Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number Four: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER FOUR: 

AN ANALYSIS

Peter O'Toole faces off against cowboys old and new on his fourth failed Best Actor Oscar nomination. He also goes up against an acting frenemy who, like him, would always be an Oscar bridesmaid but never a bride. 

The 42nd Academy Awards was a battle between the old guard and the young Turks. That battle is well exemplified with that year's five Best Actor nominees. You have the very traditional John Wayne on his second nomination for the Western True Grit. You have Richard Burton on his sixth nomination for the lavish costume picture Anne of the Thousand Days. Opposing them are two actors from horror of horrors, an X-rated film. Dustin Hoffman on his second Oscar nomination and Jon Voight on his first were both nominated for Midnight Cowboy, a tale of low rent street hustlers. 

Into the mix of tough men versus sleazy men, Peter O'Toole finds himself a bit of the odd man out. His nomination for the musical adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips is firmly with the old guard. Unlike all the other nominees, O'Toole plays a very gentle albeit rigid man. Curiously enough, an earlier adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips had won its lead the Best Actor Oscar. In 1939, a surprise upset in Best Actor was Robert Donat. He won for his performance as Mr. Chips over such legendary figures as Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind and James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Would history repeat itself thirty years after Donat's win for the same role?

Sadly, no. The Robert Donat version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips had seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture. The Peter O'Toole version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips had a mere two nominations, and the other one was not for Best Picture. The 1969 Goodbye, Mr. Chips was tied with True Grit for the same number of Oscar nominations. Compare that to the ten nominations for Anne of the Thousand Days and seven for Midnight Cowboy and a Best Actor frontrunner starts emerging.

That frontrunner is not Peter O'Toole. Oddly though, it is not John Wayne either.

Instead, the odds-on favorite seems to be Richard Burton. 

Several elements pointed to Richard Burton being the likeliest winner this year. Anne of the Thousand Days had the most Oscar nominations that year at ten total. Burton was on his sixth nomination without a win. Two actors from the same film had been nominated the same year. Two other nominees were in films that that Academy barely recognized. 

Traditionally, two actors nominated in the same category from the same film tend to cancel each other out. That means that Hoffman and Voight would put each other out of contention. Add to that, both of them were relatively young. They also were on their second and first nominations respectively. There would be time to honor them later. John Wayne and Peter O'Toole for their parts were both in films that were not as recognized as Burton's. Finally, Richard Burton was as stated on his sixth Oscar nomination without a win. He therefore had a strong "overdue" narrative. 

Having lost repeatedly, the wind was certainly to Burton's back. 

A wild card for Burton finally winning was that Anne of the Thousand Days had those ten Oscar nominations. Its closest rival was the nine-time nominated They Shoot Horses, Don't They? which was not even nominated for Best Picture. Everything looked set for Richard Burton to finally achieve what had so eluded him: a Best Actor Oscar.

And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Oscars. Anne of the Thousand Days kept losing. 

Anne of the Thousand Days was well received by the Academy. However, it was not embraced by the Academy. In category after category, Anne of the Thousand Days kept falling faster than the sword that cut off Anne Boleyn's head. Film Editing: denied. Cinematography: denied. Sound: denied. Original Score: denied. Anne of the Thousand Days even managed to lose Production Design (then known as Art Direction). One would think that a lavish costume picture with ten Oscar nominations could knock out more wins. Yet, somehow, Anne of the Thousand Days managed to win only Costume Design. Its final tally of 1-10 is shockingly low. This was a prestigious film. It was all but set up to sweep the Oscars. However, it kept losing, indicating to me that it had very little support among members.

I think a warning sign for Anne of the Thousand Days failing so spectacularly at the Oscars was that it did not receive a Best Director nomination. Of the five Best Director nominees, only two were for Best Picture nominees (John Schlesinger for Midnight Cowboy and George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). The rest were from films that were not in Best Picture contention. They were respectively Alice's Restaurant, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Z. The last one is a foreign language film that won Best Foreign Language Film (now known as Best International Feature Film). Alice's Restaurant received only one nomination (Best Director). They Shoot Horses, Don't They? may have missed out on a Best Picture nomination. However, it was seen as a pretty close competitor to Anne of the Thousand Days. 

To me, that indicates that while Anne of the Thousand Days was popular with Academy members, it had almost no support within it. Curiously, both Anne of the Thousand Days and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? would receive only one win out of their ten and nine nominations respectively. The former won for Costume Design, beating out the latter. The latter won for Best Supporting Actor, beating out the former. 

I imagine that Richard Burton saw Anne of the Thousand Days fail over and over and thought that his chances were slipping. Who then could beat him?

Now, let us look at the nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1969. They were:

Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days

Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy

Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy

John Wayne in True Grit

You had three cowboys, a king and a schoolteacher all battling it out. This would be the first of two times that Peter O'Toole would compete with Dustin Hoffman. The second would be thirteen years later. This would also be the second and final time that O'Toole and Richard Burton would be in contention for the ever-elusive Best Actor. In an odd twist, the first time was when they competed against each other for their performances in Becket. This is similar to how Hoffman and Jon Voight would be in competition for the same film. 

So, let us look at how not one but two of Oscar's most denied actors lost yet again. I still think that Richard Burton had the strongest chances. His was the most nominated film. Two of his rivals were fighting against each other. Two others were in films with fewer nominations. Therefore, how did he lose?

