Ellen Burstyn's reaction after losing the Oscar in 1974

No, I think she was shocked that some NOBODY won.

She knew she had to amp up her facial expressions to compete for attention with Susan Hayward's wig.

LOL I love Ellen Burstyn!

Joan Crawford was a huge fan of Glenda Jackson and vice versa. They were even pen pals for a couple of years until Crawford passed.

R2 thank you I know my old time movie stars but I had no idea who that was!

She was clearly surprised, but furious or feeling foolish? No.

It must suck to lose to one of the people who can't be bothered to show up.

Susan Hayward looked teeny tiny next to Heston. Miniscule.

Woodward should've won.

[quote]It must suck to lose to one of the people who can't be bothered to show up.

I wonder which actress was feeling that the following year.

Susan Hayward was very ill with cancer. She had been given an anti-epileptic drug against seizures, earlier that day.

Poor Susan. Despite being medicated within an inch of her life, she barely made it out of the building before she collapsed and had a seizure.

Marsha Mason

Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore which was released in 1974. During what time period did she win it? I'm confused.

A detailed account of Susan's appearance that night, and her cancer. She had 20 tumors in her brain.

It was so good to see Susan Hayward in her last public appearance. A great star shining for the last time.

Can someone find that clip of Susan at the Oscars that time and post it? I'd do it but I'm trimming my nasal hairs tonight.

Weird that article says she presented with David Niven. It's obviously Chuck Heston.

She is probably just reacting to the shock of Jackson winning.

Burstyn, Streisand and even Marsha Mason were considered to be the more likely winners.

Barbra is apparently backstage and would only appear if she won. (bitch)

BTW Heston really was a sexy guy. Pity he went wacko with guns in his later days.

Marsha Mason? The most forgettable.

She's expressing surprise because Glenda Jackson had just won her 1st Academy Award only two years earlier.

Mason had won the Golden Globe and was considered a contender for the Oscar.

[quote] Can someone find that clip of Susan at the Oscars that time and post it?

I think the year Burstyn did win for Alice, she wan't there to accept it.

Glenda Jackson's win was a huge surprise that year, and Burstyn's facial expression reflects that more than disappointment. The Oscar was expected to go to Streisand (the big fan favorite that year, in a very showy role) or to Woodward (who had beat out Jackson and Streisand both for the NYFilm Critics Award). "A Touch of Class" was a small British comedy, so Jackson was really not expected to win--almost no one saw it.

A Touch of Class was a very big film when it came out, R23.

Woodward had heavily bad mouthed the Academy in 68 when Newman wasn't nominated for director for Rachel, Rachel.

She didn't stand a chance this year.

Neil Simon describes the night in his bio. While Marsha Mason had won the globe (Jackson won the comedy globe) and stood a chance they were expecting Burstyn or Streisand to win because those films were the biggest commercial hits and (accroding to him) that mattered a lot back then.

R13 That article also states that the show was at the Pantages. It was a the Dot Chandler Pavilion, and hadn't been at the Pantages for 15 years.

Streisand certainly didn't expect to win. She didn't even show up. And THIS was the film all the critics said proved Streisand could not act.

r27 Streisand was backstage. She didn't want to sit in the audience but was going to accept the award if she won.

For me the bigger surprise is that Jackson was even nominated. I suppose the Academy thought A Touch of Class was a change of pace and worth recognizing.

what a bitch she is deep down

lip readers::::what did she say???

joanne woodward shoulda won

GOD BLESS SUSAN HAYWARD SHE WAS DYING OF CANCER AND HAD HUGE SEIZURE IN THE DRESSING ROOM AFTER, WAS CARRIED OUT ON STRETCHER. LIVED NOT LONG AFTER...SHE WAS THERE ONLY BY HER OWN POWERFUL WILL...

THEY SHOULDA GIVEN HER A STANDING OVATION AND AN AWARD !!!!!

