Streakers, X-Rated Movies and LSD: The Craziest Tales in the History of the Oscars

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo:Bettmann Archive/Getty; Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty; AP Photo

Bettmann Archive/Getty; Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty; AP Photo

Showbiz folks have a flair for the dramatic, so it makes sense that Hollywood’s biggest night (a.k.a.the Academy Awards) has yielded some wild moments over the course of its (nearly) 100-year history.

On the eve of the 97th annual Academy Awards, let’s revisit some of the craziest things that have ever gone down in the name of the little golden man over the years — from acts of God to acts of actors, and also some old-fashioned production mishaps. Some are hilariously funny, some are utterly tragic, but they’re all pretty wild.

Jack Palance does one-handed pushups on stage at the 64th Annual Academy Awards in 1992.Craig Fujii/AP/Shutterstock

The moment became a running gag throughout the remainder of the telecast, with Crystal offering comedic updates that Palance was “backstage on the StairMaster,” bungee-jumping off the Hollywood sign, or preparing for spaceflight.According to Crystal’s memoir,when the two costars met up at the afterparty, the freshly-anointed Oscar winner placed his statuette on Crystal’s shoulder before chuckling, “Billy Crystal … who thought it would be you?!” Crystal accepted the moment as an expression of gratitude from Palance for co-writing the film and advocating to cast him, thus helping him finally bring home the gold after two previous nominations 40 years earlier.

“It was his really funny way of saying thank you to a little New York Jewy guy who got him the Oscar,” Crystal recalled during an appearance onInside the Actors Studio.

The pair re-teamed at the Academy Awards the following year for the broadcast’s introductory sketch, which featured Palance dragging a giant Oscar statue onstage, with Crystal (again the host) riding it.

South ParkCreators Matt Stone and Trey Parker Attended the Oscars While Tripping on LSD in 2000

‘South Park’ creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker on the Oscars red carpet in 2000.

When their song “Blame Canada” fromSouth Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncutunexpectedly earned an Oscar nod in 2000, the countercultural televisual icons had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make their unique mark on Hollywood’s glitziest night. “We talked about [going in] big duck outfits,”Parker later said. “And then we thought, ‘If we go with big duck costumes, then they have a reason not to let us in. But if we’re wearing what other people are wearing, then they really can’t say we can’t come in.’”

Technically the nomination went to Trey Parker, who co-wrote the song with lyricist Marc Shaiman. When Parker invited hisSouth Parkpartner Matt Stone to be his date, Stone initially wanted to wear a dress and pose as a fictitious European model. The idea morphed a bit from there, and ultimately the pair both opted to go in drag — with Parker wearing a painstakingly recreated replica of thelow-cut Versace gown that Jennifer Lopezhad worn to the 2000 Grammys a few weeks earlier, and Stone donning a dress modeled after thepink Ralph Lauren number Gwyneth Paltrow had wornto collect her Oscar forShakespeare in Lovethe year before. “Some people were stoked when we showed up at the Oscars in those dresses. Michael Caine being one,“Stone toldThe Hollywood Reporterin 2016. “But I remember Gloria Estefan was super pissed.”

Unfortunately, their comedown was made extra harsh when they lost the Oscar to Phil Collins’Tarzantrack, “You’ll Be In My Heart.” When a reporter asked them if it was still a magical night after this bitter disappointment,Parker replied: “It doesn’t matter because losing just makes it horrible. It’s terrible to lose to Phil Collins especially.”

Tom Hanks’ Controversial Acceptance Speech for HisPhiladelphiaOscar Inspired the Plot of a Hit Movie

Tom Hanks Holding His Oscar for ‘Philadelphia’.Steve Starr/Corbis/Getty

When Tom Hanks accepted his Oscar for playing a homosexual lawyer dying of AIDS in 1993’sPhiladelphia, he took a moment during his acceptance speech to thank his former high school drama teacher, Rawley Farnsworth, referring to him as one of the “finest gay Americans.” The tribute had the unintended side effect of launching Farnsworth into the media spotlight,with headlines like “OUTED AT THE OSCARS.”

In truth, Hanks had called Farnsworth three days before the ceremony and asked permission to disclose his sexuality in the speech. The pair hadn’t spoken since shortly after Hanks graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif. In 1974.

“I don’t know if you’ll remember me,” Farnsworth, then 69,recalled Hanks saying, “but I’m an old student of yours. I’ve got a ticket to the Academy Awards, and if I win, I would like to use your name in regard to the content ofPhiladelphia.” Farnsworth, who had been private about his sexuality during his 30-year teaching career, said he would be thrilled.  “I thought, ‘I’ve been retired for 12 years. What harm can it do?’ ” he told PEOPLE at the time.

The Academy Awards Have Been Postponed Three Times Due to Floods, Assassinations and Assassination Attempts

Photograph of chaos outside the Washington Hilton Hotel after the assassination attempt on President Reagan.U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons

“The show must go on” may be a show business mantra, but there have been three occasions when the Oscars ceremony was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. The 10th Academy Awards were postponed a week asa result of the Los Angeles Flood of 1938, which killed over 100 people and destroyed roads, bridges, and acres of farmland throughout the county. The five-day flood caused upwards of $78 million of damage ($1.69 billion in 2023 dollars), making it one of the costliest disasters in the city’s history.

