George Stevens Jr. Awarded With Honorary Oscar

George Stevens Jr., the man behind the Kennedy Center Honors. Photograph by Carol Ross Joynt.

Washington’s own George Stevens Jr., the founding director of the American Film Institute
and producer of
The Kennedy Center Honors, has been named to receive an honorary Oscar. The announcement was made late Wednesday
in Los Angeles by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who also plan to
honor stuntman
Hal Needham, documentary filmmaker
D.A. Pennebaker, and DreamWorks executive
Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The awards will be presented in a special program in Los Angeles in December. The
main Oscars telecast will be in February.

Coincidentally, Stevens is not the first in his family to get an Oscar. His father,
director
George Stevens, won Best Director Oscars for
A Place In the Sun and
Giant.

Last year, before the 34th annual Kennedy Center
Honors, we talked to Stevens about producing Washington’s most glamorous cultural event,
which this year happens
on December 2.