Norman Jewison Voted Academy's Thalberg Award
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Canadian-born producer-director Norman F. Jewison has been voted the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy President Robert Rehme announced today. The award will be presented at the 71st Annual Academy Awards® Presentation on March 21, 1999.
"Norman Jewison is an eclectic and sensitive producer-director whose films paint evocative pictures of the human experience that have become icons of American life," Rehme said. "Norman has distinguished himself as a talented artist and superior craftsman through four decades of movie making and is most deserving of this honor."
The Thalberg Award was established in 1937 and awarded that year to Darryl F. Zanuck. Academy rules state that the award be given to "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production." Jewison is the 32nd individual to receive the award and the bust of Irving Thalberg that symbolizes it. The last such recipient was Saul Zaentz in 1996.
Jewison's films have earned more than 10 Academy Awards and 45 nominations, including the Best Picture Oscar® for In the Heat of the Night.
As a producer, four of his films received Academy Award® nominations for Best Picture, including The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Fiddler on the Roof, A Soldier's Story and Moonstruck. The latter received six Academy Award® nominations and won Oscars® for Leading Actress (Cher), Supporting Actress (Olympia Dukakis) and Original Screenplay (John Patrick Shanley).
As a director, Jewison has received three Academy Award® nominations, for In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck and Fiddler on the Roof.
In nominating Jewison for the honor, Alan Bergman, Academy vice president, remarked on the producer-director's "extraordinary movie making skills." Bergman, who received a Best Song Oscar® for The Windmills of Your Mind, from Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair, also lauded the wide range of stories and genres upon which Jewison has focused his lenses.
"In addition to heightening public consciousness of various social issues," Bergman said, "Norman has tapped into people's love of family, as in Fiddler on the Roof, given us a fairy tale romance like Moonstruck and explored difficult issues of faith in a picture like Agnes of God. He constantly challenges us to reevaluate our own beliefs and to recognize the dignity of the individual. He takes serious ideas and makes them play in Peoria as well as Paris."
A Canadian Navy World War II veteran, Jewison began his career in London as an actor and writer for the BBC before returning to his native Toronto, to direct television shows for the CBC from 1952 to 1958. He directed musical-variety shows in New York for the CBC for the next three years, featuring such performers as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Harry Belafonte and Andy Williams, before embarking on a remarkable film career that has been marked by both critical acclaim and commercial success.
Jewison also served on the Academy's Board of Governors for nine years in three consecutive terms from 1988 to 1997, and produced the highly acclaimed 53rd Annual Academy Awards® Presentation in 1980.
Additionally, he established the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in Toronto in 1986.
The 1998 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award will be presented at the 71st Academy Awards® on Sunday, March 21, 1999, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center of Los Angeles County. Sunday at the Oscars® will be televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. (PST), with a half-hour arrivals and behind-the-scenes segment before the awards ceremony.
