Sacheen Littlefeather: Oscars apologises to actress after 50 years
The Oscars has apologised to Sacheen Littlefeather, a Native American woman booed off stage nearly 50 years ago, BBC reported.
The activist and actress appeared on live TV in 1973 to refuse an Oscar that Marlon Brando won for The Godfather.
Brando rejected the best actor award because of misrepresentation of Native Americans by the US film industry - and sent Littlefeather in his place.
The Academy said Littlefeather endured "unwarranted and unjustified" abuse following her brief speech.
"I never thought I'd live to see the day I would be hearing this," she told the Hollywood Reporter.
Littlefeather, then 26, was heckled and shunned by the entertainment industry following her speech at the awards.
Introducing herself on behalf of Brando - who wrote "a very long speech" - she briefly told the audience "that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award".
"And the reasons for this being the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television in movie re-runs, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee," she said - in reference to a violent stand-off with federal agents at a site of significant importance to the Sioux people.
In 2020, Littlefeather told the BBC that straight after the speech she had to leave the stage with two security guards. But, she added, it "was a very good thing" as actor John Wayne was backstage (secured by six security men); she said he was "furious with Marlon and furious with me" and wanted to pull her off stage himself.
Some people used the "Tomahawk chop" - seen as a demeaning gesture to Native Americans - as she was walking by.
It was televised to 85 million people. Some media reports after the event claimed Littlefeather was not truly a Native American, but rather that she agreed to the speech to help her acting career. Some speculated she might be Brando's mistress.
She told the BBC all those claims were untrue.
"The abuse you endured... was unwarranted and unjustified," David Rubin, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wrote in a letter to Littlefeather made public on Monday.
Mr Rubin said the speech at the 45th Academy Awards "continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity".
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will host an event in September, in which Littlefeather will talk about her appearance at the 1973 Oscars and the future of indigenous representation on screen, BBC reported.
She added that keeping a sense of humour is "our method of survival".
Anne Heche, star with troubled life, dies of crash injuries
Anne Heche, the Emmy-winning film and television actor whose dramatic Hollywood rise in the 1990s and accomplished career contrasted with personal chapters of turmoil, died of injuries from a fiery car crash. She was 53, Associated Press reported.
Heche was “peacefully taken off life support,” spokeswoman Holly Baird said in a statement Sunday night..
Heche had been on life support at a Los Angeles burn center after suffering a “severe anoxic brain injury,” caused by a lack of oxygen, when her car crashed into a home Aug. 5, according to a statement released Thursday by a representative on behalf of her family and friends.
She was declared brain-dead Friday, but was kept on life support in case her organs could be donated, an assessment that took nine days. In the US, most organ transplants are done after such a determination.
A native of Ohio whose family moved around the country, Heche endured an abusive and tragic childhood, one that helped push her into acting as a way of escaping her own life. She showed enough early promise to be offered professional work in high school and first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1987 to 1991, winning a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of twins Marley and Vicky Hudson, who on the show sustained injuries that anticipated Heche’s: Vicky falls into a coma for months after a car crash.
By the late 1990s Heche was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. In 1997 alone, she played opposite Johnny Depp as his wife in “Donnie Brasco” and Tommy Lee Jones in “Volcano” and was part of the ensemble cast in the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
The following year, she starred with Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights” and appeared with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in “Return to Paradise.” She also played one of cinema’s most famous murder victims, Marion Crane of “Psycho,” in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, and co-starred in the indie favorite “Walking and Talking.”
Around the same time, her personal life led to even greater fame, and both personal and professional upheaval. She met Ellen DeGeneres at a the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, fell in love and began a 3-year relationship that made one of Hollywood’s first openly gay couples. But Heche later said her career was damaged by an industry wary of casting her in leading roles. She would remember advisers opposing her decision to have DeGeneres accompany her to the premiere of “Volcano.”
“We were tapped on the shoulder, put into her limo in the third act and told that we couldn’t have pictures of us taken at the press junket,” Heche said in 2018 on the podcast Irish Goodbye.m, according to Associated Press.
After she and DeGeneres parted, Heche had a public breakdown and would speak candidly of her mental health struggles.
Heche’s delicately elfin look belied her strength on screen. When she won the National Board of Review’s 1997 best supporting actress award, the board cited the one-two punch of “Donnie Brasco” and the political satire “Wag the Dog,” in which Heche portrayed a cynical White House aide and held her own against film great Robert De Niro.
Heche also called effectively on her apparent fragility. In 2002 she starred on Broadway in the play “Proof” as a woman fearful of losing her sanity just like her father, a brilliant mathematics professor. An Associated Press review praised her “touching performance, vulnerable yet funny, particularly when Catherine mocks the suspicions about her mental stability.”
