Peter O'Toole Nomination Number Five: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE NOMINATION 

NUMBER FIVE: 

AN ANALYSIS

How was Peter O'Toole to know that his fifth Best Actor nomination would find itself embroiled in controversy? Not the actual nomination itself for his performance in The Ruling Class. Instead, he was one of the four men who lost to a winner who opted to turn Best Actor into a now famous or infamous moment of political activism on the Oscar stage. Had he won, the chances of Peter O'Toole going on about Native American rights and representation in film/television would have been thin. Still, one can imagine that his The Ruling Class character would certainly have disrupted the ceremony far worse than what ultimately happened that night.

The 45th Academy Awards finds our favorite Oscar bridesmaid facing off against three films instead of four. He also faced, once again, almost impossible odds to have any real chance in winning.

Peter O'Toole found himself facing a very lonely battle in 1972's Best Actor race. His performance in The Ruling Class was that film's sole Oscar nomination. This was the first time that O'Toole was singled out for recognition when his film was ignored for any other Oscar consideration. This would happen twice later on when both My Favorite Year and Venus were similarly not nominated for anything else except for O'Toole. 

That was already bad enough for O'Toole's chances. Making matters worse is that his other competitors were in films that had multiple Oscar nominations. The Godfather had ten nominations, tying it with Cabaret as that year's most nominated film. Sounder and Sleuth had four nominations each.  Both The Godfather and Sounder were Best Picture nominees. Those were very hard hurdles for someone with one nomination to overcome.

Add to that how Sleuth had not one but two Best Actor nominees: Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. With The Godfather, Sounder and Sleuth getting more recognition, it would have been pretty much impossible for The Ruling Class to break out to be O'Toole's first win. 

As a side note, Sleuth is one of only three films where the entire credited cast received Oscar nominations. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Give 'Em Hell, Harry! were the others. 

Despite those odds, there was still a chance, thin as it was, for O'Toole to have something of a fighting chance. Films where two actors compete in the same category rarely led to either one of them winning. More often than not, two nominated actors from the same film in the same category almost always cancel each other out. There are as of this writing 77 occasions when two actors/actresses have been nominated in the same category for the same film. Of those 77 dual nominations in all four acting categories, one actor/actress has beaten out his/her costar and fellow nominee to win an acting Oscar a mere 25 times. Peter O'Toole himself had faced off against his Becket costar Richard Burton in 1964. Both of them lost. 

As such, the likelihood that either Olivier or Caine would win was small. Prior to Sleuth's dueling nominations, one nominee beating out his costar for Best Actor had happened only twice. The first was Bing Crosby over Barry Fitzgerald for Going My Way. The second was Maximilian Schell beating his fellow Judgement at Nuremberg costar/nominee Spencer Tracy. 

Complicating matters is how Fitzgerald was nominated for both Lead and Supporting Actor the same year for Going My Way. While he ended up winning Best Supporting Actor, Fitzgerald's situation could have led to a bizarre double win for the actor. This was the first and only time that someone was nominated in both acting categories for the same performance. Fitzgerald's dual nomination for the same role in the same film was the impetus to alter Academy rules. From now on, an actor could be nominated in only one category for a particular film. An actor could be nominated in Lead and Supporting in the same year, but it had to be for different films. 

That would lead to another unforeseen effect: category fraud. There would come occasions when a leading performance would be submitted in the supporting category and vice versa. I have long argued that Peter O'Toole's sixth nomination for The Stunt Man was a supporting role. There have been arguments that Jennifer Connelly and Zoe Saldaña won Supporting Actress Oscars for leading roles. Conversely, one of O'Toole's fellow nominees this year could be considered a supporting role in a leading category.      

Marlon Brando had approximately 40 minutes of screentime in The Godfather. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Al Pacino had approximately one hour and seven minutes of screentime in The Godfather. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. As the kids say, "make it make sense". Yes, Brando was the title character in The Godfather. However, his role was significantly shorter and smaller than Pacino's was. Was Brando lead? Was Brando supporting? 

That same issue, curiously enough, affects the last Best Actor nominee. Paul Winfield was on screen for 35 minutes in Sounder which runs one hour and forty-five minutes long. That means that Winfield was off the screen for most of Sounder. The plot required him to be absent as his character was imprisoned and his son's journey was one of Sounder's main plot points. However, as with Brando, a strong case can be mounted that Winfield was a supporting and not lead performance. Curiously, few people take issue with Winfield's Best Actor nomination the way that they do with Brando's Best Actor nomination.

With all that said, let us now look at our nominees. The nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1972 were:

Marlon Brando in The Godfather

Michael Caine in Sleuth

Laurence Olivier in Sleuth

Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class

Paul Winfield in Sounder  

This was an interesting race as we had two nominees from the same film, two nominees with remarkably short screentime and one nominee who was that film's sole nomination. If one looks at this year's slate, I think it becomes clear that the winner was pretty much inevitable.

