Last week I made note of some of the more conspicuous Best Actor Oscar omissions – Lew Ayres for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930), Charlie Chaplin for CITY LIGHTS (1931), Joseph Cotten for SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) – while some of you brought up other favorite shutouts such as James Cagney for WHITE HEAT (1949) and Humphrey Bogart for IN A LONELY PLACE (1950). Starting with 1955 and continuing up to 2000, here are the rest of my Best Actor choices which deserved nominations.    

Mention THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) and most movie fans immediately flash on that image of Marilyn Monroe, standing over a subway grate as the gust from passing trains below blows her skirt up above her knees. Or they remember some of her delightfully loopy quips, supplied by George Axelrod and Billy Wilder, such as “When it gets hot like this, you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox!” What usually gets overlooked though is Tom Ewell’s hilarious performance as Richard Sherman, a New York City book editor whose wife and son are on holiday, leaving him behind to work.  Instead, his overactive imagination runs wild, concocting fantasies about the blonde downstairs (Monroe) with himself as her suave, experienced seducer. It’s a dual performance in some ways, contrasting the rather meek, unadventureous Sherman against his macho alter ego and some of the biggest laughs occur during the film’s Walter Mitty-like fantasy sequences where he comes on to Monroe with promises like, “..Now I’m going to take you in my arms and kiss you, very quickly and very hard.” When he actually tries to act on his fantasy, it’s a disaster. Ewell, of course, had also starred in the 1952 Broadway stage play, and Wilder wisely cast him and not another actor for the film version. Despite the fact that Ewell played the role more than 900 times on stage, his performance feels fresh and spontaneous; it’s a great showcase of his versatility as a comic actor, emphasizing not just his unique way with a verbal zinger or vocal intimations but also his natural ease with physical humor and sight gags. He did win a Golden Globe for his work here but he didn’t make it into the AA nominations. Admittedly, the competition was tough that year and all of it serious dramatic work – Ernest Borgnine won for Marty –but usually comedic performances are overshadowed by the former in the Oscar race, despite occasional exceptions (William Powell for THE THIN MAN [1934] & MY MAN GODFREY [1936], Woody Allen for ANNIE HALL [1977]).

James Mason deservedly won a nomination in 1954 for his magnificent portrayal in A STAR IS BORN opposite Judy Garland. But he also deserved another nod for BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956), Nicholas Ray’s dark vision of fifties surburbia where surface conformity hides claustrophobic panic and oppression. Mason plays Ed Avery, a school teacher who suppliments his meager income as a taxi dispatcher (a detail he keeps from his wife out of pride). When crippling pain from a rare inflammation of the arteries becomes a matter of life or death, he agrees to an experimental drug treatment of cortisone. The effects are positive at first and then unexpected and frightening side effects begin to emerge as wild mood swings and superego rantings. The film takes on the emotional tone of a horror film as Ed, in a hallucinatory overload, begins to enact the Biblical tale of Abraham and his son Isaac, preparing to sacrifice his own son with kitchen scissors. There is a powerful intensity to his work here that demonstrates Mason’s ability to force himself out of his comfort zone and into something even more risky and emotionally naked than his self-loathing Norman Maine from A STAR IS BORN. (Mason also deserved an Oscar nomination for his tortured Humbert Humbert in LOLITA (1962) but at least he earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nods for that role). By the way, BIGGER THAN LIFE is due for release on DVD from The Criterion Collection on March 23rd.

Speaking of taking a risk in a role, you can’t find a more extreme example than Anthony Perkins in PSYCHO (1960). Up until this groundbreaking Hitchcock film, Perkins was being groomed as a young leading man. A wholesome boy-next-door type, his sensitive nature and dark, good looks worked well in romantic comedies like The Matchmaker (1958) and Tall Story (1960) but also in coming-of-age dramas in period settings (The Actress [1953], Friendly Persuasion [1956], The Tin Star [1957]). The first indication that he had a much wider range surfaced in his biopic FEAR STRIKES OUT (1957) in which he played Boston Red Sox baseball star Jimmy Piersall, whose emotional problems resulted in a major and very public breakdown. FEAR STRIKES OUT may have been the film that convinced Hitchcock to cast him as Norman Bates and it certainly was an edgier, more neurotic performance by the bobby-soxer pin-up but it was just a warm-up for his brilliant work in PSYCHO. If he wanted to kill his former teenage idol image, he succeeded beyond all expections but it also ended up typecasting him for the rest of his life besides great work in other movies (Orson Welles’ The Trial [1962], The Fool Killer [1965], Pretty Poison [1968]). His Norman Bates was such a carefully delineated and eccentric creation that unimaginative producers, directors and casting agents saw Perkins as that character from then on, offering him variations on it the rest of his life.  Worst of all, he wasn’t even recognized by the Academy for this career highpoint. Years later, Anthony Hopkins would score an Oscar for his cunning serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs but maybe Perkins’ spellbinding schizophrenic was just too disturbing or weird for Academy voters in 1960.

