While it’s common to dress up for award shows, Robert Opel was underdressed for the occassion when he crashed the Oscars in 1974. His quick few seconds of fame at the Academy Awards actually led to some appearances in the years that followed. However, his life ended in tragedy in a violent burglary where the suspects made off with a camera and just $5.
English teacher Robert Opel made history at the Oscars on the night of the Academy Awards in 1974. He took off his clothes and ran across the stage holding up a peace sign. He sprinted behind actor David Niven who was about to introduce celebrity Elizabeth Taylor. Niven was unaware the activist was preparing to run across the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage and looked perplexed. But he handled it in a suave manner and a funny remark. Despite the next few years offering new opportunities for Opel, he met his tragic end when armed burglars entered his studio one fateful night five years later. The glamorous night is supposed to celebrate movie stars and the crew behind the big films of the year. But this particular year, all eyes were on someone else.
Robert Opel’s stunt at the Oscars was part of the ‘plan’
After Opel stormed the stage, holding up a peace sign, he was ushered backstage. He was given access to the Hollywood event with a press pass. Although, instead of sending him on his away or removing Robert Opel from the premises, the Oscars crew clothed him and let him speak to press backstage.
He simply said: “It’s one of those one-time things”.
“People shouldn’t be ashamed of being nude in public,” Robert Opel told reporters, standing in front of a huge replica of an Oscars statue.
“Besides – it’s a hell of a way to launch a career.”
Later, he appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, and announced he was running for president as a nudist. He claimed he had “nothing to hide”, and was then booked by Allan Carr to streak at a party.
Opel was an activist and a lover of performance art. He was described as a hippie that was all the rave in the 1970s.
But he knew some of his antics, like the Oscars, may upset or embarrass his family so he dropped a second ‘p’ from his name becoming Robert Opel.
He apparently bared all during a meeting at Los Angeles City Council, and opened an art gallery in San Francisco in 1978, Fey-Wey Studios. Robert moved to the city after being jailed over a protest. At the time gay art was displayed in gay bars only, and his gallery would be referred to as an adult shop when it wasn’t.
His nephew, named after him, said of his Academy Awards moment: “It was a social comment”.
Did the Oscars know about it?
The awards show have never come out to say they knew Robert Opel was going to use the Oscars to make headlines. But someone else has claimed it was planned nine years later.
Robert Metzler, business manager who has worked with the star-studded event, told the LA Times he didn’t think it was “accidental”.
He said: “My wife was here for the dress rehearsal and David Niven asked her out in the lobby if he could borrow her pen.
“She gave it to him and he sat on a step out there and wrote his ad-lib remark about this fellow’s shortcomings, and then he told my wife how proud he was about this terse line he’d written”.
Metzler claimed it was “two hours” before it happened on stage.
His last performance
During the year of his death, he staged another piece of performance art after a man was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder.
San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk had been killed by Dan White, who served as a politician. Milk was known for his contributions to the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. He was only in office for less than a year at the time of his assassination. White, a former fireman and police officer, resigned from the board of supervisors to ‘support his young family’. But when he returned to ask for his job back, Moscone refused. White killed the two men, believing Milk had encouraged Moscone’s decision.
Following the case, Opel dressed in leather, representing ‘Gay Justice’ and pretended to execute his friend who dressed up as White. At UN Plaza during the Gay Freedom Day Parade, he tried to send a message. This was despite being warned by the police not to do so.
However, soon after, on July 8, a pair of armed burglars burst into his gallery, demanding drugs and money.
He was with ex-boyfriend Anthony Rogers and girlfriend Camille O’Grady at his studios when they barged in. He dealt drugs occasionally, writes the New York Post, but didn’t have any on him that night.
The two men tied up his friends and trashed the studio looking for valuables while arguing with the artist. A shot was heard and then they warned O’Grady: “If you see us again you’re dead”.
He realized Opel had been shot. The robbers only stole $5 and a camera.
Opel was pronounced dead at 10.40pm.
Rumors emerged over his death
The two men, Maurice Keenan and Robert Kelly were arrested while attempting to flee to Miami two days later.
After Robert Opel’s death, because of the fame he gathered from his Oscars stunt, rumors flew.
One claimed the men were drug dealers who wanted to reclaim money from the artist. Another followed the lines of a conspiracy Keenan was asked to silence Opel. Keenan had escaped from prison three times before his murder trial, so some theorists alleged the cops freed him to do the job.
Keenan was convicted of murder and asked for a life sentence over the death penalty. But he was sentenced to death, with an appeal upholding the charge in 1988. This was until 2000 when a US District judge reversed the decision. Keenan had spent 20 years on death row before pleading guilty to lesser charges of aggravated burglary and kidnapping charges when he was re-tried.
Kelly was sentenced to 25 years to life.
His nephew Robert Oppel created a documentary in 2010 titled ‘Uncle Bob’ to honor his life before the Oscars.
Four years later, he and curator Rick Castro opened an exhibition on the artist at Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood. Then in 2017, Robert Opel, along with others in history, were memorialized with their names cast in bronze bootprints in San Francisco’s Leather History Alley.
Related Topics
MORE CELEBRITY STORIES
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmroaSuwaqwwaKrZ5ufonxzfJFtZmlrX2WEcL7Om5yrrF2kvaa40marq5mXnrBusMSaq6FlqZqus7%2BMmp2tnaJiwaK3yKeeZqCZqHqkuM6tn56rXaSzp3nArWStoJVivLSvwKuqaA%3D%3D