61st Academy Awards
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 The Oscar ceremony that made history for all the wrong reasons.
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The 61st Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1988, and took place on Wednesday, March 29, 1989, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST/9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented the Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Allan Carr and directed by Jeff Margolis. Ten days earlier, in a ceremony held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Angie Dickinson.
This awards ceremony is widely considered to be the worst one in the history of the Oscars up until the 93rd and 94th Academy Awards in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and for good reasons.
Why It Got The Poison Apple
- There was no host at this time since it took a break. It only had a host again a year later after the negative reception of this ceremony with Billy Crystal as a host in the 62nd Academy Awards.
- The music is ear-bleedingly awful.
- Poor use of Snow White, who was portrayed by Eileen Bowman, and she was also given an irritating Minnie Mouse-style voice. As a result, The Walt Disney Company sued AMPAS over the illegal use of Snow White's image, but Richard Kahn issued an apology to them and the lawsuit was dropped.
- Rob Lowe sang a parody of "Proud Mary" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which became infamous for its sheer awfulness. Also, the song goes on for 12 minutes; some people say that the song wouldn't be so bad if it had been only 4 minutes long, but producer Allan Carr decided to extend it.
- This was the Academy Awards edition of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.
- The telecast would be the last time Allan Carr would ever be given a production job before his death from liver cancer in 1999 and it would also be the last live appearance of Lucille Ball before her death almost one month later.
Redeeming Qualities That Deserve Oscars
- For the first time, presenters announced each winner with the phrase "And the Oscar goes to..." rather than "And the winner is...".
- Some awards were considered well-deserved:
- Rain Man won the Oscar for Best Picture.
- Tin Toy won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, the first of many for Pixar.
- The late Richard Williams won a Special Achievement Oscar for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- This was the first Academy Awards where comedian Bruce Vilanch acted as the head comedy writer of the show, a position he still holds as today.
- As horrible as this ceremony was, it was thankfully nowhere near as abysmal as the 93rd and 94th Academy Awards in 2021 and 2022.
Reception
Critical reviews
The show was panned by most of the media publications. Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg lamented, "the Academy Awards telecast on ABC was surprisingly devoid of magic. It was on the musty side, and compared with last month's Grammycast, absolutely moribund." Film critic Janet Maslin chastised the opening number, saying it "deserves a permanent place in the annals of Oscar embarrassments". She also bemoaned that the "I Wanna Be an Oscar Winner" number "was confusingly shot and inspired no confidence in Hollywood's future". Television editor Tony Scott of Variety complained, "The 61st Annual Academy Awards extravaganza—seen in 91 different countries including, for the first time, the Soviet Union—turned out to be a TV nyet" He also observed that the "Break-Out Superstars number" looked like they were "cavorting around a giant Oscar as if it were the golden calf".
The telecast also received a mixed reception from professionals within the show business industry. Talent agent Michael Ovitz praised Carr saying that he had "brought show business back to the movie business". Actress Jennifer Jones thanked Carr in a written letter to the producer, which read "You delivered." On the other hand, seventeen people, including actors Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, and Julie Andrews, and directors Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, signed an open letter deriding the telecast as "an embarrassment to both the Academy and the entire motion picture industry".
Just outside the auditorium, on Jefferson Boulevard, a group of San Francisco drag queens, calling themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indignity, stood in Mae West wigs and gowns, saying that they had come "to show our support for Allan Carr" for producing the first "gay Oscars." There has been speculation that some of the blowback against the ceremony, which was the first produced by an openly gay person and which prominently featured a musical number based on a gay nightclub show, was homophobic, although others, such as Bruce Vilanch and David Geffen, have challenged that assessment.
Ratings
Despite the criticism regarding the production of the ceremony, the American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 42.68 million people over its length, which was a 1% increase from the previous year's ceremony. The show also drew higher Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony, with 29.81% of households watching over a 50.41 share. It was the highest-rated Oscar broadcast since the 56th ceremony, held in 1984.