Oscar Flashback: Amid a Strike, The Show Must Go On

In case you were wondering whether there will be an Oscars this year if the strike is still ongoing 8 months from now, which it probably won’t be, there is historical precedent. The last time the writers and the actors decided to strike at the same time was all the way back in 1960.

They still held the Oscars, though they were very different than they are now. The 32nd Academy Awards was the ceremony’s final year at the RKO Pantages Theater, on the famed corner of Hollywood and Vine. AMPAS tells us that it was also the year the first Barbie doll was on display (1959).

The ceremony is on YouTube and it looks as though it was pared down to one opening monologue by Hope with minimal hosting duties between any of the envelope reveals. It was televised on NBC.

As far as I can tell, the Bob Hope monologue was the only “entertainment” beyond handing out of awards. Ben-Hur swept, which tells you exactly what kind of Hollywood existed prior to the counterculture revolution about to unfold over the next 20 years.

Bob Hope’s monologue is still funny after all of these years but was riddled with edgy jokes that would definitely not fly today. His humor often makes a mockery of the union dispute, or pokes light jabs at the strike — neither of which would be done today.

Here is a story from the New York Times archive about the Oscars and the strike:

A few key things to note, like, “a few find it no longer worth their while to pay $36…” The acting branch still dominated the Academy membership roster, with just 432 members. There was no mention in this piece, nor in any other materials I could find, as to whether there would be any issue with holding the Oscars amid a strike. If anyone reading this knows differently, you’re welcome to assist with our understanding.

There were many fascinating factors at play back in 1960. For instance, Ronald Reagan led the strike twenty years before he would become one of the most influential US presidents. What they were demanding back then is naturally very different from what they’re demanding today, but general similarities remain the same: filmmakers have to fight for rights that studios were reluctant to give them. It always comes down to money.

You can read more about the strike here. It essentially comes down to how dramatically the industry has changed with the looming advent of AI, of all things, and streaming. Both the actors and the writers want protection from how there ideas and words will be used, how their likenesses can be repurposed, or how they may be replaced to some extent altogether, going forward.

Living through 2023 is mind-blowing on almost every level, but especially so if you are interested in history and how the pendulum of history and society tends to swing. The truth about human beings as a species is that we are entranced by and can’t resist the wizardly of technology, even when it’s magic is dark.

Back in 1960, movies themselves were being threatened by the first Golden Age of live television. Technology had changed and so too had patterns of American cultural consumption. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times back in 1960 about how movies had experienced a sudden jolt of creative energy, much like we just had with Barbenheimer and Sound of Freedom surprising everyone at how well they are doing. Only in 1960, it was the stunning one-two punch of Psycho and Oceans 11 — which Crowther flat-out called “amoral.”

He goes on to say:

Here is Crowther’s full piece:

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer, not to mention Sound of Freedom, are — strangely enough — kind of conventional in that they offer audiences what movies used to offer. For Barbie, it’s sheer fun. It doesn’t seem like we’ve had much fun lately. So much of the problem with politics infused into our movies is that the end result is usually a bummer of one kind or another. In less adept hands, Barbie might have been that movie, too, but Gerwig turned it into a glass of champagne instead. She made it funny and exciting, and visually appealing. I am not surprised that it’s doing so well.

I see people on Twitter annoyingly mocking the Cassandras who have been worried about box office saying, “What happened to ‘go woke, go broke’?” Barbie kept its plot under wraps until the hype was built up as their unprecedented PR machine whirred to life. The idea that it was “feminist” or “man-hating,” didn’t come out until after its explosive opening weekend. By now, the train is moving too fast to slow it down. Also, I don’t think Barbie is “woke” in the ways that turn off audiences. I don’t think people care as long as they’re having fun. If it’s a drag, then they don’t bother showing up.

What can we learn from what Crowther was saying 63 years ago, and how does it align with the kinds of movies are doing well now. It’s mostly the same, right? Because at the moment, we’re in the midst of another pendulum shift, just as they were in 1960.

Although Americans were starkly divided in the 1930s, everyone mostly came together to fight WWII. By the 1950s, that unified America had created what many regarded as an American utopia — the Leave it to Beaver kind of ideal society depicted on television and in films, and was also aligned with the Conservative Eisenhower administration. That’s also why there was so much fear and paranoia that there were Communists in our midst. Utopias must become more authoritarian if they’re to survive, but especially so when threatened.

But that unified America of the 1950s was disguising enormous fault lines of unrest, alienation, and dissatisfaction. Eventually, the harmonious marriage between the government and culture would come apart.

The 1960s would see what was simmering beneath the surface throughout the 1950s finally explode — Civil Rights, women’s rights, gay rights. By the 1970s it would take about a decade for these movements to exhaust themselves in the minds of the general public, and by 1980, the pendulum was swinging back to the Right. That was the last major pendulum swing. Now, we’re at the beginning of another one.

Politics and culture would again briefly unite when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. That’s why the Obamas are still very much intertwined with cultural ties to the Oscar race. That explains why their podcasts, Netflix contract, and Obama’s top ten lists of books and music still matter. He has not really receded from the public spotlight the way presidents usually do, because he still very much leads the vanguard of the Left. But all that is likely going to change as a counter-culture revolution erupts over the next decade.

The Obama era, I’d say, represented earnest and aspirational content, representative of an American utopia not unlike the post-war America of the 1950s. But if you listen closely, you can feel the rumble of change. That’s the only constant in life, especially in a country like this one, that is always remaking itself decade after decade.

The writers are especially threatened, I think, because they have become so tightly policed. What they can say and can’t, whose stories can be told. Studio execs seem to believe AI can replace writers if that is what writers must do going forward. AI, since it feeds off what has been done before, can convincingly be politically correct and compliant — it just can’t be great or original. Only humans with our endless imagination can be great. Writers should be let out of their cage and allowed to explore the full spectrum of the human experience. Think: Psycho in 1960.

Actors are feeling threatened not just by AI but by TikTok, which seems to be a fame factory for the ordinary people out there who can be extraordinarily effective in building loyal audiences. In many ways, TikTok is much more exciting, unpredictable and entertaining than anything you can find on network television now — or even on streaming. The users threaten both the writers and the actors in Hollywood, especially now, amid a climate of fear.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer both took high risks that have paid off. In Gerwig’s case, she had Margot Robbie as producer giving her freedom to express herself and create an unpredictable take on what would be otherwise have been an ordinary “toy movie.” In Nolan’s case, he has created a jaw-dropping Summer blockbuster about an historical figure that wasn’t based on any previous brand or a franchise.

Going to the movies and seeing so many people buzzing about this week’s extraordinary films — and yes, I’d even include Sound of Freedom in this — the studios are making the public an offer they can’t refuse. The only way they got here was by to allowing their talent room to take big risks, to shatter norms and to reinvent the wheel. That’s what they had to do in 1960 to compete with television, it’s what they did this past weekend, and what they’ll have to keep doing from her on out, in order to compete with another promise and another threat of technology that has entranced our species yet again.