Gene Hackman, who won the 1971 Best Actor Oscar, suggested, “Maybe the award should really go to my car,” referring, of course, to the breathtaking chase scene in Billy Friedkin's “The French Connection.”

Lee Marvin, who won the 1965 Best Actor for the spoof comedy-Western “Cat Ballou,” broke with the tradition of solemn speeches, when he simply said, “Half of this Oscar belongs to a horse someplace out in the valley.” The horse helped Marvin, who played a dual role, win the coveted award.

An excited David Niven, who won the 1958 Best Actor Oscar at his first (and only) nomination, for “Separate Tables,” admitted: “I'm so loaded down with good-luck charms I could hardly make the steps.”

All the winners of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which swept the most important awards in 1975, made references in their speeches to the setting or plot of their movie. “I spent more time in mental institutions than the others,” said director Milos Forman. “I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else,” said Best Sctor Jack Nicholson.

Upon winning her third Oscar, Ingrid Bergman rushed up to the stage and said: “This is unfair. I want this award to go to Valentina Cortesa (nominated for Trufaut's “Day for Night,” in which she played an aging actress who can't remember her lines). The spotlights and cameras swept across to Valentina Cortesa, who stood up and blew kisses at Bergman.