Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number One: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER ONE: AN ANALYSIS

There would be time enough to reward Peter O'Toole in the future. 

Perhaps that is a reason why O'Toole lost the Best Actor Oscar on his first nomination. How were people in 1962 supposed to know that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science would nominate O'Toole seven more times without ever awarding him a competitive Oscar?

The 35th Academy Awards showed a lot of lust in the dust in its slate of nominees. The grand biographical epic Lawrence of Arabia led the nominations tally with ten. Hot on its heels was the relatively small-scale drama To Kill a Mockingbird, which had eight. Curiously, these two films faced off in only five categories. At the time, certain categories were split between black-and-white and color films. Therefore, Lawrence of Arabia and To Kill a Mockingbird could both be nominated for Art Direction and Cinematography (and both win the former) with no difficulty. In the five categories where they did compete against each other, the overall tally was evenly split between them. Lawrence of Arabia won in three of those five categories: Picture, Director and Score. To Kill a Mockingbird won in the other two categories: Adapted Screenplay and Actor. 

The other Best Picture nominees were also nominated in multiple categories. Mutiny on the Bounty, The Music Man and The Longest Day received seven, six and five overall nominations respectively. In a surprising turn, these other nominees did not face off against Lawrence of Arabia and/or To Kill a Mockingbird often. It is a hodgepodge of categories where only in Film Editing did four of the five Best Picture nominees compete against each other. To Kill a Mockingbird failed to be nominated for its film editing, with The Manchurian Candidate taking that fifth slot that year. Lawrence of Arabia won that category, one of its seven overall wins.

That black-and-white/color split caused part of that failure to have the Best Picture nominees square off as often. The Longest Day and To Kill a Mockingbird were the black-and-white films that faced off in Cinematography and Art Direction. The former won the first category, the latter the second. The three Best Picture nominees in color competed against each other in Color Art Direction (Lawrence of Arabia, The Music Man and Mutiny on the Bounty) and Color Cinematography (Lawrence of Arabia and Mutiny on the Bounty). Lawrence of Arabia won those. When there was no black-and-white/color split, it was Lawrence of Arabia winning Best Sound over The Music Man and in Original Score over both Mutiny on the Bounty and To Kill a Mockingbird. The Music Man, as an adaptation of a Broadway musical, was in a separate category of Musical Adaptation, which it won.

Overall, the Best Picture race was a battle between T.E. Lawrence and Atticus Finch. The Longest Day, The Music Man and Mutiny on the Bounty had little to no chance of winning here. Those five, six and seven nominations were not in Best Director. The remaining three Best Director slots were filled by Divorce Italian Style's Pietro Germi, The Miracle Worker's Arthur Penn and in something of a surprise, Frank Perry's David and Lisa. The man who later brought the tawdry Mommie Dearest to life can claim to have been nominated for Best and Worst Director. 

The five Best Picture nominees were hit films, up to a point. The Longest Day, Lawrence of Arabia and The Music Man were the top three films respectively. Mutiny on the Bounty was fifth and To Kill a Mockingbird was sixth. There is a bit of a caveat in that Mutiny on the Bounty did not recoup its budget. Therefore, despite having a big box office, the film was a flop. It was also a flop at the Oscars, losing all seven of its nominations. 

Further evidence that no other film other than Lawrence of Arabia and To Kill a Mockingbird had a major chance to win comes from the acting nominations. Out of the twenty acting nominees that year, not one came from The Longest Day, The Music Man or Mutiny on the Bounty. Only Lawrence of Arabia and To Kill a Mockingbird were nominated in the acting categories. Both received two acting nominations each. Lawrence of Arabia famously had no female roles, so it was not in Lead or Supporting Actress. Its nominations were in Lead for Peter O'Toole and Supporting for Omar Sharif. To Kill a Mockingbird had its nominations in Lead for Gregory Peck and Supporting Actress for Mary Badham. 

It would be here in Best Actor where the young Turk and the old veteran would fight it out. Now, let us look at the competition.

The nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1962 were:

Burt Lancaster for Birdman of Alcatraz

Jack Lemmon for Days of Wine and Roses

Marcello Mastroianni for Divorce Italian Style

Peter O'Toole for Lawrence of Arabia

Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

Two of this year's Best Actor nominees were already Oscar winners. Jack Lemmon had won on his first nomination: Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts. All of his future nominations were in the Leading Actor category. This nomination for Days of Wine and Roses was his fourth out of an eventual eight, with a second Oscar forthcoming. Burt Lancaster had won Best Actor on his second nomination for Elmer Gantry. This nomination for Birdman of Alcatraz would be his third out of an eventual four overall, all for Lead Actor. 

Two of this year's Best Actor nominees received their first nominations; those would be both Peter O'Toole and Marcello Mastroianni. The latter made Oscar history with his nomination for Divorce Italian Style. It was the first time that an actor was nominated for a leading performance in a non-English language film. He would receive two more Leading Actor Oscar nominations for A Special Day and Dark Eyes. Mastroianni would earn a place in Oscar history as one of the few people nominated multiple times for acting Oscars in a language other than English. For his part, Peter O'Toole would receive a career total of eight Oscar nominations, all for Lead Actor, and would go on to lose all eight.

Our fifth nominee, Gregory Peck, was the sole actor with previous nominations and no wins. His nomination for To Kill a Mockingbird was his fifth nomination. He had been nominated for three years straight from 1945 to 1947, with a fourth nomination in 1949. 1948 must have been a quiet year for Peck. It had been thirteen years since that nomination for Twelve O'Clock High. 

