CAST AWAY Hanks(Photo: Getty Images)

Since the writers' strike killed the Golden Globes and the WGA awards, organizers for the 80th Academy Awards have been struggling to keep its kudo-fest afloat. Enter Academy board member Tom Hanks with his unique brand of folksy, white-bread diplomacy. "The show must go on," Hanks brayed cleverly at the London premier of Charlie Wilson's War. "There are a lot of people out there associated with the industry, for whom the sooner this work stoppage is over the better. I just hope that the big guys who make big decisions up high in their corporate boardrooms and whatnot get down to honest bargaining and everyone can get back to work." Check please!

While the show has never been canceled, it was postponed three times: once in 1938 due to floods, again in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed, and in 1981 after President Reagan was shot.

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