Academy Awards?

My personal feelings about the Academy Awards are mixed: I’m not naive enough to feel all the awards are given on merit alone, yet I’m not cynical enough to believe all awards are given on the basis of press agency rather than performance or achievement. So, like it or not, the Academy Awards for 1968 are now part of history and, like it is every year, it is now time for film critics and gossip columnists to rehash the events of that perennial April evening and try to come up with some sort of comment of the film industry (and it is an industry).

A writer can approach the Academy Award from two directions; he can climb on a high horse and blast everyone involved (as did TIME’S anonymous film critic this week, bitterly denouncing almost everyone from some reason or other-Katherine Hepburn didn’t show up, Barbra Streisand wore a see-through outfit. Cliff Robertson didn’t deserve to win, etc. etc.), or the writer can pull a Shirley Eder and concentrate on the glamour (“Isn’t it a shame Cliff Robertson’s director wouldn’t let him be there to win.”). In this dissertation, there’s going to be a little bit of both.