There have been so many winners at the Oscars that dozens of people have passed the stage and made different speeches when accepting the award. And there is a person who is known for having given the shortest speech in history.
Since the Oscars were first broadcast in 1929, there have been hundreds of speeches that viewers have had to listen to. And the truth is that there have been all kinds: extremely long speeches, loaded with emotion, with political messages or those that have raised controversy.
But there have also been speeches that were characterized by being simple and concise, and others have been so short that they managed to go down in history. The shortest speech in Oscar history only consisted of two words. That's right, and the creator of this 'record' was Patty Duke, an actress who gained popularity during the 50s and 60s, and who was also the mother of The Lord of the Rings actor, Sean Astin.
Patty Duke rose to fame as a child actress and it was in 1962, at age 16, when she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. That year, the actress competed with Angela Lansbury, Shirley Knight, Mary Badham and Thelma Ritter, and it was actor George Chakiris who presented her with the award.
There, when her name is announced, the actress walks happily to the stage, takes the statuette and hugs it tightly while the audience applauds her. When the room is silent to let her speak, the actress approaches the microphone and utters two words: “thank you very much,” and then turns around and leaves.
The truth is that this moment went down in history and the actress became remembered as the performer who gave the shortest speech at the Oscars. However, it would be pertinent to clarify that although it is the most popular, it is not the only one, since in 1956, the actor Anthony Quinn had uttered those same two words when winning the award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Lust for Life.
Adding to the list of short speeches are William Holden (1954) and Gloria Grahame (1952) who offered a four-word speech: “Thank you very much, thank you very much.” For his part, Joe Pesci also earned a place on the list when in 1990 he was awarded Best Supporting Actor for his incredible performance in Goodfellas. Surprised, the actor went on stage and said “It was a privilege, thank you very much.”
Later, Pesci revealed that his speech was so short because his victory took him by surprise and he had not been able to prepare anything to say. Because of this, he preferred to give a short but sincere speech instead of talking nonsense for a long time. And just as it happened to him, the same thing most likely happened to Patty Duke.
