Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number Seven: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER SEVEN: 

AN ANALYSIS

Here is the thing about Peter O'Toole's seventh Best Actor Oscar nomination. He had absolutely no chance of winning. At the most, at the very most, he had, I think, a one percent chance of winning. I think I'm being generous in giving him even that much of a chance. Separate whether his performance in My Favorite Year was good or not, O'Toole was never going to win for My Favorite Year.

The reasons are pretty simple. First, three of his four fellow Best Actor nominees were up for roles that are now seen as some of their most definitive performances. Dustin Hoffman was nominated for his cross-dressing turn in Tootsie, which is still one of his most memorable roles decades after the film's release. The Verdict is, I think, one of Paul Newman's greatest performances. In fact, many people still erroneously think that Paul Newman won Best Actor for The Verdict when he actually won for The Color of Money. The eventual winner, Ben Kingsley, is seen still as the title character in Gandhi. I think the final nominated performance, Jack Lemmon in Missing, is not as well-remembered as the other aforementioned three. More people, I would argue, remember Lemmon for Some Like it Hot or The Odd Couple than for Missing. I think Lemmon's turn in Dad is better remembered than his performance in Missing. Yet, I digress.

Second, O'Toole's competitors were in mostly dramas. Tootsie is, I would argue, a dramedy. While there are moments of humor in the film, I think Tootsie was using comedy to make important, dare I say, dramatic, points. Even if I were to say that Tootsie was a straight-up comedy, that would not have helped O'Toole. The Academy is extremely parsimonious when it comes to recognizing comedic performances. Tootsie was a comedy but one with elements of drama. My Favorite Year had no such aspirations. It was a pure romp and never pretended to be anything else. Comedic performances almost never win. My Favorite Year was not going to be the one to break the mold. 

Third and I think more importantly, O'Toole's fellow nominees were all nominated for films that were nominated for multiple Oscars. Every single one of his competitors was in a Best Picture nominee (with E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial being the final Best Picture nominee). Gandhi was the most nominated film for 1982 with eleven nominations in total. Tootsie followed close with ten nominations (though two were in the same category of Supporting Actress). The Verdict had five nominations, and Missing had four nominations. Amidst all those 30 nominations combined for his competition, comes little old Peter O'Toole for My Favorite Year. 

O'Toole was My Favorite Year's sole Academy Award nomination. 

It is pretty much impossible for anyone to win an Oscar if it is that film's sole nomination. It is not completely impossible, but it is extremely difficult. For anyone to win an Oscar on that film's sole nomination, particularly in the acting category, other factors are needed to get the win. Take Julianne Moore's win for Still Alice. Moore was that film's sole nomination but her fifth career nomination overall. I think there was an "overdue" narrative for Moore that got her the win. She is a well-respected, well-regarded and well-liked actress who had lost four times before. Still Alice was, to my mind, a de facto Lifetime Achievement Oscar. The Academy could pat itself on the back, tell itself it had done right by Moore, and then move on.

I should note that as of this writing, Julianne Moore has yet to receive another Oscar nomination. 

The best or worst recent example is Glenn Close's nomination for The Wife. This was Close's seventh nomination. She was predicted to win easily, basically in a landslide, for The Wife. Unfortunately, people let sentiment blind them. The Wife received one nomination, that being Close's Best Actress nod. Her competition had multiple Oscar nominations: ten for both Roma and the eventual Best Actress winner The Favourite, eight for A Star is Born and three for Can You Ever Forgive Me? This meant that, despite the "inevitable win" narrative for Close, more people were looking at the other films than looking at The Wife. Moreover, the "inevitable win" narrative, I've long argued, doomed Close's chances. So many voters, convinced that Close was going to win anyway, opted to vote for other candidates. That in turn led to Close actually losing precisely because basically no one was voting for her owing to the idea that everyone was voting for her. 

