Local places and faces took Oscar's fancy

Oscar will rear his lovely golden head Sunday night and make a little nod toward Philadelphia.

Over the years, the city and its environs have been locations for movies either filmed here or about the area, receiving nominations and, sometimes, the coveted statuettes.

The Philadelphia Story, for which Jimmy Stewart won an Oscar, was set in this city, even if all the filming was done in Hollywood. Philadelphia's most glamorous star, Grace Kelly, won best actress for The Country Girl. This year, Eagles owners Jeffrey and Christina Lurie are the executive producers for the Oscar-nominated documentary about the recent global financial crisis, Inside Job.

But there are Philadelphia-related films on Oscar's rolls that can prompt a visit to relevant local places. It is a quirky list below, but one that could give a little boost to Oscar-watching this weekend - a sort of warm-up for the big telecast.

There was no star with greater potential in musical film just after World War II than Alfredo Cocozza, born in 1921 near Seventh and Christian Streets in South Philadelphia. He changed his name to something more mellifluous, Mario Lanza, studied voice and became an operatic tenor.

Lanza's cover-boy looks landed Hollywood roles, and eventually he played his boyhood hero in The Great Caruso, which won the Oscar for sound recording and nominations for set design and costuming. His next film, Because You're Mine, was nominated for Lanza's version of the title song.

Lanza died young, in 1959 at age 38, but folks in South Philadelphia still pay homage to him at the Mario Lanza Museum, open five days a week at 712 Montrose St., a few blocks from Lanza's birthplace, though about a mile from the mural of Lanza painted by Diane Keller, which you can visit near the corner of Broad and Reed Streets.

The museum has memorabilia from Lanza's career - from posters and fliers to costumes and regalia from his movies and stage performances.

For the complete Oscar nominee list and coverage, go online to www.philly.com/

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Among the closest connections to the 2011 Oscars is that Pennsylvania Ballet dancers are featured in Black Swan, the dark dance film nominated as best picture and its star, Natalie Portman, as best actress.

Fortuitously, the ballet performs this week in Swan Lake, the 2004 Christopher Wheeldon adaptation of Tchaikovsky's famous score. This production is set in the 19th-century Paris that Edgar Degas, known for his paintings and sculptures of dancers, would have inhabited.

The National Museum of American Jewish History is replete with singular artifacts from all walks of Jewish American life. A dramatic part of this new venue concerns the entertainment business, and it is worth a visit to get some Oscar prep.

There are 18 folks chosen for the museum's "Only in America" exhibit, and two of them are Oscared-up: Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg. Streisand donated several items from her movie Yentl, and for Spielberg, visitors can see a model for E.T., the prop typewriter from the movie Schindler's List, and the Super-8 movie camera Spielberg's parents gave to him when he was a teenager (and the one he presumably used for the four years he lived in Haddon Township, when his dad worked at RCA).

Elsewhere in the museum is Irving Berlin's piano. Berlin is among Oscar's most nominated songwriters.

All right, so three-quarters of the Earth's population has run up the "Rocky steps" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - 35 years out from the Italian Stallion's big match against Apollo Creed.

So find a different Rocky venue for this year's event. How about the Rizzo Rink, the ice-skating arena where Adrian and Rocky fell in love in their native South Philly.

They play a lot of ice hockey there, but there are still loads of public skating hours Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons and weekend evenings.

Lots of Oscar-worthy movies, from Rocky to Trading Places, have our City Hall's ornate exterior as a backdrop.

But no movie used it like Philadelphia, in the most dramatic scenes where attorney Denzel Washington pursues Tom Hanks' lawsuit in one of the austere courtrooms.

City Hall is a fascinating building - once the tallest in the world, before being surpassed by the Eiffel Tower. It is still the tallest building in the world without a steel supporting structure. Go on a tour and learn more.

A Beautiful Mind, the story of John Forbes Nash Jr., a bit fictionalized, won the Oscar for best picture in 2002, as well as those for best director (Ron Howard) and best supporting actress (Jennifer Connelly).

Nash went to Princeton, and the film lovingly shows the campus, beautiful on a late winter's day. The Holder Courtyard and the Firestone Common Room are prominent in the film. The faculty dining room in the movie is actually the common room of Rockefeller College, and some of the winter scenes were actually filmed in the early spring - so the "snow" is fake, but the Holder Courtyard is real.

Though Princeton campus tours are designed for prospective students, anyone who comes to the town can take them, and someone on nearly every tour is just a visitor, not a prospective Ivy Leaguer.