Today marks the 40th anniversary of the rescheduled date for the 1967 Academy Awards ceremony. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4 of that year, artists including Louis Armstrong, Diahann Carroll, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger requested that the Academy postpone the originally-set April 8 ceremony until after the civil rights activist’s funeral on April 9. The Academy shuffled its feet but complied, unwilling in part to admit that the real world reigns over Hollywood as it does anywhere else.
Factoid: The event was postponed once more in 1981. Originally slated for March 30, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences held off on hosting the ceremony for one day following an assassination attempt on newly-elected President Ronald Regan–himself a former screen actor.
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