This time last year the talk was of the stolen Oscars which mysteriously went missing before the ceremony only to be found by Willie Fulgear, a freelance scrap dealer who briefly became a hero and received a $50,000 (£35,000) reward and a ticket to the awards ceremony.
The happy ending turned out to have a sting in its tail when it transpired that Mr Fulgear's half-brother was under investigation for receiving the Oscars, and the reward money later went missing. But as next Sunday's ceremony approaches, the talk is of a different kind of robbery.
What do Citizen Kane, High Noon, Bonnie and Clyde, Dr Strangelove, Raging Bull and LA Confidential have in common? They did not win Oscars as best film. And with barely a week to go until this year's envelopes are opened, the traditional examination of "stolen" Oscars is under way again.
Everyone has a favourite complaint about a film or actor overlooked in favour of some temporary dross, but this year the seemingly endless stream of awards ceremonies has focused attention more closely on why certain dull but worthy films succeed while more innovative and original ones fail.
Peter Rainer, critic of New York magazine, said yesterday that Robert Altman stood out as one director who had been unfairly ignored. "He has never been embraced by the Hollywood establishment," he said. "He still hasn't made it into the club and I guess he never will." Among others ignored for top prizes are Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin. "My favourite [omission] is Laurence Olivier for one of the greatest performances ever in Othello in the year that Lee Marvin won for Cat Ballou," he said.
Emanuel Levy, the Variety film critic, in the latest book on the subject, Oscar Fever, concludes that "in years of fierce contest, the winning performance is not necessarily the strongest; at times it is the weakest."
He cites amongst conspicuous omissions Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina and Liv Ullman in Cries and Whispers, and notes that some actors have been consistently passed over, most notably the late Edward G Robinson. "Bette Davis was denied an Oscar for the greatest performance of her career as Margo Channing in All About Eve .. errors of omission are particularly visible in years in which the nominated achievements are mediocre compared with the excellence of those overlooked."
This year, the LA Times published its own list of controversial and innovative films that lost out to worthy films on "important" subjects. It cited Citizen Kane which lost to How Green Was My Valley in 1941; High Noon which lost to The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952; Bonnie and Clyde which lost to In the Heat of the Night in 1967; All the President's Men which lost to Rocky in 1976; Raging Bull which lost to Ordinary People in 1980; and Goodfellas which lost to Dances with Wolves in 1990.
Some esteemed directors apart from Altman have never won an Oscar for best director. Alfred Hitchcock was one, Martin Scorsese another. On the acting front, there have also been puzzling choices. Neither Dustin Hoffman nor Jon Voight won best actor for their roles in Midnight Cowboy, although the movie won best film Oscar and best director for John Schlesinger. Instead the prize went to John Wayne for True Grit.
When Spartacus lost out in 1960, the feeling was that it was a victim of the cold war. It was based on a book by a former communist, Howard Fast, and its script was by Dalton Trumbo, who had been jailed for refusing to testify to the House of Representatives committee on un-American activities. Mr Trumbo had already embarrassed the academy by winning an Oscar for The Brave One in 1957 under the pseudonym Robert Rich.
Kirk Douglas lost the best actor prize that year to Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry and told Entertainment Weekly in this year's Oscar special that "I thought we were unfairly discriminated against". The other epic of the era, Ben Hur, upset some critics by beating Some Like It Hot to the best film prize.
Whoever does win this year may make briefer thank-you speeches than usual. Conscious of the concerns of programme schedulers and people with low saccharine tolerance, the academy is offering the prize of a new high definition television set to the maker of the shortest speech. In a further bid to cut the endless thank yous, it has also offered to allow entire lists of thank yous to be posted on the internet ,so that winners who want to thank "everyone I have ever met in my life" can do so in full without delaying the actual ceremony. This year's big steal? No-one seems sure, although if, as one New York rumour has it, Chocolat wins against the odds, there will be plenty of candidates.
As for Willie Fulgear, well, he has made it into Vanity Fair's special Oscars issue, but is he happy? "I wish I'd never seen them Oscars," he is quoted as saying. "I'm taking medication! I am stressed!" He put $40,000 of the reward money in a safe at his home but when he came back from a trip last June both the safe and the money had gone. He has put the word out to the academy that he would like tickets to this year's event. So far they have not been forthcoming.