Two past winners. Two first-time nominees, one in a foreign language film. A beloved veteran who had yet to win an Oscar. Looking at it now, one wonders why they even bothered to hold a ceremony given that Gregory Peck was almost certain to win separate from how good or bad his performance was. 

Peter O'Toole was not completely out of the running. Lawrence of Arabia had the most nominations: ten versus To Kill a Mockingbird's eight. It was the bigger hit. He and he alone was Peck's greatest threat. However, had O'Toole won, it would have felt a bit like an upset win. Peck had lost four times before. He was adored by filmgoers and his fellow actors. Atticus Finch seemed tailor-made for Gregory Peck. It was almost as if he were playing himself.

Gregory Peck had all the cards to win this year. As stated, he was the only returning nominee. He was totally beloved by the Academy membership and Hollywood community overall. Lawrence of Arabia was pretty much set to dominate the Academy Awards. To Kill a Mockingbird could not mount a threat for all of its other battles with Lawrence of Arabia. That film was too big, too powerful, to have another be a strong rival; no other Best Picture nominated film was not going to be a serious threat. 

Curiously enough, that dominance was reversed in Best Actor between To Kill a Mockingbird and Lawrence of Arabia. It was Peck who was essentially too strong to have anyone else overtake him. O'Toole was Peck's greatest threat. He, however, was not going to get past Peck's wild card: those previous nominations. Giving Peck the Oscar would be a way to reward Peck on a personal level while throwing To Kill a Mockingbird a bone.

The battle was always going to be between Gregory Peck and Peter O'Toole. The other three had little to no chance. Lancaster and Lemmon were already Oscar winners. That, along with how neither Birdman of Alcatraz nor Days of Wine and Roses were as big as either To Kill a Mockingbird or Lawrence of Arabia pretty much killed their chances. Mastroianni was in a foreign language film. Sophia Loren, who presented Best Actor that year, had been the first person to win an acting Oscar for a foreign language performance in Two Women. I think her win was a combination of Loren's star power and a relatively weak competition. We were not going to see a repeat for Lead Actor here. Peck and O'Toole were too strong to have Mastroianni sweep in.

Most people that year may have focused on Lead Actress to see if Bette Davis could win her third Oscar. That bit of potential history, coupled with the juicy story of the longstanding feud between Davis and her non-nominated What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? costar Joan Crawford might have distracted some. When it came to Best Actor, there was hardly any suspense. 

It was a combination of personal affection and an overdue narrative that got Gregory Peck the win. In a most curious way, Peter O'Toole's first nomination out of a future eight losses would go unrewarded because someone else was considered overdue.

Here, now, is my ranking from Best to Worst:

Peter O'Toole

Gregory Peck

Marcello Mastroianni

Burt Lancaster

Jack Lemmon

Peter O'Toole burst onto the world's stage as T.E. Lawrence. His performance was complex, befitting this most enigmatic of men. He showed Lawrence as brash, arrogant, who then became almost drunk with his own publicity only to become disillusioned, haunted and tortured. The arrogance of youth was blended with ancient wisdom in his performance. This was a man who came to Arabia utterly convinced that he knew more than the generals, because he did. He evolved into a man whose loyalty became divided both politically and internally.

At one point in the film, Lawrence has reached the Suez Canal. As someone calls out "Who are you?" to him, we see Peter O'Toole's admittedly beautiful blue eyes. This is a now-haunted man, who cannot answer that question because he simply does not know. The double meaning of the question is clear. It is both a literal question and a metaphorical one. 

Technically, Lawrence of Arabia was not Peter O'Toole's film debut. It was, however, a thunderous debut for audiences. It is a towering performance which for me has grown in stature. 

Here is where I get into the "unpopular opinion" section when it comes to Gregory Peck's win. His performance in To Kill a Mockingbird is held in such lofty terms as to be downright deified. So many lawyers will almost certainly tell you that Atticus Finch/Gregory Peck inspired them to become lawyers. Atticus Finch was voted the Greatest Screen Hero by the American Film Institute. He is nobility itself. He is the embodiment of moral courage. He is practically perfect in every way. 

Curiously, Lawrence of Arabia's T.E. Lawrence was ranked at Number 10 on the AFI Heroes and Villains List, the highest listing for a historical figure.

I think that it is a very good performance. Having revisited To Kill a Mockingbird after so many years, I think there are issues. Nowadays, Peck's Atticus Finch can be seen as a "white savior". Here is Atticus Finch, all nobility, all moral rectitude, strutting about telling the rural jurors to "do their duty" and do right by "the great levelers" of the court system. Finch's closing statement, to my mind, comes across as rather grand to pompous, especially in its delivery. This is not to say that what he was saying was wrong. It is, rather, to say that Atticus Finch was addressing the wrong audience. 

The jurors in the Tom Robinson trial were rural white men. I figure most were not well-educated, certainly not to Finch's level. Yet, here is Atticus Finch, not speaking to them but almost speaking at them, lecturing them about doing their duty. He did not seem to want to win them over into doing the near-impossible. He seemed to be scolding them for not overcoming decades of prejudice because he, Atticus Finch, said so.

To be fair, the "white savior" trope could be thrown at T.E. Lawrence. Here was this brash British officer trying to liberate the Arab peoples and unite them under one banner. I would argue that Lawrence is different than Finch because Lawrence was a real person. Moreover, it was his efforts to meddle in Arab affairs that were not shown in Lawrence of Arabia in the best light. That did not happen in To Kill a Mockingbird. Far from it. Atticus Finch is nobility itself because he is that white savior, not despite him being a white savior. Yet, I digress. 

