Oscar Dead Pool

Oscar prediction has become far too easy — at least around my house anyway. I just ask Mrs. James

, who hardly ever sees any of the movies and is always 100% accurate in her predictions. (Her technique: “I just pick the one that seems most obvious.”)

(My prediction for this year: Alvin and the Chipmunks in a walk.)

So the only real excitement in the Oscar-cast comes from guessing who will be the last celebrity mentioned on the Celebrity Death Roll three-quarters of the way through the show.

Here, we have three top-rank, obvious choices. Ingmar Bergman is the greatest director of all time, but Deborah Kerr is a genuine old-time movie star, and an American to boot. Will Antonioni take away some of Bergman’s heat by being another world-class foreign-film director, who died on the same day as Bergman?

Will Jane Wyman prove a spoiler to Kerr, since she was, after all, once married to Ronald Reagan? If so, what if they cancel each other out, allowing Anna Nicole Smith to squeak past?

Or will Jack Valenti wield his extraordinary influence, even from beyond the grave, and take all?

Will Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer be mentioned? Plenty of movies (mostly bad) were made from their novels. If so, which will be mentioned first? If they’re mentioned, does thatmean they have to include Ira Levin, or for that matter Sidney Sheldon?

Will Merv Griffin make the list, and what about Toms Snyder and Poston? Or will they lump Tom Poston together with Charles Nelson Reilly and Kitty Carlisle Hart in a kind of “game show trifecta” moment?

I assume that Brad Delp (singer for Boston) and Eric von Schmidt (folk singer) won’t be mentioned, but what about Luciano Pavorotti? He made a movie once.

Or will the Academy, in a bow to the younger set, include the lolrus?

As for me, my money is on Dick Wilson, who, through his indelible portrayal of a haunted grocery-store manager with a unique fetish, taught a generation of Americans about the importance of squeezable toilet paper.