During the sixties, it seemed that there was only room for one African-American actor in the annual Oscar race and the chosen one was Sidney Poitier. He won for Lilies of the Field in 1963 and should have been nominated for A Patch of Blue (1965) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) but there were many other deserving black actors that never had a shot at an Oscar. For example in 1964, both Ivan Dixon for NOTHING BUT A MAN and Bernie Hamilton for ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO deserved nominations and in 1967, Al Freeman Jr. was vivid and affecting opposite Shirley Knight in the sexually charged DUTCHMAN, a rarely seen independent film based on the play by LeRoi Jones (he changed his name to Amiri Baraka). Knight went on to win the Best Actress award at the Venice film festival for DUTCHMAN but Freeman didn’t score another leading role in a feature film and eventually moved into television work. At least in that medium he was recognized for his talent and has been nominated for Emmy Awards six times. All three of these films were made outside the Hollywood mainstream and despite glowing reviews from most critics were ignored by the Academy, probably because so few Academy members bothered to see them. That’s their loss. NOTHING BUT A MAN, in particular, is due for a revival. The Washington Post called it “one of the most sensitive films about black life ever made in this country” and singled out Ivan Dixon, noting he “gives a spectacular depiction of a strong, principled individual who will not bend over for any man, white or black. It’s an early portrait of black pride, presented long before showing pride in being black was accepted.” Bernie Hamilton is equally riveting in ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO, a realistic, unsentimental drama about an interracial romance and the effect it has on the couple in question (Hamilton and Barbara Barrie) and their friends and families in a small midwestern town. It’s the sort of movie which makes socially conscious films such as Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) look slick and overstated in comparison. At least 1970 would begin on a more promising note with the recognition of James Earl Jones for The Great White Hope.

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP was probably the most overhyped film of 1971 thanks to Esquire Magazine’s advance cover story and prediction that it was going to be a runaway boxoffice smash. Pre-release buzz from Rolling Stone and other sources also raised everyone’s expectations to such a high level that it was doomed to fail. And truth be told, the much-anticipated acting debuts of James Taylor, Dennis Wilson (of The Beach Boys) and model-turned-actress Laurie Bird were underwhelming to say the least. They were mere wisps of smoke compared to the humming engine underneath the hood of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP – Warren Oates. It’s the performance of a lifetime for this highly regarded character actor who has always been better known and idolized by his peers than the general moviegoing public. An existential road movie directed by Monte Hellman, Oates plays G.T.O., a lonely, disconnected drifter whose car provides his sole connection to other people and the world. In the script, G.T.O. comes across as more of a metaphorical conceit than a real person but Oates brings this enigmatic figure to life, drawing a poetic portrait of alienated humanity. Even if many critics had mixed feelings about the film, few had anything but high praise for Oates. Daily Variety reported that Oates was “a total smash” in the role and “has what it takes to hold the center of attention in the big leagues.” According to Susan Compo in her excellent biography, Warren Oates: A Wild Life, “By the end of the year, he [Oates] would be hailed as the successor to Humphrey Bogart and one of the nation’s finest actors. Critic Charles Champlin would rate him a double Oscar contender for TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and The Hired Hand.” But Oates would be shut out of the 1971 Oscar race and never was nominated for any acting awards during his career.  This was also the year Malcolm McDowell was overlooked for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

It seemed like an instant classic when it was first released in 1973 and it looks better and better as the years go by but for some reason BADLANDS, directed by Terrence Malick, was completely ignored by the Academy in every category. You’d think they’d recognize the brilliant art direction by Jack Fish or the stunning cinematography by Tak Fujimoto, Stevan Larner, & Brian Probyn or Sissy Spacek in her first major role. But how could they ignore Malick for best director or Martin Sheen as the James Dean wannabe who goes on a serial-killing spree with his teenaged girlfriend? Based on the true case of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate who terrorized Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, the film is one of Sheen’s greatest performances (he is equally great in Apocalypse Now (1979) yet he has never received an AA nomination for anything despite countless other acting award honors (Emmy, Golden Globe, BAFTA, etc.).    Another milestone performance that was overlooked in 1974 was Gene Hackman in THE CONVERSATION.

David Carradine had a long and prolific career, even if he was largely undiscriminating in his choice of roles and films. The junk may outweigh the good work but he certainly should have been a Best Actor contender for BOUND FOR GLORY (1976), Hal Ashby’s evocative recreation of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography.Carradine might not have actually looked like Guthrie or even sound like him when he sang but he captures the spirit of the man with this performance. It’s a soulful, deeply felt piece of work that is conveyed less through dialogue than his eyes, his gestures, the way he moves and his own way of performing the iconic Guthrie songs.

