The 50th Academy Awards appear in Andy Warhol’s diary through the Polaroid-sponsored party he co-hosted with Truman Capote at Studio 54. The gathering brought together award-night celebrities and New York social figures, but Warhol’s account is less a record of ceremony than a sharp contrast between the spectacle the hosts arranged and the attention it ultimately received.

The Party and Its Hosts

Tom Sullivan arrived with Margaret Trudeau, who was wearing a red dress; the group picked up Catherine Guinness before going to Studio 54. Polaroid Corporation had arranged the party, with Warhol and Truman Capote as hosts. The event therefore joined an awards-night celebration to a corporate-sponsored social occasion, with the hosts expected to draw guests and attention to the evening.

Warhol’s Reaction to the Awards

Warhol wrote that he disliked the awards, the nominees, and the winners. He singled out John Travolta as someone he thought should have won, and dismissed the idea that Richard Dreyfuss could be regarded as a sex symbol. Vanessa Redgrave’s remarks reminded him of a speech she had previously given at 860 Broadway, while he also registered his dislike of Woody Allen’s films. His account presents the ceremony not as a succession of honored performances but as a series of choices he found out of step with his own judgments.

Guests and Social Positioning

At the party, Warhol encountered Jim Andrews of Polaroid Corporation, as well as Yul Brynner and Eric Clapton. Bob Colacello later told the group that the people he considered important were downstairs: Halston, Apollonia, Tom Sullivan, Margaret Trudeau, Barbara Allen, and Ryan O’Neal, who was in town filming Oliver’s Story with Candice Bergen. Warhol introduced Ryan O’Neal to Margaret Trudeau and noted that she seemed interested. The diary thus records both the party’s celebrity attendance and the social sorting that took place within it, as some guests were described as the people who mattered and gathered in the basement.

Press Coverage and Aftermath

The party received only one mention in the papers, in Earl Wilson’s column, and that notice did not mention Polaroid Corporation. Warhol worried that the company’s staff might be fired for spending $30,000 on an event that brought its sponsor so little notice, and that Interview might lose advertising as a result. By contrast, Swifty Lazar’s Oscar party received the prominent mentions. Warhol thought the absence of society guests might be due to lingering resentment toward Truman Capote, but presented this as his own conjecture rather than an established explanation. The contrast between the expense, the guests, and the limited coverage gives the diary’s account its central significance: a carefully staged public occasion could still fail to make its sponsor visible.