The Oscars were delayed again in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Academy postponed the 40th annual ceremony, initially scheduled for April 8, for two days so stars like Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Marlon Brando couldattend King’s funeral in Atlanta. (The Governors Ball afterparty was canceled for the only time in Oscars history.) Gregory Peck, the Oscar-winning actor then serving as the president of the Academy,opened the ceremony on April 10, with a speech acknowledging the tragedy. “This has been a fateful week in the history of our nation. We join with fellow members of our profession and men of goodwill everywhere to pay our respects to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Peck said, before observing that two of the five films nominated for Best Picture that year —Guess Who’s Coming to DinnerandIn the Heat of the Night, both starring Sidney Poitier— dealt with the subject of “understanding between the races.”

The Oscars were postponed a third time in 1981,just four hours before the ceremony was due to beginon March 30. Earlier in the day, 25-year-old John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. — reportedly in an attempt to gain the attention of Jodie Foster. (Hinckley had developed a psychotic obsession with the actress after seeing her in Martin Scorsese’sTaxi Driver, in which Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle character plots to assassinate a presidential candidate.) Reagan, who began his career as an actor and was a former Academy member, had pre-recorded a message for the Oscar ceremony’s opening sequence. The Academy felt it wise to wait until the commander-in-chief was confirmed to be in stable condition. Reagan himself specifically requested that the clip be aired, andwatched the ceremony from his hospital bed.

An X-Rated Film Won Best Picture

MGM Home Entertainment

Interestingly, the studio that producedMidnight Cowboylabeled it with an X rating themselves, without even submitting it to the MPAA. United Artists’ production head David Picker assumed that the sexually explicit nature of the film, plus the druggy psychedelic freak-out scenes and homosexual themes, made it an obvious contender for the strictest rating. “We didn’t want to go through the exercise [of submitting it] since we weren’t prepared to change the movie,“Picker later explained toThe Hollywood Reporter. Stranger still, when the MPAA opted to reviewMidnight Cowboyin 1971, they downgraded the rating to a less extreme R.

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The First African American to Win an Oscar Nearly Wasn’t Allowed in the Venue — And Was Forbidden from Sitting with Her Castmates

Hattie McDaniel with her Oscar.John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive / Getty Images

It took more than a decade for an African American to win — or even receive a nomination for — an Academy Award for acting. The honor went to Hattie McDaniel, who earned a Best Supporting Actress statuette for her role as Mammy in 1939’sGone with the Wind. While the achievement was an important breakthrough for Black performers, the moment was not completely victorious for McDaniel, the daughter of two former slaves.

Segregation was still the law of the land throughout much of the United States, and producerDavid O. Selznick had to pull stringsto ensure that McDaniel would be allowed to attend the ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which had a strict “no Blacks” policy. Despite Selznick’s endorsement, McDaniel was prohibited from sitting with her fellow castmates. Instead she was banished to a small table in the back of the room along with her escort and agent. (This was still an upgrade from the film’s Atlanta premiere, from which she was barred entirely. An African American children’s choir that was hired to pose as slaves at the eventincluded a young Martin Luther King Jr.)

It would be 62 years before another Black actress received an Academy Award. This time it went to Halle Berry for her starring turn in 2002’sMonster’s Ball. “This moment is so much bigger than me,” she said during her tearful acceptance speech. “It’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” Berry remains the only Black actress to ever win in the leading role category.

An Actor Sold His Oscar to Pay for His Wife’s Medical Costs — Or Possibly a Cruise

Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty

Although theycost approximately $400 to make, the gold-plated statuette (which has been hand-crafted at the UAP Polich Tallix foundry in Rock Tavern, New York since 2016) is technically only worth $1. Since 1951,Oscar winners are required to sign an agreementstating that they cannot sell the award without first offering to sell it back to the Academy for a buck. Those who refuse are not allowed to keep the trophy. This rule also extends to the winners’ family and estate once they die.Per the Academy, the rule is intended to “preserve the integrity of the Oscar symbol.”

However, the prohibition doesn’t apply to Oscars given out prior to 1951. Steven Spielberg paid upwards of half a million dollars each for two awards formerly belonging to silver screen icons Clark Gable and Bette Davis. The director, who has three Oscars of his own, donated his purchases to the Academy.  “The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow,”he toldVariety, “and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times that this icon could be confused with a commercial treasure.”

