March 29, 1951: The 1st Hispanic Oscar Winner

March 29, 1951: The Academy Awards are held at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. Fred Astaire is the host. All About Eve wins 6 "Oscars," including Best Picture. But stars Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, and also Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, are defeated for Best Actress by Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday.

José Ferrer wins Best Actor, for the title role in a film version of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. The real Cyrano, born in 1619, was a French writer, who died young in 1655, from a cause still not determined, but possibly murder. And while a sketch of him drawn during his lifetime shows him to have had a big nose, it wasn't exaggerated, as in the various portrayals of him.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 8, 1912, Ferrer had previously played Cyrano on Broadway. This award made him both the 1st actor of either gender to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role, and the 1st Hispanic Academy Award winner, preceding fellow Puerto Rican Rita Moreno by 11 years.

The actors he beat out for this award: James Stewart for Harvey, Spencer Tracy for Father of the Bride, William Holden for Sunset Boulevard, and Louis Calhern in The Magnificent Yankee. (Not a baseball movie: He was playing Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) So he was up against some difficult competition.

He later starred in Moulin Rouge, The Caine Mutiny, Lawrence of Arabia, Ship of Fools, and the 1984 version of Dune. He was married to actress Uta Hagen, then dancer Phyllis Hill, and then to singer Rosemary Clooney, which eventually made him the father of actor Miguel Ferrer and the uncle of actor George Clooney. He was not related to actor Mel Ferrer (who was of Catalan descent), but did once direct him on Broadway.

José Ferrer passed away on January 26, 1992, the day the Washington Redskins beat the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVI. He was 80 years old.

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March 29, 1951 was a Thursday. Nick Ut, the Vietnamese photographer who took the photo of Kim Phuc running through her napalm-bombed village, was born on this day. This was also the day The King and I premiered on Broadway. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 2 games in the NBA. The New York Knicks lost to the Syracuse Nationals, 102-80 at the State Fair Coliseum in Syracuse, New York. And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Rochester Royals, 76-73 at the Minneapolis Auditorium.

There was a Stanley Cup Playoff game that night: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 1-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. It took until 2:20 of the 3rd overtime before a goal could be found, and Maurice "the Rocket" Richard of the Canadiens found it.