On this day (March 21) in 1994, Bruce Springsteen won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Streets of Philadelphia," his contribution to the soundtrack for Jonathan Demme's acclaimed AIDS drama Philadelphia.
Springsteen won the award over fellow rock legend Neil Young, whose song "Philadelphia" was nominated in the same category from the same film.
"This is the first song I ever wrote for a motion picture, so I guess it's all downhill from here," Springsteen said while accepting the honor. "But, Neil, I gotta share this with you. You do your best work and you hope that it pulls out the best in your audience and some piece of it spills over into the real world and into people's everyday lives. And it takes the edge off fear and allows us to recognize each other through our veil of differences. I always thought that was one of the things popular art was supposed to be about, along with the merchandising and all the other stuff."
Both Springsteen and Young performed their songs during the Oscars telecast. Although the Springsteen recording featured on the soundtrack features the Boss playing all the instruments himself on the sparse track, for the Oscar performance he enlisted drummer Zack Alford, who played on his Human Touch tour instead of E Street drummer Max Weinberg, who was likely busy serving as the band leader of Conan O'Brien's late night talk show.
That night, Tom Hanks took the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia as a lawyer who's outed as an HIV-positive gay man and fired from his job. In the film, his character teams with another attorney, played by Denzel Washington, to sue for discrimination in some dramatic courtroom scenes.
"Streets of Philadelphia" also cleaned up at the Grammy Awards in 1995, winning Song of the Year, Best Rock Song, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture. It also fared well on the charts, reaching No. 9 of the Billboard Hot 100, and was also a hit in several other countries, including Norway (where it hit No. 1), Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland and Italy.
Springsteen went on to write a few more songs for films - and several of his classics have found their way into movies - yet his joking prediction was somewhat correct. He hasn't won another Oscar, though two years later he was nominated again - this time for "Dead Man Walkin'," his song from the Sean-Penn-Susan Sarandon film Dead Man Walking. More recently, "The Wrestler," his song from the 2008 Mickey Rourke film of the same name, earned him a Grammy nomination, an MTV Movie Award and a Golden Globe, but failed to get nominated for an Oscar.
