61st Academy Awards

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61st Academy Awards
Date	March 29, 1989
Site	Shrine Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles
Host	None
Producer	Allan Carr
Director	Jeff Margolis
Duration	3 hours, 19 minutes

The 61st Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1989 at the Shrine Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles.

Contents 1 Films 2 Direction 3 Acting 4 Writing 5 Music 6 Trivia

[edit] Films

• Best Picture: Rain Man

[edit] Direction

• Best Director: Barry Levinson for Rain Man

[edit] Acting

• Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man
• Best Actress: Jodie Foster in The Accused
• Best Supporting Actor: Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda
• Best Supporting Actress :Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist

[edit] Writing

• Best Original Screenplay: Rain Man written by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Dangerous Liaisons screenplay by Christopher Hampton

[edit] Music

• Original Score: The Milagro Beanfield War by Dave Grusin
• Original Song: "Let The River Run" from The Working Girl by Carly Simon

[edit] Trivia

• The producers of the ceremony attempted to change established Oscar traditions for this year's show. One noticeable difference was that instead of an award presenter saying, "and the winner is.." they'd say, "and the Oscar goes to...". Many however, continued announcing winners with the traditional line. In addition, there was no official host for the ceremony this year. The show's opening number consisted of an elaborate stage-show featuring Merv Griffin, Snow White (portrayed by actress Eileen Bowman), and Rob Lowe - the latter two singing a disastrous rendition of the song "Proud Mary". This debacle, in addition to he changes made by the producers, led to the television broadcast receiving a disastrous reception. Consequently, producer Alan Carr would not return to produce the ceremony again.

• Right before Cher was to present the award for Best Picture, she had an anxiety attack. Jack Nicholson was brought backstage to help calm her down and almost had to present the award with her.

• Best Actor winner Dustin Hoffman, upon realizing he'd forgotten to thank Tom Cruise and director Barry Levinson in his Best Actor acceptance speech asked Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn (who were presenting next) to please thank them for him before presenting their award, which Russell did. Then, when Hoffman and Cruise took the stage later in the show to present the Best Actress award, Hoffman said "In my nervousness, I left out the director's name and I left out Tom's name. Tom, thank you very much. I love you very much."

• This is one of the few years in history that the nominees for Best Song were not performed during the ceremony.

• This was the final public appearance of Lucille Ball who died one month later.

In the United States, the ceremony was televised nationally by ABC.