Such was not the case for Peter O'Toole. There was no "overdue" narrative for O'Toole despite this being his seventh nomination. There was no groundswell of support for him or for My Favorite Year. That support instead was going to Paul Newman. Newman was, coincidentally, on his seventh overall career nomination: six for acting and one for producing Rachel, Rachel. He was an extremely popular and beloved member of the industry. The Verdict was a critical and commercial hit. If anyone was going to ride the "overdue" narrative to an Oscar win, it was going to be Paul Newman, not Peter O'Toole. It was to where, years later, Ben Kingsley said that just before the winner was announced, he turned to his then-wife and said, "Ready to stand up for Paul Newman?". 

As such, one can see why Peter O'Toole was never going to win for My Favorite Year. The bigger question is why and how Paul Newman lost. That is for another time. However, let us look at the nominated performances and see how and where Peter O'Toole would rank. 

First, the Best Actor nominees of 1982 in alphabetical order. The nominees were:

Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie

Ben Kingsley in Gandhi

Jack Lemmon in Missing

Paul Newman in The Verdict

Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year

It is a sign of how even Peter O'Toole knew that he had no chance of winning that O'Toole was the sole Best Actor nominee to not appear at the ceremony. Now, could there have been a way for Peter O'Toole to somehow defy the odds and pull one of the greatest upsets in Oscar history?

Absolutely not. The battle between two nominees was simply too strong for O'Toole to overcome. Why not three or four? I think that Dustin Hoffman had pretty much very little chance of winning Best Actor. Tootsie is one of his most remembered roles. The film was a financial and critical hit. It received ten Oscar nominations, the second highest number that year.

It ultimately won exactly one, for Jessica Lange in Supporting Actress. That suggests to me that despite the great love Tootsie had among audiences and Academy members, there was little support for it. Tootsie was a successful and popular comedy. Gandhi was "an important film". I suspect that Academy members may have felt that Tootsie was not "serious enough" to merit Oscar recognition. It also may have thought that it got enough of a reward financially, so it didn't need more with Oscar wins.

Lange's win was, I think, not a consolation prize for Tootsie itself. It was a consolation prize for Jessica Lange. Lange was nominated in both Supporting and Lead Actress for Tootsie and Frances respectively. I think that unlike Best Actor, the Best Actress race was pretty much a given for Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. I do not know if any of Streep's fellow nominees: Missing's Sissy Spacek, Debra Winger's An Officer and a Gentleman or Julie Andrews' Victor/Victoria would have mounted a serious threat to Streep. One thing was certain: Jessica Lange wasn't winning Best Actress for Frances. Therefore, here was a chance to kill two birds with one stone. You could reward Lange for losing Best Actress while throwing Tootsie a bone. 

O'Toole and Hoffman lost because My Favorite Year and Tootsie were comedies. Interestingly enough, both expressed similar views in a roundabout way. As swashbuckling movie star Alan Swann says in My Favorite Year, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard". Reflecting years later on Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman once started crying, commenting that he did not see it as a comedy. "Comedy is a serious business", he said. 

Why then do I dismiss Jack Lemmon's chances to win? He was a two-time Oscar winner on his eighth nomination for Missing. His performance in the film is a strong piece of dramatic acting. Lemmon sometimes deliberately underplays scenes. He does not go for big moments. Instead, some of the most effective work he does in Missing is when he is quiet and still. However, as stated, he was already a two-time Oscar winner on his eighth nomination. Why reward him with a third when you had three other men who were not even on their first win?

So, the Best Actor race was down to two men: Paul Newman and Ben Kingsley. Almost all indicators suggested that Paul Newman was going to, at long last, win his very first Oscar. This was, as mentioned, his sixth acting nomination without a win. The Verdict was a hit film. Newman's performance is an acting masterclass. The Verdict is considered one of if not Newman's finest hour.

Many people might have focused on the number "six" as in acting Oscar nominations for Paul Newman. They might have even focused on "seven" if they remembered his Best Picture nomination. They should have focused on two other set of numbers. 

