIV.

Another outcome of Hanks’ speech was that it inspired a movie. The confusion about whether or not Farnsworth had been outed gave screenwriter Paul Rudnick the idea for In & Out, a movie about a closeted high school teacher whose secret is inadvertently revealed during a former student’s acceptance speech at the Oscars. As the Turner Classic Movies host Dave Karger observed to The New York Times in 2019, “It’s safe to say it’s the only Oscar speech in history to inspire another movie.”

The Academy Awards Have Been Postponed Three Times Due to Floods, Assassinations and Assassination Attempts 

“The show must go on” may be a show business mantra, but there have been three occasions when the Oscars ceremony was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. The 10th Academy Awards were postponed a week as a result of the Los Angeles Flood of 1938, which killed over 100 people and destroyed roads, bridges, and acres of farmland throughout the county. The five-day flood caused upwards of $78 million of damage ($1.69 billion in 2023 dollars), making it one of the costliest disasters in the city’s history.

The Oscars were delayed again in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Academy postponed the 40th annual ceremony, initially scheduled for April 8, for two days so stars like Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Marlon Brando could attend King’s funeral in Atlanta. (The Governors Ball afterparty was canceled for the only time in Oscars history.) Gregory Peck, the Oscar-winning actor then serving as the president of the Academy, opened the ceremony on April 10, with a speech acknowledging the tragedy. “This has been a fateful week in the history of our nation. We join with fellow members of our profession and men of goodwill everywhere to pay our respects to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Peck said, before observing that two of the five films nominated for Best Picture that year — Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, both starring Sidney Poitier — dealt with the subject of “understanding between the races.”

The Oscars were postponed a third time in 1981, just four hours before the ceremony was due to begin on March 30. Earlier in the day, 25-year-old John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. — reportedly in an attempt to gain the attention of Jodie Foster. (Hinckley had developed a psychotic obsession with the actress after seeing her in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle character plots to assassinate a presidential candidate.) Reagan, who began his career as an actor and was a former Academy member, had pre-recorded a message for the Oscar ceremony’s opening sequence. The Academy felt it wise to wait until the commander-in-chief was confirmed to be in stable condition. Reagan himself specifically requested that the clip be aired, and watched the ceremony from his hospital bed.

An X-Rated Film Won Best Picture

Midnight Cowboy has gone down in cinema history as one of the most revered films of the 1960s, thanks in large part to Dustin Hoffman’s unforgettable portrayal of Ratso “I’m Walkin’ Here!” Rizzo, the wannabe pimp who befriends the naïve stud known as Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight). While its reputation as a Best Picture winner is reasonably well known, few realize that it’s the first (and, to date, only) X-rated movie in Oscar history to earn that distinction. However, the certification meant something very different at the time than it does today.

When Midnight Cowboy was released in May 1969, the Motion Picture Association of America (or MPAA, then only six months old) distributed X ratings to films that contained content judged unsuitable for children, such as extreme violence, strongly implied sex, and graphic language. Many mainstream movies of the era — including A Clockwork Orange, Last Tango in Paris, and The Evil Dead — were marked by the X, which barred anyone under the age of 16. The rating was phased out in 1990 in favor of the NC-17 rating.

Interestingly, the studio that produced Midnight Cowboy labeled it with an X rating themselves, without even submitting it to the MPAA. United Artists’ production head David Picker assumed that the sexually explicit nature of the film, plus the druggy psychedelic freak-out scenes and homosexual themes, made it an obvious contender for the strictest rating. "We didn't want to go through the exercise [of submitting it] since we weren't prepared to change the movie," Picker later explained to The Hollywood Reporter. Stranger still, when the MPAA opted to review Midnight Cowboy in 1971, they downgraded the rating to a less extreme R.

The 2017 ‘In Memoriam’ Montage Included a Film Producer Who Was Still Very Much Alive

Fans of comedian Garry Shandling were miffed that the Academy left him out of the 2017 In Memoriam segment paying tribute to those whom the moviemaking community had lost that year. But Australian film producer Jan Chapman had another reason to be distraught. As Sara Bareilles sang a somber rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now,” Chapman was horrified to see her own face flash across the screen during the montage. The ceremony’s organizers had mistakenly paired her image with the name of costume designer Janet Patterson, who had died the previous October. Chapman, who had worked with Patterson on 1992’s The Last Days of Chez Nous and 1993’s The Piano, told Variety that she was “devastated” by the mistake in the telecast. “I am alive and well and an active producer.”