There is also whether Gregory Peck acted or played himself. Peter O'Toole was wrong for the role of T.E. Lawrence on many levels. O'Toole was about a half foot taller than the real Lawrence. He also was a gregarious Irishman versus the more retiring British officer. Gregory Peck, conversely, was pretty much the same as Atticus Finch off and on screen. 

Again, this is not to say that I think Gregory Peck gave a bad performance. His scenes with the children were a standout for him in terms of acting. He was gentle and loving but firm in his own way. Overall, though, I still think that Atticus Finch is closer to how Gregory Peck was than when he played Josef Mengele or Douglas MacArthur.

Finally, when it comes to Peck, we cannot dismiss the "overdue" narrative. To Kill a Mockingbird was his fifth nomination. It was also his last nomination. The Academy may have felt that, now that they awarded Peck the Oscar, they had done right by him. To be fair, they were not going to nominate him for something like Old Gringo. Still, no one questions why Gregory Peck never received another acting Oscar nomination (he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award four years later).

Now, as regards the other nominees, I put Marcello Mastroianni third because he, like O'Toole and Peck, gave an actual performance. His sleazy Count had something of an exaggerated manner. However, Divorce Italian Style was a farce. I think that Mastroianni played the part correctly. With the forlorn face and slightly droopy shoulders, Mastroianni made the character a deliberately ridiculous figure. We were meant to laugh at him and see him as a bit of a cartoon. He was comically sinister.

Lancaster's great flaw in Birdman of Alcatraz was that he made his character one-note. Lancaster's Robert Stroud was always righteously angry. Sometimes, I thought that Lancaster was literally posing while delivering his lines as if he were playing a statue come to life. Lancaster's square jaw and tight face always said, "I AM NOBLE". Gregory Peck at least had gentle moments with children. Burt Lancaster just had his birds.

It is curious that Jack Lemmon keeps popping up during this Peter O'Toole Retrospective. This is the first of an eventual three times that Lemmon and O'Toole would face off against each other. They would not face off against each other until 1980 on O'Toole's sixth nomination and Lemmon's seventh. They would duel again two years later on what would be Lemmon's final Oscar nomination. Both would lose those three times.

I have seen five of Jack Lemmon's eight nominations. I have yet to see the two films that won him the Oscar: Mister Roberts and Save the Tiger. It is unfortunate that each time that Lemmon and O'Toole face off, the former always lands at or near the bottom. Lemmon's nomination for Tribute was probably his worst. His nomination for Days of Wine and Roses, to my mind, is not far behind.

Having seen Days of Wine and Roses twice, I still am astonished at its lofty reputation. It is constantly sold to me as this gripping portrait of the destructive nature of alcoholism. I see it as the alcoholic version of Reefer Madness. One drop of booze, apparently, can turn a teetotaler into a sex-crazed harpy with vaguely incestuous designs. 

My puzzlement over Days of Wine and Roses' lofty reputation extends to Jack Lemmon. This nomination, his fourth, was for a supposed straight drama. His previous nominations for Mister Roberts and Some Like It Hot were for comedies. The Apartment, I would argue, qualifies as a dramedy. Days of Wine and Roses was, I figure, meant to showcase Jack Lemmon as a dramatic, serious actor. 

If so, why was I laughing watching him throughout the film? I think it has to do with how apparently Lemmon and film director Blake Edwards approached the film. Lemmon had vetoed the original teleplay's director, John Frankenheimer, from directing the film version. According to Frankenheimer, Lemmon nixed him as the film version's director because Lemmon said that Frankenheimer "couldn't direct comedy". Reflecting decades later, Frankenheimer still seemed astonished at Lemmon's reasoning. "I never saw it as a comedy", Frankenheimer said.

The end results show that apparently Jack Lemmon and Blake Edwards saw Days of Wine and Roses as a comedy. There was a lot of mugging and slapstick early on in the film. Lemmon, for example, had a bouquet of flowers but was unaware that the elevator had cut the flowers off the stems. His "striptease" while revealing a bottle of booze was deliberately silly and exaggerated. Worse is what I am constantly told is his big dramatic scene. Lemmon's character had hidden a bottle in his father-in-law's greenhouse with an elaborate system: fifth row, third table, fourth pot. Lemmon is supposed to evoke shock and tears as he becomes more desperate in his efforts to find that bottle of alcohol, smashing the greenhouse due to his inability to find it and/or accurately recall his own code.

In the original teleplay, Cliff Robertson made the scene one of desperation, even terror. In the film version, Jack Lemmon made the scene one of unintended comedy. Ranting and raving like a crazed lunatic, this is some of the wildest overacting that I have seen. I wasn't shocked. I wasn't astounded. I Whatever Robertson's flaws as an actor might have been, he was nowhere near as over-the-top as Jack Lemmon was when he did the same scene. I think Jack Lemmon's nomination for Days of Wine and Roses is terrible and should not have happened. I think The Music Man's Robert Preston, Sweet Bird of Youth's Paul Newman or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance's John Wayne would all have been better choices.

In an ironic twist, Cliff Robertson would go on to beat Peter O'Toole for the Best Actor Oscar. 

Peter O'Toole should have won Best Actor for Lawrence of Arabia over Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird.

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

Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number Two: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER TWO: AN ANALYSIS

It is a curious thing that Peter O'Toole's second Oscar nomination would feature not one, not two, but three great actors who would never win an Oscar. O'Toole would also face off against his costar for the prize neither ultimately ever won. 

The 37th Academy Awards were in great tune as two musicals dominated the nominations. The original musical Mary Poppins was the frontrunner at 13 Oscar nominations, one shy of the all-time record. Its closest rival was the film version of My Fair Lady at 12 nominations. That year, another film had 12 nominations. That other film was the historical epic Becket. 

