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Retro revival

With Titanic, an old-fashioned, Gone With the Wind-style blockbuster claiming a record-tying 11 Oscars, this year's Academy Awards had a distinctly retro feel. Oscar was celebrating its 70th birthday, so there were plenty of crowsfeet among the flawless facelifts, including Fay Wray, King Kong's original victim in the silent-movie classic. Recent fads like colored lapel ribbons were almost nonexistent, and fashion critics noted that even cleavage was a relative rarity this year-Madonna notwithstanding. Titanic's billion-dollar dominance removed any suspense from the evening, so the four-hour-long telecast was mostly a chance for Hollywood to celebrate itself. With scores of former winners assembling for the largest-ever "Oscar family portrait," producers no doubt hoped to show that film is forever. What they proved instead is that fame is fleeting. Polite applause couldn't mask the fact that the proverbial 15 minutes of fame were long since past for former winners like Shirley Jones, Cloris Leachman, and Ernest Borgnine-actors whose statuettes can't buy them a decent role today. An honorary award went to director Stanley Donen, whose genre, the movie musical, hasn't seen a hit since Grease 20 years ago. But the lesson was largely lost on today's movie royalty. When Titanic director James Cameron accepted his statue for directing, he waved it in the air, shouting a line from his winning movie, "I'm the king of the world! Whoo!" Enjoy the reign, Mr. Cameron: Stanley Donen was once a king, too.

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April 04, 1998, Vol. 13, No. 13

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