One in a series
On the eve of the 1973 ceremonies, Marlon Brando announced that he would boycott the Academy Awards and send Sacheen Littlefeather to the podium to refuse his Oscar for “The Godfather,” should he win it. When the presenters, Liv Ullman and Roger Moore, read his name, Littlefeather calmly strolled onstage and concisely, yet respectfully protested the degrading depiction of Native Americans in movies and on television. She then exited to polite applause, leaving Ullman and Moore holding Brando’s statuette.All of this has been much publicized. Less well known – or perhaps never publicly revealed, as there is no mention of it on the Internet – is the role Barbra Streisand almost played in this incident.
An industry insider who worked with Streisand at the time told us that after Brando proclaimed that he would decline the Oscar, the Motion Picture Academy asked Streisand to accept on his behalf. When Brando found out, he called Streisand to request that she not go ahead. He supposedly said, “I have something else in mind.
