On this very auspicious day — today is the 200th anniversary of  the birth of Abraham Lincoln, America’s most charismatic President (tinted and gorgeous above) – it’s a small leap to consider all the times that the Academy Awards have fallen for the charms of the biographical.  From the very beginning of the Awards, actors and actresses making like historical figures have won the heart of Oscar, and of course this coming year is no exception.  With both Frank Langella — as Richard Nixon — and Sean Penn — as Harvey Milk — contending for the Best Actor Award, the lure of real reel characters is alive and well. 

At the 1929 Awards, George Arliss and his portrayal of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli was the first historical role to win an Oscar.   As movie producers eagerly mined history to develop screenplays, so actors and actresses loved playing these practically guaranteed to win (or at least be nominated) roles.  The august provenance obviously appealed to Academy voters, too.   Just a few years later Charles Laughton won for his portrayal of King Henry VIII in The Private Lives of Henry VIII — English history was a bloody goldmine.

In 1934, biopics littered the Best Picture category.  The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Cleopatra, House of Rothschild, Viva Villa! were among the pictures nominated, and actress Norma Shearer was nominated as Best Actress for her role as Elizabeth Barrett Browning.   The not-unattractive real Elizabeth got a bit of a movieland makeover with Shearer in the role.  (The trend to de-glamorize, as personified by Charlize Theron in Monster and Nicole Kidman and her faux schnoz in The Hours, is usually what it takes to win these days.) 

1935′s Mutiny on the Bounty, ripped from the salty pages of genuine maritime history, won for Best Picture, and three actors — Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone — were all nominated in the acting category.  A year later, Paul Muni took home the gold for playing scientist Louis Pasteur, and The Great Ziegfeld — about impresario Florenz Ziegfeld – won for Best Picture.   The next year Muni and his portrayal of French intellectual Emile Zola brought the Oscar to the movie The Life of Emile Zola, and he was nominated for his title role.   A couple of years later Spencer Tracy put on the Roman collar and got himself an Oscar for playing philanthropic priest Father Flanagan in Boys Town, which also was in the running for Best Picture.  That same year Norma Shearer nabbed a nomination for her title role as Marie Antoinette.

Apropos of today’s special anniversary, in 1941 Raymond Massey was nominated for the movie version of his spectacular stage success as Abe Lincoln in Illinois but didn’t win.   In 1942, Gary Cooper won the Oscar for his role as WWI’s most-decorated hero Alvin York in Sergeant York.    The next year James Cagney won for his role as patriotic song-and-dance man George M. Cohan (who died a few months before the Oscar ceremony) in Yankee Doodle Dandy and Cooper was again nominated for his sentimental but all-guy role as doomed New York ballplayer Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees, and Teresa Wright was nominated as his wife.

The ladies came to the forefront the next year, with Greer Garson getting a nom for her role as radiation pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie in Madame Curie, and the Oscar went to Jennifer Jones for her portrayal of Lourdes mystic Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette.  Walter Pidgeon also was nominated for playing Pierre Curie.  In 1945 the little-remembered biopic Wilson, about President Woodrow Wilson, garnered a Best Picture nomination, plus one for actor Alexander Knox in the title role.  The year after relative newcomer Cornel Wilde earned himself a Best Actor nom for playing pianist/composer Chopin in A Song to Remember.

In 1947 Larry Parks was nominated for his role as consummate entertainer Al Jolson in The Jolson Story, and Rosalind Russell also received a nom for playing the pioneering nurse and polio researcher Elizabeth Kenny in Sister Kenny.  In 1949, both Jose Ferrer and Ingrid Bergman received acting nominations for their roles in re-telling the incredible tale of Joan of Arc.  Louis Calhern was nominated for his role as prominent American legal mind Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.  in The Magnificent Yankee a year after.

1953 was a banner year for the biography.  Jose Ferrer got a nomination for his physically torturous role as painter Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge, and the film also received a Best Picture nom.   Marlon Brando was nominated for playing Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!.   Susan Hayward picked up a nom for her role as singer Jane Froman, who had bravely undergone horrible medical complications after a USO plane crash, in With a Song in My Heart.

The trend continued.  In 1955 James Cagney received an Oscar nom for playing 1920′s singer Ruth Etting’s gangster husband in Love Me or Leave Me, and actress Susan Hayward was honored with a nomination for her Lillian Roth – the singer who battled alcoholism – portrayal in I’ll Cry Tomorrow.  The other actress nominee playing a real woman that same year was Eleanor Parker as polio-stricken Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody.

And of course the nominations and wins have never stopped for actors and actresses playing real people.  There are so many that the list could go on forever, but I promise to take a look at the next batch in my post next week here. 

Here are some photos of the real-life historical characters behind the Oscar nominations and winners:

Disraeli

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Emile Zola

 

Father Flanagan

 

Sgt. Alvin York

 

Bernadette Soubirous

 

Toulouse Lautrec