‘Amadeus’ Top Film; Field and Abraham Win

“Amadeus” dominated the 57th annual Academy Awards ceremonies Monday night, winning eight Oscars, including the best-picture award and a best-actor award for F. Murray Abraham, co-star of Peter Shaffer’s film about the flamboyant Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

But it also was a night of tearful joy for Sally Field, who won her second best-actress Oscar for her portrayal of a gritty Texas farm widow in director Robert Benton’s “Places in the Heart,” which also won for Benton a statuette for best original screenplay.

Field, who won her first Oscar in 1979 for “Norma Rae,” told the audience at the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that “this means so much more to me this time . . . I don’t know why.”

But, she added, “I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it. But this time, I feel it and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, you like me!”

She was heavily favored to win in Monday’s ceremonies, presided over by two-time Oscar winner Jack Lemmon and televised live by ABC.

Abraham also was expected to win. In “Amadeus,” he played a minor composer, Antonio Salieri, who was driven mad with envy over the immense musical talents of Mozart, played in the film by Tom Hulce. Hulce also was nominated for best-actor honors.

For Milos Forman, the Czech-born director of “Amadeus,” Monday’s award was his second Oscar for directing since 1975, when he won for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Amadeus,” which had 11 nominations, also won Oscars for art direction, makeup, costumes, sound and Shaffer’s adaptation of the movie from his highly charged play, also called “Amadeus.” The latter was a New York theater hit in 1981 and won Broadway’s top honor, the Tony award, in 1982.

Abraham, a Texan who before “Amadeus” was a little-known film, theater and stage veteran, was loudly cheered when he said: “There is only one thing missing for me tonight--and that is to have Tom Hulce standing by my side.”

One of the night’s most moving moments came early when Dr. Haing S. Ngor, 34, a Cambodian refugee who made his acting debut in “The Killing Fields,” won a supporting-actor Oscar. He joyously raised it above his head, crying: “This is unbelievable!”

Ngor, the evening’s first winner, praised all involved with the movie, particularly Warner Bros. “for helping me tell my story to the world, let the world know what happened in my country. And I thank God, Buddha, that tonight I’m even here.”

A surgeon who escaped from Cambodia in May, 1979, Ngor now is a job counselor in Los Angeles, where he is studying for a medical license. His escape from Khmer Rouge concentration camps eerily mirrored the experiences of Dith Pran, whom he portrayed in “Fields.”

Correspondent’s Aide

Pran was the assistant to New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg in the bloody days during and after the rise to power in Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Pran’s harrowing imprisonment, escape, and reunion with Schanberg was told in the latter’s 1980 article, “The Death and Life of Dith Pran,” from which the grim, yet ultimately uplifting “The Killing Fields” was adapted.

The film was the closest rival to “Amadeus” in Oscar honors, winning three. Its two other awards were for for cinematography and film editing.

Dame Peggy Ashcroft, whose career spans 52 years, won the supporting-actress Oscar for her performance as indomitable, good-hearted Mrs. Moore in David Lean’s lush adaptation of E.M. Forster’s 1924 novel about the tragi-comedy of British colonial rule, “A Passage to India,” However, the 77-year-old actress was unable to personally accept the first Oscar of her career because she was in London for the funeral services today of her good friend, Sir Michael Redgrave, who died last week. Angela Lansbury accepted the statuette for her.

“A Passage to India,” although regarded as a possible big winner with 11 nominations, only won one other Oscar, for Maurice Jarre’s original score.

Shaffer, in accepting his Oscar for the adaptation of “Amadeus,” said that his “great pleasure” with the film version “is that Mozart is now heard by millions; millions who had never heard him before.”

Jarre drew chuckles from the black-tie audience of 2,800 after he accepted his award for “A Passage to India.” He grinned and said: “I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year.”

In other Oscar honors for music, the rock star Prince won for the original song score of “Purple Rain,” and Grammy-winner Stevie Wonder won original-song honors for “I Just Called to Say I Love You” from “The Woman in Red.”

The latter award was a mild surprise, since the rap song, “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr., had been widely expected to win. Although the film comedy from which the song got its title was a box-office smash, the movie only had two nominations and won neither.

Although “Ghostbusters” was nominated for visual effects, that award was won by another big hit, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” An Oscar for best makeup went to “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan.”

Jimmy Stewart Honored

Veteran actor Jimmy Stewart, an Oscar-winner in 1940 for “The Philadelphia Story,” was awarded an honorary Oscar for the “memorable performances” of his 50-year film career and for his “high ideals” on and off the screen. The 76-year-old Stewart, given his statuette by Cary Grant, drew one of the night’s few standing ovations.

The night’s foreign-film Oscar award went to “Dangerous Moves,” a Swiss film centering on a world championship chess match in Geneva between a Russian and an exiled dissident.

A statuette for best documentary feature went to “The Times of Harvey Milk,” about the openly gay San Francisco supervisor who was slain along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978 by former supervisor Dan White.

“The Stone Carvers” won an Oscar for best documentary short subject, “Charade” for best animated short film, and “The Painted Door” for best live-action short film of 1985.

The only major surprise of the evening was that the Oscar program lived up to the promise of its four co-producers to be far tighter and faster-paced than last year’s Oscar ceremonies, which lasted a numbing three hours, 45 minutes, and suffering in its television ratings.

45-Second Speech Limit

This time, with winners warned to keep their acceptance speeches to 45 seconds each, the Oscar show ended after three hours and seven minutes.

Brevity was notably aided when Lord Laurence Olivier, for unexplained reasons, dispensed with announcing the five nominees for Best Picture at the end of the ceremonies and simply opened the envelope and announced “Amadeus” as the winner.

The eight Oscars of “Amadeus” tied the number won by “Gandhi” in 1983, by “Cabaret” in 1972, and “From Here to Eternity” in 1953. But the all-time winner remains “Ben Hur,” which garnered 11 statuettes in 1959.

The board also gave a special Oscar to the National Endowment for the Arts, while producer David L. Wolper got the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for “his untiring efforts” to help the entertainment industry, Los Angeles and the nation.

Times staff writer John S. Wilson contributed to this story.