The First African American to Win an Oscar Nearly Wasn’t Allowed in the Venue — And Was Forbidden from Sitting with Her Castmates

It took more than a decade for an African American to win — or even receive a nomination for — an Academy Award for acting. The honor went to Hattie McDaniel, who earned a Best Supporting Actress statuette for her role as Mammy in 1939’s Gone with the Wind. While the achievement was an important breakthrough for Black performers, the moment was not completely victorious for McDaniel, the daughter of two former slaves.

Segregation was still the law of the land throughout much of the United States, and producer David O. Selznick had to pull strings to ensure that McDaniel would be allowed to attend the ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which had a strict “no Blacks” policy. Despite Selznick’s endorsement, McDaniel was prohibited from sitting with her fellow castmates. Instead she was banished to a small table in the back of the room along with her escort and agent. (This was still an upgrade from the film’s Atlanta premiere, from which she was barred entirely. An African American children’s choir that was hired to pose as slaves at the event included a young Martin Luther King Jr.)

McDaniel found herself typecast following her famous role in Gone with the Wind, and went on to play more than 70 domestic servant roles over the next decade. (“I’d rather play a maid than be a maid,” she often said.) Even so, the NAACP took a dim view of her credits and effectively disowned her for perpetuating negative stereotypes. The indignities continued even after McDaniel’s death in 1952. Her final wish to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied due to her race, and the Oscar she bequeathed to Howard University was deemed worthless by appraisers. The statuette went missing in the early  ‘70s, and to this day it has never been recovered.

Related: Academy to Replace Hattie McDaniel's 'Historic' Missing Oscar Trophy for Gone with the Wind

It would be 62 years before another Black actress received an Academy Award. This time it went to Halle Berry for her starring turn in 2002’s Monster's Ball. “This moment is so much bigger than me,” she said during her tearful acceptance speech. “It's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” Berry remains the only Black actress to ever win in the leading role category.

An Actor Sold His Oscar to Pay for His Wife's Medical Costs — Or Possibly a Cruise

Although they cost approximately $400 to make, the gold-plated statuette (which has been hand-crafted at the UAP Polich Tallix foundry in Rock Tavern, New York since 2016) is technically only worth $1. Since 1951, Oscar winners are required to sign an agreement stating that they cannot sell the award without first offering to sell it back to the Academy for a buck. Those who refuse are not allowed to keep the trophy. This rule also extends to the winners’ family and estate once they die. Per the Academy, the rule is intended to “preserve the integrity of the Oscar symbol.”

According to The New York Times,  the restriction was adopted after the heirs of Sid Grauman, owner of the famous Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, bought advertisements offering to sell an honorary Oscar that Grauman had been awarded. The horrified Motion Picture Academy bought it back and implemented the “no sale” stipulation  a short time later. The Oscar itself contains a reminder of this contractual fine print with a small band around the base engraved with the phrase: “This statuette may not be sold or transferred (other than bequest) without first being offered to the Academy.”

However, the prohibition doesn’t apply to Oscars given out prior to 1951. Steven Spielberg paid upwards of half a million dollars each for two awards formerly belonging to silver screen icons Clark Gable and Bette Davis. The director, who has three Oscars of his own, donated his purchases to the Academy.  “The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow,” he told Variety, “and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times that this icon could be confused with a commercial treasure.”

Michael Jackson, meanwhile, shelled out $1.54 million in 1999 to buy producer David O. Selznick's Oscar for 1939's Gone With the Wind. Following his death a decade later at age 50, the artifact has reportedly gone missing. “The estate does not know where the Gone With the Wind statuette is,” Jackson's attorney, Howard Weitzman, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “We would like to have that Oscar because it belongs to Michael’s children. I’m hopeful it will turn up at some point.”

Obviously, most Oscar winners would prefer not to part with their prized possession, and those pre-1951 performers who sold them usually did so due to dire circumstances. Case in point: Harold Russell, a World War II Veteran who lost both his hands before being cast in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives. (“I got into an argument with a block of T.N.T. and lost,” he’d later explain.) Though not a professional actor, he received the role because it closely mirrored his own life story, and it ultimately earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well as an honorary award  for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures.” Russell sold the Best Supporting Actor trophy at auction in 1992, at age 78, reportedly to pay for his wife’s mounting medical costs. “I love the Oscar, but I love my wife more," he told The New York Times. "Although I've had the Oscar longer…If I ever get lonely for it, I can watch the picture." The award was sold for $60,500 to an anonymous buyer.

