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Golden Boy

Hollywood loves to tell stories about itself in its films, and no Hollywood movie was more deliriously tell-all than The Oscar, the 1966 Joseph E. Levine camp classic that’s the subject of my newest Grand Old Movies’ post. The film is gloriously, even masochistically, self-referential, mixing names of then-real-life Hollywood stars (Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin) with its tawdry tale of ambitious screen newcomer Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd, essentially retreading his nasty Messala from Ben-Hur, with the addition of trousers) and his quest for that golden statuette. Frankie will do anything to get the award, even tell the truth about himself (his beginnings as a shill for a stripper), in an ass-backwards bid to gain sympathy. It all ends in a near-surreal scene of Bob Hope hosting a fake Oscar ceremony. Hope would have been familiar to filmgoers as the presenter of the actual Academy Awards; and his bringing his standard, stale Hope jokes (“This is the night war and politics are forgotten, and we find out who we really hate”) to the scene only heightens that moment’s giddy unreality.

Hope at least meant to be funny. The real fun, and lure, of The Oscar is how unaware it is of its own hilarity. The film could be considered part of an unintentionally campy subgenre of Sixties Hollywood-insider films, such as The Carpetbaggers or Harlow (also Levine-produced) orValley of the Dolls, movies that dish the dirt on Hollywood excess and end up buried in it. Hollywood had certainly made insider films throughout its history (A Star is Born, The Bad and the Beautiful). But by the 1960s, with the decline of the major studios, the collapse of the Production Code, and the rise of independent filmmakers, the tinsel on Tinseltown had definitely tarnished. A later film like The Oscar is not only self-referential but self-devouring: what had once been buried in the pages of Confidential magazine is now the focus of a major studio production. Audiences were no longer buying the Dream Factory’s own dreams.

But when it comes to The Oscar, the badder, the better. There’s no doubt that, with its shrill performances, its tacky-glam sets and costumes, its aura of insider sleaze, and, especially, its campy lines, The Oscar gives us everything we really love and dream about old Hollywood. And there’s even an Oscar, to boot. Please click here to read my post.