Hope you had a good weekend. — Dan

Homer Simpson is Not a Murderer

The Simpsons, the iconic TV show, debuted on December 17, 1989, and is still going strong today, with 781 episodes as of this writing. Along the way, the writers have made thousands of jokes, most of which you can watch today via syndicated TV, streaming services, DVD box sets, or downloadable videos. And if you watch the 12th episode of the 7th season via any of those media, you’ll see the joke below. (Don’t worry, I’ll explain.)

In the episode, titled “Team Homer,” Homer Simpson is on a bowling team with fellow Springfieldians Apu, Otto, and Moe. (If you don’t know anything about the secondary Simpsons characters, don’t worry, you don’t need to know much, if anything, for this story to make sense.) All four are good bowlers — good enough to win a local bowling league — but they don’t have the $500 needed for the league entry fee.

Homer concocts a plan. His boss, the very, very rich owner of the local nuclear power plant, Montgomery Burns, happens to be under anesthesia. Homer takes advantage of the situation and somehow gets Burns to sign a check to cover the fee. The bowling quartet makes it to the league finals, but Homer’s plan hits a snag — Mr. Burns, who is elderly and frail (and not very nice), discovers that he sponsored the bowling team and insists on taking over one of the four spots (Otto’s, in case you’re wondering). Homer realizes that his team is destined to lose the championship, and later that evening, tells his wife Marge how upset he is, saying, “We were so close to winning the championship. Now, thanks to Burns, it's never going to happen. And I spent so much time building that trophy case.” At that moment, the camera pans to Homer’s shoddily-made handcrafted shelf, which is empty except for one award: an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor awarded to Don Ameche, as seen above. Ameche won the award in 1986 for his role in Cocoon, the only time he was ever nominated for an Oscar. The joke is more about Homer having stolen an Academy Award than a commentary on Ameche’s performance.

And we know that, because originally, Homer didn’t steal Ameche’s award. You can watch Homer and Marge’s conversation about the trophy case, as it was originally aired, here — and if you pay close attention, you’ll note that the Oscar doesn’t have Ameche’s name scratched out. Rather, it reads “Dr. Haing S. Ngor,” as seen below.

Ngor was a doctor in Cambodia in the 1970s, which was a dangerous time and place for an educated man — Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime tried to purge the nation of its intellectuals. (They even persecuted people who, like Ngor, wore glasses, under the assumption that glasses-wearers were necessarily intelligent.) Ngor was imprisoned in concentration camps until 1979 when he was able to escape the country. He ultimately made his way to Los Angeles, and, despite not having any acting experience, was cast in the 1984 film The Killing Fields, a fictionalization of the Khmer Rouge regime’s rule over Cambodia. Ngor played a character who, like him, had been persecuted and imprisoned by the regime. He became only the second amateur actor to win an Academy Award. Ngor’s acting career was sporadic thereafter, with mostly small appearances and a few larger roles for made-for-TV movies.

Ngor’s relative obscurity made him a fun target for the Simpsons; Ngor’s Oscar win is notable because it makes for a good trivia question, not because of his notability as an actor. And when the original “Team Homer” episode aired on January 7, 1996, it was a pretty good, albeit tiny, joke. Unfortunately, when re-runs of the episode were set to debut a few months later, the joke changed. On February 25 of that year, in a robbery gone wrong (that some believe may have been a politically motivated attack), Ngor was murdered.

Before re-runs of the episode were set to air, the people behind The Simpsons realized that this throw-away gag could come off differently: instead of it just being an innocent joke about an unknown Academy awardee, it could imply that Homer murdered Ngor to steal his trophy. Not wanting to suggest that Homer was, secretly, an award-hungry psychopath, the producers quietly swapped out Ngor’s name. As noted above, if you watch the episode today, it will show Don Ameche’s name is scratched out, not Ngor’s. And there’s no risk of confusion as a result — Ameche died in 1993, a few years before Team Homer debuted, at the age of 85. (And to be clear, he wasn’t murdered — by Homer or anyone else.)

Support Now I Know — Visit Today’s Sponsor!

Get a Free Tumbler on Us

Get a FREE 40 oz Tumbler when you purchase a best-selling Marin in soft or comp toe. Try it on the job for 30 days, if you don't love it, send it back for a full refund.

Get your tumbler here

More About The Academy Awards

Today’s Bonus fact: Ngor, as noted above, was the second amateur actor to win an Academy Award. The first was Harold Russell, whose win was so surprising, that even the hosts of the Academy Awards were caught off-guard. Russell won the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, a movie about World War II veterans readjusting to life after the war. Russell’s role was a natural one for him — he had served in WWII but lost both hands during a training accident in North Carolina, and had been outfitted with hooks as a result. The role he played in the movie was of a soldier who similarly lost both hands during the war.

When Russell was nominated, the Academy wanted to make sure that he was recognized for his war efforts. Figuring he was unlikely, at best, to win the acting award, they gave him an honorary Oscar for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures,” according to the New York Times. When he won the competitive award as well, he not only became the first amateur to win a (non-honorary) Oscar, but as Miltary.com notes, he also became “the only actor to ever win two Academy Awards for the same role.”

From the Archives: Oscar de la Rental: How we know that Homer didn’t buy Ngor’s or Ameche’s statuette.

Support Now I Know!

Now I Know is supported by readers like you. Yes, you! Many of my readers donate a few dollars a month to help Now I Know grow and thrive. And in exchange, they get an ad-free version!

Interested in supporting Now I Know? Click here! 

And thanks! — Dan