Mark Sennet/Getty

Obviously, most Oscar winners would prefer not to part with their prized possession, and those pre-1951 performers who sold them usually did so due to dire circumstances. Case in point: Harold Russell, a World War II Veteran who lost both his hands before being cast in the 1946 filmThe Best Years of Our Lives. (“I got into an argument with a block of T.N.T. and lost,” he’d later explain.) Though not a professional actor, he received the role because it closely mirrored his own life story, and it ultimately earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well as an honorary award  for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures.” Russell sold the Best Supporting Actor trophy at auction in 1992, at age 78, reportedlyto pay for his wife’s mounting medical costs. “I love the Oscar, but I love my wife more,” he toldTheNew York Times. “Although I’ve had the Oscar longer…If I ever get lonely for it, I can watch the picture.” The award was sold for $60,500 to an anonymous buyer.

A few years after Russell’s death in 2002, Academy executive director Bruce Davis claimed that the real story was less of a tearjerker. “A couple of reporters pinned [Russell] down,“Davis claimed inThe Times. “It came out that his wife wanted to take a cruise. He had a new wife who knew he had a spare Oscar. [Universal Studio head] Lew Wasserman bought it and donated it back to us.”

Beatrice Straight Won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Five Minutes of Screen Time

Jean Dujardin has the distinction of winning an acting Oscar with the least amount of dialogue, (in the post-”talkies” era, at least) thanks to his role in 2011’sThe Artist. The film is almost entirely silent, save for 12 words — two of which are his: “ “With pleasure.” (The Artist was also the first entirely black-and-white film to win Best Picture sinceThe Apartmentin 1961, over half a century earlier.)

Charlie Chaplin receives his honorary Oscar at the 44th annual Academy Awards in 1972.Bettmann Archive/Getty

The bulk of Charlie Chaplin’s pioneering work in the silent film era occurred before the inauguration of the Academy Awards in 1929. Though he was awarded an honorary trophy at the first ceremony, Chaplin only earned a single competitive Oscar during his lifetime — and even then, it took two decades to be recognized.

For 20 years he stayed true to his word, living in exile in Switzerland. Then, in 1972, the Academy announced that it was awarding him a second honorary Oscar “for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” Chaplin opted to travel to Hollywood and receive the honor in person. It was a triumphant homecoming. As he took the stage, the audience rose to their feet — and stayed there for an astonishing 12 minutes. “Words seem so futile — so feeble,” Chaplin said as he accepted the award. “I can only say thank you for the honor of inviting me here.”

Limelightwas given a wide American release that December. Months later, the twenty-year-old film earned Chaplin his only competitive Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score. His two co-writers, Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell, had died decades earlier and were awarded the honor posthumously.

Robert Opel streaks at the 1974 Oscars.AP

The theory has never been proven, butsome associated with the showclaim they saw Niven writing his supposed ad-lib into his script during dress rehearsal hours before the ceremony. (Also, the live incident was expertly shot so that the man’s unmentionables didn’t end up getting broadcast into America’s living rooms — a tough feat to pull off!)

Opel became a minor celebrity in the immediate aftermath, and the media clamored to learn more about him. Initially a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan’s California gubernatorial campaign, his politics veered further left at the dawn of the ‘70s. He became a radical activist,appearing naked at multiple Los Angeles City Council meetingsto protest the city’s ban on nudity at area beaches. (At least one of these stunts would land him in jail.) Openly bisexual, he became active in the queer counter-culture at the dawn of the ‘70s,  socializing with figures like John Waters and Divine, and working as a part-time photographer for gay liberation outletThe Advocate.

Though he never explained his precise motives for his Oscars streak,he admittedthat it was a great way to jumpstart his career. For a time, that’s exactly what happened. He appeared as a guest onThe Mike Douglas Show, where he announced his campaign for president with slogans like “Nothing to Hide” and (taking aim at Watergate-plagued President Richard Nixon)“Not Just Another Crooked Dick.”Hollywood producer Allan Carr, who would go on to produceGrease,even hired Opel to streak through a party for Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

Thirty years later, Opel’s nephew Robert Oppel — the elder had dropped one “P” from his name to protect his family —produced the documentaryUncle Bob, which explored the life and work of his infamous relative.

Marlon Brando Rejected His Award as a Protest Against the Treatment of Native Americans

At the 1973 Academy Awards, Sacheen Littlefeather refuses the Academy Award for Best Actor on behalf of Marlon Brando who won for his role in The Godfather.Bettmann Archive

One of the most iconic roles in cinema history also gave way to one of the most iconic moments in the history of the Oscars. When Marlon Brando won his second Oscar in 1973 for his performance as Don Vito Corleone inThe Godfather, he wasn’t there to receive it. In his place, he had sent Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache Native American activist and the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, to reject the award on his behalf. When his name was announced, she took the stage in a buckskin dress and moccasins. Although Brando had given her a 15-page speech to read, she was forced to improvise due to the 60-second time limit disclosed minutes before to the award presentation.

In 1990, Littlefeather spoke to PEOPLE about the fallout she faced in response to her Oscars moment. “I went up there thinking I could make a difference,” she explained. “I was very naive. I told people about oppression. They said, ‘You’re ruining our evening.’ "

Littlefeather died in October 2022 at the age of 75, weeks after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences publicly apologized for her treatment at the ceremony nearly 50 years earlier. “The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified,”wrote then-Academy president David Rubin. “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”

source: people.com