Tag Archives: Academy Awards

Rock the Oscars 2019: Arkansan and Oscar Host Bob Burns

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Bob Burns was a well-known national radio and film personality during the 1930s and 1940s. He was known such as “The Arkansas Traveler” and “The Arkansas Philosopher” because he wove tales of life in the Arkansas hills with his musical performances.

On March 10, 1938, he hosted the tenth Oscar ceremony, becoming the first Arkansan to do so.  At that ceremony the big winner was The Life of Emile Zola. The first version of A Star Is Born became the first color motion picture nominated for Best Picture. It was also the first time the Irving Thalberg Award was presented.  At the time, Burns had made a few movies and was ruling the airwaves as a popular radio star.  Since the Oscars were broadcast on the radio, he was an appropriate choice to host the awards.

He earned his nickname, “Bazooka,” from an instrument he invented and named as a young man in a plumbing shop.  The instrument, which was a simple device made of spare gas fittings and a whiskey funnel, eventually lent its name to the World War II anti-tank weapon due to its similar looks and Burns’ popularity among the troops who employed it in combat.

Burns was born in Arkansas (there are conflicting sources as to where) and grew up in Van Buren. As a youth, he started playing in bands. Among the instruments he played was his Bazooka invention. Eventually he came to the attention of a radio program in California. His originally non-paying assignment as a radio comic eventually led to appearances on Paul Whiteman’s coast-to-coast radio program and regular appearances on Rudy Vallee’s shows.

He eventually starred on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall radio program with Bing Crosby while also making more movies. From 1941 to 1947 he starred in his own radio show – The Arkansas Traveler which eventually became The Bob Burns Show.  During the same time period, he wrote a column for Esquire and syndicated newspaper column.

He was feted several times when he returned to Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s.  In 1956, Burns died of cancer and is buried in California.

Rock the Oscars 2019: Dick Powell

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Oscars nominations are announced today.  In the days leading up to the ceremony, this blog will look at Arkansas to the Academy Awards.

First up is Dick Powell.  Though not born in Little Rock, he grew up here and graduated from Little Rock High School when it was on Scott Street (now the East Side Lofts).  He started earning money as a singer in Little Rock churches and masonic lodges before transitioning to nightspots which eventually led to him touring the country with dance bands.

When Hollywood beckoned, he first appeared in light musicals as a singer and dancer.  One of his first non-musical roles was in the  all-star A Midsummer Night’s Dream which earned four Oscar nominations and won two.  He starred opposite future Oscar winners Jimmy Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.  Eventually, he transitioned into film noir roles including playing Phillip Marlowe in 1945’s Murder, My Sweet.  

In 1948, Powell hosted the Oscars ceremony. Gentlemen’s Agreement won Best Picture and two other Oscars that year.  (He was not the first Arkansan to host the Oscars.  In 1938, Van Buren native Bob Burns hosted the ceremony.)  In 1959, he and his then-wife June Allyson were two of the presenters at the Oscars.  That ceremony came in at one hour and 40 minutes in length. It was under-time so the presenters and winners took to the stage floor with dancing as a way to fill time before NBC cut away and aired a documentary on target-shooting.

Powell was one of the stars of 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful.  The film won five Oscars but was not nominated for Best Picture.  It holds the record for the most wins by a film not nominated for Best Picture.

Run Forrest Run – CALS Ron Robinson screens FORREST GUMP tonight

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Forrest Gump PosterNo word on whether there will be boxes of chocolates available at the concessions stand, but the CALS Ron Robinson Theater will be showing Oscar winner FORREST GUMP tonight.

The story follows the life of low I.Q. Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) and his meeting with the love of his life Jenny. The film chronicles his Zelig-like experiences with some of the most important people and events in America from the late 1950s through the 1970s including a meeting with Elvis Presley, JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, fighting in Vietnam, etc. The problem is, he doesn’t realize the significance of his actions. Forrest comes to embody a generation.

Others in the cast include Sally Field, Robin Wright, Gary Sinese, and Mykelti Williamson.  The movie was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won six including Best Picture, Best Actor (Hanks), Best Director (Robert Zemeckis), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Eric Roth).

The showing starts at 6:30pm. The cost is $5.00.

Set in Northwest Arkansas – third season of HBO’s TRUE DETECTIVE premieres tonight!

