ACADEMY AWARD WINNING SONGS

Well, the Academy Awards are over for another year. Congratulations to all of this years Oscar winners. This week, continuing with our new format, we're going to test your knowledge of Academy Award winning 'Best original Songs'. And for those of you that aren't over 80, we'll confine the quiz to the 1960's, '70's, '80's and '90's. And to make it even easier, at least a little bit, all 5 questions are true or false. Take your best guess if you don't have a clue. And there may just be a trick question thrown in just for fun.
So here we go.

QUESTIONS

1. Neil Young has never won an Academy Award for 'Best original Song' - true or false?

2. Composer Henry Mancini won back-to-back Oscars for 'Best original Song' in the 1970's - true or false?

3. "Unchained Melody" from the 1990 movie "Ghost" won the Oscar for 'Best Original Song' - true or false?

4. Rocker Huey Lewis won the 1985 'Best Original Song' Oscar for "The Power of Love" from "Back To The Future" - true or false?

5. Burt Bacharach and Hal David won the 'Best Original Song' OScar in 1970 for "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" from the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". B. J. Thomas sang the song in the movie, but B.J. was not the composers first choice. Burt and David actually wanted Neil Diamond, but he turned them down - true or false.

ANSWERS

1. True, although Neil Young was nominated in 1994 for his song "Philadelphia" from the 1993 Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington film, "Philadelphia". The Oscar for 'Best original Song' that year went to Bruce Springsteen for "Streets of Philadelphia", also from the same movie.

2. Trick question here. The answer is false, although Henry Mancini DID win back-to-back Oscars for 'Best Original Song' in the 1960's. In 1962, Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer won for "Moon River" from the 1961 film, "Breakfast At Tiffany's". The following year, the duo repeated their win with "Days of Wine and Roses" from the movie of the same name. Interestingly, the '62 Oscars, hosted by Bob Hope for the 7th time no less, ran over 2 hours for the very first time. These days, they're usually over 4 hours.

3. False. Although "Unchained Melody" worked fabulously for the pottery scene between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in "Ghost", the song wasn't eligible to be nominated, having been previously written for the 1955 film, "Unchained". At the 28th annual Academy Awards ceremony in 1956, "Unchained Melody" was nominated as 'Best original Song' for authors Alex North and lyricist Hy Zaret, but lost to "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing".

4. False. While Huey Lewis WAS nominated for 'Best Original Song' in 1986 for "Power of Love", Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me" from the movie "White Nights" took home the Oscar.
SIDE NOTE: Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr. over the theme from 1984's"Ghostbusters" theme song, claiming it was a rip off of his song, "I Want A New Drug". Huey won in court.

5. That too is false. Burt Bacharach and Hal David had originally wanted Bob Dylan to sing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", but HE turned them down.