Oscars can be night of high points and faux pas
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-05 13:56

Comedian Chevy Chase opened the Oscars in 1988 with the line: "Good evening, Hollywood phonies," and never hosted the show again.

Students from the Inner-City Filmmakers School carry actual Oscar statuettes, to be presented to winners at the 78th annual Academy Awards, down the red carpet and into the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood March 4, 2006. The Oscars will be handed out on Sunday. [Reuters]

Jerry Lewis launched into a frenetic, one-man variety act when the telecast ran short one year, David Niven wryly shrugged off a streaker, and Billy Crystal turned Jack Palance's one-armed push-ups into a running gag that became Oscar legend.

The job of hosting the Academy Awards, one of the most prestigious and demanding assignments in Hollywood, now falls to cable television political satirist Jon Stewart, an Oscar newcomer who will preside over Sunday's 78th annual ceremony.

He will be judged against a wide range of preceding performances, some triumphant, others disastrous. Here are some notable high points and faux pas from years past.

-- Bob Hope, who hosted or co-hosted the Oscars a record 18 times from 1940 through 1978 but never took home a statuette for any of his movie roles, opened the 1968 show by saying, "Welcome to the Academy Awards, or as they're known at my house, Passover." (Hope did receive four honorary Oscars during his career, once joking that they carried the inscription, "Made in Japan.")

-- Jerry Lewis, a co-host in 1959, did his manic best to keep the proceedings going when the show ran 20 minutes short. Desperate to fill time, Lewis told jokes, danced, played the trumpet and offered to show Three Stooges shorts "to cheer up the losers." He even grabbed a baton to start conducting the orchestra, shouting, "We may get a bar mitzvah out of this!" NBC finally pulled the plug and went to a sports documentary on pistol shooting.

-- When the 1974 show was famously disrupted by a streaker dashing across the stage, co-host David Niven quickly remarked that "probably the only laugh that man will ever get is for stripping and showing his shortcomings."

-- Billy Crystal, an eight-time host, says his favorite Oscar moment came in 1992 when 70-something actor Jack Palance began performing one-armed push-ups on stage after receiving his Oscar for "City Slickers."

Crystal turned the moment into a running gag, sprinkling the rest of the evening with one-liners such as: "Jack Palance is backstage on the StairMaster" and "Jack Palance has just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign."

Also that evening, 100-year-old veteran producer Hal Roach stood up in the audience to take a bow and, without a microphone, began delivering an inaudible speech. Crystal came to the rescue without missing a beat: "I think that's fitting because Mr. Roach started in silent films."

-- David Letterman got off to a dubious start in 1995 with the odd introductory line, "Uma, Oprah ... Oprah, Uma" (an apparent reference to Uma Thurman and Oprah Winfrey) and brought a couple of his signature late-night TV shticks, a Top 10 list and a Stupid Pet Trick, to the Oscar proceedings. One other planned gag, a car giveaway to Sally Field, was scrapped after it fizzled during the show's first dress rehearsal.

-- Whoopi Goldberg opened the first post-9/11 Oscars in 2002 by descending to the stage on a trapeze in top hat and feathers, later remarking that "Security here tonight is tighter than some of the faces." She also joked about the length of the show: "Oscar is the only 74-year-old man in Hollywood who doesn't need Viagra to last three hours."

-- Steve Martin opened the 2003 awards with an oblique reference to the Iraq war that had begun days earlier, prompting Oscar organizers to tone down the show's glitz. "By the way, the proceeds from tonight's telecast -- and I think this is so great -- will be divvied up between huge corporations," Martin said.

Later that evening, he eased tensions after Michael Moore was practically booed off stage for his anti-Bush rant ("Shame on you, Mr. Bush. shame on you") while accepting an Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine." Martin emerged minutes later to assure the audience, "The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."

-- Chris Rock irked some Academy members with an opening monologue last year in which he told the assembled movie elite that "there's only four real stars" and the rest were "just popular people." And a joke suggesting that actor Jude Law was overexposed as a screen performer prompted an indignant Sean Penn to come to Law's defense later in the show.