The OSCARS Worst Opening Number

The Hollywood Reporter is digging deep into the past and catching up with Eileen Bowman, an actress who, in 1989, played Snow White opposite post-sex scandal Rob Lowe, in one of the most disastrous Oscars musical numbers of all time.

It was an especially interesting read for me, since I really didn't remember this number at all. But I’m including the longest video of it I could find. It is horrible.

I guarantee you will both be glad you watched it and loathe me for watching it at the same time.  It goes without saying, but there was a lot of cocaine going around in the late eighties.

Now let's flashback to March 29, 1989!!!!


From the article in THR

The campy live number, arranged and conducted by Marvin Hamlisch, was as over-the-top as the man who masterminded it, Grease producer Allan Carr, a bombastic Hollywood oddball famed for wearing caftans and hosting debauched parties at his disco-equipped house in Benedict Canyon. (That residence, Hilhaven Lodge, is the current home of Brett Ratner, leading some to joke that the place is cursed, at least where producing the Oscars is concerned.

 Carr was uniformly shunned at industry canteen Morton’s the following day. Disney, which then had no stake in ABC, was furious over the unauthorized use of its copyrighted version of Snow White and filed a lawsuit against the Academy. And 17 Hollywood heavyweights — among them Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews and Billy Wilder — signed an open letter deriding the telecast as “an embarrassment to both the Academy and the entire motion picture industry.”

[Bowman, during the audition process] Our first stop was Allan Carr’s house. I remember his swimming pool had pink water in it. He had a 30-foot Oscar outside his door and auditioned us in a robe.

Eileen Bowman today
(Photo: Ramona Rosales/The Hollywood Reporter)

 The other girl and I looked at each other thinking, “What is happening?”

 My dress was bought for $23,000 by someone involved with the production who was buried in it. It was a man. I’m leaving it at that. [The next day after the Oscars] My phone never stopped ringing. It was awful. All I can say is what Rob Lowe said, “Never trust a man in a caftan.” 

Read the entire article on the Hollywood Reporter Website HERE!