A few years after Russell’s death in 2002, Academy executive director Bruce Davis claimed that the real story was less of a tearjerker. "A couple of reporters pinned [Russell] down," Davis claimed in The Times. "It came out that his wife wanted to take a cruise. He had a new wife who knew he had a spare Oscar. [Universal Studio head] Lew Wasserman bought it and donated it back to us.”

Beatrice Straight Won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Five Minutes of Screen Time

Talk about time well spent! The record for the shortest Oscar-winning performance goes to Beatrice Straight, who played the heartbroken wife of a philandering TV station president in Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network. Straight appears in just one scene, in which she delivers an impassioned monologue confronting her husband about his affair. Clocking in at five minutes and two seconds, the moment earned her an Academy Award alongside co-stars Faye Dunaway, who took home the Best Actress statuette, and Peter Finch, who became the first actor honored with a posthumous Oscar. (James Dean was the first actor to earn posthumous nominations, with back-to-back nods in 1955 and 1956 for East of Eden and Giant, respectively.)

Jean Dujardin has the distinction of winning an acting Oscar with the least amount of dialogue, (in the post-”talkies” era, at least) thanks to his role in 2011’s The Artist. The film is almost entirely silent, save for 12 words — two of which are his: “ "With pleasure.” (The Artist was also the first entirely black-and-white film to win Best Picture since The Apartment in 1961, over half a century earlier.)

Charlie Chaplin Receives a Record-Breaking 12-Minute Standing Ovation After Being Persecuted by the U.S. Government 

The bulk of Charlie Chaplin’s pioneering work in the silent film era occurred before the inauguration of the Academy Awards in 1929. Though he was awarded an honorary trophy at the first ceremony, Chaplin only earned a single competitive Oscar during his lifetime — and even then, it took two decades to be recognized.

In October 1952, Chaplin sailed to his native London to promote Limelight, a film he’d written, directed, scored, and starred in. Upon his return to the United States, he was denied a reentry visa on orders of the Justice Department, which was investigating his alleged Communist ties. The rumors would prove to be totally unfounded, but the U.S. Attorney General labeled him “an unsavory character.” Limelight was picketed by veterans’ groups like the American Legion. The film was pulled from theaters soon after its New York premiere, and further openings across the country were canceled. Since the Academy required films to have a public screening in Los Angeles in order to be eligible for an Oscar, Limelight was excluded from competition. Chaplin was so stung by the experience that he vowed never to return to the United States.

For 20 years he stayed true to his word, living in exile in Switzerland. Then, in 1972, the Academy announced that it was awarding him a second honorary Oscar “for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” Chaplin opted to travel to Hollywood and receive the honor in person. It was a triumphant homecoming. As he took the stage, the audience rose to their feet — and stayed there for an astonishing 12 minutes. "Words seem so futile — so feeble," Chaplin said as he accepted the award. "I can only say thank you for the honor of inviting me here."

Limelight was given a wide American release that December. Months later, the twenty-year-old film earned Chaplin his only competitive Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score. His two co-writers, Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell, had died decades earlier and were awarded the honor posthumously.

The 1974 Best Picture Award Was Interrupted by an Onstage Streaker

While most people have nightmares about being naked onstage in front of a massive group of people, 33-year-old Robert Opel did it voluntarily… during the most anticipated moment of Hollywood’s biggest night! Oscars co-host David Niven was in the midst of welcoming Elizabeth Taylor to the stage to present the Best Picture when a nude Opel ran behind him, flashed a smile and peace sign at the camera, and dashed off again. The “streaking” fad had swept the country that year —  Ray Stevens had just released the country novelty song “The Streak,” which hit number one soon after — and the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers. Even the band launched into a suggestive stripper theme. The debonair Niven didn’t miss a beat, famously quipping, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that the only laugh that man is bound to get in his entire life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?” When a giggling Liz Taylor finally came out, she couldn’t resist making a crack of her own: “That’s a pretty hard act to follow.”

Afterwards, Opel was given the chance to explain himself to the assembled media. “People shouldn’t be ashamed of being nude in public,” he told the reporters while standing on “winner’s row” in front of an oversized Oscar statue. “Besides — it’s a hell of a way to launch a career.” He would claim that he sneaked past security and posed as a journalist to access the backstage area of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It all seemed so smooth that there were rumors that the stunt had been staged by the ceremony’s producer, Jack Haley Jr. — son of The Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man. Why else would a man who just trespassed, exposed himself on national television (and apparently damaged an expensive stage curtain) simply be allowed to dress and address the press?

