10 worst Oscars hosts of all time

Who are the 10 worst Oscars hosts in history?

The question comes up every single year: Who’s going to host the Oscars? And yes, we’re still waiting on you, Eddie Murphy. With the 89th annual Oscars ceremony just days away, we obviously know that Jimmy Kimmel will be handling the duties this year and I’m feeling confident that he’ll do a good job. Well, at least we can hope that he’ll do a good job.

Not everybody can pull off hosting the biggest awards show of the year and there have certainly been plenty of options in the last 88 years. They’ve gone old, they’ve gone young, they’ve gone with duos, trios, foursomes and even once had more than 30 official hosts at one point. But what makes a good Oscars host? Or more importantly as it pertains to this particular list, what makes a bad Oscars host? Well, that’s not the easiest question but then again, hosting the Oscars isn’t the easiest job. It was a little easier back in the old days when the ceremony wasn’t the spectacle it is today and you really only had to please the crowd you were in front of. But now, millions of people around the world tune in and you’ve got to try and please them as well.

Do you need the dance number? Can you be edgy? And if so, what percentage of people are you willing to upset? Personally, I don’t mind when they think outside the box a bit and get someone in there willing to break the norm. That’s why you won’t find Seth MacFarlane on this list. No, he wasn’t the greatest host in the world but he certainly wasn’t boring either. And seriously, if anybody was offended by him, what exactly did you think you were going to get with the creator of Family Guy as the host of the Oscars? Okay, he hasn’t exactly been asked back at this point but he kept the crowd loose and got some of the biggest stars in the world to participate alongside him so at least some of the Hollywood elite weren’t too upset. And if he were to be asked back, I’m sure he’d do an even better job than he did before. There’s a couple names on this list that bombed the first time around but did great the next time out.

You’re not going to get a winner every time. Even Bob Hope wasn’t perfect all 18 times he hosted. Johnny Carson is a legend and slipped up at least once during his five outings. Billy Crystal, who many feel is the greatest modern host, has hosted the Oscars on eight different occasions and threw a dud in there. Whoopi Goldberg has about a 50/50 record in there as well. So as I said, it’s not an easy job.

But then there are some that are just really, really, really bad. I mean, just awful. There’s no flow, there’s no connection and sometimes it just looks and feels really uncomfortable. So that’s what we’re here to celebrate today. The worst of the worst. So let’s take a look at the 10 worst Oscars hosts in history.

10. Nobody-1989

I actually might have this one at the wrong end of this list but we had to start somewhere and this seemed like the easiest call. You can actually get away with having no host. They pulled it off four times prior to the 1989 Oscars with little to no backlash but this show was absolutely terrible. The only saving grace of this show was that it was the last public appearance of Lucille Ball, who came on stage with Bob Hope to introduce a musical number, even though the “I Wanna Be An Oscar Winner” performance was atrocious. But it certainly wasn’t as bad as the opening number that saw Rob Lowe perform with an actress playing Snow White. Now, this was the year after a sex tape featuring Lowe and a 16-year-old girl had surfaced so the idea of putting him with a Disney princess might not have been the best idea from producer Allan Carr.