Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross and Annette Bening in Film Stars don't Die in Liverpool are two of my all-time favorite non-nominated performances.

Lemmon and Pacino should have traded places with Pacino winning for Serpico over Lemmon's sappy tur in Save the Tiger and Lemmon should won for Glengarry over Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

It's hard to say what happened with Film Stars. Sony really dropped the ball on that one. Bening Jamie Bell, and Julie Walters should have all been campaigned hard for Oscars. Bening and Bell were nominated by BAFTA and Bell and Walters did well with British Independent awards, but the film was barely released in the U.S.

Joan Allen was not nominated for what is easily her best performance in Pleasantville

And along with Ship of Fools Vivien Leigh should also have been nominated for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone - Piper Laurie took up a slot for what was basically a supporting role in The Hustler.

Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glenn Ross is a very good example. He won best actor at Venice and Al Pacino was nominated for the same film.

I didn’t follow the nominations race at the time, but was he considered to be a favorite for a nomination? I would say that probably Stephen Rea took his place.

A few more I'd add to the list:

1. Annette Bening - After nominations for The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia, and The Kids Are Alright, she's been surprisingly passed over by the Academy several times in the last 15 years despite critical buzz and recognition from other awards bodies: Running with Scissors (Golden Globes); 20th Century Women (Golden Globes, Critics' Choice, Independent Spirit Awards); Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (BAFTA); and The Report (Golden Globes.)

2. Joan Allen - After considerable attention in the late 1990s/early 2000s with nominations for Nixon, The Crucible, and The Contender, she was undeservedly ignored for what some would argue is her best performance in The Upside of Anger and more recently for her supporting work in Room, a performance I thought was criminally overlooked in a weak year for supporting actresses.

3. Lily Tomlin - Though her sole nomination for Nashville is well-remembered, I thought she more than earned an Oscar nomination for 2015's Grandma. With both her comedic and dramatic abilities on display, her moving performance would've made a much more deserving addition than Jennifer Lawrence's somewhat surprising (though immediately boring) inclusion for Joy.

4. Albert Brooks - A supporting actor nominee in 1987 for Broadcast News, most expected a similar nomination for Brooks in 2011 for Drive. But the actors' branch would fail to deliver, providing the most shocking snub of nomination morning. Leading up to the Academy's announcement, he had won a slew of critics' awards (including citations from some of the biggest players: Boston, Chicago, NYFCCA) and earned nominations from the Critics' Choice, Golden Globes, and Independent Spirit Awards. The unjustified oversight prompted Brooks' own memorable response on Twitter: "And to the Academy: "You don't like me. You really don't like me."

5. Jack Lemmon - Amply nominated and awarded from 1955 to 1982, it's still a crime that Lemmon's masterful work in 1992's Glengarry Glen Ross went unacknowledged. Perhaps it was category confusion, though the National Board of Review had awarded him their Best Actor prize earlier that year. I'd even argue that his performance in the following year's Short Cuts was also worthy of consideration even if 1993's supporting actor lineup is hard to improve.

6. Vivien Leigh - With the perfect track record of two legendary wins for two legendary nominations, perhaps insisting for a third nomination for Leigh that was destined to result in a loss is a fool's errand. No matter, I still consider it unfortunate that 1965's Ship of Fools netted nominations for Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, and Michael Dunn but not for her. While moments may border on camp, it's still my favorite performance in the film and one that won Leigh France's Étoile de cristal. Given that it was to be her last film, an Oscar nomination would've made an appropriate farewell for one of cinema's greatest actresses.

Loren, Burstyn, Bergen, Fonda, these are all good recent snubs.

Some others I am remembering:

James Cagney in One, Two, Three
Maurice Chevalier in Fanny
Simone Signoret in Madame Rosa (the film Loren remade as The Life Ahead)
MacLaine more recently in In Her Shoes
Redford more recently in The Old Man and the Gun along with Sissy Spacek

Just last year: there was a lot of noise regarding likely nods for both Loren and Burstyn, though in the end as we know the rumours failed to materialize nominations for them.

Now come to mind Shirley MacLaine in Postcards from the Edge, Candice Bergen in Let Them All Talk, Robert Redford in All is Lost and Gena Rowlands and Sandy Dennis in Another Woman.

It was not really a big snub but I remember Jane Fonda being touted for a nomination in Youth.

Good ones.

Also:

Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Fredric March in Executive Suite, Inherit the Wind, Seven Days in May, and The Iceman Cometh.

Olivia de Havilland in The Light in the Piazza.

Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies, Sully, and News of the World. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was an anomaly.

How about Gene Hackman for The Royal Tenenbaums? I think that he was more deserving of a nod than Will Smith for Ali.

Jack Nicholson in The Departed comes to mind as a recent late career snub.

Reza, I agree with many of these, but my focus was on late career snubs. These are mostly early to mid-career snubs.

The Garfield snubs were of an actor in the prime of life. If they knew he was going to die at 39 they might have nominated him. Same is true for Sidney Poitier who was 38 when snubbed for A Patch of Blue and 40 when he was snubbed for In the Heat of the Night. If they knew that his career would have gone downhill after that they might have nominated him for those two mid-career high performances.

Late career snubs that almost made my list include Deborah Kerr in The Night of the Iguana and Angela Lansbury in Something for Everyone.

Anyone have other examples of late career snubs?

Here are some more memorable performances by some of the actors you mention below for which they deserved Oscar nominations.

Claudette Colbert
Torch Singer (1933)
Midnight (1939)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Barbara Stanwyck
The Miracle Woman (1931)
Forbidden (1932)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
The Furies (1950)

Irene Dunne
Back Street (1932)
Magnificent Obsession (1935)

Dorothy McGuire
The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
Invitation (1952)

Cary Grant
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Charade (1963)

Robert Mitchum
Pursued (1947)
The Lusty Men (1952)
Cape Fear (1962)

James Stewart
The Shop Around the Corner (1940) instead of the one for which he won his Oscar.

Robert De Niro
Mean Streets (1973)
The King of Comedy (1982)
Midnight Run (1988) - he should have won an Oscar for this one.
GoodFellas (1990)
This Boy's Life (1993)
The Irishman (2019) - absurd that he wasn't nominated.

I want to add John Garfield to the list. Nominated twice only he was ignored for a number of memorable performances.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Force of Evil (1948)
The Breaking Point (1950)
He Ran All the Way (1951)

Both of Stanwyck's 1950s Sirk films, All I Desire being the other one, would have been excellent choices.

I'd replace Stanwyck's co-star in Executive Suite, Nina Foch, for her with Foch in An American in Paris replacing Joan Blondell in 1951. Blondell in turn would have replaced Joan Lorring in 1945 for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and later Joyce Redman for 1965's The Cincinnati Kid.

Stewart is the one on my list that I have the hardest time fitting in.

I think his performance in 1965's Shenandoah was far better than Lee Marvin's in Cat Ballou, but then so were the performances of Rex Harrison in The Agony and the Ecstasy, Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue, and Terence Stamp in The Collector, all of whom were ignored that year.

Interesting thread, Magilla. I'll have to seek some of these out.

I'd be more relaxed about Stanwyck's later film misses if she had won for any one of her roles in the 40s. I'm not sure where I'd rate her 1954 (who would you drop for Stanwyck), but thought her performance in There's Always Tomorrow should have placed in 1956 (an even weaker year, I'd argue, than 1954).