We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Oscar Derby Reveals Filmdom's New Style
About noon of April 8 an anonymous voice on the phone asked if the editor of Film BULLETIN would like to have the betting "line" on the Academy Awards. Assured that no commitment of a wager was necessary, we told the caller to give us the dope.
This was the line: Best Picture — "Lawrence of Arabia" the favorite at 2 to 5, "To Kill a Mockingbird" 7 to 5, the field (all others) 20 to 1; Best Actor — Gregory Peck the favorite at even money, Jack Lemmon 6 to 5, Peter O'Toole 8 to 5, Burt Lancaster 12 to 1, Marcello Mastroianni 25 to 1; Best Actress— Bette Davis the favorite at even money, Ann Bancroft 9 to 5, Katherine Hepburn 2 to 1, Geraldine Page 3 to 1, Lee Remick 20 to 1. In the Best Song category our informant listed "Days of Wine and Roses" odds-on at 1 to 10, and warned that if he "got any more action on it, he would take if off the board!"
The incident is related to reveal not only how shrewd the oddsmakers were (with the exception of the Best Actress award), but to point up the fact that the Oscar Show is beginning to rival the Kentucky Derby and the World Series as a national event.
With TV and radio audience researchers in such bad repute at this writing, it would be unwise to rely on professional estimates. One is safer to guess at the size of the audience that saw and heard the Academy Awards
Frank Sinatra introduces Sophia Lor en, who winged in to make a presentation.
am
BEST PICTURE WINNERS
"Lawrence of Arabia", "Sundays and Cybele", the French import, gave Columbia a dual victory in the key Best Picture categories.
show on the night of the 8th, and a fair country guess is that 8 out of every 10 television and radio sets were dialed to the events taking place in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. What they saw and heard was one of the best of the 35 Oscar shows.
Some of the movie-hateing TV columnists to the contrary notwithstanding, this year's production had pace, dignity and entertainment. While the awards ran true to form, there was no lack of suspense, and there were a few surprises among the choices of the Academy members to enliven the affair. From an industry public relations standpoint, it was one of the strongest presentations, for most of the selections and the words uttered into the microphones bespoke the current accent on quality in motion pictures.
Master of ceremonies Frank Sinatra
handled his chore with class and style. Some missed Bob Hope's quips, but everyone seemed to find Frankie a welcome relief from the ill-advised type of humor dispensed by Jerry Lewis. Production chief Arthur Freed merits praise for his pacing of the show. It moved. The more ample use of clips from nominated films was a plus factor (although better sequences could have been selected in some cases). The presence of a number of past Oscar winners to hand out this year's statuettes added to the glamour and sparkle, and some solid moments of entertainment were provided by singers Fddie Fisher, Ethel Merman and Robert Goulet.
Faults? There were some. Those technical awards, important to the recipients hut not to the public at large, again took up almost half of the show
(Continued on Page 10)
Film BULLETIN April 15, 1 963 Page 7