Goddamit, I’m still glad I didn’t give the gold to that schlock horror picture The Ex-Or-Cyst. Burstyn was fine but everybody knows B-pictures pay the bills but they ain’t gettin’ you any trophies, toots. Take it from me.

She went full on Gillooly.

Barbra didn't even blink when Glenda was announced.

"A Touch Of Class" was a big ht. Everyone was surprised because it was a comedic role, the only in the list and the Academy was and is notorious for shitting on comedic performances. If Jackson hadn't been British, which the Academy favors, she would have been ignored.

Barbra was too stunned to even move.

That is an awkward moment for Marsha Mason when Susan Hayward has trouble announcing her name as a nominee.

Ellen Schmellen, let's focus on Chuck Heston. Goddamn he was a good-looking man! I'll focus on that and forget his NRA nonsense.

[quote]That is an awkward moment for Marsha Mason when Susan Hayward has trouble announcing her name as a nominee.

Everyone knew Hayward was deathly ill and greeted her with great applause for showing up. Chances are Marsha who seems like a lovely lady was thrilled to have her say her name.

I was a foot away from Burstyn leaving a restaurant a yr ago: she was like a little old lady..

Did you say hello?

oh no, her look was 'leave me the fuk alone...'

I admire her a lot tho

How many Oscars have been given to actresses in leading COMEDIC roles?

Are there any besides Glenda here, Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night?

Those were the days we still had real movie stars we revered and idolized. Now Hollywood is packed to the gills with trash who don't care if the public sees what lowbrows most of them are.

Charlton Heston was still quite the hunk in 1974. The actors today are mere boys in comparison.

R44= Ann Miller

It is really cool that there was suspense and surprises. Those were the days. You rarely have surprises like that anymore at the Oscars. Now it is a course where everybody stops,at different steps, it dilutes any drama you could have, and the crowning with the Oscars are just a formality

Also, they were naive people. Nowadays, you just know the British actress will take the prize.

Add Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and Cher in Moonstruck to that list.

Um, just because I suck the humor out of all my live appearances doesn’t mean I wasn’t funny in Fargo

And just because I sang my way through most of my Oscar-winning performance doesn’t mean it wasn’t a comedy.

And the fact that American critics deemed my film a drama didn’t stop its screenplay from winning a European best comedy award.

Has anyone actually read the article posted above about Susan Hayward’s last year of life? It sounds horrific. Because of the seizures she had no tongue left because she had bitten it all off.

I think she was resigned to the fact that she probably wasn’t going to win. The horror genre just didn’t really translate to wins for actors (Ruth Gordon the one exception for RB). Mason won the globe but no one had ever heard of her. Streisand and Woodward were probably the true front runners if there were any but voters seemed indifferent to their work. I think Jackson was great and just squeaked by to a win. I’ve heard the vote was extremely close.

What was going on with Joanne Woodward? What was so fascinating off to her side that she stared at it the whole time refusing to face forward so that the cameras could capture her face at this suspenseful time? Maybe she was trying to avoid having a moment similar to Ellen Burstyn's. Ellen's reaction isn't anger at losing, but it was more of a "WTF" reaction at the surprise winner.

Ellen's moment was not as bad at Faith Hill's moment at the 2006 CMAs when she lost to Carrie Underwood.

R55 she was watching a clip of her work. If you listen close there’s a little bit of the audio from the films.

Just surprise. Shock, even. No fury.

I have to wonder if she really thought she'd win for that piece of junk The Exorcist. Probably.

Actors.

Was it Amy Pohler or Tina Fey who at some award show -as a funny bit - reacted with anger at losing?

[quote] lip readers::::what did she say???

"I just shit my panties!"

A YouTuber reads lips. He said in one of the comments Ellen said hmmm what a surprise, Joanne-Glenda Jackson what a shock.

According to a YouTube post, Ellen said "No kidding? What a surprise."

