If the slap delivered live by Will Smith to Chris Rock on the stage of the 94th Academy Awards following a joke about the alopecia of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, will remain in the annals, other embarrassing moments, political or viral also marked the history of the Oscars. From gigantic confusion to a billion-dollar selfie (and still plenty of Jada Pinkett Smith), look back at five great television moments.#1. 1973: the courage of Sacheen LittlefeatherIn 1973, Marlon Brando won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in The Godfather, eighteen years after a first statuette for his role in On the docks by Elia Kazan. But the actor, known for his involvement in the fight for civil rights in the United States, will not pick up his trophy and it is the Apache actress Sacheen Littlefeather, activist for the rights of Native Americans, who will take the stage. in his place. In the name of Marlon Brando, she will refuse the statuette presented by Roger Moore, “because of the stereotypical treatment that the film industry reserves for Native American actors”. She will be applauded by the Oscars audience but also booed by some spectators, including John Wayne, ready to go on stage to dislodge her and held back by six security guards, the actress remembered in the columns of the LA Times. This sequence joins history today since in 2016, Jada Pinkett Smith wrote a letter to Sacheen Littlefeather to thank her for her courage, which will inspire her to boycott the Oscars in response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.#2 . 2002: Halle Berry’s historic OscarIn 1964, Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to receive the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Ralph Nelson’s Le Lys des champs. It will be necessary to wait thirty-eight years for the prestigious statuette to be given to a black actress, and it is Halle Berry who will win it for her performance as a bereaved mother in In the shadow of hatred by Mark Foster. In tears, she will introduce her speech by thanking Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Angela Bassett and… Jada Pinkett Smith, congratulating herself for paving the way for women of color thanks to this Oscar. But, twenty years later, she is still the only black actress to have received this statuette.#3. 2009: Heath Ledger’s moving posthumous Oscar In The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan, the Australian Heath Ledger sublimates the role of the super-villain like never before. “Heath came along and completely ruined my plans. I immediately thought, ‘He’s so much more interesting than me and what I do,'” confessed Batman Christian Bale. The actor will die in 2008, shortly after the end of the filming of The Dark Knight, and the Academy will decide to give him the posthumous Oscar for Best actor in a supporting role. He would have been 28. It will be only the second time in the history of the Oscars that an actor has received the statuette posthumously, the first being Peter Finch for Network in 1977, the year he would have turned 65. “We both knew what you created with the Joker was so special and we even talked about being there for that big day,” Heath Ledger’s sister said in the family’s acceptance speech.#4 . 2014: The Billion-Dollar Selfie The Oscars aren’t all about tears and political speeches. They’re also moments that become enduring pop culture, like the “all-stars” selfie taken by Ellen DeGeneres at the 86th Academy Awards with Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Lupita Nyong’o, all smiles, in the most shared photo in history. The snapshot crushes the record of the photograph of the re-election of Barack Obama. We were 37 million people to have seen the selfie pray by DeGeneres, which was retweeted more than two million times in less than two hours. Best picture ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014 If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best picture ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014 But this is Hollywood, and what seemed like a spontaneous, shared moment of euphoria was actually a marketing ploy by Samsung to promote its Galaxy Note 3. According to Maurice Lévy, the director of the Publicis communication group, the value of this selfie is estimated between 800 million and 1 billion dollars for the telephony giant.#5. 2017: La La Land MalaiseThe latest, and certainly the biggest hiccup in Oscar history, was in 2017, when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the recipient of the ultimate Best Picture statuette at the 89th Academy Awards. General euphoria at the announcement of what should have been the seventh Oscar for Damien Chazelle’s film. Mounted en masse on the stage, the film crew begins its traditional speeches of thanks before the general confusion. The envelopes have been reversed, it is Moonlight by Barry Jenkins who finally wins the prestigious statuette. Jimmy Kimmel will try somehow to catch up with the blunder while Warren Beatty justifies his blunder, which will cause a lot of talk.
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