Not one but two of those 12 nominations belong to our perennial Oscar bridesmaids. As stated, this was Peter O'Toole's second nomination for Best Actor. This was Richard Burton's third overall Oscar nomination. Like O'Toole, Becket was the second nomination for Burton in Best Actor. Unlike O'Toole, Burton's first nomination had been as Supporting Actor for My Cousin Rachel. 

Out of the three other nominated men, only one was a previous winner. Anthony Quinn had won twice in the Supporting Actor category for Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life. His nomination for Zorba the Greek was his first in the Leading Actor category. 

The others were still on the hunt for their first competitive win. My Fair Lady's Rex Harrison, like O'Toole, was on his second nomination. He had been nominated the year before for Cleopatra. Peter Sellers, the final nominee, is a curious case. This is technically his second Oscar nomination but his first acting nomination. Sellers had a previous nomination for Best Live-Action Short Film for The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film.

In terms of this Best Actor race, Peter O'Toole faced good though not great odds to win on his second nomination. There were some hurdles. All of his fellow Best Actor nominees were in Best Picture contenders. Therefore, the competition was strong overall. There was nothing, however, that could break O'Toole out from the pack.

The biggest hurdle this time around was Richard Burton. It is almost always the case that when two actors from the same film are nominated in the same category, they cancel each other out. That is not always the case. The Godfather Part II had three actors nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg). Despite having three performances from the same film, De Niro won over his costars. More recently, both Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu were nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Curtis managed to beat out her costar. Those however are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Up to this point, only once had someone won Best Actor over his costar/fellow Best Actor nominee. That had happened three years earlier to this year when Maximillian Schell beat his Judgement at Nuremberg costar Spencer Tracy. The other four times when two or even three actors from the same film had been nominated, they all lost. 

Technically, Bing Crosby managed to beat his fellow Going My Way Best Actor nominee Barry Fitzgerald the second time that costars faced off against each other in this category. However, Fitzgerald had been nominated in both Lead and Supporting Actor for the same role in the same film. Making things more bizarre, Fitzgerald won Best Supporting Actor for Going My Way. As such, he both won and lost for playing the same role in the same movie! There could have been a curious situation where Barry Fitzgerald could have won two Oscars for the same role in the same film. 

In short, history was very much against Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton winning Best Actor for Becket. O'Toole and Burton's chances to win this time were hampered by having to compete with his Becket costar. O'Toole also faced surprisingly strong competition from the other nominees. No one was a frontrunner nor completely out of the running. It would be a fight to the finish to see who would walk off with the Oscar.

And now, let us look at the five men vying for this prize. The nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1964 were:

Richard Burton in Becket

Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady

Peter O'Toole in Becket

Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek

Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove 

O'Toole's first turn as the mischievous monarch Henry II was no match for the elocution professor. He would have no luck the second time he was nominated as this lusty Plantagenet king.

As stated, it is more than probable that Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton knocked each other out of contention. This would happen five years later to two of his rivals when Midnight Cowboy's Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight both lost Best Actor to John Wayne in True Grit. 

That would leave three men in contention: Rex Harrison, Anthony Quinn and Peter Sellers. How did Harrison end up triumphing over everyone?

I think we can put that down to two numbers. Twelve and eight. 

Zorba the Greek had seven nominations. Dr. Strangelove had four. My Fair Lady had twelve. Zorba the Greek won three Oscars: Best Supporting Actress, Best Black-and-White Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Dr. Strangelove won none. Curiously, My Fair Lady also won Cinematography and Art Direction but in the Color category when the Academy split them into two separate categories. One wonders which would have won had Cinematography and Art Direction been combined.

My guess is that Zorba the Greek would have received only Best Supporting Actress, curiously enough beating out My Fair Lady. Interestingly enough, Becket won only one of its twelve nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. More interestingly, Becket's sole Oscar win came by beating Dr. Strangelove, My Fair Lady and Zorba the Greek.

This 1-12 record, one of the lowest in Oscar history, is important to see how Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton lost while Rex Harrison won. Becket was highly appreciated. However, it was almost totally rejected. Prestige could not beat out popular. 

Out of the ten categories where they were in direct competition, My Fair Lady cleaned out Becket's clock, beating it in seven out of those ten. As stated, Becket won over My Fair Lady in only Adapted Screenplay (Becket's sole Oscar win). In the remaining two categories, both Becket and My Fair Lady lost to another film. One was when Topkapi's Peter Ustinov won Best Supporting Actor over Becket's John Gielgud and My Fair Lady's Stanley Holloway. The other was Film Editing, where Mary Poppins triumphed over them.

Becket, and to a lesser extent Mary Poppins, were swamped by My Fair Lady. Mary Poppins had the most overall nominations at 13. It did walk away with a respectable five. However, My Fair Lady had a better record: eight out of twelve. With My Fair Lady dominating so much, Rex Harrison's win seems all but certain. However, while the dual nominations knocked Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton out, what about the other two nominees?

Anthony Quinn already had two Oscars. Would they give him a third? At that time, it would have been almost impossible to have one actor winning three Oscars. I think Walter Brennan had been the only one to do so, all for Supporting Actor. The rarity of having one actor take three Oscars knocks Quinn out. What then about Sellers? Dr. Strangelove was less popular with Academy members. It had a mere four nominations. It was not well-supported by Columbia Studios, certainly less so than Warner Brothers supported My Fair Lady. The latter was a prestige production, opulent, the film version of a wildly popular Broadway hit. The former was a Cold War comedy about the end of the world.

