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HOW TELEVISION CHANGED THE CEREMONY AND THE STAKES
The 35th Academy Awards were broadcast on ABC television. This fact mattered in ways that would not have been true in the previous decade, because by 1963 television had fundamentally altered the relationship between the Academy Awards ceremony and the general public.
The first television broadcast of the ceremony had been in 1953, on NBC. The transition from radio (which had carried the ceremonies since 1930) to television transformed the Oscar ceremony from an industry event that the public followed through press coverage into a live spectacle that millions of Americans could watch in real time. The implications for how stars behaved at the ceremony—how they dressed, how they accepted or rejected awards, how they comported themselves in the moments of victory or loss—were significant.
A gesture made at the Oscar podium in 1963 was not observed by a room of roughly a thousand industry figures; it was watched by a national television audience. Joan Crawford’s walk to the microphone, her acceptance on Bancroft’s behalf, her smile—these were visible to millions of people who had no stake in the Crawford-Davis rivalry, who might or might not have seen *What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?*, who were watching a television spectacle and reading whatever they could read into it.
The specificity of what was visible on screen—the formal gown, the composed demeanor, the statuette being carried—was legible to every viewer. The specific meaning of all of it, in the context of the rivalry narrative, was legible only to viewers who understood the backstory. For those who did understand, the image carried whatever weight they had already assigned to the rivalry. For those who didn’t, it was simply an actress accepting an award.