As awards season approaches, one can hardly imagine that it will provide an image as iconic as one morning-after shot taken by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1977. A woman in a gold dressing gown and silver heels reclines, deep in thought, in a white chair. The pool stretches out behind her in all its turquoise glory; she’s surrounded by newspapers; on a table are pots of tea, a lighter, and an Oscar for best actress.
The woman is Faye Dunaway, who’d won the Oscar the previous evening and reportedly hadn’t slept much before her then boyfriend Terry O’Neill snapped what would go on to become one of the most famous celebrity portraits of the 20th century. The newspaper headlines tell the story. Her Network co-star Peter Finch had won a posthumous Oscar to join Dunaway’s; he’d died of a heart attack in the hotel’s lobby two months earlier.