Seller gave a bravura performance. Unfortunately, he did not have Lerner & Lowe songs to talk in pitch to. The mad scientist, egghead President and stiff upper lipped British officer were also no match for the elocution professor.

And now, for my ranking from Best to Worst:

Peter Sellers

Richard Burton

Peter O'Toole

Anthony Quinn

Rex Harrison

Will Rex Harrison rank among my worst Best Actor Winners whenever I opt to do that retrospective? He's teetering on the edge of being on that list. I figure that people do remember Harrison's recreation of his Broadway performance. However, I think more people remember Sellers' triple turn in Dr. Strangelove.

Peter Sellers did not falter in any of his three performances in Dr. Strangelove. Each of them was true to the character. I figure that perhaps Sellers' final scene where the mad scientist really goes all out in the cray-cray might have put some Academy voters off. However, I think that Dr. Strangelove himself was supposed to be so insane. That scene, that performance, has become iconic. One need only say, "MEIN FUHRER, I CAN WALK!" and know you what you mean. I do not think that the same can be said about Rex Harrison's poor, fussy, misogynist Professor Higgins.

I put Richard Burton second because I found the transformation of St. Thomas Becket to be well-acted and quite moving. Burton's character was something of a libertine who had a religious conversion. Burton was not grandiose or over-the-top. Instead, he was remarkably quiet and still for almost all of the film. I will concede that his death scene was slightly over-the-top. However, it is a minor detail to the overall performance. 

He edged out Peter O'Toole, who was brilliant in the role. His Henry II was conflicted, sometimes crazed, even contradictory. This was a man unapologetic about the delights of power. He also was someone who genuinely loved Thomas Becket until he stopped being his drinking buddy and started being a moral adversary. In his rages both for and against Becket, Peter O'Toole showed himself a powerful but flawed figure.

Putting Anthony Quinn low does not mean that I thought he did not merit the nomination. I would have been fine if Quinn had won that third Oscar as the lusty Hellenist. Zorba is now one of Anthony Quinn's most iconic roles. It is more impressive when you think that the embodiment of Greek exuberance was in real life of Mexican and Irish ancestry. 

Now, we come to Rex Harrison. His performance as the pompous, arrogant Professor Henry Higgins was...fine. It is not terrible. It is correct. It is exactly what the role was supposed to be. However, is it really the best out of the five? I figure that it is probable that most people remember Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady than they do either Peter O'Toole or Richard Burton in Becket. I do not think, however, that being remembered makes one better. Moreover, I think more people do remember Peter Sellers and Anthony Quinn in Dr. Strangelove and Zorba the Greek respectively than they do Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. 

I do not think that Rex Harrison was terrible or that his win was a travesty. I just think that all four of his fellow nominees that year were better. 

Peter Sellers should have won Best Actor for Dr. Strangelove over Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady.

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

Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number Three: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER THREE: 

AN ANALYSIS

This one hurts.

The 41st Academy Awards were looking back with their various selections in both Best Picture and Best Actor. The five nominated films for Best Picture were two musicals, a historical film, a Shakespearean adaptation and one contemporary drama. Two of those nominated films also found themselves among the five Best Actor nominees.

The first was our perennial Oscar bridesmaid Peter O'Toole. His nomination for The Lion in Winter was one of that film's seven nods. The other Best Actor nominee was Ron Moody for Oliver! which had the most overall nominations at eleven. The Lion in Winter was the historical film. Oliver! was one of the two musicals (Funny Girl being the other). The other three nominees seemed to have a very small chance of winning.

One of the Best Actor nominees was Alan Arkin for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. That film received two nominations for Arkin and Sondra Locke in Supporting Actress. The other two were their film's only nominations: Alan Bates in The Fixer and Cliff Robertson for Charly. Films that receive only one nomination rarely win in their nominated category. In the four acting categories, the chances of a win from its sole nomination are even lower. 

Again, it is not impossible for an actor or actress to win the Oscar despite having only one nomination. Overall, though, circumstances have to be such that such a win is plausible to logical. Such a thing does not appear to be the case here. In other occasions, an actor winning in their category despite being that film's only nomination has other factors that push them to victory. There can be an "overdue" narrative where someone wins the Oscar after many failed nominations. There can be a weak field where that sole nominee can overpower the others. Conversely, there can be such a strong field where that sole nominee can end up as a consensus choice after the others beat each other up.

So far, none of those factors appear to be in play. Three of the five nominees (Bates, Moody and Robertson) were on their first nomination. One (Arkin) was on his second. O'Toole was the most nominated of the five and he was just on his third. Curiously, those same three first-time nominees (Bates, Moody and Robertson) would never be nominated again. Alan Arkin would be the only one of this year's five apart from O'Toole to return to the Oscar race; eventually he would win a competitive Oscar, although it took almost forty years for him to get his chance.  

As a side note, the lack of nominations save for Best Actor curiously would, in the future, affect O'Toole as the years and nominations went on. Out of the five future nominations that he would receive, only two would be for films where he was not that film's sole nomination. In 1969 his film Goodbye, Mr. Chips would get two nominations. In 1980, O'Toole's nominated performance in The Stunt Man would be one of that film's three nominations. His fifth, seventh and eighth nominations would be just for his performance and for nothing else. 

This nomination would also be the last time that O'Toole's nomination came from a film that was up for Best Picture. 

Everything looked to be set for Peter O'Toole to win on his third nomination. It would have not been a surprise if he had won. He was not overdue per se, but he was in a successful film that eclipsed his fellow nominees in terms of box office and nominations save for Ron Moody.  His reviews were mostly positive. He was facing three nominees who were both on their first nominations and their film's sole nominations. 

