![]() But who was Robert Opel, and why did he do what he did? Conspiracy theories surfaced immediately. Nearly half a century later, the “Oscar streak” is remembered as a blip of seventies counterculture amid the Hollywood glitz. Besides, it’s a hell of a way to launch a career.” “You know, people shouldn’t be ashamed of being nude in public. “It just occurred to me that it might be an educative thing to do,” he said. What he didn’t say was that he actually worked for the Los Angeles school system, and that he was gay. He identified himself as Robert Opel, an advertising man. The streaker was taken not to the authorities but to the pressroom, where he appeared in a blue jumpsuit unzipped to the waist and posed alongside a jumbo Oscar. ![]() With that, he brought out Taylor to hand the final prize to “The Sting.” Niven had taken a would-be nervous breakdown and turned it into entertainment. “But isn’t it fascinating,” he continued, “to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?” “That was almost bound to happen.” As the crowd’s murmuring gave way to tentative laughter, Niven rode the moment like a surfer. “Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he said coolly. Niven did a double take as the orchestra struck up a jaunty tune. The man disappeared stage right, and the gasps turned to chatter. Taylor, Grier said, was backstage fixing her hair: “When the streaker went across the stage, she just started laughing.” “I was standing in the wings and saw this flash-I have great peripheral vision,” she later told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Pam Grier, who had been given the ceremonial job of “Oscar guardian,” saw it all from backstage. The audience, which included Jack Nicholson, Liza Minnelli, Paul McCartney, and Groucho Marx, along with sixty-four million viewers at home, watched in disbelief. Glancing to his right, he saw a man with floppy brown hair and a bushy mustache, flashing a peace sign as he ran across the stage-naked. It took Niven a moment to realize what the commotion was. ![]() “Get me out of there fast.” And so Niven moved on to introduce the Best Picture presenter, whom he called a “very important contributor to world entertainment, and someone quite likely-”īut before he could finish he was interrupted by a squall of screams. “Hurry up, David,” she had told him backstage. Niven, a stiff-upper-lip charmer, could glide above America’s political paroxysms, and he might have gone on talking were it not for his friend Elizabeth Taylor, whom he was introducing. ![]() That was how Hollywood wanted to see itself: as the unifier of a country fractured by Vietnam and Watergate. Scott refusing his award for “Patton,” Marlon Brando sending Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his for “The Godfather.” When Niven introduced the final presenter, he said, “If one reads the newspapers or listens to the news, it is quite obvious that the whole world is having a nervous breakdown.” But in Hollywood, he went on, “we turn out entertainment.” As in recent years, with such surprise sideshows as the Best Picture envelope mixup (“Moonlight” or “La La Land”?) and Will Smith smacking Chris Rock, the Oscars of the early seventies had been bumpy: George C. David Niven, sharing hosting duties with Burt Reynolds, Diana Ross, and John Huston, introduced Hepburn with the line “To conceal the identity of our next presenter has called for a security operation of truly royal proportions.”Ī little royalty-and a little decorum-was what the Academy desperately craved. At ten years old, Tatum O’Neal had become the youngest person ever to win an Oscar, for “Paper Moon.” Katharine Hepburn had attended the ceremony for the first time, to present an award. Late in the evening on April 2, 1974, the forty-sixth Academy Awards had already secured their place in the history books.
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