Like Anthony Perkins, Brad Dourif is an actor who seems to have fallen into a typecasting trap ever since his second film appearance in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1976), where he played an emotionally vulnerable mental patient dominated by the psycho ward nurse (Louise Fletcher). Since then, he has carved out a niche for himself as wild eccentrics, psychos and fringe characters in more than 100 films and television shows. Still, my favorite Dourif performance and the one that deserved an Oscar nod was his work in WISE BLOOD (1979), based on the novel by Flannery O’Connor and directed by John Huston. Despite the low budget and challenge of bringing O’Connor’s seemingly unfilmable story to the screen, Huston succeeded beyond all expectation and part of the movie’s success is Dourif’s fiery, driven portrayal that captures the anger and confusion of O’Connor’s social misfit. Hazel Motes is clearly a fanatic of some kind but is never able to fully articulate or convey to others what he actually stands for or believes in – and Dourif makes his burning need to express himself so real that you forget you’re watching a performance. And that’s the secret of great acting, isn’t it?

After working in films and television for four decades, character actor Harry Dean Stanton was finally cast in a leading role in PARIS, TEXAS (1984) and he made the most of that opportunity, giving what was possibly the finest perfomance of that year, in my opinion. Written by Sam Sheperd and L.M. Kit Carson and directed by Wim Wenders, Stanton begins the movie as a wandering amnesiac in the desert and slowly regains his lost memory through the help of his brother’s family, piecing together the details of his past life that led up to a complete breakdown. His dawning awareness of who he was and what he did drives him to search for his runaway wife – and find closure, forgiveness and redemption for the past. Stanton’s performance was universally praised by almost every critic; Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Stanton was “a marvelous Sheperd character. Every foolish endeavor in American history appears to be written in the deep lines and hollows of his face. There is a gentleness about him that at any moment may erupt in inexpicable violence.” And Wenders captures this quality about Stanton in a once-in-a-lifetime role which received no AA nominations.

Denzel Washington is one of those rare actors who can shift effortlessly from superstar status in commercial genre films like The Pelican Brief (1983), Crimson Tide (1995), and The Bone Collector (1999) to more challenging, unconventional roles that demonstrate the man’s true acting chops and are more appreciated by critics than the general public. Nominated for two Best Supporting Actor parts (he won for GLORY, 1989) and three Best Actor roles (he won for TRAINING DAY, 2001), Washington may be the most honored African-American actor of all time but I would still like to steer people to one of his most overlooked performances and my favorite – his loose, self-assured but wary detective Easy Rawlins in DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (1995), based on the novel by Walter Mosley. Set in post-WWII Los Angeles, the movie, directed by Carl Franklin, has some of the complexity of Chinatown with its undercurrents of political corruption and sexual scandal but it lacks the cold, hard noir finality of Polanski’s film, thanks to Washington’s warm, bemused characterization and some unexpected dark humor provided by Don Cheadle (in a scene-stealing role as Rawlins’ homicidal pal Mouse). Rawlins may be a less showy and dynamic role than Malcolm X or Steve Biko (Cry Freedom, 1987) or the sociopathic Alonzo in Training Day but maybe that’s why I like it so much; Washington inhabits this character completely but subtly, bringing him to vivid life with quiet charm, self-deprecating humor and a shrewd understanding of his world and the limited options for navigating through it.

Jeff Bridges in THE BIG LEBOWSKI. 1998 was the year Roberto Benigni won the Oscar for Life is Beautiful but does anyone want to revisit that movie again? And how will it look in another ten years? Meanwhile, the Lebowski cult continues to grow and in the minds of the movie’s fans, Bridges is inseparable from that role. It’s one that will outlast the memory of the other best actor nominees’ work that year, despite their excellence. And if there is any justice this year, Bridges will win for Crazy Heart. Even if he doesn’t, the Dude abides and prospers in pop culture history.

Michael Douglas has a special talent for playing bold, ruthless and cunning characters much like his father and his Gordon Gekko of Wall Street (1987) is a perfectly realized embodiment of everything that represented success and wealth gone awry in corporate America at that time. Yet I prefer his performance as the stoner college professor in WONDER BOYS (2000), which reveals an amiable, slightly goofy, even vulnerable side to the Douglas persona we rarely glimpse. I don’t think I’ve seen him more relaxed or funnier, though he showed real comic flair in the frantic, over-the-top black farce, THE WAR OF THE ROSES. I wish he had been singled out by the Oscar voters for WONDER BOYS but at least this clever insider view of the academic world and one self-deluded faculty member won nominations for Best Writing, Best Editing and Best Song. I know there have been many other worthy contenders for the Best Actor Oscar that I haven’t mentioned (like Rock Hudson for Seconds [1966] or Eric Roberts for Star 80 [1983] or Robert De Niro for The King of Comedy [1983]) but I’ll stop here at the end of the 20th century.