Female Oscar hosts

Hilary Clinton is running for president, and Ellen DeGeneres is hosting the Academy Awards.

These two things are not exactly equivalent--after all, we've never had a female president, while the Academy Awards has had a female host. One.

Whoopi Goldberg is the only woman to have served as the sole host of an Oscar ceremony, something she's done four times since 1994. (Over the years, 26 different men have handled the job solo.)

Sure, females have served as occasional co-hosts: Beginning in the mid-1950s, women occasionally emceed in years when multiple hosts were used. Rosalind Russell was one of five in 1958, Carol Burnett one of four in 1973, Jane Fonda one of four in 1977 and one of three in 1986…

Still, if you take Goldberg's four shows and add in all the fractions from other female hosts (one-fifth of a show from Russell, one-fourth from Burnett, etc.), you end up with a paltry six and three-quarters Oscar shows, out of 78, that have been hosted by women.

(The list: Russell, Helen Hayes, Burnett, Diana Ross, Shirley MacLaine, Goldie Hawn, Ellen Burstyn, Fonda, Liza Minnelli.)

Which is not to say that the women in charge haven't had a few opportunities to shine over the years. A sampling:

The first female star to be listed as host in the academy's official histories was Rosalind Russell, the fourth of five co-emcees in 1958.

Russell, though, was not given much of a role in the show; the most notable aspect of her hosting stint, aside from the fact that she was the first, may have been her outfit, a beaded pajama suit that was part of her wardrobe for the film she was shooting at the time, "Auntie Mame."

* * * * Fast-forward 41 years, and the host's wardrobe again drew attention. In 1999, Goldberg made her entrance as Queen Elizabeth in an enormous gown and full whiteface. Over the course of the show she made 11 costume changes, modeling clothes from all of the films nominated for costume design, from "Shakespeare in Love" to "Velvet Goldmine."

"About halfway through that show, I started sensing a little regret," says stage manager Garry Hood. "I could see her thinking, maybe I shouldn't have done this."

* * * * Things had been tenser for Goldberg in 1994, five years earlier, when she became the first woman to emcee the show on her own. Taking note of the dire predictions of some who'd grown accustomed to four years of Billy Crystal, Goldberg began her monologue by referencing her naysayers.

"There haven't been so many show business executives so nervous…over one woman since Heidi Fleiss," she said.

* * * * "An interesting thing happened in films last year," said Shirley MacLaine from the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1975. "Not many of us women were in any."

MacLaine co-hosted with Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. that year, and wound up in the midst of a political controversy that had nothing to do with the paucity of women in film.