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HBO’s anthology series TRUE DETECTIVE is back. And the buzz is strong!  Partner detectives investigate a macabre crime involving two missing children in the heart of the Ozarks, Arkansas. The story spans three decades. It premieres tonight.

Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (who just picked up a Golden Globe last Sunday) will play detective Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas. Stephen Dorff is set to play Arkansas State Investigator Roland West. Carmen Ejogo will play school teacher Amelia Reardon, who is connected to two missing children.

Additional cast members include Josh Hopkins, who will play Jim Dobkins, a private attorney in Fayetteville involved in deposing state police detectives in an ongoing investigation. Scoot McNairy is Tom, a father who suffers a terrible loss which ties his fate to that of two state police detectives over ten years. Mamie Gummer stars as Lucy Purcell, a young mother of two at the center of a tragic crime. Jodi Balfour, Lonnie Chavis, Ray Fisher, Michael Greyeyes, Jon Tenney, Rhys Wakefield, Sarah Gadon, Emily Nelson, Brandon Flynn and Michael Graziadei also star.

Many Arkansas actors (including Corbin Pitts, Grace Pitts, and Jennifer Pierce Mathus) also appear throughout the series. But in the true nature of the project, don’t ask them too many questions if you know them.

Nic Pizzolatto has scripted eight episodes for Season 3, co-writing Episode 4 with David Milch. Little Rock’s Graham Gordy worked on episodes 5 through 8 as a writer and consulting producer. The new season will mark Pizzolatto’s directorial debut.

31 Days of Arkansas Rep: Charles Portis’ DELRAY’S NEW MOON in 1996

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When you’ve written one of the great American novels of the second half of the 20th Century and seen it turned into an Oscar winning movie, what do you do next?  You continue writing.

And if you are Charles Portis, you decide in the 1990s to try your hand at a play.  So in 1996, the Arkansas Rep offered a staged reading of Portis’ play Delray’s New Moon. 

Directed by Rep Artistic Director Cliff Baker, it was set in a honky tonk hotel halfway between Little Rock and Texarkana. Most of the people there are senior citizens awaiting their next location whether it be a nursing home or a relative’s house.

The cast featured Scott Edmonds played a father being shuffled each month between his daughters played by Judy Trice and Natalie Canerday.  Others in the cast included Danielle Rosenthal, Jean Lind, John Stiritz, Michael Davis, Graham Gordy, Stacy Breeding, Angel Bailey, Rhonda Atwood and Tom Kagy.

The production ran from April 18 to 28.  The normally reclusive Portis participated in talkback sessions following performances.

LR Culture Vulture turns 7

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The Little Rock Culture Vulture debuted on Saturday, October 1, 2011, to kick off Arts & Humanities Month.

The first feature was on the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, which was kicking off its 2011-2012 season that evening.  The program consisted of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90, Rossini’s, Overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers, Puccini’s Chrysanthemums and Respighi’s Pines of Rome.  In addition to the orchestra musicians, there was an organ on stage for this concert.

Since then, there have been 10,107 persons/places/things “tagged” in the blog.  This is the 3,773rd entry. (The symmetry to the number is purely coincidental–or is it?)  It has been viewed over 288,600 times, and over 400 readers have made comments.  It is apparently also a reference on Wikipedia.

The most popular pieces have been about Little Rock history and about people in Little Rock.

Shark Week remembrance of Roy Schneider

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Actor Roy Scheider’s connection to Little Rock is a sad one.  He visited the City quite frequently during the last years of his life as he was getting treated at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  Despite UAMS’s best efforts, Scheider died in Little Rock on February 10, 2008.

Though he starred in several iconic films in the 1970s and 1980s, he is probably best remembered for his role in the Jaws series of films.

In the 1970s, Scheider received two Oscar nominations. His first, for Best Supporting Actor, was in The French Connection.  While Scheider did not pick up the Oscar, the film itself was named Best Picture.  It won four other Oscars that night. (As a side note: it was the first R-rated movie to win Best Picture.  Though Midnight Cowboy was re-released as an R-Rated movie after winning the Best Picture Oscar, it was initially released as an X-rated movie.)

Scheider’s second Oscar nomination came for playing Bob Fosse’s stand-in in the movie All That Jazz.  It, too, won four Oscars, though Scheider’s nomination would not result in a win.