He was also, in a curious turn, recreating a previous performance. O'Toole's second nomination was for playing the same role as King Henry II. He had been nominated four years earlier for his performance as Henry II in Becket. The Lion in Winter was not a sequel. However, Peter O'Toole joined a rare group of actors who were nominated multiple times for playing the same character. 

Looking at past history, it looked like Peter O'Toole was the odds-on favorite. He was not a prohibitive frontrunner. However, he looked to have the strongest chances of winning. However, when Burt Lancaster opened the envelope, it was not Peter O'Toole's name that he read out. So, what happened?

First, let us look at the competition that year. The nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1968 were:

Alan Arkin in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Alan Bates in The Fixer

Ron Moody in Oliver!

Peter O'Toole in The Lion in Winter

Cliff Robertson in Charly

It looked to be a two-man race between Peter O'Toole and Ron Moody. Two of the three first-time nominees (Bates and Robertson) were going up against stronger competition. As stated, Bates and Robertson were their film's sole nomination. Arkin was one of only two of his film's nominations. This race does not seem to have someone dominate the film. There, however, does not seem enough of a strong competition as to have Academy members make any of them a consensus choice. 

The Academy thought well enough of The Lion in Winter to give it seven nominations and three wins. The Lion in Winter made Oscar history when Ingrid Bergman announced Best Actress. Opening the envelope, Bergman said, "The winner...it's a tie!". Bergman was so shocked that she muddled Katharine Hepburn's film as "Lion in the Winter" instead of The Lion in Winter before announcing Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl also won Best Actress. However, Hepburn's costar in Lion in the Winter lost Best Actor to an actor whose film received one nomination. 

How exactly did Cliff Robertson win for his first and only nomination? How was this somewhat small film able to overcome the more nominated film? I can guess that there may have been one to two factors. First, Robertson played a mentally challenged individual in Charly. A performance that shows a character with physical or mental limitations seems to be taken as an acting feat. That might have swayed enough voters to see Robertson playing someone who starts out mentally challenged, transitions to genius and then reverts to his original state as authentic acting.

The second factor is not a pretty one. Robertson may simply have had a better Oscar campaign. It was well-known that Charly was a passion project for Robertson. He had played the character on television. He had bought the film rights to guarantee that he would star in a film version. He even hired the screenwriters, firing the first (William Goldman) when dissatisfied with the results. Robertson hustled hard for his film. That hustle probably included campaigning for the nomination and the eventual win. 

While I figure the other nominated films campaigned for Oscars, I think O'Toole was not glad-handling prospective Oscar voters like Robertson was. Neither he nor Bates nor Robertson attended, though in fairness Robertson was filming in the Philippines and was denied permission to attend. 

Time Magazine a few weeks after Robertson's surprise win made an example of him as essentially buying votes. Robertson or his team took out full-page ads in all the trade publications that it could, pushing and promoting his nomination. This kind of campaigning is nothing new. Perhaps the nadir was the campaign that The Alamo costar Chill Wills launched for Best Supporting Actor. His ads saying that his costars were praying harder for Wills than those at the Alamo were so garish that they became an embarrassment to all concerned. 

Exactly how and how many voters were swayed enough to tip the race to Robertson over O'Toole is purely speculative. However, it ultimately worked as Cliff Robertson won the Best Actor Oscar. I think in the long run, though, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Few people nowadays remember that Cliff Robertson won Best Actor for Charly. I think few people nowadays even remember Charly. A contemporary of mine expressed genuine shock when I told him.    

Peter O'Toole, as stated in past analyses, was respected. He, however, was not loved. Never underestimate the power of love when it comes to selecting Oscar winners. I also think that there is something of a wild card here. Cliff Robertson and Alan Arkin were the only Americans nominated for Best Actor that year. Could anti-British sentiment have played a role in O'Toole's defeat? It does not strike me as likely, but not impossible.

And now, for my ranking. Going from Best to Worst, my ranking goes as follows:

Peter O'Toole

Ron Moody

Alan Arkin

Alan Bates

Cliff Robertson

I look on Robertson's win and O'Toole's loss as simply inexplicable. Peter O'Toole dominated the screen as Henry II. He was a man filled with rage, with schemes, but also with great fears. O'Toole makes Henry II a man full of lust for life. Proud to the point of foolishness but with a sharp mind, O'Toole's performance towers over all his fellow nominees.

I flipped a bit between Ron Moody and Alan Arkin for who should be in second place. I still could be persuaded to flip them and have Arkin second and Moody third. Curiously, Moody and Arkin were the only nominees to attend that year's ceremony. I ultimately put Moody ahead of Arkin because Moody had to do more. He had to do the singing and dancing in Oliver! However, Moody also had to show some dramatic and comic non-singing and dancing moments. Moody's Fagin was a schemer and survivor. He was, in his own way, protective of his gang of tween hoods. He had to maintain a balance between Oliver Reed's brutal Bill Sykes and Fagin's more conciliatory manner. In turns amusing and dramatic, Ron Moody did an excellent job.

Alan Arkin was hampered a bit in that more often than not he looked the same in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. By that I mean that he had to do a lot of staring to communicate as his character was a deaf-mute. It is a curiosity that two of the nominees were for playing disabled characters. Again, I think Arkin did a fine job in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I could flip him and Moody. Ultimately though, Moody barely edges Arkin out.

Alan Bates in The Fixer is pretty much forgotten now. The Fixer is as of this writing unavailable either on DVD or streaming. If Bates' performance or The Fixer itself were better known and/or remembered, I still would have ranked it lower. Bates was pretty one-note in The Fixer. The subject of antisemitism is an important one. However, both the film and Bates' performance had a sluggish quality to them that made them fall short of being good, let alone Oscar worthy.