Poor Peter O'Toole was not going to win. The Ruling Class faced off against other films that had more nominations and more recognition. He was excellent as Jack Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney. He was on the screen longer than both Marlon Brando and Paul Winfield. However, The Ruling Class was not going to push The Godfather or Sounder or Sleuth out. 

Paul Winfield's major drawback was that his screentime was so limited. He did have some benefits. Sounder was a Best Picture nominee. Sleuth and The Ruling Class were not. Sleuth was competing against itself. Winfield therefore could almost count on Caine and Olivier cancelling each other out. With O'Toole having almost no chance, Paul Winfield could mount a more serious challenge to Marlon Brando. Winfield's strengths were, however, no match against two points. First is that limited screentime. Save for Marlon Brando all his other nominees were on screen longer than Winfield was. That meant that Caine, Olivier and even O'Toole left longer and stronger impressions than Winfield. 

Second was Marlon Brando's star power. Brando was mercurial. Brando was temperamental. Brando was slipping into greater and greater eccentricity. Despite all that, Marlon Brando was still a name. He was a bigger name than Paul Winfield. He was probably a bigger name than Michael Caine or Peter O'Toole. Laurence Olivier is probably the only one of the other nominees who could legitimately challenge Marlon Brando in terms of both star power and acting prowess. 

Fortunately for Marlon Brando, The Godfather was a bigger hit than Sleuth. It was also a bigger hit than both Sounder and The Ruling Class. I think more people saw The Godfather than any of the three other Best Actor nominated films. The Godfather also had more nominations than The Ruling Class, Sleuth or Sounder. It had more nominations than those three films combined: ten to nine. 

As I think of this year's Best Actor race, I think that Marlon Brando won less because of his specific performance and more because the other nominees could never mount a serious challenge to him. Caine and Olivier were pretty much evenly matched in Sleuth. That ended up knocking each other out. Winfield pretty much disappeared for most of Sounder. O'Toole was in a film with one nomination. Each of Brando's competitors faced a stumbling block that they could not overcome.

That is not to say that Marlon Brando was not worthy in terms of his performance. His Don Vito Corleone was highly praised then. The film and Brando's performance have grown in stature in the ensuing years. There are people who absolutely adore Marlon Brando in The Godfather. His performance has become iconic down to being easily recognizable and ripe for parody. Yes, it is a relatively short performance. However, Marlon Brando did leave his stamp on the role. It just looked that through a series of circumstances, and the quality of his performance, Marlon Brando was going to easily win.

How was anyone to know that Marlon Brando playing a gangster would lead to his proxy Sacheen Littlefeather talking about Native American representation when declining the Oscar on Brando's behalf? This is not the time to talk about Miss Littlefeather's role at the Oscar ceremony. Neither is this the time to talk about whether Sacheen Littlefeather really was whom she claimed to be. I will say briefly that I found her short speech eloquent given the immense pressure that she was under both from the Academy and from Brando himself. I also think that she was put in a very difficult situation and handled the whole thing with grace. Finally, I maintain that the Academy Awards are not the place for any political causes. 

The story of John Wayne allegedly attempting to rush the stage and being held back by six security people is a myth. It never happened. If you see the post-Oscar interviews, you can see Wayne clearly avoiding any discussion on what had occurred. He was not enraged, let alone violently so. He, like Littlefeather, was quite dignified and succinct. The press persisted in getting Wayne to say something, anything, about the whole kerfuffle. He cut them off gracefully. If memory serves correctly, he told them either "Talk to Brando" or "Go get Brando". It makes for a nice story: the embodiment of the Western and solid right-wing Republican furiously attempting to storm the stage against a small Native American woman. In this case, however, I think it is blending the John Wayne image with Marion Morrison the person. 

Finally, how would I rank the nominees? Here is my slate in terms of Best to Worst:

Marlon Brando

Michael Caine

Laurence Olivier

Peter O'Toole 

Paul Winfield

I should start out by saying that none of the five nominated performances are bad. I would be happy had any of them won. As I think on it, I put Brando first despite his short screentime.

He dominates the screen whenever he appears. The Don is the title character. People instantly recognize Marlon Brando in/as The Godfather. They do not do that with any of the other nominees save perhaps Paul Winfield.

As Sleuth has two leads, how to match them against each other? Thinking long and hard, I think Caine had the harder role and the better performance. Sleuth is a masterclass of acting with Caine and Olivier both giving bravura performances. It makes it hard to choose which one would edge out the other. However, one must, and I went with Caine barely beating out Olivier.

Both Caine and Olivier were neck-and-neck. That forced the last two nominees down. Peter O'Toole went all-in with The Ruling Class. I could have easily had him at second. However, O'Toole was in a very eccentric film that veered dangerously close to going over-the-top. Peter O'Toole touched that line of being too much but never went over it. As I kept thinking, I simply could not put O'Toole over either Caine or Olivier. 

It pains me to put Paul Winfield last. He was deeply moving in Sounder. Unfortunately, his limited screentime was a major issue. He was simply in too little of Sounder to be a lead. 

Marlon Brando should have won Best Actor for The Godfather over all the other nominees. His Best Actor win stands.

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