The Oscar (film)

The Oscar made its network television debut on February 12, 1969, on ABC's Wednesday Night Movie. ABC moved the film up a half-hour, to 8:30 Eastern, due to cancelling the comedy show Turn-On after only one episode. TBS later included The Oscar in a film series called "Bad Movies We Love".

It was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Kino Lorber on February 4, 2020.[6]

While the film is technically a drama, many consider it to be an unintentional campy comedy, with critics skewering the script and performances.[7][8] Others consider it most likely to be a burlesque, given the stature of the actors involved (one of the few things critics liked about the film was Berle, a classic comedian in a dramatic role).

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times panned the film, writing, "Not only is this screen translation of a novel by Richard Sale about a cheapskate Hollywood actor who tries to bludgeon his way to an Academy Award a piece of expensive claptrap, loaded with harrowing clichés, but it also is shamelessly endorsed by the presence of some of the great and near great of Hollywood."[9] Variety noted that the filmmakers "make handsome use of the Hollywood background as setting for a narrative some may accept as typical of the Oscar race and others may not accept at all."[10] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote that like executive producer Joseph E. Levine's[11] earlier films, it "is filled with people who, if they are not mean and despicable, are just weak or fear-ridden. The picture's own weakness is that they are characters first and people second; their motivations do not so much proceed from inside themselves as from the written screenplay."[12] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post stated, "The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have been on an LSD kick when it allowed itself to be used for 'The Oscar' ... That the story is a sleazy slice of muck is bad enough but for those presumably in charge of 'Oscar's' public image in an image-conscious 'industry' to permit such an association is far worse. For not only is the 'hero' of this yarn a totally cardboard heel, there is no evident justification for his role to have been nominated."[13] The Monthly Film Bulletin declared, "Acres of screaming dialogue and mountainous moral question-marks can in no way disguise the basic silliness of this exercise."[14]

Tony Bennett never made another feature film, and later "won" the Golden Turkey Award for "Worst Performance by a Popular Singer".[15] The Oscar also marked the near-endpoint of Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse's careers; they made just one more feature afterwards: 1967's The Caper of the Golden Bulls, which they respectively produced and directed, but did not write, and which had already begun production at the time The Oscar premiered.[16] For co-screenwriter Harlan Ellison, The Oscar was both the first and last produced feature screenplay he wrote in his over 60-year writing career.

Rotten Tomatoes stated:

"This attempt at showing up the seamy underside of the film industry is in itself a testament to the overblown excesses of Hollywood before the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls shook things up. But that doesn't mean the story of Frankie Fane, amoral gigolo who claws his way to the top of the A-list, isn't enormously entertaining. Seething, sleazy and sensational, it's constantly guffaw-worthy, not least for Tony Bennett's disastrous performance as Hymie, Fane's version of Entourage's Turtle, and a glittering parade of stars doing cameos of themselves."[17]