With the occasional exception of the biggest awards of the night—as well as a few superlative winners, A-listers, or long overdue recognitions— nowadays Oscar speeches are now limited to just 45 seconds. After that time has elapsed, winners whose thank-you’s threaten to last longer than the three-quarters of a minute cut-off point are gently played off the stage by music from the ceremony’s in-house orchestra. Some winners, however, don’t require quite so long to actually make their speech.
Despite being among cinema’s greatest ever directors, Alfred Hitchcock memorably never won a competitive Oscar in his entire career, and had to make do instead with receiving the honorary Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968. You might think that after waiting several decades to be recognized by the Academy, Hitchcock would want to make the most of the occasion, but his speech lasted a grand total of six seconds: “Thank you,” he said, before pausing and adding simply, “very much indeed.”
Likewise, when Joe Pesci won the award for Best Supporting Actor for Goodfellas in 1991, he simply said, “It’s my privilege, thank you.” The director Delbert Mann, winner of the Best Director Oscar for Marty in 1956, simply exclaimed, “Thank you, thank you very much. Appreciate it.” Actors Gloria Grahame, William Holden, and Patty Duke all likewise said a simple “thank you” when they approached the Oscar microphone before leaving the stage. And the legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder—whose movie The Apartment defeated Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1961—quipped,
“Thank you so much, you lovely discerning people,” when he picked up the award for Best Director.
But if those are among the Academy’s shortest Oscar speeches, what about the longest? For that, we need to head back to the early 1940s.
The British-American actress Greer Garson was one of the biggest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, achieving an unprecedented five consecutive Best Actress nominations every year from 1941 to 1945. And it was for the second of these nominations, for her title role in the wartime drama Mrs. Miniver, that Garson won the Best Actress Oscar.
Making her way to the stage, Garson graciously collected her prize from fellow actress Joan Fontaine, approached the microphone on the podium, and began her speech with the words, “I’m practically unprepared.” That may have been the case, but Garson certainly wasn’t lost for things to say.
In her speech, she waxed lyrical on everything from the meaningful role of the Academy Awards in the wider filmmaking community, and what moviemaking means as both an emerging and evolving art form, and as a medium of artistic expression. In all, she spoke for a total of almost six minutes— earning not just an Oscar, but a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest Oscar speech in movie history.
As gracious as Garson’s speech was, however, it seems that its long-windedness did not go down too well with the members of the Academy (perhaps not least because hers was the last win of the evening, and she was delivering it to an exhausted audience at almost two o’clock in the morning). As a result, the Academy soon afterward introduced the three-quarters of a minute time-cap on winners’ speeches. As for Garson, despite going on to secure another four Oscar nominations over the next two decades, she was never awarded a prize by the Academy again!