93rd Oscars Trivia

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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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In the game of six degrees of separation, there are only three degrees separating one of the first Oscar inners from one of the last to date.

Janet Gaynor was in Bernardine with Pat Boone who was in State Fair with Ann-Margret who was in Magic with Anthony Hopkins.

Similarly, Gaynor was in A Star Is Born with Fredric March who was in Mary of Scotland with Katharine Hepburn who was in The Lion in Winter with Hopkins. Adolphe Menjou and May Robson who were with Gaynor in A Star Is Born were also in films with links to Hepburn and then Hopkins.

She was also with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Roland Young, and Billie in The Young of Heart, all of whom were in films that connect to Hepburn and then to Hopkins.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Good one, Tee.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Another one that came to me this evening:

A few years back, someone pointed out to me that the 1973 film of The Iceman Cometh featured both Fredric March and Jeff Bridges -- making for a one-degree-of-separation between the best actor winners of 1931/32 and 2009. This 77-year gap seemed tough to match, but it occurred to me that, if Annette Bening were ever to be successful in a best actress campaign, she could top it, since she appeared in 1994's Love Affair remake with 1933's best actress Katharine Hepburn.

But, just tonight, as I came across The Lion in Winter on TCM, it struck me that, if you make this gender-neutral, it's already been topped, as 1933's best actress winner appears in that film with 2020's best actor winner -- gaining a full 10 years on the March/Bridges gap.

Side note: imagine if, while The Lion in Winter was filming, someone had said the cast of the film would eventually account for six leading acting Oscars. Would anyone have guessed that Peter O'Toole would be responsible for zero of them?
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Interestingly, to me at least, my Oscar Shouldabeens relationship between acting winners and Best Picture winners is a little more balanced than Oscar's.

I had 23 Best Actor, 19 Best Actress, and 16 each Best Supporting Actor and Actress matchups. Of my multiple winners, only four won for Best Picture winners twice - Peter O'Toole for Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter, Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood, Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire, and Frances McDormand for Fargo and Three Billboards.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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HarryGoldfarb wrote:
Mister Tee wrote:McDormand is in a truly select group of 4 women who've fronted a best picture winner with a winning lead performance without a male co-star nominated alongside -- Luise Rainer '36, Shirley MacLaine '83, Gwyneth Paltrow '98, and now McDormand.

Great post, Tee. Yes, we should have noticed this back then... It seems/feels obvious, but it is great to have the data.
Add in here that MacLaine had a female co-star nominated along with her, and Paltrow and Rainer each had male co-stars who could easily have been nominated.

McDormand is the only one of any of these nominees who is really the SOLE lead of her movie. There is really no argument that anyone could be nominated along with her.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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HarryGoldfarb wrote:
Mister Tee wrote:McDormand is in a truly select group of 4 women who've fronted a best picture winner with a winning lead performance without a male co-star nominated alongside -- Luise Rainer '36, Shirley MacLaine '83, Gwyneth Paltrow '98, and now McDormand.

Great post, Tee. Yes, we should have noticed this back then... It seems/feels obvious, but it is great to have the data.
Thanks. And, to put another point on it: are there other women who came close to joining this small club?

Surely the best bets were Bette Davis in 1950 and Julie Andrews in 1965.

But also in the running would have been Mary Tyler Moore in 1980, Renee Zellweger (who did win SAG and a Globe) in 2002, and possibly Sally Hawkins, had McDormand's film not existed in 2017.

Hard to make much case for the others: Bessie Love in 1929, Diana Wynard in 1933, Streep in 1985 or Winslet in 1997.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Mister Tee wrote:McDormand is in a truly select group of 4 women who've fronted a best picture winner with a winning lead performance without a male co-star nominated alongside -- Luise Rainer '36, Shirley MacLaine '83, Gwyneth Paltrow '98, and now McDormand.

Great post, Tee. Yes, we should have noticed this back then... It seems/feels obvious, but it is great to have the data.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Not sure if this was brought up back then, but I realized something when doing some other research. Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor twice and in both of those situations, his film won Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, and a screenwriting award (Adapted for Green Book and Original for Moonlight), and no other awards.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Interesting
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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All these months later, it hits me, something we should have noted that very night (had BJ been here, I'm certain it would have been mentioned, as it was something he tracked): Frances McDormand is the first best actress winner associated with a winning best picture since Hillary Swank/Million Dollar Baby, 16 years earlier. And, remarkably, only the 12th such best actress in history -- while there are 27 best actor/best picture match-ups.

