Arts&Life

the oscars

44 | FEBRUARY 6 • 2020 

father is Jewish; his mother, Protestant. 
Baumbach is secular but identifies as 
Jewish culturally). A series of mostly 
well-received movies followed Squid, 
but in some sense, all the pieces came 
together in Marriage Story, an acute 
look at a failing marriage without a 
false note. Baumbach says details are 
based on truth but the larger story 
is not autobiographical . His current 
partner is Greta Gerwig, a best adapted 
screenplay nominee (Little Women). 
 
MUSIC and 
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Randy 
Newman, 76, is nominated for best 
score (Marriage Story) and best song 
(“I Can’
t Let You Throw Yourself 
Away” from Toy Story 4). He has won 
two Oscars for his songs and has been 

nominated 20 times for a song or score. 
Three of Newman’
s uncles were success-
ful Hollywood composers (Emil, Lionel 
and Alfred Newman). Randy’
s father 
was a doctor and the only Newman 
brother to marry a Jewish woman. He 
competes for best score with his first 
cousin Thomas Newman, who is nomi-
nated for 1917. 
 Randy Newman competes with 
Diane Warren, 63, for best song. She 
wrote “I’
m Standing with You” from 
Breakthrough. She has won a slew of 
Grammys and has written many pop 
hits, but she can’
t seem to win an Oscar. 
She’
s been Oscar-nominated 11 times 
since 1988 and hasn’
t won yet. 
Lawrence Sher, 49, is nominated for 
best cinematography for Joker. There’
s 
no doubt that his work was critical to 

the way the film artfully conveyed the 
mental anguish of the title character. 
Sher has long worked with Phillips, and 
he shot the Hangover movies. In 2017, 
he directed his first feature, Father 
Figures.

BEST PICTURE: The Best Picture 
Oscar goes to the film’
s principal pro-
ducers. Oscar rules limit the number 
of nominees to three. All the nomi-
nated films have a Jewish producer: 
1917, Sam Mendes; Ford v. Ferrari, 
James Mangold, 56; The Irishman, 
Jane Rosenthal, 63; Jojo Rabbit, Taika 
Waititi; Joker, Todd Phillips; Little 
Women, Amy Pascal, 61; Marriage 
Story, Noah Baumbach and David 
Heyman, 58; Once Upon a Time in 
Hollywood, David Heyman. 

RANDY THOMAS continued from page 40

to Alison Steele (“The Nightbird”) on 
the radio and was inspired to try being 
a DJ. She went back to Michigan and 
attended Oakland Community College, 
which led to local work before moving 
on to various stations in New York, 
Florida and Los Angeles.
While Thomas was DJing a Los 
Angeles morning show in 1993, she was 
offered an audition for the Academy 
Awards job, a role she said “changed my 
life.” She quickly moved from radio into 
TV, supplementing awards shows with 
promotion assignments.
“Live award shows are fantastic, but 
they only happen X amount of times 
a year,” she said. “I have to work every 
week, and I have radio and TV stations 
that I’
m now the voice of.”
The most dramatic Oscar moment 
that Thomas recalls happened in 2017, 
when La La Land was called as Best 
Picture instead of the real winner, 
Moonlight. A third accountant was later 
added along with security procedures to 
prevent any similar mistake.
Coincidentally, La La Land producer 
Gary Gilbert also grew up in Michigan, 
where he worked for his brother, busi-
nessman and developer Dan Gilbert.

BUILDING HER CAREER
Thomas credits many things with helping 
her rise to the top of her field.
“I think vocal tone tends to determine 
the kind of work I do,” Thomas said. 
“Because my voice is big, I can project 
with control so my voice doesn’
t waver. I 
can put gravitas into a read as well as a big, 
warm smile.”
Diet and exercise keep Thomas’
 voice 
healthy and strong. Eighty-five percent of 
her diet is plant-based, and 30 days before 
a major show, she avoids sugar, dairy and 
orange juice. 
Thomas, whose stepfather (Max 
Thomas) owned the Michigan Glove 
Company in Oak Park, has been mar-
ried for 35 years to Arnie Wohl, a former 
record promoter who is exploring busi-
ness opportunities with CBD oil. Their 
daughter, Rachel, a voiceover artist since 
childhood, recently graduated from the 
University of Southern California and does 
technical consulting.
“I wasn’
t raised with a Jewish back-
ground; I was just raised by Jews and 
became the most observant of my family,” 
Thomas said, adding that her daughter 
became a bat mitzvah with Chabad.
Thomas appreciates producers like 

Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner, of 
the Tony and Emmy Awards, who have 
employed her over many years.
“
A lot of times, producers are incredibly 
loyal to a production team,” she said. “If 
you do your best job and help them have 
a great show, they will bring you back, and 
that has been a huge blessing in my life.” 
Thomas recently shared her story first-
hand in a TED Talk, “Voice Lessons: How 
I Talked My Way to the Top,” available 
on YouTube. She hopes her experiences 
inspire young women to break other gen-
der career barriers, and she repeats her 
grandmother’
s encouragement to show 
chutzpah.
“If you would have told me that I would 
be the first woman to announce a global 
live television broadcast, I would have 
been shocked,” she said. “I think the 
opportunities that came my way happened 
because I was ready, and it also had to do 
with reading Malcolm Gladwell’
s Outliers, 
which discusses success. I wasn’
t the first 
woman on the air in Detroit, but I was one 
of the first.”
And she’
s not done with aspirations. 
“I feel I want to be a branding voice for 
an entire network,” she said. “That would 
be amazing.” 

OSCAR GUIDE continued from page 43