usa today engages in limited form of Marlon Brando/"sacheen littlefeather" hoax

By N.S.

usa today engages in limited form of the Marlon Brando/"sacheen littlefeather" hoax

usa today ran a "thing" today on Motion Picture Academy members who have refused their Oscars. The first case was that of Dudley Nichols, one of the all-time-great screenwriters, who refused his Oscar for his adaptation of The Informer, collaborating with John Ford. (Note that Nichols, like most of history's greatest screenwriters, e.g., Robert Riskin and Robert E. Sherwood, was snubbed by the new york magazine/dnc vultures.com commissars.) The other cases were those of George C. Scott and The Bum.

"Marlon Brando arrives in London in 1968. The actor would come to define a brave new style of realist acting, as well as defy the Academy Awards when he refused his 1973 Oscar for The Godfather."

(N.S.: There was nothing "realistic" about The Bum's style of acting. As for emotionalism, it was Jimmy Stewart who introduced a more emotional style of acting in 1946 in It's a Wonderful Life. But more "realist"? (I think that would be "realistic" in English.) In my 2004 obituary for The Bum, I criticized the notion that he had revolutionized movie acting by making it more "realistic," and was pleased to see Stefan Kanfer quote me at length, in his 2008 Bum bio, Somebody.)

When younger actors imitated him, The Bum succeeded at making movie acting more self-indulgent.

As far as refusing his Oscar, The Bum was just engaging in a shameless publicity stunt, which emphasized him in his absence, and which imitated George C. Scott, who had refused his own Oscar, for Patton, the previous year.

On the plus side, usa today operatives Marco della Cava and Patrick Ryan and their editors ditched most of the "Sacheen Littlefeather" hoax (the blood libel asserting that John Wayne sought to attack the woman on Oscar Night, 1973), but left in two parts of it: that there was a "Sacheen Littlefeather," when no such person existed, and that she was an American Indian ("native american"). The female's name was Maria Cruz, and she was hispanic, not at all American Indian.


"Why these 3 Oscar winners turned down their Academy Awards
"The Academy Awards is Hollywood's most important event, and the Oscars its biggest prize. So who are the winners who declined the vaunted statuette?
Marco della Cava
Patrick Ryan
(usa today)
march 7, 2026

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando was a once-in-a-generation actor who literally re-wrote the acting book with his powerful Method performances on both stage and screen. His 1973 best actor win was all but expected given the tremendous success of 1972's "The Godfather," in which Brando played Don Vito Corleone.

Interestingly, Brando had been out of favor with the Hollywood system by the early 1970s, after a series of movies that ran over budget and failed to score big at the box office. He was considered a high-risk hire, and "Godfather" director Coppola had to fight to cast Brando.

So perhaps it wasn't a surprise when instead of accepting the award, he stunned the well-heeled crowd by sending in Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse the Oscar proffered by Roger Moore. Instead, she gave a statement (abridging a 15-page speech Brando had written for the occasion) in support of Brando's latest political cause: the plight of Native Americans, specifically the occupation of a town called Wounded Knee.

No one knows where that famous Oscar is now.