National Observer, April 26, 1971
The Oscars: How About Some Dignity
Comment by Clifford A. Ridley
Jim Note: A strongly critical comment on the changing film industry.
"[T]his year''s Academy Awards were really too much."
Deadly Plasticity
"No, the trouble wasn't with the awards themselves; nor was it even the deadly plasticity of the affair. The difficulty with the Academy Awards isn't that they're dull, but that they're so smug and 'chummy.' Desperately needing to be not only respected but loved, the Hollywood mentality proceeds to fantasize its ego-desires as fact, to assume that all of us share in the sleazy tradition of this spurious exercise."
Final two paragraphs:
"But no one is really asking Hollywood to walk in the footsteps of the masters: it would more than suffice for it to go its own way with a modicum of grace and dignity. The other night Lillian Gish, almost alone of the people on view, demonstrated that this is no elusive goal. In an acceptance speech in ironic contrast to the saccharine, overwritten piece of mush that Melvyn Douglas delivered about her, she said simply that movies are 'the heartbeat of our technical century.' She and her like, she said, strove to serve that heartbeat, and I hope we served it well.'
That woman has class. it's a wonder they let her in."
The YouTube of Lillian's acceptance speech is very brief and poignant. Her multiple drafts of her acceptance speech are long and, thrilling, with her mentioning see Earth from the Moon on TV. We'll share some of that in the future.
'
Jim Patterson, Editor
LDGish.blogspot.com
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