OPRAH WINFREY to get honorary OSCAR but critics charge, “She’s NOT even in the movies!” The truth about their desperate gambit.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to give Oprah Winfrey the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award— given to an "individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.'”
But critics charge The Big O hasn't done ANYTHING movie-wise since her Oscar nom for The Color Purple in 1986
"She's IN the motion picture industry?!" New York Film Critics Circle chair John Anderson asked The Hollywood Reporter.
"It seems like a shameless bid for a ratings boost — although once they start showing clips from Beloved and The Color Purple the numbers will plummet."
The LA Times raged Winfrey's award was "boneheaded."
Hollywood insiders say that while handing the corpulent chatty an award is merely an attempt to get her to be charitable to the Academy – first, by appearing on the annual Oscar TV snooze-a-thong and then at the untelevised Governor's Awards for a whole lotta ballyhoo.
"Does… Oprah means the same thing to Hollywood as past Hersholt Award winners — Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Lew Wasserman, Charlton Heston?!!" longtime film critic Armond White grumbled.
"Is this just ANOTHER way for the Academy to continue to grovel for TV ratings?"
NO doubt.
