Billy Crystal was the best modern Oscars host – just check out all his opening songs

Ahead of the Academy Awards this weekend, a look back at legendary Oscars host Billy Crystal and his classic opening songs.

---

Conan O’Brien will hosting the 97th Oscars this weekend. It’s a pretty solid choice by the Academy after a slew of slightly dull (and even calamitous) ceremonies. 

Even if O’Brien absolutely nails the gig, it’s unlikely he’ll be anywhere near as good as the best host of the modern Oscars: Billy Crystal. Crystal hosted the ceremony a total of nine times and made it look easy. His opening monologues have become iconic, thanks to his quick wit and cracking songs. 

Crystal hosted the Oscars for the first time in 1990 and opened the show with a joke about the previous year’s opening act. “Is it me or are you just glad I’m not Snow White?” Crystal joked, referencing the awful sketch with Rob Lowe and Eileen Bowman as Snow White. That was the year that led to Disney suing the Academy Awards.

Over the course of the next eight minutes, Crystal affectionately, good-naturedly mocked Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson to mention a few.And, of course, the host debuted the act he’s perhaps best known for; a medley of the year’s nominees in song form.

“It’s a wonderful night for Oscar,” Crystal sang while dancing around on the stage rather gracefully. 

Take a look at the whole monologue below: 

For his second year? Crystal rode in on a horse. Crystal made a slightly risque joke about Saddam Hussein, claiming he won regardless of which stars walk home with the coveted golden statue. 

1991’s medley might be this writer’s favourite song parody in Crystal’s discography. For one, the nominees – The Godfather Part III, Ghost, Goodfellas etc – were excellent (well, with caveats), but Crystal’s song somehow manages to lampoon them while still celebrating them. 

Here’s the full thing:

The year after? He was wheeled onto the stage in the style of Hannibal Lecter.

“Welcome to the Oscars, or as it’s known tonight, Cape Fear,” Crystal began his monologue. As Crystal notes, 1992 was a notable year because Beauty And The Beast made history by becoming the first ever animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. Naturally, such an achievement didn’t save it from being the target of Crystal’s jokes.

“Not everyone was happy about the nomination,” Crystal said. “Fievel didn’t take it well,” the host joked, referring to 1986’s An American Tale. Crystal went on to say that Fievel, the poor thing, “took an eraser to his wrists and OD’d on some Whiteout.”

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why Crystal is such a fun host, but the comedian can certainly keep a room’s attention and make his audience laugh wholeheartedly. 

Take a look at the whole thing:

1993 marked the end of Crystal’s run of hosting the Oscars every year. The overall theme, as reflected in Crystal’s opening monologue, was the incredible year women had enjoyed in Hollywood.  

Crystal rode on stage sitting on a giant Oscar statuette which was being pulled by actor Jack Palance (a continuation of his gags from the previous year’s ceremony). 

The show received more negative reviews and Crystal’s monologue was seen as tired and by the numbers. It was still a good show, but Crystal made a joke which was in pretty bad taste when he was talking about 1992 being a poor year for women’s parts in film that year. “In fact, some of the most talked about women’s parts were Sharon Stone’s,” referring to the actor’s infamous scene in Basic Instinct. 

The song medley was groovy once more, of course.

Crystal also ventured into the audience and even sat on Clint Eastwood’s lap. We dare Conan O’Brien to do the same this year.

After 1993, Crystal took a break from hosting the Oscars before to helm the ceremony again in 1997. Whoopi Goldberg took on the hosting duties twice in 1994 and 1996 with David Letterman hosting in 1995. Letterman’s show was a bit of a disaster (Uma, Oprah anyone?) and while Goldberg managed to strike the tone of funny and respectful, you just can’t beat Crystal.

1997 isn’t Crystal’s finest hosting gig, but by then, he was a seasoned pro at keeping the show moving and the jokes were safe enough for the Academy to tolerate. In many ways, it was a return to form for the Academy, much like bringing back Jimmy Kimmel to host the 2024 Oscars after a year that saw Will Smith slap Chris Rock on stage. 

Titanic was the major winner of the 1998 Academy Awards, and fittingly, Crystal came on stage on top of a large boat. Instead of doing multiple jokes before breaking into song, Crystal got straight into it and the entire opening monologue lasted less than seven minutes. 

Not really a bad thing, since the Oscars tend to clock in at nearly four hours. Part of the host’s job is to keep things moving, so starting off with a bang and then moving onto the main portion of the evening was a welcome change. 

Crystal took another break while Whoopi Goldberg hosted the Oscars in 1999, but returned to host the 72nd annual Academy Awards in 2000. This time, a police officer – or probably an actor posing as one – carried Crystal onto the stage. 

Crystal once again broke straight into song. The medley felt just a little snappier this year, including a line about the sponge being dry when a man was fried to death in Green Mile. Crystal also stopped the song to make jokes in-between the nominees, and the stage’s more modern design gave the whole ceremony a fresh feel. 

Crystal ruthlessly made fun of DreamWorks and Miramax chasing for Oscar glory and spending millions of dollars on their films in the hopes of bagging a statuette of their own. Crystal also devoted part of the medley to Haley Joel Osment, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Sixth Sense. 

In 2004, it felt like the winners had already been decided long before a single envelope was opened on stage. Peter Jackson’s final Lord Of The Rings film, Return Of The King, was bound to walk away with a lot of the statuettes, so the ceremony itself felt a little flat. 

However, the same can’t be said about Crystal’s hosting. The host was on excellent form, once again doing his iconic medley of songs. At this point, is it even the Oscars if Crystal isn’t hosting and singing? 

If anything, Crystal only got better and more confident as he went on. His opening monologues always took the same form and basic principle, but it never failed to entertain. Even now, the performances come across as snappy, witty and hilarious in a way that the Academy hasn’t been able to really replicate. 

Crystal hosted the Oscars one last time in 2012. The 2011 Oscars were hosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway, which wasn’t a bad idea on paper, but pretty disastrous in execution. It just wasn’t funny, and few seemed to have a good time, so the Academy were likely hoping to bring in a seasoned, safe pair of hands who could handle such an important ceremony with grace and humour. Crystal was a natural choice. 

Since his last hosting gig, the number of Best Picture nominees had grown from five to nine, meaning there were more lyrics to remember for the song medley. If the job had become more difficult, Crystal never showed it, waltzing through the opening number. 

“This is my ninth time hosting the Oscars,” Crystal noted to immediate applause. The comedian managed to bring some stability and groove back to the Oscars – something that the ceremony could do with more of in the 2020s.

It’s unclear whether Crystal would ever return to host the Oscars for a tenth time. In 2021, Crystal told IndieWire that he hadn’t been asked to host. O’Brien is set to take the stage on 2nd March, but it’s a tough gig; if he can do it with even a sliver of Crystal’s charm, we’re in for a treat. 

—

Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:

Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.

Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.

Become a Patron here.