We all know there are three cases of film/actor/actress wins (It Happened One Night, Cuckoo's Nest, Silence of the Lambs), so McDormand is part of a smaller group: only 9 actresses who were the sole winning lead performers in a best picture winner.

Drill down even further: 5 of those 9 had their male co-stars nominated alongside them -- Leigh (Gable) '39, Garson (Pidgeon) '42, Keaton (Allen) '77, Tandy (Freeman) '89, and Swank (Eastwood) '04.

So, McDormand is in a truly select group of 4 women who've fronted a best picture winner with a winning lead performance without a male co-star nominated alongside -- Luise Rainer '36, Shirley MacLaine '83, Gwyneth Paltrow '98, and now McDormand.

It probably won't surprise most who know the history of the Oscars to hear that men have scored far better in that situation. Fully 23 of the 27 best actor winners matched to a best picture won without a female co-star nominated -- the only exceptions are the three double-winners cited above, plus Kevin Spacey '99.

The outlook doesn't get much brighter for women if you take it down to the nominations level. The 93 best picture winners have yielded best actor nominations in 57 years (the number of actual nods slightly higher due to multiple nominations for Mutiny on the Bounty, From Here to Eternity, Midnight Cowboy, and Amadeus). For actresses, the number of years is a mere 29 (with two extra, for the Davis/Baxter '50 and MacLaine/Winger '83 tandems ). In fact, Sally Hawkins '17 is the only actress even nominated for a best picture winner since Swank in '04.

Since I was doing all this stat-checking, I thought I'd look and see just how many times a best picture winner featured nominations for both its male and female leads. You'd think it'd be quite common, but I found it's actually quite rare: there are only 15 such instances over the 93 years. The list, if you care (again, excluding the 3 clean-sweepers we all know): Cimarron, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Mrs. Miniver, Gentleman's Agreement, From Here to Eternity, The Apartment, Rocky, Annie Hall, Driving Miss Daisy, The English Patient, American Beauty.

Although, really getting into the weeds: there are a few films that, having won the DGA prize, came into the Oscar ceremony expecting to win best picture, and would have qualified for this distinction, had they not been upset in the actual going -- A Place in the Sun, The Lion in Winter, Reds, and La La Land. Two of which would also have added to the paltry best picture/best actress group.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Kind of like Meryl Streep was.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Greg wrote:
OscarGuy wrote:Though, really, how often has Daniel Day-Lewis even had a supporting performance?
A Room With A View is the only one that immediately comes to mind.
Actually, for that, and an equally supporting performance in My Beautiful Laundrette that same year, he won both the NY Critics' and NBR supporting actor awards in 1986. Had the Academy followed suit (as seemed very possible, till veteran Denholm Elliott snagged the slot instead), he'd have been boxed out of this unique distinction right at the start.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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OscarGuy wrote:Though, really, how often has Daniel Day-Lewis even had a supporting performance?
A Room With A View is the only one that immediately comes to mind.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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Though, really, how often has Daniel Day-Lewis even had a supporting performance? Almost every role he's played, he's been the lead of the film. Benefits of taking only the occasional job, I guess.
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Re: 93rd Oscars Trivia

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HarryGoldfarb wrote:By winning for The Father, Hopkins became the actor with the fewest nominations (in Leading) to win 2 Leading Actor awards (2/4). At the other end of the spectrum is Spencer Tracy, who won two statuettes out of 9 nominations.
Of course, these stats can change over time. When Tracy won his 2nd statue, it was on only his 3rd nomination; same for Tom Hanks. And Fredric March was on his 4th nomination when he won the 2nd time around. Hopkins' distinction here is the age at which the second trophy came, and the relatively few lead nominations he'd had over that entire career.

To piggyback a bit on danfrank: Day-Lewis is also notable among actors nominated in the post-1960 era for having multiple wins with all his nominations coming in lead; I think Dustin Hoffman is the only other one with that distinction, as so many of the other double winners (Hackman, DeNiro, Nicholson) had multiple supporting nods.
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