In the fall of 2000, soon after her break-up with DeGeneres, Heche was hospitalized after knocking on the door of a stranger in a rural area near Fresno, California. Authorities said she had appeared shaken and disoriented and spoke incoherently to the residents.
In a memoir released the following year, “Call Me Crazy,” Heche talked about her lifelong battles. During a 2001 interview with TV journalist Barbara Walters, Heche recounted in painful detail alleged sexual abuse by her father, Donald Heche, who professed to be devoutly religious and died in 1983 from complications of AIDS. Heche described her suffering as so extreme she developed a separate personality and imagined herself descended from another planet, Associated Press reported.
Disney plans ad-funded streaming and overtakes Netflix
Disney will launch a new ad-supported streaming service in the US in December, as it overtakes Netflix in the race for paid subscribers, BBC reported.
The firm reported 221.1 million subscribers across its three streaming platforms at the start of July.
That put it just ahead of Netflix, which has been losing accounts.
But Disney warned that its loss of streaming rights for cricket in India would reduce its subscriber growth compared to previous forecasts.
The firm, which also owns adult television streaming platform Hulu and the sports-focused ESPN+, said demand for its Disney+ product remained strong.
Pandemic lockdowns provided a boost to streaming services like Disney, but the easing of Covid restrictions doesn't seem to be preventing it attracting new customers.
The company added 14.4 million Disney+ subscribers in the quarter, many of them outside of the US - far more than analysts had expected.
Later this year it will launch a new ad-funded service, which will still be charged at the current subscription rate of $7.99. The charge for the ad-free service will rise to $10.99 per month.
The firm plans to launch its ad-funded service outside the US next year.
Executives said they do not expect the rise in prices to put off customers over the long term. The firm is also seeing strong interest from companies hoping to advertise on the new service, they said, according to BBC.
"We are in a position of strength with record upfront advertising commitment," chief executive Bob Chapek told analysts in a conference call to discuss the firm's financial results.
Disney's subscriber gains have come at a hefty cost, with its streaming business losing $1.1bn in the quarter.
Executives said they expect losses to peak this year, In the meantime, a strong rebound in attendance at its theme parks since the worst of the pandemic has provided the firm with a large financial cushion.
Total revenues in the April-June period jumped 26% from last year, pushing profits to $1.5bn.
Shares in the company jumped more than 6% in after-hours trade after the firm shared its results.
Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight, called it a "pivotal moment in the streaming wars" saying Disney had more room to grow than arch-rival Netflix.
Netflix lost nearly one million accounts in the most recent quarter, putting its subscriber total at 220.67 million, BBC reported.
The results "firmly underline my belief that Disney is at a different phase of growth to Netflix", said Mr Pescatore. "There are still millions of users to acquire as it continues to expand into new markets and rolls out new blockbuster shows".
Beyoncé to re-record offensive Renaissance lyric
Beyoncé is to re-record one of the songs on her new album, after facing criticism from disability campaigners, BBC reported.
The song Heated, which was released on Friday, contained a derogatory term that has often been used to demean people with spastic cerebral palsy.
The star's publicist told the BBC the word, which can have different connotations in the US, was "not used intentionally in a harmful way".
It "will be replaced in the lyrics", they added, without giving a timescale.
The backlash came just a couple of weeks after US pop star Lizzo apologised for using the same word in her song GRRRLS.
Within days, she apologised and re-released the song, omitting the offensive lyric.
"Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language," she wrote in a statement posted to social media.
"As a fat black woman in America, I've had many hurtful words used against me so I understand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case, unintentionally)."
When fans heard Beyoncé's track on Friday, it felt "like a slap in the face", disability advocate Hannah Diviney told the BBC.
"I'm tired and frustrated that we're having this conversation again so soon after we got such a meaningful and progressive response from Lizzo".
Disability charity Scope had asked Beyoncé to re-record the song, omitting the insult. It welcomed the change of heart.
"It's good Beyoncé has acted so swiftly after disabled people yet again called out this thoughtless lyric," Scope's media manager Warren Kirwan said.
"There's a feeling of deja vu as it's just a few weeks since Lizzo also had to re-release a song after featuring the same offensive language, according to BBC.
"We hope this is the last time we see this kind of thing from anyone, let alone musicians with massive global influence."
Some fans had defended Beyoncé, pointing out that the term she used can have a different meaning in the US - where it is often used to mean "freaking out" or "going crazy" (although those terms can themselves be insensitive to people with mental health conditions).
Despite the controversy, Beyoncé's seventh studio album, Renaissance, is expected to top the charts around the world this week.
In the UK, it is currently outselling the rest of the top five combined. The lead single, Break My Soul, is also expected to top the charts, BBC reported.