The theory has never been proven, but some associated with the show claim they saw Niven writing his supposed ad-lib into his script during dress rehearsal hours before the ceremony. (Also, the live incident was expertly shot so that the man’s unmentionables didn’t end up getting broadcast into America’s living rooms — a tough feat to pull off!)

Opel became a minor celebrity in the immediate aftermath, and the media clamored to learn more about him. Initially a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan’s California gubernatorial campaign, his politics veered further left at the dawn of the ‘70s. He became a radical activist, appearing naked at multiple Los Angeles City Council meetings to protest the city’s ban on nudity at area beaches. (At least one of these stunts would land him in jail.) Openly bisexual, he became active in the queer counter-culture at the dawn of the ‘70s,  socializing with figures like John Waters and Divine, and working as a part-time photographer for gay liberation outlet The Advocate.

Though he never explained his precise motives for his Oscars streak, he admitted that it was a great way to jumpstart his career. For a time, that’s exactly what happened. He appeared as a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, where he announced his campaign for president with slogans like “Nothing to Hide” and (taking aim at Watergate-plagued President Richard Nixon) “Not Just Another Crooked Dick.” Hollywood producer Allan Carr, who would go on to produce Grease, even hired Opel to streak through a party for Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

Open moved to San Francisco in 1978, where he opened Fey-Way Studios, the first openly gay art gallery in the country, becoming one of the first gallerists to display work by legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland. Opel was hosting friends at Fey-Way on July 7, 1979, when the two burglars stormed the studio seeking money and drugs. A scuffle ensued and Opel was shot in the head at close range. He was pronounced dead later that night at age 39. The assailants, identified as Maurice Keenan and Robert Kelly, made off with $5 and a camera. They were arrested on July 10th at San Francisco International Airport while apparently trying to escape to Miami.

Thirty years later, Opel’s nephew Robert Oppel — the elder had dropped one “P” from his name to protect his family — produced the documentary Uncle Bob, which explored the life and work of his infamous relative.

Related: Everything to Know About the Academy's Mistreatment of Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars

Marlon Brando Rejected His Award as a Protest Against the Treatment of Native Americans

One of the most iconic roles in cinema history also gave way to one of the most iconic moments in the history of the Oscars. When Marlon Brando won his second Oscar in 1973 for his performance as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, he wasn’t there to receive it. In his place, he had sent Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache Native American activist and the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, to reject the award on his behalf. When his name was announced, she took the stage in a buckskin dress and moccasins. Although Brando had given her a 15-page speech to read, she was forced to improvise due to the 60-second time limit disclosed minutes before to the award presentation.

"I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening,” she told the stunned crowd, “and he has asked me to tell you ... that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award…And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry. And on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity.”

The moment drew a mixed response from the audience. Some cheered, others booed, and many were simply baffled. A confused Roger Moore, who attempted to present the award, ended up simply taking it home with him. (It was later collected by Academy officials.) Littlefeather would later claim that an enraged John Wayne, another presenter that night, tried to rush the stage and had to be restrained by six men. Backstage, she was reportedly mocked with faux Native American chants and “tomahawk chop” gestures, and even threatened with arrest.

In 1990, Littlefeather spoke to PEOPLE about the fallout she faced in response to her Oscars moment. "I went up there thinking I could make a difference," she explained. "I was very naive. I told people about oppression. They said, 'You're ruining our evening.' "

Littlefeather died in October 2022 at the age of 75, weeks after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences publicly apologized for her treatment at the ceremony nearly 50 years earlier. "The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified,” wrote then-Academy president David Rubin. “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration."

Brando was not the first person to refuse an Academy Award. Dudley Nichols rejected his Best Adapted Screenplay award for 1935’s The Informer due to an ongoing Screen Writers Guild strike. In 1971, George C. Scott responded to his Best Actor nomination for Patton by informing the Academy that he wouldn’t be attending the ceremony, dismissing it as a “two-hour meat parade.” Hollywood insiders assumed that the rebuff would tank his chances during Academy voting. When he ultimately won, presenter Goldie Hawn exclaimed “Oh my God!” The award was accepted by the film’s producer.

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