Weekend at Grauman's

Ginger Rogers wore a metallic-cloth gown, cut very low in front. Bette Davis was there in horn-rimmed spectacles. The master of ceremonies, of course, was Bob Hope. The occasion: Hollywood's 18th annual Academy Award rites in Grauman's Chinese Theater.

To the surprise of no one--except perhaps a few diehard members of the W.C.T.U.--The Lost Weekend, the terrifying, brilliantly handled story of a dipsomaniac, came off best. To Weekend's Ray Milland went the Oscar as 1945's best screen actor. (Cracked Hope: "I'm surprised they just handed it to him. I thought they'd hide it in the chandelier.") Weekend's other Oscars: to Billy Wilder (best director); to Wilder and Charles Brackett (best-written screen play); to Paramount (best picture of the year).

Among other 1945 winners: Peggy Ann Garner, most promising juvenile; James Dunn, best supporting actor (Johnny Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn); Anne Revere, best supporting actress (the mother in National Velvet); Richard Schweitzer, best original screen play (Swiss-made Marie-Louise).

Be-Oscared in absentia, as 1945's best actress, was wide-eyed, durable Joan Crawford, who after 21 years in the movies still has the figure and bounce of a starlet. Ill at home, Joan got her Oscar from Director Michael Curtiz for her comeback performance in Mildred Pierce.

Academy Comeback. Meanwhile, there were signs that the Academy itself was about to stage a comeback. Founded in 1927 by the late Douglas Fairbanks and others, it had never lived up to its high & mighty name. It had made valuable technical contributions in some fields, but its major claim to fame was its yearly dole-out of Oscars. Even these no longer represented only the vote of Academy members (actors, producers, directors, etc.). Winners were now selected by a sizable hunk of the industry.

But there was talk in Hollywood of once more making the awards what they had originally been: an Academy accolade, rather than a politics-ridden popularity contest. Other signs for the future: the Academy would soon move from rented offices to a building of its own; it now had, for the first time, a steady outside income ($1,500 a week for a radio program). Academy membership, once down to about 100, is now near 900.

There was even some hope that the Academy would some day accomplish what it set out to do: improve U.S. motion pictures.

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