Mister Tee wrote:
Finally, Magilla's take. I'm going to half-agree with you, and half say, You're romanticizing the past. First, the latter: if you look back at the presenters of my early years of watching the Oscars, you'll see there were plenty of non-entities and passing-through starlets -- Elke Sommer, Pamela Tiffin, Virna Lisi...they're not a whole lot different from the nobodies you sniff at today; you were just more familiar with them. Plus, MacDonald Carey -- he was what Jack Valenti became: someone I knew almost nothing about, except he gave out an Oscar every year. And, as far as Kimmel's stunts bringing the show to a new low...again, you're looking through the rose-colored glasses of the past. If I'd hung on to reviews of Oscar shows past, I guarantee you, most of them complained about how bad the show was, how stupid many of the routines were. (Gary Trudeau parodied presenter-patter in Doonesbury back in 1974.) Oh, and, for the record: the selfie was actually the most successful Oscar stunt of out time, as it set records for retweets around the world.
However, where you're not wrong (and this ties in to one of Sabin's big points): there's no question that there are fewer Hollywood legends available to appear on the show, because the older generation (Nicholson, Hackman, Duvall et al.) has aged to the point where they're not suited to public appearances, and the current movie environment has created few stars who have the level of respect and success the heroes of our youths had. Apart from DiCaprio and the off-in-her-own-world Streep, there are no truly respected actors who are consistently viable commercially outside of a Marvel movie. This isn't to say there aren't people who've had multiple successes (Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, etc.), but none at the titan-level Hoffman/Nicholson/Pacino/Fonda/Dunaway held in decades past. This, of course, is partly because Hollywood just doesn't much try to create the kinds of movies that would make such careers possible. Lots of actors would love to work in/create such a niche...but no one outside of DiCaprio has achieved it (and he was simply blessed, to have signed on to an otherworldly blockbuster at a young age, and to have bonded with female fans who follow him most anywhere). I don't know what you do about this...but I will say that moving film editing off he broadcast does nothing to address the issue.
First half - Yes, there were always starlets mixed in with the stars, but not to the extent there is today.
Virna Lisi, however, was not a starlet. She was a full-fledged star the year she made her only Oscar appearance at the 1965 awards. How to Murder Your Wife was a huge hit. She was as welcome then as Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds, Kim Novak, and the rest of the big-name presenters.
Macdonald Carey I can't explain, but maybe it had something to do with his being a longtime vice president of the Screen Actors Guild. He did appear at a lot of awards presentations but only 3 times at the Oscars for the 1964, 1967, and 1974 awards.
Second half - mostly so, but it's not just the old guys who don't show up. Neither do actors who were in the conversation for nominations but came up empty handed. I would love to see this year's awards kick off with a Best Supporting Actress presentation by Ann Dowd and Martha Plimpton introducing the nominees as "five women you thought were better than us", with Jamie Dornan and Bradley Cooper or Jared Leto doing something similar later on with the men. Daniel Kaluuya and Yuh-jung Youn could then present Best International Film, because they are, you know, international stars. Lady Gaga could present Best Picture.
