HANKS. “The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels.”
Now that the next US Film Academy Awards, or Oscars, are only a couple of months away, let’s hark back and recall some of the best, most memorable or most unusual acceptance or presenter speeches uttered through the years during the most popular annual film awards rites of them all:
Chevy Chase: “Good morning, Hollywood phonies!”
Bob Hope: “I think ‘The Godfather, Part 2’ has an excellent chance of winning tonight. Neither Mr. Price nor Mr. Waterhouse has been seen in days.”
Billy Crystal: “Tonight is the night we honor people for individual achievement and also for bodies of work – and, looking at this crowd, some of your bodies have had a lot of work!”
Jodie Foster: “To the five Best Actor nominees tonight, you have moved me, moved the Academy, moved the people. Your performance took us somewhere strange and familiar, and we are changed forever by that glimpse, that intimacy, and that surrender, all etched in celluloid.”
Fellow nominees
Dustin Hoffman: “I’d also like to thank my fellow Best Actor nominees, Tom Hanks, Max von Sydow, Edward James Olmos and Gene Hackman, for their wonderful work – even if they didn’t vote for me…I didn’t vote for you guys, either!”
Louise Fletcher: “Well, it looks like you hated me so much (as the villainous Nurse Ratched in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’) that you have given me this award. And all I can say is – I’ve loved being hated by you!”
Tom Hanks: “I know that my work in this case (playing a gay AIDS victim in ‘Philadelphia’) is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels. We know their names. They number a thousand for each one of the red ribbons we wear tonight. They finally rest in the warm embrace of the gracious Creator of us all, a healing embrace that cools their fever, that clears their skins, and allows them to see a simple, self-evident truth: It was written down by wise men, tolerant men, in the city of Philadelphia 200 years ago.”
And, the best acceptance speech of all?
Laurence Olivier (after receiving an honorary Oscar in 1978): “Oh, dear friends, am I supposed to speak after that (an introduction by Cary Grant)? Cary, my dear old friend, thank you for that beautiful citation and the trouble you have taken to make it. Mr. President, members of the Academy, my very noble and approved good masters, my colleagues, my friends, my fellow students:
Generations
“In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation’s generosities, this particular choice may be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it – the prodigal, pure human kindness of it – may be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament, which shines upon me at this moment – dazzling me a little, but filling me with the warmth of the extraordinary elation that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow.
“In the solace, in the kindly emotion that is charging my heart and soul at this moment, I thank you for this great gift, which lends me such a very splendid part of this, your glorious occasion!”