Question: I know the Oscar statuettes are about a foot tall and weigh 8 pounds, but what are they made of, and is it true that they got their name because someone said it looked like their Uncle Oscar? That sounds like a made-up story.
Answer: Last part first: The official story is indeed that Margaret Herrick, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' first librarian in 1931 and its executive director from 1943 to 1971 (and for whom the Academy's Los Angeles library, where I've done my share of research, is named), saw one of the statuettes (designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons for the first ceremony in 1929) on a desk and exclaimed that it looked just like her Uncle Oscar. Which is sort of alarming in that it implies that her uncle was a bald nudist with a thing for (perhaps compensatory) swords. Many people prefer the slightly ruder version in which Bette Davis sugge
read more
SurfaceYou know, this show keeps striving to emulate Spielberg, but this week, I couldn't get the darker side of Walt Disney out of my head. For starters, the entire plotline, which finds Dr. Laura and Crazy-Eyed Rich stranded at the bottom of the ocean, had me constantly making up highly inappropriate lyrics for "Under the Sea" — you remember that calypso confection from The Little Mermaid that effectively ruined the bulk of 1990. (A brief example of my handiwork: "The oxygen's always greener in somebody else's tank; if Lake Bell dies in this episode, maybe they
read more
