'Evita,' 'Patient' Win Top Golden Globes

From The Times: Monday, January 20, 1997

The sweeping epic "The English Patient" and the musical "Evita" received best movie honors at the 54th annual Golden Globe Awards presented Sunday night in Beverly Hills.

The tally for "Evita" included a best-actress award for Madonna, as well as best song, and as the best film in the musical or comedy category.

The film's victory represented something of an upset, given the critical honors heaped upon the dark comedy "Fargo."

The overall awards thus seem to augur a wide-open Oscar race, as "The People Vs. Larry Flynt" nabbed awards for director Milos Forman as well as for its writers.

Tom Cruise was named best actor in a musical or comedy for his role as a fast-talking sports agent in "Jerry Maguire."

The sentimental favorite among the winners was film legend Lauren Bacall, who won the evening's first award, as best supporting actress for playing the possessive mother of Barbra Streisand in "The Mirror Has Two Faces." Bacall, an acclaimed actress since her debut at age 19 with future husband Humphrey Bogart, came to the podium to a standing ovation, and waved her award aloft.

By contrast to the musical/comedy honors, drama awards went to two performers relatively unknown in the United States: Brenda Blethyn for "Secrets & Lies," Mike Leigh's British film about a mother reunited with her lost daughter, and Australian stage actor Geoffrey Rush, who received an enthusiastic standing ovation accepting a Golden Globe for his performance as piano prodigy David Helfgott in another independent film, "Shine."

"I was so happy to be in the building, let alone standing here," said Blethyn, who admitted to being "star-struck" by the festivities at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

And Rush mentioned how some had questioned his being chosen for "Shine." He drew a laugh by thanking his "newfound friends" at Creative Artists Agency, a top talent agency, then held his statue aloft with a broad smile and added, "To all those people who were happy to bankroll the film as long as I wasn't in it. . . ."

Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., the awards are most significant as a potential bellwether for the Academy Awards, for which balloting for nominations closes at the end of the month.

"The English Patient," a war-torn romance told through flashbacks and starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, led the field with seven nominations but won only for best original score before taking the night's final sweepstakes prize as best drama.

Writer-director Anthony Minghella called the award "total vindication of my passion for a great book," which, he noted, "people said was unadaptable."

Minghella and producer Saul Zaentz recounted how they "went through hell" with the project, in Zaentz's words, with work halting four weeks before production was supposed to begin, then lying dormant for a month until Miramax Films bailed them out.

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