I Have Some Things to Say

Oscar Winning Speeches

Hello and welcome to Popped, a journey through cinema history and culture. Thank you for joining!

This is the next instalment of my Women in Cinema series! I hope you enjoy and please do comment, share and like to your hearts content. It really does help. Remember too that you can listen to me read this if you want. Just click the play button above.

The dust is settling on the 96th Academy Awards.

Did you agree with the winners? Has it finally convinced you to sit through three hours of Oppenheimer? For someone who has a newsletter about The Movies, the Oscars pass me by every year. The glitz and glamour is an interesting read but I tend to leave it there, not dwelling on the disappointments and triumphs for very long.

What I really enjoy about the awards is looking back at the speeches. I love seeing someone getting completely blindsided by winning. The recipients seem to become either humble and profound or completely bewildered, not knowing quite where they are (see Olivia Coleman).

As I’m in the middle of my Women in Cinema series, I wanted to take a look at speeches throughout Oscar history made by the Women in the industry. I found a database (there’s always a database), and sat down to read all of the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress speeches they had on there. I’ve collated a few of my favourites below…

Hattie McDaniel - Gone with the Wind - 1939

Here, Hattie McDaniel is accepting her Oscar, which was hosted at the ‘White’s Only’ Ambassador Hotel in 1940. Sat in the far corner of the room, on a segregated table, McDaniel got up, accepted her award, and her speech concluded,

“I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel. And may I say thank you and God bless you”.

From what I have read, McDaniel was a determined and hardy character who not only had to suffer the conservative views of the time, but also received criticism for taking roles that perpetuated stereotypical views of Black people in society. “I’d rather play a maid than be one”, she would often retort.

McDaniel played her characters with nuance, and would make directors omit racist dialect by simply refusing to say them. She was the first Black actor to receive an Oscar (not to be repeated by a woman until Whoopi Goldberg 50 years later!). Quite the legacy.

1970 - 1999

• For most of the speeches prior to 1970, there was not much more than the thank you’s and overwhelming happiness you would expect from winning an award for your work. It wasn’t until 1971 that you could see things starting to change. Jane Fonda, who won best actress for playing a prostitute in Klute and was at the beginning of her understanding of feminism, kept things short but weighty by saying

“There's a great deal to say and I'm not going to say it tonight”.

• There’s a beautiful moment where Louis Fletcher uses sign language to thank her parents in 1976.

• Shirley Mclaine taking a rare stab at proceedings when she started her acceptance speech with,

“I'm gonna cry because this show has been as long as my career.”

• I’ve read that this quote from Sally Field was used countless times in parody. During the speech though, she comes across sincere and probably the happiest person I’ve ever seen! Seeing her outpouring of gratitude speaks to me of the vulnerability of performing, and why most actors get into the business in the first place.

As we head into the nineties, more actors start speaking of the opportunities afforded to them, and how a future Hollywood could look. The year prior to Emma Thompson’s win, Jodie Foster dedicated her award to the ‘women who came before me who never had the chances that I've had, and the survivors and the pioneers and the outcasts'.

And then came the big one…

“Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me.”

Halle Berry’s iconic speech is breathtaking, not only because she literally can’t catch her breath, but the weight of her achievement is part and parcel of the moment . Out of all the speeches I watched, this one stands out.

Frances McDormand - 2018

If you’re going to click on any link in this newsletter, click on this one. If you haven’t seen this speech, watch it below.

Frances McDormand wins Best Actress - YouTube

Rallying the crowd, McDormand asks all the women nominated in any category to stand defiant as the MeToo movement exposed the rotten underbelly that the movie world had sat on for decades,

Look around, everybody. Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days—or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best—and we'll tell you all about them.

One of my favourite actors, in one of my favourite Oscar moments!

Emma Stone added her speech to the list this week. While it was Da’Vine Joy Randolph who summed up what all of the speeches say to me:

“For so long I always wanted to be different. And now I realise I just needed to by myself. And I thank you, I thank you for seeing me.”

It’s amazing to be able to sweep through a century of personal moments that were played out to millions. The early speeches were reserved and become more confident as time goes on, but each one has it’s personal moments, where the women we’re watching don’t quite know what to do with themselves.

The speeches that made me stop and watch though, are the ones where the actors are being completely themselves. They're imperfect, maybe slightly confused, accident prone selves. Big moments like these will always get the better of a person’s emotions, and it’s a privilege for us to get to see them.

Gareth