OSCARS FOR JOSE AND JUDY
Gloria also stars in the role of loser in New York celebration
The movies' big show of the year was played on location last week, in a New York nightclub. In Hollywood the klieg lights and the furs and 2,000 fans turned up in conventional style at the Pantages theater for the presentation of the Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There was the usual horde of directors, supporting players, technicians biting their nails as they waited for the sealed envelopes to be opened and the winners announced. But the real drama was 3,000 miles away.
Jose Ferrer was throwing a party at a place called La Zambra for the 52nd birthday of Gloria Swanson, his costar on Broadway in Twentieth Century; but it had grown into an East Coast Oscar party with a radio hookup to the Pantages. Celebrities began drifting in about 11:30 p.m. Judy Holliday (LIFE, April 2), nominated for her role in Born Yesterday, was there, hands folded in her lap and eyes staring straight ahead of her at nothing. Gloria Swanson, nominated for her role in Sunset Boulevard, made a grand entrance, bedecked in aigrette and white mink. At 12:24 the best actor award was announced: Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac. Jose, who recently denied charges that he was a Communist, made a speech calling the award a "vote of confidence." Gloria smiled and waved her snakelike arms about. Judy sat deathly still and repeated under her breath, "I'm sick, sick, sick." At 12:26 the radio announced the best actress award: Judy Holliday. Judy was too overcome to do tom e than stand around and sob and smile by turns. Gloria murmured, "Judy, sweet, bless your heart" and maintained the old trouper tradition by saying airily it was just as well she hadn't won: it would have meant she had nothing left to look forward to in life.
GLUM GLORIA, waiting for the verdict, covers her eyes as Jose offers encouragement (top), covers mouth while whispering to Judy (middle), bites fingernails nervously (bottom) while two other losers, Born Yesterday Director George Cukor and Actress Celeste Holm (All About Eve), look unconcerned.
JOYOUS JOSE leaps to his feet when announcement comes of the award on air, while press agents and well-wishers close in to drag him over to the microphone.
WINNER AND LOSER, Holliday and Swanson put on their very nicest smiles at climactic moment.
HAPPY HOLLIDAY, finding it impossible to make her way on foot through the crowded nightclub to greet her mother, ducks under the table (left), comes up other side (center), then stands for smiling family portrait with her father, (right), her mother and husband, David Oppenheim, clarinetist and recording director.
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