Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Cavalcade is little more than a photographed stage play. For my money, second leads Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin steal the show from the stiff upper lipped Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook.

Reza, I like your idea of giving the supporting awards to James Mason and Dorothy McGuire. I believe Mike Kelly was the first to award James Mason his 1959 award, but the choice of Dorothy McGuire is unique and quite wonderful. I actually thought she gave the year's most under-rated performance in ...

dws, this is not an undistinguished group. Oscar actually got it right more often than not in this decade. My favorite is Jack Albertson, repeating his blustery stage triumph of a type of character very prevalent not only in the 40s when The Subject Was Roses takes place, but through the late 60s, ...

Most crtitics and film historians cite Counsellor-at-Law as Barrymore's best 1933 performance and Twentieth Century as his best overall screen performance, but I love him in Topaze. It's so far from the Barrymore we expect, more like something Clifton Webb might do, that I find it absolutely endear...

Yes, M was 1933 in the U.S.

1933 Best Picture *Dinner at Eight 42nd Street King Kong Little Women M Best Actor John Barrymore, Topaze Gary Cooper, Design for Living Leslie Howard, Berkely Square *Charles Laughton, The Private Life of Henry VIII Fredric March, Design for Living Best Actress Marie Dressler, Dinner at Eight Greta...

Reza, technically The Lady Vanishes wasn't Oscar eligible until 1939. Also, in 1935 you have Blanche Yurka listed for Les Miserables. I think you meant to cite her for her heartless Madame DeFarge in A Tale of Two Cities, which was a 1935 release in New York, but a 1936 release in L.A. and thus Osca...

I'm not sure Merle Oberon counts since she was passing for white at the time. On the other hand, Luise Rainer, Akim Tamiroff, Aline MacMahon and Jennifer Jones were nominated for pretending to be Asians, so maybe they should be added to the count. The most blatant omissions of Asian actors occurred...

Joshua, I just found your question about Frank Morgan. He was great in both The Mortal Storm and The Shop Around the Corner, again in support of Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. I like them better in Shop, Morgan better in Storm, but all three are excellent in both. Morgan's early portrayal of ...

Straight's nomination was not a surprise, though her win was. She was basically a stage actress who had been prominent in early live TV of the 50s. She was married to stage and occasional film actor Peter Cookson and was a prominent member of New York high society. She was one of the Whitneys, maki...

Sorry, I did mean Hunt, not Hunter. Blue Sky was basically a character study in which the performances of Lange and Tommy Lee Jones were the principal rasons for seeing the film. In addition to the competition being rather weak, there was the added cache of the film having been kept out of circulat...

Was Jane Alexander's role in All the President's Men any bigger than Straight's? It's been a while since I've seen the film, but I don't think so.

And for the life of me, I can't figure out why Ingrid Bergman won in 1974. I thought her performance was nearly as dull as the film itself. Well, if you think Murder on the Orient Express is dull, I guess it makes sense that you can't figure out why Ingrid Bergman won. Actually Agatha Christie's no...

My choice is Maggie Smith, who I had pegged as a multiple future Oscar winner way back in 1963 when I first saw her in The V.I.P.s. I knew the minute I saw her in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that that would the film for which she won her first. I never beleived all the hype about it being a two-w...