Sentimentality, box office and another "overdue" won over Burton's overdue narrative. 

Peter O'Toole probably knew that he had little chance of winning. He was one of two nominees not present. Dustin Hoffman was also absent. Whether it was because he was in his prickly actor phase or was not able to attend, I do not know. In retrospect, did O'Toole have a legitimate chance of winning?

I would say "No". Goodbye, Mr. Chips was not a big hit. It lost both its nominations (Lead Actor and Best Score of a Musical Picture-Original or Adaptation). In terms of chances, Peter O'Toole was an afterthought of the five nominees. The real fight was between the others. Out of those, with Hoffman and Voight pushing each other out, it comes down to the lusty Tudor king versus the one-eyed fat man. How then did Rooster Cogburn knock out Henry VIII?

Perhaps John Wayne's win should not have been as big a surprise as perhaps it might first appear. Out of the five Best Actor nominees, Midnight Cowboy was a box office hit. What else was a box office hit that year? It certainly wasn't Goodbye, Mr. Chips. However, it wasn't Anne of the Thousand Days either.

It was True Grit.  

The general public, and presumably more Academy members, were familiar with True Grit than they were with the respectable and grand Anne of the Thousand Days. It helped that John Wayne was simply more liked, respected and admired by his peers than Richard Burton. Wayne's performance as Rooster Cogburn was a slightly different take on the Wayne persona. He was still tough and rugged. However, Wayne was also lighter, even amusing. Wayne had built a long and steady career in Hollywood. He had standing among his peers separate from his political views. 

It also helped that this was John Wayne's second nomination compared to Richard Burton's sixth. Normally, the odds would be in favor of the one with the most previous nominations to win. This time though, the reverse happened. John Wayne had been nominated only once before for Best Actor for The Sands of Iwo Jima twenty years earlier (I am not counting his producing nomination for The Alamo). In that interim, John Wayne's status as a box office draw and basically an American icon had grown far greater than Richard Burton's somewhat mercurial and extravagant status. While Burton had an overdue narrative, John Wayne had the overdue narrative. This could be John Wayne's last chance to receive a competitive Oscar. 

Richard Burton was respected. John Wayne was loved. It might be better to be feared than to be loved. However, when it comes to Oscar voting, it is better to be loved than to be respected. 

O'Toole was pretty much out before it began. Hoffman and Voight fell to each other. With the last two standing, it was a combination of personal standing among his peers as well as his more successful film that I think got John Wayne the win. To be fair, John Wayne had won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama over Burton, Hoffman and Voight (O'Toole winning for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy). There was buildup for Wayne to win despite Anne of the Thousand Days having won the Best Drama Golden Globes. The Golden Globes were not the barometer then than they are now. However, that the eventual Oscar acting winners matched up in three of the four Golden Globes categories should not be dismissed.

The only one where they did not match up? Best Actress, with Anne of the Thousand Days' Genevieve Bujold winning here but losing the Oscar to fellow Golden Globe nominee Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Boy, the Academy really rejected Anne of the Thousand Days, didn't it?   

Now, how would I rank the nominees? Going from my Best to Worst:

Jon Voight

Dustin Hoffman

John Wayne

Peter O'Toole

Richard Burton

I will start by saying that all but one the performances are good. The one that I have an issue with is a slight issue. I would have been fine with any of them winning Best Actor.

It is hard to choose between the two leads in Midnight Cowboy. Giving it some thought, I opted to put Jon Voight over Dustin Hoffman. I think Voight's character of Joe Buck was the one who had the greatest evolution. I think Voight had the harder task in that Joe Buck was the harder role. Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo was a great performance. It is, I think, held in high regard. That is correct. 

I also think that of the two, Voight did not have Hoffman's physicality to aid him. Hoffman had Ratso's physical struggles to showcase his performance. Voight, conversely, had to rely on his face, his voice, his mannerism. They are both brilliant performances. However, as I think of it, it is Jon Voight's blending of vulnerable, even innocent and fake swagger that tilts it to being my preferred choice.

John Wayne was wonderful in True Grit. He blended a tough and gruff manner with an almost comic manner. It was not quite spoofing his image. I would say that he was more playing with it. He is also still remembered for it, particularly when he calls out, "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!" before riding against his adversaries. However, Wayne gave better performances in films like The Searchers. His Rooster Cogburn is a great performance. It was so good that it inspired a sequel, a rarity at the time. However, in retrospect both Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy are better remembered.    

Now, as for our perennial nominees, it is O'Toole over Burton. O'Toole was absolutely wonderful as Arthur "Chips" Chipping. I was deeply moved by his performance. O'Toole showed the growth of a man who found that love can change one. Seeing Goodbye, Mr. Chips, you think how extraordinary it is to see someone go from rigid to romantic. 

His major handicap is that his singing is, shall we say, questionable. It is more in a "talk in pitch" style than straightforward singing. Had Goodbye, Mr. Chips been a straight drama, perhaps it would have ranked higher. However, it would have lost the charm of the film. 

I had mentioned that I had one slight issue with one of the performances. That slight issue is that there were a few occasions when Richard Burton went over-the-top. For most of Anne of the Thousand Days, Burton was if not restrained at least not going crazy. Unfortunately, he did veer into grandiose theatrics from time to time. It is not a terrible performance. It would have been fine if he had won. However, the other four were better.

Jon Voight should have won Best Actor for Midnight Cowboy over John Wayne in True Grit.

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