INDIANAPOLIS — Movie buffs visiting the Indiana State Museum’s IMAX Theater this month may have a surprise encounter with a flashy character. His friends call him Oscar.
A genuine Academy Award statuette – presented to Vincente Minnelli as Best Director for the smash 1958 musical Gigi — will be on display in the lobby through Sept. 15 as the theater at White River State Park in Indianapolis presents Oscar-winning films including Jaws and The Godfather. The historic item is on loan to the Carmel-based Great American Songbook Foundation from EGOT-winner Liza Minnelli, the late Vincente’s daughter and a close friend of Songbook Foundation Founder Michael Feinstein.
Gigi, a romantic comedy starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jordan, featured a screenplay and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and conducted by André Previn. The movie swept the 1959 Academy Awards, claiming a record-breaking nine Oscars including Best Picture. The Library of Congress later selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and the American Film Institute ranked it #35 on its 100 Years … 100 Passions list of cinema’s greatest love stories.