Cliff Robertson goes at the end because of a curious reason. This sounds odd, but Robertson is too smart for this character. You can see a calculated manner to his Charly Gordon. I found it too methodical, as if he was concentrating on how to make Charly this mentally disabled person. He was never Charly Gordon to me. He was Cliff Robertson. The acting was too pronounced, too calculated, for me to think it should outrank any of the others. It did not help that Charly and Robertson became almost laughable in the third act. Charly's transition to a hippie biker or biker hippie was in turns goofy and bizarre. 

I think Cliff Robertson's Best Actor win for Charly will rank as one of the worst Best Actor wins of all time when I do a Best Actor Retrospective. It is pretty much a forgotten win which has not stood the test of time.

Peter O'Toole should have won Best Actor for The Lion in Winter over Cliff Robertson for Charly.

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

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. 

Peter O'Toole Oscar 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.

Peter O'Toole Oscar Nomination Number Six: An Analysis

PETER O'TOOLE OSCAR NOMINATION NUMBER SIX: 

AN ANALYSIS

On his sixth Academy Award nomination, Peter O'Toole faced yet again more insurmountable odds to have much chance of winning the long-elusive Oscar. Two of his competitors were in Best Picture nominees. Two were already Oscar winners. However, O'Toole's nominated performance for The Stunt Man actually had a slight leg-up on at least two of his fellow Oscar nominees. 

This would be the last nomination that O'Toole received for a film where he was not that film's sole nomination. Out of his eight overall career nominations, three (The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year and Venus) were for films where only his work was singled out for recognition. Out of these, only The Ruling Class came prior to this particular nomination. 

This time, it was different. His Best Actor nomination for The Stunt Man was one of three that the film received. Besides the nod for O'Toole, The Stunt Man received two other surprisingly high-end nominations. One was for Best Adapted Screenplay. The third was for Best Director. This nod is a somewhat ironic nomination given that O'Toole played a tyrannical director in The Stunt Man. This indicates, if not strong support for The Stunt Man, at least a greater awareness among Academy members of the film. For once, Peter O'Toole was not the nominee whose nomination was that film's sole nomination.

That distinction went to Jack Lemmon, who was on his seventh career nomination for Tribute. Lemmon was Tribute's only Oscar nomination that year. As such, it was Lemmon, not O'Toole, who had even less of a chance at winning Best Actor. O'Toole had another advantage when it came to fellow nominee Robert Duvall. The Great Santini had scored only two nominations: one for Duvall as Best Actor and one for Michael O'Keefe as Best Supporting Actor. As such, the chances of Lemmon winning were almost nil. Duvall had a slightly better chance, but not by much. The Great Santini did not leave as great an impression on the Academy as The Stunt Man. In retrospect, Peter O'Toole had a slightly, slightly stronger chance to best two of his rivals.

The unfortunate thing for O'Toole, however, was that his two other nominees were in stronger positions to win. Both Robert De Niro and John Hurt were in films that were tied for the most Oscar nominations that year. Raging Bull and The Elephant Man each received eight nominations. Raging Bull and The Elephant Man were battling it out not just in Best Actor. They faced off against each other in Best Picture, Best Director and Best Film Editing as well. These are major categories, meaning that Academy voters were watching Raging Bull and The Elephant Man more than The Stunt Man, The Great Santini and especially Tribute. 

Where would O'Toole's chances to finally win stand this year? First, let us look at our choices.

The nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role for 1980 were

Robert De Niro in Raging Bull

Robert Duvall in The Great Santini

John Hurt in The Elephant Man

Jack Lemmon in Tribute

Peter O'Toole in The Stunt Man

It is a most curious coincidence that two of 1980's Best Picture and Best Actor selections were for black-and-white biopics from two legendary directors: Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. Separate from how good or bad Duvall, Lemmon and/or O'Toole were, the battle was always between Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull and John Hurt as John Merrick in The Elephant Man. The other three should have just been glad to be invited. I do not think that any of them had any real shot of pulling an upset. 

Jack Lemmon was probably the least likely to surprise. He was already a two-time Oscar winner by this point. His second win for Save the Tiger had been seven years ago. Therefore, one could say that it had been a while. However, it was not that long of a while. Moreover, as already stated, Lemmon was Tribute's sole nomination. He had been nominated the year before for The China Syndrome. That film received four nominations to Tribute's one. Save the Tiger had, like The Stunt Man, three Oscar nominations. 

As a side note, this would be the second of three occasions when Jack Lemmon and Peter O'Toole would face off for Best Actor. They had first battled in 1962 on Peter O'Toole's first nomination and Jack Lemmon's fourth nomination. They would return to dueling for the prize a mere two years later. They both lost on all three occasions.  

Oddly, if someone was going to ride an overdue narrative, it was not going to be six-time nominee O'Toole. It was going to be three-time nominee Robert Duvall. He had been nominated those three times within nine years. The Great Santini was his third nomination, but it was his second consecutive nomination after his Best Supporting Actor nomination for Apocalypse Now. He had been more consistent in his nominations than O'Toole, who had gone without a nomination since Duvall's first for The Godfather the same year that The Ruling Class had been nominated. Therefore, Robert Duvall was fresh in Academy members' memory. Peter O'Toole was not.

Still, The Stunt Man was a bigger hit than The Great Santini. It also got three major nominations to The Great Santini's two. Was there any chance that Peter O'Toole could have snuck in? Sadly, no. Again, I go back to how Robert De Niro and John Hurt were dominating everyone else. Raging Bull and The Elephant Man are held up as some of the best films of 1980. The Academy gave each eight nominations. This year, the big question was whether Best Actor would go to a black-and-white biopic or to a black-and-white biopic. It was always going to come down between De Niro and Hurt. We know that in the end, Robert De Niro won that fight. He was one of two Oscars for Raging Bull. The Elephant Man went empty-handed, its 0-8 record one of the worst in Academy history. 