11-5 and 8-0. 

Those are the respective number of nominations and wins for Gandhi and The Verdict respectively.

Gandhi had double the nominations of The Verdict. Gandhi was sweeping the awards while The Verdict was going empty-handed. Gandhi and The Verdict faced off in three categories: Picture, Director and Actor. Gandhi won each one. It also won Best Original Screenplay while The Verdict lost Best Adapted Screenplay. Gandhi was, as stated previously, seen as an "important film". The Verdict was seen as "a very good film". Importance trumped good. 

Sentiment and "overdue" was no match for the Gandhi juggernaut. Paul Newman got crushed by the sheer massiveness of Gandhi. I think there was a slight version of the "Glenn Close Effect". Perhaps voters expected Newman to win, so they could switch over to someone else. I do not think, though, that such a thing was big enough to get Kingsley in and Newman out. There was no big rally for Kingsley's performance. I think many voters were just checking off the Gandhi box no matter what category.

In retrospect, some of Gandhi's win in some technical categories seems downright baffling. Gandhi won Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. I do not think people these forty-plus years later are still talking about Gandhi's Art Direction. I'm not even sure that they were talking about Gandhi's Art Direction then. 

Gandhi's only losses were in Original Score, Sound and Makeup. The first two went to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, a film whose music is still recognized. The third went to Quest for Fire. Granted, it might not be well-remembered now. However, Quest for Fire is a film about early cavemen. It was also one of only two Best Makeup nominees, meaning it had only Gandhi to compete with. Fantasy makeup tends to win over historical epic makeup. Case in point: Men in Black winning Best Makeup over Titanic.

Ultimately, Peter O'Toole was never going to win on his seventh Best Actor nomination for My Favorite Year. Paul Newman losing was also not a surprise given Gandhi's dominance. Sadly, Peter O'Toole would go once again unrewarded, though at least here it makes sense on how it happened.

And now, my Ranking of the Five Nominees:

Paul Newman

Ben Kingsley

Peter O'Toole

Jack Lemmon

Dustin Hoffman

Personally, I think each of the nominated performances are excellent. I do not have an issue with any of the nominations. I would not be upset if any of them had ended up winning. I wavered quite a bit between Kingsley and O'Toole for second place. My heart is with O'Toole's wonderfully hilarious turn as Alan Swann, this crazed thespian who utters one of the greatest lines in film, "I'm not an actor, I'm a MOVIE STAR!". However, whatever one may think of Gandhi's Oscar-winning screenplay (another odd win in my opinion), people do still remember Ben Kingsley's performance as the Mahatma. It is a fine performance on a technical level. I cannot say that Kingsley was a bad win.

I can and do say that Paul Newman gave the performance of the year in The Verdict. It was raw, heartbreaking and heart-rousing. His evolution from deeply self-loathing and drunken to slowly, steadily recovering his humanity is an astonishing turn. I think in any other year, Paul Newman would have won easily. Sadly, the Indian lawyer taking the Raj down also took down the redeemed lawyer.

Jack Lemmon gets knocked down because I think most people do not remember Missing or his performance in it. More people remember Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie than they do Lemmon in Missing. So why then do I have Hoffman last? I think it has to do with the fact that in some ways, Dustin Hoffman was playing a version of his public persona as a Method actor who can also be a demanding diva. 

Why do I have Peter O'Toole smack dab in the middle? I think it is because "comedy is hard". O'Toole does have a couple of nice, quiet, dramatic moments amidst the hilarity and hijinks. On a technical level, I think Peter O'Toole's performance is solid. However, both Kingsley and especially Newman edge him out.

Paul Newman should have won Best Actor for The Verdict over Ben Kingsley for Gandhi. 

In conclusion, the Academy made the right choice in not awarding Peter O'Toole the Best Actor Oscar for his seventh Oscar nomination.