The award-worthy thank-you speeches

Laura Ziskin, producer of this year's Oscar broadcast, has repeatedly pleaded with potential winners to do away with laundry list thank-yous and give acceptance speeches that prove they are actually members of the \o7entertainment \f7industry. To aid her cause, Vance Van Petten, executive director of the Producers Guild and author of the upcoming "Ten Minutes to the Speech," offers his Four-H rule: Start from the heart, season with humor, reveal your humility and end with haste. Here's his list of the 10 best Oscar speeches ever.

Sally Field, 1985, best actress for "Places in the Heart." In just about one minute, Fields managed to thank her colleagues and family, \o7and \f7enter the vernacular with her final lines: "I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now you like me!"

John Wayne, 1970, best actor for "True Grit." Wayne was 61 when he finally won his Oscar for his portrayal of one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, a fact he acknowledged with his opening: "Wow! If I'd known that, I would have put the patch on 35 years ago." He thanked all the usual suspects but also thanked moviegoers: "To all you people who are watching on television, thank you for taking such a warm interest in our glorious industry." And he didn't even need a website to do it.

Robin Williams, 1998, best supporting actor for "Good Will Hunting." What made Williams' speech extraordinary was his trademark ability to be funny, even corny, but still endearing. "Thank you, [writers] Ben [Affleck] and Matt [Damon] -- I still want to see some ID. Thank you, [director] Gus [Van Sant] for being so subtle you're almost subliminal ... and most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who, when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, 'Wonderful. Just have a backup profession, like welding.' "

George Clooney, 2006, best supporting actor for "Syriana." Clooney, who was also nominated for best director for "Good Night, and Good Luck," managed to open with enough self-deprecating humor -- "Well, it looks like I'm not winning best director" and "from here on in, it will be Oscar winner George Clooney, Sexiest Man Alive in 1997, Batman, died in a freak accident...." -- that he was able to give a fairly political speech, answering the charge that Hollywood is out of touch. "We're the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular ... we gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters."