The Christian Science Monitor

There was a strong current of mother-love happening at last night’s Oscar ceremony:

Sunday’s awards ceremony seemed to have an informal theme of “mothers’ night” – beginning with the two young hosts’ shout out to their mother and grandmother in the audience and topped off by director Tom Hooper’s thank-you remarks, laughs pop culture pundit Robert Thompson of Syracuse University in New York. More than a few moms no doubt nudged their teenagers as they heard the director of the winning film, “The King’s Speech,” thank his mom and drop this bit of Hollywood wisdom: “Listen to your mother.” His mom is the one who discovered the script at a staged play reading and phoned her son to say, “I’ve found your next movie.”

More on the mom-praise from the Monitor’s L.A. reporter Gloria Goodale here.

Plus, we take a look at the success of the P.S. 22 chorus which beautifully wrapped up last night’s show and Monitor contributor Chuck Cohen lends his first-hand account of his trip down the red carpet.

Monitor reporter Gloria Goodale in Los Angeles takes a deeper look at the story behind Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech” and its screenwriter David Seidler.

The king’s travails are intensely personal for Mr. Seidler, who suffered from a childhood stutter himself after a wartime evacuation from England. He was keenly aware that the man who never expected to wear the British crown had labored mightily to overcome the same affliction. “The king was my hero,” he says simply, and a lifelong urge to tell the king’s story was born almost as soon as he became aware of their shared challenge. When he acquiesced to the queen’s request to delay telling her husband’s story until her passing, he did not realize just how much patience that might require – the queen mother, as she was affectionately known after her daughter became queen, died in 2002 at age 101.