The Academy Awards Are 3 Months From Today – March 2, 2014

Oscar Sunday is three months from today, March 2, 2014 and this year, it’s anyone’s game. The Academy has a history of playing up all the glamour and suspense, and this year should be no different.

As of today, GOLD DERBY‘s Top 5 Best Picture predictions for the 86th Academy Awards are: 12 YEARS A SLAVE, GRAVITY, SAVING MR. BANKS, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS and AMERICAN HUSTLE.

HIT FIX’s Top 5 are: GRAVITY, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, SAVING MR. BANKS, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.

In what’s classic TV, take a look at the opening of the 43rd Academy Awards in 1971, featuring an introduction by Academy President Daniel Taradash.

The big A-listers of the day all appeared at the Oscars – Goldie Hawn, Jeanne Moreau, Melvyn Douglas, Ryan O’Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young, George Segal, Jennifer Jones, Lee Grant, Maximilian Schell, Ginger Rogers, Jack Nicholson, Ali McGraw, Robert Evans, Quincy Jones, Sally Kellerman, Jim Brown, Sarah Miles, Angie Dickinson, Burt Bacharach, Joan Blondell, Genevieve Bujold, Paula Prentiss, Richard Benjamin, Walter Matthau, Juliet Prowse, Glen Campbell, Merle Oberon, Gregory Peck, Eva Marie Saint, Steve McQueen and Harry Belafonte.

Shirley Jones and John Marley presented the Oscar for Sound to Douglas Williams and Don Bassman for PATTON – which went on to win Best Picture.

For you real Oscarphiles, below is a list of the five Best Picture nominees from that year.

* – Winner from their category.

Here are some highlights from the night:

• Best Picture: PATTON
• “Patton” also won Academy Awards for Best Actor (George C. Scott), Art Direction-Set Decoration (Urie McCleary, Gil Parrondo, Antonio Mateos, and Pierre-Louis Thevenet), Directing (Franklin J. Schaffner), Film Editing (Hugh S. Fowler), Sound (Douglas Williams and Don Bassman), and Writing – Story and Screenplay based on factual material or material not previously published or produced (Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North).
• George C. Scott declined his nomination and the award, but Academy President Daniel Taradash noted that, “…a person responsible for the achievement cannot decline the nomination after it is voted. Actually, Mr. Scott is not involved. It is his performance in ‘Patton’ which is involved.”
• Helen Hayes won Best Supporting Actress for AIRPORT. She became the first actor or actress to receive Academy Awards in the two categories honoring performers (she won Best Actress for “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” in 1931/32).
• The Beatles won the Academy Award for Music – Original Song Score for “Let It Be.”
• The Awards were broadcast by NBC-TV for the first time in 11 years.
• The Awards presentation and hosting duties were handled by 34 “Friends of Oscar.”

The 86th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 16, 2014, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network.

Ellen DeGeneres will return to host the Oscars for a second time. DeGeneres hosted the 79th Academy Awards in 2007.

THE 79TH ACADEMY AWARDS¨ (ABC/ANDREW ECCLES)