IT’S ALL OUT FOR ‘AFRICA’; ‘COLOR PURPLE’ FADES

The final score: “Out of Africa,” 7, “The Color Purple,” 0.

What started last Christmas as a two-horse race to the Oscars turned into a runaway for Sydney Pollack’s $32-million movie adapting Danish author Isak Dinesen’s experiences running a coffee plantation in Kenya, and of her affair with the ill-fated English hunter Denys Finch Hatton (played as an American in the movie by Robert Redford).

“Out of Africa’s” seven awards included two Oscars for Pollack, as director and producer, and one for Kurt Luedtke, the former Detroit newsman who found the key to translating Dinesen’s personal reminiscences into the kind of sweeping romantic epic that Hollywood seldom attempts these days.

Pollack, who was seen shaking Spielberg’s hand in the audience before going up to accept his best director award, said later that he was surprised that “The Color Purple” had been shut out of the awards.

“I did not expect to win because of what happened at the DGA (Directors Guild of America) awards,” Pollack said. “It (Monday) was a strange night because no one knew what would happen. It was a kind of wide-open year.”

The seven Oscars may help “Out of Africa” overtake “The Color Purple” in one other important category: box office. As of Monday, Spielberg’s movie was leading “Out of Africa” by $6 million, with total receipts of $77.6 million to “Africa’s” $71.5 million.

It’s hard to recall a year more difficult to handicap for the Oscars than this one. The only thing anyone could say with certainty about the two lead actor categories is that it was the only time in Oscar history that all 10 nominees were born in the United States.

Streep did not get in on the “Africa” sweep. What would have been her third Oscar, for a performance many critics labeled her best, went instead to Geraldine Page.

Page’s nomination, for her performance as an elderly widow who sets off on an adventuresome bus ride searching for her childhood home, was her eighth and she had not won before.

Judging by the lengthy and unusual standing ovation that escorted her to the stage, it was easily the most popular award of the evening.

“Yea for the geriatrics!” shouted the 61-year-old Page backstage. “I’m my biggest fan and I was great in that role . . . I was great in all my roles. Perhaps they (the voters) said, ‘The poor thing. This is her eighth time. Let’s vote for her.’ ”

The best actor award, in a mild surprise, went to William Hurt, who played the tortured transvestite sharing a dank prison cell with a fiery revolutionary in “The Kiss of the Spider Woman.” Jack Nicholson, from “Prizzi’s Honor,” was generally regarded as the favorite.

Hurt, winning for only his fifth feature-film role, downplayed the significance of winning the Oscar, the first ever awarded an actor portraying a homosexual.

“I see my honor as lying in the work,” Hurt said. “There is no honor greater than that.”

Anjelica Huston, as best supporting actress, was the sole winner for “Prizzi’s Honor,” her father John Huston’s darkly satirical film about loyalty and love among Mafia families and contract killers.

Don Ameche, another of the evening’s sentimental favorites, won the best supporting actor award for “Cocoon.” Ameche is 77. “Cocoon” was his 50th film. The Oscar is his first.

Despite “Out of Africa’s” domination of the awards (the only other multiple winners were “Witness” and “Cocoon,” with two each), the drama of this year’s show was alive right to the end, when legendary directors Billy Wilder, Akira Kurosawa and John Huston announced the best picture.

The popular scenario among Oscar watchers in recent weeks had “The Color Purple” winning the best picture, even if it were otherwise shut out. It would have been the academy voters’ way of disassociating themselves from the directors branch, which had overlooked “The Color Purple’s” Steven Spielberg as a best director nominee.

The best actress category looked like a dead heat between Page, Streep and “The Color Purple’s” Whoopi Goldberg. Sentiment was on Page’s side, since her seven previous nominations, dating back to 1953 and “Hondo,” had yielded no Oscars.

Spielberg won the best director award from the Directors Guild of America, and thus becomes only the third winner of the guild award in nearly 40 years to not have an Oscar to go with it.