Also on YouTube, Susan Hayward was heavily medicated to prevent a seizure from happening on stage. She managed to hold on until she got to her car, where she had a major one. When she died, she was buried in the dress she wore that night.

There was once the most wonderful Susan Hayward thread on DL.

R30 I'm pretty sure Ellen said "Well, that's a surprise."

Ellen was the front runner, and Marsha was the "dark horse", the win for Glenda came out of nowhere

R13 What a sad article. So what was it that killed her - her love of smoking or that movie filmed on radioactive soil she did?

[R65]

It had to be the soil. Everybody associated with that movie either died from cancer or was treated for it.

Smoking probably would've killed her eventually, but it had to be that soil.

R64 it wasn’t a total shock. I think if the then unknown Mason would’ve pulled it off (despite her golden globe) it would’ve been more shocking. ATOC was nominated for best picture and was a hit. This coupled with Jackson enjoying tremendous artistic success in the early and mid 70s (she also won two Emmys during this period) and the Academy loving all things British pretty much explains her win,

Not sure if the idea about an unknown Marsha Mason is correct. She had done a sizeable supporting role in Blume in Love which had come out the year before and was on Broadway in Neil Simon's The Good Doctor. And her marriage to Neil Simon would have boosted her public profile.

IIRC the surprise about Mason's nomination was not so much about her or her performance but that Cinderella Liberty was not a very widely seen or popular film.

Yes it appears both Cinderella Liberty and Blue in Love were both box office duds so Mason was lucky to meet Neil Simon.

.. Blume in Love.

“It must suck to lose to one of the people who can't be bothered to show up.“

That was probably it. At a lot of awards shows, awardees are somehow telegraphed (“you should REALLY try to get there if you can...”) and if people don’t show up, they often aren’t winners. Not always, but I think people often assume that. And Burstyn was surprised.

Did Glenda Jackson attend for her first win?

Nope.

R73 she said she was working and watched it on tv. But felt disgusted like it was a public hanging (her words). She didn’t show up for her 1971 Oscar either. Claiming she couldn’t afford the trip. Her lone Oscar appearance was to give the best actor Oscar to Art Carney in 1975 because she was in LA anyway.

I'm sure she went backstage afterwards and bitchslapped both Susan Hayward and Charlton Heston to a pulp for not saying her name and saying Glenda's instead.

Nobody really showed up for the Oscars back then. . It wasn't the ridiculous event that it's become now. Awards shows in general were like that. Very casual and nondescript.

Neither Glenda or Marsha showed up to accept their Globes that year either. Marsha was busy working on Broadway and sent the director of Cinderella Liberty to accept. She said she got something from Sears to wear to the Oscars. None of this glam squad nonsense like there is today.

Glamour and the lack of glamour were trends that came and went with the Oscars as years went by. Women were encouraged by the studios not to dress up during WWII and in the 1970s it was a mark of coolness to dress hipper and more casually (or not show up at all). But if you check out clips from the 1950s and even through the mid-1960s, women are wearing lavish gowns and all of the men are in white tie and tails.

It was really the red carpet coverage of Joan Rivers ("Who are you wearing?") that changed everything to the spectacle that exists today.

There's a rumor that the difference between the winner and the 5th place finisher that year was only 4 votes. Burstyn wanted to support the film and Linda Blair after a lot of negative attention had been placed on both in recent weeks. Woodward's film was a nice gem of a movie but came and went very quickly that year and didn't start getting attention until awards season.

Burstyn didn't show up to get her Oscar in 1975 because she was doing Same Time, Next Year on Broadway and didn't want to cheat fans who paid money to see her. Also she had a psycho ex husband who had a habit of stalking her during theater performances and at industry functions. He killed himself a few years later.

I loved it when Heston was in epics and he wore revealing clothing that showed off his massive chest and hairy, ham like thighs. Fap-fap-fap-fap.

Glenda's double no-show justifies the Maggie Smith line in California Suite; "Glenda Jackson gets nominated every goddamn year and she never goes."