| Number: | 42 |
| Award: | Academy Awards |
| Date: | April 7, 1970 |
| Site: | Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles |
| Producer: | M. J. Frankovich |
| Director: | Jack Haley Jr. |
| Best Picture: | Midnight Cowboy |
| Most Wins: | Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (4) |
| Most Nominations: | Anne of the Thousand Days (10) |
| Network: | ABC |
| Duration: | 2 hours, 25 minutes |
| Ratings: | 43.4% (Nielsen ratings) |
| Last: | 41st |
| Next: | 43rd |
The 42nd Academy Awards were presented April 7, 1970, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. For the second year in a row, there was no official host. This was the first Academy Awards ceremony to be broadcast via satellite to an international audience, though outside North America, Mexico and Brazil were the only countries to broadcast the event live.[1]
One year after Oliver! became the only G-rated film to win Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy became the first and only X-rated film to win, though its rating was changed in 1971 to R after the MPAA revised its ratings criteria. Only one other X-rated film has been nominated for Best Picture since, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), which was also subsequently downgraded to an R rating (though this was a result of cuts to the original film).
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? set an Oscar record by receiving nine nominations without one for Best Picture. This was later tied with The Poseidon Adventure and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This was the last time until the 68th Academy Awards wherein none of the four winning performances came from Best Picture nominated films, as well as the first ceremony in which every acting nomination was in color.
This was the first Academy Award ceremony intended to be broadcast via satellite worldwide, but according to Klaus Lehmann, a foreign sales executive of the ABC television network, in addition to Canada and Mexico (countries which had broadcast the event since 1953, and carried it live since 1964), only two South American countries, Chile and Brazil, roughly in the Oscars' time zone, were interested in the live coverage. The Chilean television rights to the Oscars were sold by ABC International to Televisión Nacional de Chile while the Brazilian rights were sold to TV Tupi. The latter country's rights to the TV broadcast of the Oscars were moved to a joint venture of TV Bandeirantes and TV Record. Starting in 1974, the Brazilian TV rights to the Oscars were sold by NBC (which had acquired the TV rights to the Awards from ABC to be broadcast for a five-year period until 1975, when they returned to ABC for the next year's Awards) to Rede Globo. An early attempt to change the Academy Awards presentation's start time to 1 p.m. to fit European television audiences was rejected by AMPAS executives. Since at the time television standards conversion was difficult, about 50 other countries did not broadcast the event live. In Europe, most TV broadcasters signed off at or just after midnight, thus the Oscars were not broadcast live and were recorded on film and then shipped to broadcasters with a minimum four-day delay from the awards' broadcast date.
In terms of performances, in-between presenting the documentary awards, Bob Hope and Fred Astaire discussed how Astaire had never danced on the Academy Awards broadcast before, with Astaire claiming to have "given it [dancing] up" the previous year. Cuing the orchestra, Hope then left the stage as Astaire began an ‘‘impromptu’’ dance performance (actually scripted and rehearsed), first in a modern jazz style before ending with traditional tap dancing (this would not be Astaire's final dance performance as he would later dance in the film That's Entertainment, Part II six years later). They Shoot Horses, Don't They? broke the record for having the most nominations for a film without a Best Picture nomination, receiving 9 nominations. This feat was also achieved by The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.
Cary Grant's award was described as the most popular of the evening; the audience was described as having "went wild" over his receiving the Academy Honorary Award.[2]
Nominees were announced on February 16, 1970. Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface and indicated with a double dagger .[3] [4]
These films had multiple nominations:
The following films received multiple awards.
Source:[7]