Another sign of that danger is the degree to which all the enterprises of the Academy

Another sign of that danger is the degree to which all the enterprises of the Academy (including its excellent research library) rely on the income from one night of television. More urgently than we may feel on Sunday night, the Academy needs reform. Indeed, you might even look closely at the statue of “Noodles” and see that the rather menacing figure is using his sword to pin a reel of film to the ground Was he a hired killer?. It’s more fun at the Golden Globes.That hasn’t overcome the silliness of the Globes.

But it begins to draw attention to the hollowness of the Oscars. And whereas Academy night is notorious as a ponderous show, the Golden Globes cram their three hours with awards and employ a dining-room setting (something actually originated by the Oscars) that is far more camera friendly than the Academy show. But are we really to abide by the wisdom of these prizes?There’s a larger matter still. In many eyes, Oscar has too many of the defects of being 76 – he’s out of date.

There were times in our history, in America, for instance, where enormous numbers of people went to the movies every week – 60 million just before sound came in; 80 and 90 million in the late Thirties; and even 100 million after the end of the Second World War. All at a time when the population ranged from 110 to 150 million. Today, with about 270 million people in America, less than 10 per cent go to the movies in any week. The movies are no longer the kind of shared experience that the Academy Awards want to insist on.One forceful evidence of this is the rise to prominence of the Golden Globes awards, which are unashamedly a silly, trashy show-business occasion Once upon a time they were a laughing stock. But they have become a television event potent enough to compel the Academy to hold the Oscars a month early this year.

Of course, the system breeds anomalies and in time the Academy caught up with that shortcoming.These embarrassing stories are repeated over the years, but let me remind you that the following people never won (or have never won) an Oscar for their particular work: Charles Chaplin, Josef von Sternberg, King Vidor, Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Preston Sturges, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese; Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Montgomery Clift, Kirk Douglas, Richard Burton, James Mason, James Dean, Trevor Howard, Peter O’Toole, Robert Mitchum; Gloria Swanson, Ruth Chatterton, Greta Garbo, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard, Agnes Moorehead, Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe, Deborah Kerr And so on. Many of those omissions were rectified later with “honorary” awards to mark career achievement Nor do I mean to dishonour all the awards that were made. In which case, Murray would get the Oscar with a little over a quarter of the vote. By the Academy’s rules, and its TV lust for a winner, that’s all very well.