There were no early clues as to how the evening would turn out. “Out of Africa’s” first award, for sound, didn’t come until nearly an hour into the show. Anjelica Huston’s Oscar was expected, and any “Color Purple” sentiment in that category would have likely been offset with two nominees--Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery--on the ballot.

The cosmetic award, often a tip-off to the general popularity of a film, went to Emi Wada for “Ran,” Akira Kurosawa’s epic resetting of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in 16th-Century Japan.

The award for makeup, a category that the academy added grudgingly in 1981 after years of warranted campaigning by makeup artists, went to Michael Westmore and Zoltan Etek for their extraordinary work on “Mask,” an otherwise overlooked film about a bright teen-age boy suffering from a disease that left his head grotesquely deformed.

It was a big win for Westmore’s family, he announced in accepting the Oscar. Westmore is a third-generation makeup man, following his father, Monty Westmore, whose films included “Gone With the Wind,” and Michael’s grandfather, George Westmore, who did the makeup on the original 1927 “King of Kings.”

“My family got makeup started in this business,” Westmore said, later. “When I started out in this business, there were no awards for this. So you can imagine what this means to my family.”

Anjelica Huston’s Oscar was also sweeter for the family connection. It has been 17 years since her disastrous debut in her father John Huston’s “A Walk With Love and Death,” which the elder Huston has since acknowledged he agreed to make only to provide his then-16-year-old daughter with a leading role.

Both Hustons received devastatingly bad reviews for the movie and she spent most of the next decade working as a fashion model. She has had a handful of supporting roles in recent years, but it wasn’t until her father called again, this time giving her a rich role opposite her real-life companion Jack Nicholson, that she was able to demonstrate her growth as an actress.

Huston’s performance as the jilted and heartsick Maerose was easily the year’s most honored--she won awards from the New York, Los Angeles and national critics groups--and her win was the least surprising.

Asked backstage if she felt vindicated for “Walk With Love and Death,” Huston said, “It (the Oscar) is a turnabout in every sense of the word.”

She also welcomed herself into the pantheon of the award-winning Huston clan.

“I feel like a dynasty,” she laughed.

The dynasty came up one Oscar short Monday when her ailing 78-year-old father was overlooked for the best director award. It would have been Huston’s first Oscar since the 1948 award for “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” which also won an award for best supporting actor for his father, Walter Huston.

Still, it was a good night for the senior citizens. Besides Page, there was Ameche, accepting his first Oscar for his supporting role as a senior citizen who is rejuvenated by alien-spiced water in a neighbor’s pool in “Cocoon.” Ameche told reporters backstage that he had never thought about winning before, and that it seems to be more important to actors today than it was in his heyday.

Ameche may find the Oscar good for his career, too. Despite terrific back-to-back performances in “Trading Places” and “Cocoon,” he says producers haven’t been beating down his doors.

“I haven’t had an offer since ‘Cocoon,’ ” he said, “and I finished that a year and a half ago.”

The only speech approaching a political statement was made by composer Alex North, a 15-time loser as an Oscar nominee, honored Monday with a special Oscar for career achievement. North urged the industry to start making more life-affirming films and stop with the “blatant, bloody violence.”

In the press room, North, whose most recent film was the relatively violent “Prizzi’s Honor,” said he was complaining about violence both on television and in films, singling “Rambo-style films” out for special disdain.

“I don’t think they’re good for the country,” he said, “especially in the mood we’re in now . . . In some better world, I’d like to see films that have hope and compassion rather than blood.”

He didn’t say what any of this has to do with music.

Although Whoopi Goldberg didn’t win the best actress Oscar for “The Color Purple,” she made it to the podium, as a presenter for best film editing. When she announced that the winner, “Witness’ ” Thom Noble was in Latin America on another movie, she added that she was sure that if he had been there, he would have thanked his mother, “as some of us might have thanked ours.”

Contributing to this story were Times Staff Writers David Fox and Paul Rosenfield.