Oscar's Gold Nuggets
Homeless for 73 years, the Academy Awards bid farewell to the venerable Shrine Auditorium and will settle down to a place of its own next year.
The Shrine, south of downtown, has hosted Hollywood's big night 10 times.
"Next year we're going back to Hollywood where the Academy Awards actually started. It's going to be great to be back home," said Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The new home of the Oscars, the 3,300-seat Kodak Theater still under construction, is next to the historic Chinese Theatre and across the street from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Oscars were held.
CBS Viewers: Oscars On Target
CBS viewers who cast ballots in an online survey agreed with Oscar voters more than 60 percent of the time.
The majority of those who took the CBSNews.com survey thought that Gladiator was the Best Picture; that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the Best Foreign Film and that Julia Roberts, Russell Crowe and Benicio Del Toro deserved the top acting awards.
However, CBS viewers thought Kate Hudson's performance in Almost Famous deserved the Oscar for Best Actress In a Supporting Role. Academy voters awarded that honor to Pollock's Marcia Gay Harden.
And the Oscar Steven Soderbergh won for Traffic should have gone to Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, CBS viewers thought.
Puffy In The Spotlight
It may have been Julia Roberts' night at the Academy Awards, but it was Sean "Puffy" Combs who held court at the Vanity Fair party afterward.
"The bar is open,'' the rapper shouted exuberantly from behind one of the bars at Morton's restaurant after Sunday night's show.
With him was actress Renee Zellweger, searching for a glass of water.
Combs, acquitted of bribery and gun possession charges in New York just two weeks ago, was the center of attention throughout much of the party, with one movie star after another coming up to congratulate him on the trial's outcome.
"I was standing next to Puffy Combs," an awe-struck Beau Bridges said afterward.
Fewer Viewers Watching
Despite a suspenseful contest for best picture, the ratings for Sunday night's Oscar telecast were down sharply.
Nielsen overnight figures show that 8 percent fewer viewers tuned in this year than last year.
ABC says the overnight ratings are the lowest since at least 1986.
The low ratings came despite the network's success at trimming the length of the traditionally bloated broadcast. The show was 43 minutes shorter than the four-hour broadcast a year ago.
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