131 - a question of controversy
Since the Award season is coming up one question came to my mind, which has been a subject of controversy ever since: her Oscar win.
I am sure all of you know the story of Grace Kelly winning the Oscar with just six votes separating her from Judy Garland who was also nominated.
In 1955 most thought Judy Garland in A Star Is Born, not Grace, would win. Even Grace thought so and said:
"I really thought Judy would win it."
Hedda Hopper reported that Judy Garland's loss of the Academy Award to Grace for The Country Girl (1954) was the result of the closest Oscar vote up till that time that didn't end in a tie, with just six votes separating the two. In any event, it was a heartbreak from which Judy Garland never really recovered and which has remained a matter of some controversy ever since.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000038/bio
As a result of her performance in The Country Girl, Kelly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her main competitor for the prize was Judy Garland's much heralded comeback performance in A Star Is Born; playing not only the part of an up and coming actress-singer, but also ironically, the wife of an alcoholic movie star. Although Kelly won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best actress for her performances in her three big movie roles of 1954 (Rear Window, Dial M For Murder, and The Country Girl), she and Garland both received Golden Globe Awards for their respective performances.
By the following March, the race between Kelly and Garland for the Oscar was very close. On the night of the Academy Awards telecast, March 30, 1955, Garland was unable to attend because she was in the hospital having just given birth to her son, Joseph Luft. However, she was rumored to be the odds-on favorite, and NBC Television cameras were set up in her hospital room so that if she was announced as the winner, Garland could make her acceptance speech live from her hospital bed. However, when William Holden announced Kelly as the winner, the technicians immediately dismantled the cameras without saying one word to Garland. Garland was reported not to have been very gracious about Kelly's win, saying in later years, "I didn't appreciate Grace Kelly taking off her makeup and walking away with my Oscar."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Kelly
Garland was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and, in the run-up to the 27th Academy Awards, was generally expected to be the winner. She could not attend the ceremony because she had just given birth to her son, Joseph Luft, so a television crew was in Garland's hospital room with cameras and wires to televise Garland's anticipated acceptance speech. The Oscar was won, however, by Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954). The camera crew was packing up before Kelly could even reach the stage. Garland even made jokes about the incident, on her television series, saying "...and nobody said good-bye." Groucho Marx sent Garland a telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss "the biggest robbery since Brinks". To this day, it is still considered to be one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Academy Awards.[63] Garland won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the role.
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