The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 329

OSCAR it', PREVIEW Baring heart and Two unusual moments in galas history have local connections ByMickUSalle Chronicle Staff Critic ffci Two of the more unusual occurrences in Oscar history have a local angle. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the legendary "streaking" incident, which took place on April 2, 1974. David Niv-en stood at the podium to introduce Elizabeth Taylor and was interrupted by a fellow who ran across the stage naked. Niven recovered his composure and got off his famous quip: "Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes' and showing his shortcomings." The man whose harmless prank inspired that cruel remark was 33-year-old San Franciscan Robert Opel. Sadly, Opel made the papers again five years later when he was shot and killed during a robbery at his Howard Street art gallery in the South of Market The prodm ers area.

The criminals got away with $5. On March 27, 1973, Bay Area resident Sacheen Lit-tlefeather garnered a place in Oscar history. She spoke for Marlon Brando at the Academy Awards, declining his best-actor Oscar for "The Godfather" in protest against Hollywood's stereotyping of American Indians. She also used the Oscars to call attention to the continuing In declining Marlon Brando's best-actor Oscar for "The Godfather" in 1973 from Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann, Bay Area resident Sacheen Littlefeather protested Hollywood's stereotyping of American Indians. saw it as a slap in the face of the Academy Awards.

It wasn't about them at all" Sacheen Littlefeather vf i 4 ill 4 0W0 i1 also at the Oscars, and he was hot. He wanted to come onstage and forcibly yank me off. So the whole time I stood there, John Wayne was off to the side creating a terrible disturbance. It took six men to subdue him. I knew this as I was talking.

Half the people were saying, 'Shut up," and the other half was saying, 'Let her We almost had a conflict within the audience." After that, Littlefeather says, she was blacklisted. "In those days if you dared mention anything, you were gone. The articles that came out afterward were horrible. What I thought was strange is that the producers saw it as a slap in the face of the Academy Awards. It wasn't about them at all." In the years since, Littlefeather has had other health problems, including colon cancer in the early 1990s.

"My surgeon calls me the bionic woman." Now she says she is in relatively good shape. "But I have to take care of myself and live a certain existence. I see people drugging and drinking and staying out all night and I think, my God, if I did that one week, I'd be gone." These days Littlefeather, who's Yaqui and Apache on her father's side and white on her mother's, is putting her experiences with holistic and Indian medicine into a book. "Through my own journey with death, I learned about life," she says. "You see things in a different way, with more maturity and focus and direction.

But you don't learn those things at a cheap price. The price is very high." 'J iy Us clash between Indians and the government at Wounded Knee, S.D. Today Littlefeather, 52, still lives in the Bay Area. "I'm alive that's a pretty big thing. I went through a period of years when I was supposed to die.

When I was 29, 1 was given a year to live. My lungs collapsed I was bleeding internally. I don't know how many times I was given the last rites." Littlefeather says she recovered by going back to her Indian roots. "I was in a terminally ill patient support group I'm one of the few alive who can talk about it. I got better through holistic health and Native American medicine." Following her recovery, she got a degree in health and American Indian medicine and has taught at St.

Mary's Hospital in Tucson, Arjz. She also worked with Mother Teresa to establish the Missionaries of Charity in San Francisco. 'To me, Mother Teresa is the ultimate medicine woman." In 1972, Littlefeather was an actress who also worked promoting Indian causes. She wrote to Marlon Brando, and a year later he called her. "He asked me if I knew who it was, and I said, 'Marlon Brando.

What took you so I 4 it Robert Opel's Oscar moment took place in 1974 when the San Francisco streaker ran across the stage behind David Niven. long. You're on Indian time, He warned me, 'Are you ready to stand up to Brando didn't ask her to represent her at the world and say I said yes of course, the Oscars until a day before the ceremony, when you're 26, who knows anything? "You "It was all so last-minute, so rush-rush-rush, need to know that that night John Wayne was 0 is 0 0 37.