This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most outrageous security breaches in the then 34-ceremony history of the Academy Awards.
Bypassing more than 100 police officers, Stanley Berman managed to walk onstage during the presentation of the Oscar for best cinematography. Holding a makeshift statue he had brought with him from his home in Brooklyn, he interrupted presenters Shelley Winters and Vince “Ben Casey” Edwards to address the audience at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and the millions watching at home: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m the world’s greatest gate-crasher, and I just came here to present Bob Hope with his 1938 trophy.”
A laughing Winters assured him, “We’ll give it to him.”
When Hope, the emcee that year, returned to the stage, he quipped, “Who needs Pricewaterhouse? All we need is a doorman.”
Hope really did deserve a special Oscar. He never won a competitive prize at the Academy Awards (or, as the ceremony was known in his household, “Passover,” he famously joked), but he hosted 19 times and eventually received four honorary statuettes. But why 1938 will forever remain a mystery. Of the four films Hope starred in that year, the most notable is The Big Broadcast of 1938, which actually did win an Oscar for the bittersweet song “Thanks for the Memory.” It would become Hope’s signature song.
As to why Berman chose to gate-crash the Oscars that year, we can only assume: because they were there. Berman did reveal how he crashed the Oscars in a bylined article in the August 1962 issue of Photoplay magazine. He introduced himself to readers as a cabbie for the Len Taxi Company of Manhattan. “And very understanding people they are,” he wrote. “I tell them I want some time off to crash something. And they say sure, just don’t be too long about it.”
On Monday, April 9, Berman flew the roughly 3,000 miles to Los Angeles, changed into a tuxedo, and headed by bus for Santa Monica. “I got there about two hours ahead of time and counted the number of guards who were posting themselves at all entrances,” he wrote.
He gained entrance into the auditorium by approaching an arriving “big black car,” ingratiating himself with two tuxedoed men, and mingling with them. Once inside, he disappeared into the men’s room. For the next hour, he revealed, he stood at a sink washing his hands and waiting for a celebrity to come in—“someone I knew would have a seat way down front so that I could accompany him down the aisle.”
Enter Jack Lemmon. “I thought to myself, I’ll stick with him,” Berman wrote.
A “fortunate bit of luck and eavesdropping” earned Berman a third-row aisle seat being held for a possible last-minute arrival.
His unscheduled appearance on the show came toward the end of the broadcast. “I could have gone on earlier,” he wrote, “but I did not want to disrupt the proceedings altogether. Also, when I did go on, I could have made a longer speech than I did. But, I figured, After all, this is the actors’ evening and not Stanley Berman’s evening alone. So I think I was very good about it and did it right.”
And so up he went during the presentation of the award for cinematography. Edwards, Berman wrote, “gave me a look like he wanted to swing at me. So I just turned around and went back to my seat.”