Now, how would I have ranked the nominees? Here is my slate in order from Best to Worst:

Robert De Niro

John Hurt

Robert Duvall

Peter O'Toole

Jack Lemmon

I would like to point out that Donald Sutherland never received a competitive Academy Award nomination in the whole of his career. As of this writing, Richard Gere has not received a competitive Academy Award nomination in the whole of his career. Why do I mention that? Well, it is because Jack Lemmon simply has no business being a nominee this year. 

Jack Lemmon in Tribute is an abomination. I sat in stunned disbelief that this hammy, over-the-top, embarrassing performance was nominated for an Academy Award. Tribute is simply dreadful. It is basically a filmed play, and not a particularly good play either. Lemmon originated the role of Scottie Templeton in Tribute on Broadway. For reasons lost to history, no one either in front or behind the camera apparently understood that what works on a stage does not necessarily work in film. Lemmon was hammy throughout Tribute, playing to the rafters where a more toned-down manner would have done much better. He mugs, he prances, he does funny faces and wears funny costumes, even a chicken outfit. I know that they were going for pathos. They ended up with pathetic.

Jack Lemmon took the slot that could and should have been filled by someone who actually acted rather than made faces. Richard Gere in American Gigolo, his star-making turn, would have made a better choice. Donald Sutherland in that year's Best Picture winner Ordinary People would have made a brilliant choice. Every one of Sutherland's costars was nominated: Mary Tyler Moore for Lead Actress and both Judd Hirsh and Timothy Hutton for Best Supporting Actor, with Hutton winning. Yet the Academy overlooked Sutherland's more nuanced performance for Lemmon's cartoonish performance. 

Tommy Lee Jones in Coal Miner's Daughter would also have done better than Jack Lemmon in Tribute. You also had Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5 and John Travolta in Urban Cowboy. Those performances and films are still remembered. No one remembers Tribute. It helps that Nicholson, Coleman and Travolta were actually good in The Shining, 9 to 5 and Urban Cowboy. That is something that cannot be said about Jack Lemmon in Tribute. 

Exactly how bad, how flat-out awful was Jack Lemmon in Tribute? Seeing Sam J. Jones nominated for Best Actor in Flash Gordon makes more sense than Jack Lemmon getting nominated for Best Actor in Tribute. I am being somewhat facetious in saying that it would not surprise me if literal bribes were given and taken to get Jack Lemmon nominated for Tribute. That is how awful, bizarre and inexcusable Lemmon's nomination is. 

I cannot express fully just how much I loathe Jack Lemmon in Tribute. This is a simply inexplicable nomination.

So, of the rest, I sadly have to put Peter O'Toole near the bottom. Why? His performance as crazed director Eli Cross was quite good. It is one of his best. Unfortunately, it is also a case of category fraud to me. I had knocked down Forest Whitaker when he beat out Peter O'Toole for The Last King of Scotland because I thought Whitaker was really a Supporting and not Lead performance. 

In the same vein, I think O'Toole was a Supporting and not Lead performance. Had he been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, I think it would it have been a better fit given his role. He also could have actually won. The Stunt Man is not about Eli Cross. It is about the actual stunt man, Cameron (Steve Railsback). He would have been a more logical choice for Best Lead Actor in The Stunt Man than Peter O'Toole was for that film. 

Just as Lemmon essentially stole a spot for a whole slew of better performances, O'Toole did the same here. The difference though is that Peter O'Toole gave a good performance. Jack Lemmon did not. However, Jack Lemmon's nomination, however flawed, was definitely for a Leading Role. Peter O'Toole's nomination was for a Supporting Role passed off as a Leading one.

I wavered long and hard between the last three. Robert Duvall has a couple of strikes against him. First, few people remember The Great Santini. I take into consideration whether a performance has stood the test of time. Duvall's performance as Bull Meechum is nowhere near bad. In many ways, it is quite exceptional. He balances Bull's brutality with a vulnerability that said brutality hides. That being said, Duvall's brief cameo in To Kill a Mockingbird is better remembered than his turn in The Great Santini. 

Second, he is outmatched by at least one of the great screen performances. The Great Santini is well-acted. It is however not held up as one of Robert Duvall's best performances, let alone compared to his other nominees. 

It is to Robert Duvall's credit that he came very close to pushing John Hurt out to third. It is more impressive when you consider that I kept flipping back and forth between Hurt and Robert De Niro for the top spot. Duvall and De Niro in a head-to-head matchup would have been an easy choice: De Niro. What about Hurt and De Niro?

I wavered greatly between Hurt and De Niro. Both are brilliant. Both have stood the test of time. Sometimes I had John Hurt first. Sometimes I had Robert De Niro first. Ultimately, I went with De Niro because of a few reasons. The complaint that John Hurt had the makeup do some of the heavy acting lifting is not an unfair one. I think it helped Hurt's performance. However, that help is a double-edged sword. 

I also thought which one of the two is the one people still remember, still hold up as one of the all-time greats. That goes to De Niro. He transformed completely. It was not just physically, though there is that. De Niro also brought Jake LaMotta's complexity: that rage mixed with regret which made for compelling viewing. People still talk about Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. People do talk about John Hurt in The Elephant Man. 

They just do not talk about it as much as they do about De Niro's performance. 

Robert De Niro should have won Best Actor for Raging Bull 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 sixth nomination.