Oscars

An Oscar nominated dog: The insane story of ‘Vazak’ will blow your mind

Screenwriter Robert Twane, who wrote the original script for ‘Tarzan’, was the owner of the much-celebrated Hollywood pooch.

Sergio Murillo

Update: Feb 26th, 2025 07:11 EST

The 57th Academy Awards featured three nominations for the iconic action-adventure film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

The movie starred the likes of Christopher Lambert, Andie MacDowell and Ralph Richardson. The latter was one of the three nominees at the 1984 Oscars, along with a little-known creative called P. H. Vazak.

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Vazak was given the nod the Best Adapted Screenplay category, alongside Michael Austin. Vazak, incredibly, was a dog.

The Oscar-nominated pet was owned by Robert Towne, who wrote the first draft of the Tarzan script. It took a bizarre series of events to see Towne demand that his dog was credited as the scriptwriter, rather than himself.

Robert Towne hated the final cut of Greystoke so much, he replaced his writing credit with the name of his Hungarian sheepdog, P.H. Vazak. That dog was then nominated for an Oscar. pic.twitter.com/YfTQt0RNZC
— Nick de Semlyen (@NickdeSemlyen) August 8, 2020

Why was Vazak the dog credited for Tarzan?

Towne was a prolific screenwriter, director and producer after his career as an actor. He was a key part of the New Hollywood movement and produced the Oscar-winning screenplay for Chinatown (1974).

He had written the script to the Tarzan movie but opted to sell the rights to his creation in order to finance his own directorial debut, Personal Best. But it was a poor decision from Towne and Personal Best flopped at the box office, costing him a significant amount of money and his reputation.

Warner Bros, who had bought the rights for the Tarzan movie, decided that they no longer wanted Towne as the director for their upcoming big-budget production. Towne was unceremoniously booted from his own production, but he did at least have the opportunity to take a shot at Warner Bros.

He demanded that his own screenwriting credit be removed from the movie and, instead, given to P. H. Vazak, his dog.

Directorial duties were handed to Hugh Hudson, who had directed Chariots of Fire. Decades later he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the film and the controversy that saw a pet listed as the screenwriter for one of the 1980s’ most iconic Hollywood movies.

“Robert Towne never liked it, of course,’ Hudson explained in 2016. ‘Why would he? It was his baby to begin with, but he sold his baby, to put it that way... And when we did the film, he put the name of his dog on it.”

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Who is Jon Hamm married to? What to know about actress wife Anna Osceola - AS USA

Entertainment

Who is Jon Hamm married to? What to know about actress wife Anna Osceola

The Mad Men actpr met co-star and bride-to-be in 2015 and began dating during the pandemic. They tied the knot in Anderson Canyon, Big Sur in June 2023.

NEIL HALL

Andy Hall

Update: Apr 12th, 2025 14:06 EDT

One of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors Jon Hamm married Mad Men co-star Anna Osceola in Anderson Canyon, Big Sur back in June 2023. They walked up the aisle to Nancy Sinatra’s 1967 James Bond theme song, You Only Live Twice.

Jon Hamm marries fiancée Anna Osceola where they filmed ‘Mad Men’ finale https://t.co/nbcbDE81Ub pic.twitter.com/AZ4wgLX04m
— Page Six (@PageSix) June 25, 2023

The couple got engaged in 2021 and had been dating since 2020. Hamm had previously been in a long-term relationship with Jennifer Westfeldt - their 18-year liaison was one of the longest and steadiest among Hollywood’s glitterati before it came full circle in 2015. “With great sadness, we have decided to separate, after 18 years of love and shared history,” they explained in a joint statement to People magazine in September 2015. “We will continue to be supportive of each other in every way possible moving forward.”

Hamm and Westfeldt were more or less the same age, and according to several sources, she was almost like a mother figure to him, so it came as a surprise to some observers when he was rumoured to have started dating a woman 17 years his junior. The actor is believed to have first met Anna Osceola while they were both filming Person to Person in Season 7 of Mad Men. Anna had a cameo role as a receptionist, Clementine, in the final episode.

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Whirlwind romance

Romance blossomed during the Coronavirus pandemic when they began dating. They were photographed walking Hamm’s dog Splash in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles in late 2020. The couple were engaged in February 2023 and appeared together on the red carpet the following month at the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

For the first couple of years, Jon and Anna tried to keep their relationship private and away from the limelight so what do we know about the new bride? Anna was born on April 8, 1988 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Anna Osceola, from a large family

Her father, Fuad Phillip Alan Osceola, is fully qualified massage therapist with over 30 years of experience in his field while little is known about her mother Lisa. Curiously, the surname Osceola is of native American origin and relates to the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Anna has two elder sisters - Ariel and Alexandra and a brother Sam - who are now Jon’s new in-laws.

Like all of her siblings, Anna went into higher education after high school, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama from NYU Tisch School of the Arts on Broadway, New York City.

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Early career and acting roles

She made her screen debut playing Charlie in spoof Not Another High School Show in 2007 although the pilot never aired and the follow-up series was subsequently scrapped. Minor walk-on parts followed in a number of films, series and TV movies and gradually some recurring roles. She played US soldier Abby Sherman in Rizzoli and Isles, Robin Wylie in the ABC family series Greek and Casey Logan, a fashion model who witnesses a member of the Russian mafia kill someone in USA Network drama, In Plain Sight.

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