10 Biggest Oscar Goofs Of All Time
2. Sign Language Barrier
In another egregious example of the Oscars being out of touch with a large portion of their audience, Debby Boone’s performance of Oscar nominated ‘You Light Up My Life’ at the 1977 ceremony caused significant uproar within the deaf community.
A year after Louise Fletcher’s signed, teary-eyed thank you to her parents, following her Best Actress win, the Oscars decided to capitalise on the subsequent emotional outpouring by recruiting 11 students from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf, who would sign along with Boone’s singing.
The problem was, the children weren’t deaf, nor were they fluent in sign language. They were actually from the nearby Sam Levy public school, and were each signing their own version of complete nonsense.
The Alliance for Deaf Artists expressed their dissatisfaction, but an Oscars spokespersons waved any criticisms away with the fool proof defence: “nobody actually said the children were really deaf.”