The Furniture: Celebrating the Tackiness of "The Oscar"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Tomorrow is twice blessed. You’re probably already excited for the first reason, the Oscar nominations announcement. It’s also the centennial of Ernest Borgnine, an actor I have never particularly liked. But this coincidence makes today a perfect opportunity to talk about one of the worst movies ever produced by a Hollywood studio: 1966’s The Oscar.

The film begins and ends at the Academy Awards, where fictional Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd) is as Best Actor nominee for Breakthrough, perhaps the most on-the-nose fictional title of all time. His newly estranged best friend Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, in his film debut), glares at him from the next row. Bennett would retire from acting immediately after The Oscar, for reasons that are obvious from the moment he starts talking...

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How Vintage! Natalie, Jane, Mike & Julie At Roddy's Place!

Thanks to Matt @ Boy Culture for pointing this abso-wow home movie out. A friend of the late actor Roddy McDowall has uploaded silent movies from the prominent social butterfly's beach house.

This one features Natalie Wood, Mike Nichols, Julie Andrews with toddler... (I hear that's Jane Fonda sticking her tongue out? But I maybe wouldn't have recognized her given the sunglasses and that she's SO young)

I'm not crazy. This is Elaine May with Mike Nichols, right? The timing would be right.

See how many other stars you can spot. (This reminded me of a certain Hollywood socializing passage during the Bonnie & Clyde chapters of "Pictures at a Revolution" and damnit, now I'm going to have to read that all over again.)

This video is rather kind of almost no totally jawdropping.

In this second one Jane Fonda (again sticking her tongue out -- what's that about?) and Julie Andrews (playing with her kids) are more prominent and this time Jane is unmistakably Jane. Plus Ruth Gordon even makes an appearance. Yay, Ruth Gordon. 

There are more of these videos at soapbxprod's youtube channel. These videos are such a scrapbook of who's who in 1960s Hollywood.