Annals of Entertainment: Ballad of the Oscar Streaker

What happened to the man who ran across the screen naked in 1974?

- By Michael Schulman

Late in the evening on April 2, 1974, the forty-sixth Academy Awards had already secured their place in the history books. At ten years old, Tatum O'Neal had become the youngest person ever to win an Oscar, for "Paper Moon." Katharine Hepburn had attended the ceremony for the first time, to present an award. David Niven, sharing hosting duties with Burt Reynolds, Diana Ross, and John Huston, introduced Hepburn with the line "To conceal the identity of our next presenter has called for a security operation of truly royal proportions." A little royalty-and a little decorum-was what the Academy desperately craved. As in recent years, with such surprise sideshows as the Best Picture envelope mixup ("Moonlight" or "La La Land"?) and Will Smith smacking Chris Rock, the Oscars of the early seventies had been bumpy: George C. Scott refusing his award for "Patton," Marlon Brando sending Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his for "The Godfather." When Niven introduced the final presenter, he said, "If one reads the newspapers or listens to the news, it is quite obvious that the whole world is having a nervous breakdown." But in Hollywood, he went on, "we turn out entertainment." That was how Hollywood wanted to see itself: as the unifier of a country fractured by Vietnam and Watergate. Niven, a stiff-upper-lip charmer, could glide above America's political paroxysms, and he might have gone on talking were it not for his friend Elizabeth Taylor, whom he was introducing. "Hurry up, David," she had told him backstage. "Get me out of there fast." And so Niven moved on to introduce the Best Picture presenter, whom he called a "very important contributor to world entertainment, and someone quite likely-"