Going Global

This year’s Academy Award ceremonies, to be telecast live from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 26, will be even more international that usual--Oscar winners in four categories will be announced via satellite from four cities on three other continents.

But how will the top-secret Oscar results get to Moscow, London, Buenos Aires and Sydney? Who will pass along that famed envelope . . . please?

Oscar spokesman Bob Werden tells us that four special representatives of the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse--the firm that counts the ballots amid high-level security--will carry five envelopes for each category, each envelope bearing a nominee’s name, to the four destinations.

On the night of the awards, a Price Waterhouse representative in L.A. will telephone each courier about five minutes before the scheduled announcement, revealing which envelope holds the name of the winner.

In Moscow, Jack Lemmon and Soviet actress Natalia Niegoda (“Little Vera”) will announce the best foreign-language film winner. Elsewhere, Glenn Close will be stationed in London, Norma Aleandro in Buenos Aires and Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown in Sydney (categories yet to be determined for the latter three cities).

“If the satellite goes down,” Werden adds, “we can always do it the old-fashioned way . . . live on stage in L.A.”