| 60th Academy Awards | |
|---|---|
 Official poster | |
| Date | April 11, 1988 |
| Site | Shrine Auditorium Los Angeles, California |
| Hosted by | Chevy Chase |
| Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn Jr. |
| Directed by | Marty Pasetta |
| Highlights | |
| Best Picture | The Last Emperor |
| Most awards | The Last Emperor (9) |
| Most nominations | The Last Emperor (9) |
| TV in the United States | |
| Network | ABC |
| Duration | 3 hours, 33 minutes[1] |
| Ratings | 42.2 million 29.4% (Nielsen ratings) |
The60th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on April 11, 1988, at theShrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m.PDT. During the ceremony, AMPAS presentedAcademy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 22 categories honoringfilms released in 1987. The ceremony, televised in the United States byABC, was produced bySamuel Goldwyn Jr. and directed by Marty Pasetta.[2][3] ActorChevy Chase hosted the show for the second consecutive year.[4] Two weeks earlier, in a ceremony held atthe Beverly Hilton inBeverly Hills, California, on March 27, theAcademy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by hostShirley Jones.[5]
The Last Emperor won all nine awards it was nominated for, includingBest Picture andBest Director forBernardo Bertolucci.[6] For their performances inMoonstruck,Cher andOlympia Dukakis wonBest Actress andBest Supporting Actress, respectively.Michael Douglas wonBest Actor for his role inWall Street; andSean Connery wonBest Supporting Actor forThe Untouchables, the latter becoming the firstScottish thespian to win an acting Oscar in any of the four categories.[7] The telecast garnered 42.2 million viewers in the United States.
The nominees for the 60th Academy Awards were announced on February 16, 1988, at 5:38 PMPST (13:38UTC) at theSamuel Goldwyn Theater inBeverly Hills, California, byRobert Wise, president of the academy, and actressShirley MacLaine.[8]The Last Emperor received the most nominations, with nine total;Broadcast News came in second with seven.[9][10]
The winners were announced at the awards ceremony on April 11, 1988.[11]The Last Emperor became the second film after 1958'sGigi to earn nine Oscar nominations and win all of them.[12] For the first time in Oscar history, all five Best Director nominees were born outside the United States.[13] Best Actor winner Michael Douglas became the first person to win Oscars for both acting and producing, albeit the first person to win the awards for two separate films and in different years. He previously won a Best Picture award as co-producer ofOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).[14]
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Winners are listed first, highlighted inboldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).[15]
The award honors "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production".[17]
The following 15 films received multiple nominations: | The following two films received multiple awards:
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The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or performed musical numbers.[19][20]
| Name(s) | Role | Performed |
|---|---|---|
| Bill Conti | Musical arranger | Orchestral |
| Academy Awards Chorus | Performers | "I Hope I Get It" fromA Chorus Line |
| Willy DeVille | Performer | "Storybook Love" fromThe Princess Bride |
| Starship Gloria Estefan | Performers | "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" fromMannequin |
| George Fenton Jonas Gwangwa | Performers | "Cry Freedom" fromCry Freedom |
| Little Richard | Performer | "Shakedown" fromBeverly Hills Cop II |
| Bill Medley Jennifer Warnes | Performers | "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" fromDirty Dancing |
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In view of the 60th anniversary of the Academy Awards, the academy hired film producerSamuel Goldwyn Jr. in October 1987 to oversee the telecast for the second straight year.[2] Three months later, Goldwyn selected actor and comedianChevy Chase to emcee the 1988 ceremony.[21] In addition, after being held at theDorothy Chandler Pavilion for almost two decades, AMPAS decided to move the telecast to theShrine Auditorium in order to accommodate more rehearsal time and take advantage of the large venue's seating capacity.[22] This marked the first time the facility served as the site for the Oscars since the20th ceremony held in 1948.[23] Additionally, Goldwyn and Passetta originally planned to feature pre-recorded red carpet arrival footage of actors who had roles in the 59 previous Best Picture winners. However, the segment was dropped altogether due to traffic problems among guests arriving at the ceremony.[24][25]
Furthermore, the1988 Writers Guild of America strike, which began more than a month before the ceremony, affected the telecast and its surrounding events. Despite theWriters Guild of America refusing to grant a waiver permitting writers to work on the scripted dialogue for the gala, the three head writers for the telecast,Ernest Lehman,Melville Shavelson, andJack Rose, assured the AMPAS and ABC that more than half of the material had already been completed.[26] To compensate for the missing portions of the script, Goldwyn heavily utilized comedians such asJohn Candy,Billy Crystal,Eddie Murphy, andRobin Williams toad lib and improvise jokes.[27][28] During the show, many of the participants expressed support for the writers, such as Best Supporting Actor winnerSean Connery who remarked in his acceptance speech, "If such a thing as a wish accompanied this award mine would be that we ended the writers' strike."[29]
At the time of the nominations announcement on February 16, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees at the US box office was $221 million with an average of $48.9 million.[30]Fatal Attraction was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees, with $142 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed byBroadcast News ($36.7 million),Moonstruck ($25.4 million),The Last Emperor ($11.9 million), andHope and Glory ($5.2 million).[30]
Of the 50 highest-grossing movies of the year, 39 nominations went to 17 films on the list. OnlyFatal Attraction (2nd),The Untouchables (4th),Good Morning Vietnam (10th),Throw Momma from the Train (14th),Full Metal Jacket (21st),Broadcast News (26th),Wall Street (30th), andMoonstruck (39th) were nominated for Best Picture, acting, directing, or screenwriting. The other top 50 box office hits that earned nominations wereBeverly Hills Cop II (1st),Lethal Weapon (7th),The Witches of Eastwick (8th),Dirty Dancing (9th),Predator (11th),RoboCop (15th),Mannequin (23rd),The Princess Bride (38th), andInnerspace (45th).[31]
The telecast received a negative reception from media outlets.Los Angeles Times television criticHoward Rosenberg commented, "Monday night's Academy Awards telecast on ABC was theMichael Dukakis andGeorge Bush of TV awards programs: parched, drab and leaden. You kept hoping they'd draftMario Cuomo."[32] Tom Shales fromThe Washington Post wrote, "Of hope there was little and of glory almost none last night at the 60th annual Academy Awards, telecast live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on ABC. Even considering the low standards set in previous years, the program seemed unusually lackluster from the word go."[33] Columnist Matt Roush ofUSA Today quipped, "Chevy Chase stopped the show. Cold. Over and over. As the ever-unctuous host, he tried to get laughs by picking his nose and sneezing into his hand when his ad-libs failed, which was often." He also observed thatThe Last Emperor dominance over the awards created a dull and anticlimactic atmosphere to the proceedings.[34]
The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 42.2 million people over its length, which was a 13% increase from theprevious year's ceremony.[35] An estimated 70 million total viewers watched all or part of the awards.[36] The show also drew higherNielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony, with 29.2% of households over a 49 percent share.[37]
In July 1988, the ceremony presentation received four nominations at the40th Primetime Emmys.[38][39] The following month, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Outstanding Variety Music Events Programming (Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.).[40]
