The 81 Biggest Oscar Travesties: Part One
By Darren Williams
27th January 2010
With the announcement of the Academy Award nominations approaching rapidly, it seems fitting to take a moment to reflect on some of the most wrong-headed decisions they ever made. This year's ceremony will be the 82nd Academy Awards, and no doubt there'll be at least one incredibly stupid win or nomination, so I'll leave a space open and instead of the 82 worst decisions they ever made, for now it'll just be 81. I won't include any of their more bizarre nomination snubs now, instead I'll put up a list of the worst snubs after the nominations are made, because there's bound to be some amazing performance or film left off the list (Where the Wild Things Are, Peter Capaldi and Charlotte Gainsbourg look to be the biggest snubs this year), so here's the 81 worst nominations and wins, in the big 8 categories (Picture, directing, acting, screenplays) in the history of the Oscars. Be warned, this column is arrogant, opinionated and I'm harsh about a large number of popular films.
81. Return of the King wins best Adapted Screenplay.
I feel a little bad about this one. Return of the King is a great film and it was nice to finally see the LotR team get some Oscar recognition. But screenplay? This illustrates exactly why I hate sweep winners. When a film wins the majority of Oscars it just seems like lazy thinking, was there really only one great film that year? But I wouldn't actually begrudge it most of its wins, but screenplay for the worst written part of the trilogy (those multi-endings really do hurt the film) is simply Academy members ticking boxes. The fact that it beat the genuinely inventive American Splendor makes it an even more bizarre victory.
80. John Mills wins best Supporting Actor for Ryan's Daughter
Again, one I feel bad about. Mills is genuinely one of the finest actors to ever come out of Britain, but his village idiot was an embarrassing performance in a bad film. This was a sympathy award, a 'we're sorry we never voted for you before' win. This is the Academy as a patronising group making up for past mistakes.
79. The Godfather/ The Godfather Part 2 best Picture wins.
Probably controversial, but neither film deserved best picture. Cabaret was a far better film in 72, and absolutely the right decision was made when Fosse took director. In 74, Chinatown should have walked to an easy victory. That's not to say either film are really bad or great stains on the Oscar, but they're not that great either. There's a lot of lazy critical thinking that constantly pushes The Godfather films forward as undisputed examples of cinematic excellence and I think the dual Oscar wins are part of that laziness.
78. Russell Crowe wins best Actor for Gladiator
"Father to a murdered wife, husband of a murdered son, walker of a dyslexic dog, actor of the macho bollocks" Crowe is capable of good performances, he's also capable of hideous, thick-headed, one-note performances that make Stallone look talented. The fact that he won an Oscar for Gladiator is bad enough, the fact that he beat Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Geoffrey Rush to the Oscar is sickening.
77. Jessica Lange wins best Supporting Actress for Tootsie
Lange should have won best Actress that year for Frances. It wasn't just a good performance, it was by far the best nominated performance. Instead she lost to an undeserving actress who'll appear later in the list. As a consolation award she won best supporting actress. The trouble was that her performance in Tootsie is kinda bland, she's a flat love interest and little more. Her win in this category robbed her far more deserving co-star Teri Garr of the award.
76. Ingrid Bergman wins best Actress for Gaslight
I think Bergman was a great actress, but this was another apology award, a way to say sorry that they didn't reward her for Casablanca. Once again, the Academy being forced to make up for its mistakes meant that a lesser performance beat one of the all-time greats, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.
75. Wallace Beery wins best Actor for The Champ
This isn't so much a slight on Beery, more on what seems to be silly politics by The Academy of the day. The award was tied with Fredric March's jaw-dropping performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, yet it's almost as if the Academy couldn't bear to have a performance in a horror film win best actor outright, so it has to be shared with someone else.
74. My Fair Lady wins best Picture
Bad musicals winning the best picture award is a running theme in this list, My Fair Lady isn't actually as bad as a lot of the others, it has some nice performances and a few decent songs. But it beat Dr. Strangelove to the Oscar, which is just the Academy at its bewildering, conservative worst.
73. Seabiscuit gets nominated for best Picture
It's nominations like Seabiscuit that make you wish older Academy members had their vote taken away from them. It represents 'quality' film-making. It's even more disturbing when you remember that a film can only be nominated if it's number one on a significant number of ballots,. The fact that such a completely irrelevant film could be the number one choice for people who actually work in the industry is a slap in the face.
72. Burt Lancaster wins best Actor for Elmer Gantry
I have no problems with the performance, it's not Lancaster's best, but it's still decent work and I could live with him winning for this film if it wasn't for two words. Jack Lemmon. Jack Lemmon was nominated for The Apartment this year. He'd already been screwed out of a win for Some Like It Hot the year before, but The Apartment, one of the greatest performances ever caught on film, should surely have won him the Oscar, right? Wrong. Because once again we get a 'sorry we messed up before' winner.
71. Oliver! wins best Picture/Director
And we have another of those undeserving musicals. It's not that Oliver! is a bad film, ok, it is, but it's not just that. It's not even that it beat out The Lion in Winter and the likes of 2001, The Producers, Rosemary's Baby and Faces didn't even get nominated for best Picture. It's that Carol Reed was one of the best directors of the 1940s, and instead of awarding him for The Third Man or Odd Man Out, they awarded him for this pitiful effort.
"Gone With the Wind"'s Best Picture award ranks in at number 70.
70. Gone with the Wind wins best Picture
1939. The year of The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, The Rules of the Game, Ninotchka, Gunga Din, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Only Angels Have Wings, Destry Rides Again and Daybreak. What won the Oscar? Oh yeah, the pretty, epic, meaningless bollocks. Art direction won best picture for 1939 and 70 years on it could do it again for Avatar. Nice to know some things never change.
69. Out of Africa wins best Picture
The 1980s was quite possibly the worst decade for empty prestige pictures winning the Oscar. Most of the actual great films of 1985 didn't even get nominated, but any of the other nominees, even the tamed down The Color Purple, would have made a more deserving winner than this film.
68. Sean Connery wins best Supporting Actor for The Untouchables
Connery could act once. If you see any of his films from his peak - The Offence, The Hill, The Man Who Would Be King, for example, he was capable of quite remarkable work. So they wait until he begins the slide into self-parody to award him with an Oscar. It just makes me sad that so often the Academy are unable to see great actors until they start to lose that greatness.
67. Tom Cruise gets nominated for best Supporting Actor for Magnolia
Magnolia was one of the most self-indulgent films of the 90s and it could easily have done with being an hour shorter. But within all the nonsense there was some honestly great acting, so who do the Academy choose to recognise from the film's cast? Tom Cruise. In a role not that different from the smug yuppies he played in the 80s. It's just this time he swore a lot. Bravo.
66. Whoopi Goldberg wins best Supporting Actress for Ghost
They could have given the Oscar to Bracco in Goodfellas, Bening in The Grifters or Ladd in Wild at Heart. Instead they went for Whoopi's screeching comedy relief performance. And this was history-making because she was only the second black actress to ever win an Oscar. The fact that Whoopi became the first black actress since the 30s to win an Oscar was made even more insulting by the fact that the magnificent To Sleep with Anger was released the same year and failed to pick up a single nomination.
65. Jake Gyllenhaal gets nominated for best Supporting Actor for Brokeback Mountain
Apart from the fact it's the worst kind of category fraud (one of the leads in a love story only gets a supporting nomination?) in order to ensure he didn't split votes with Ledger, it's also a horrific performance. I have a lot of problems with this film, the major one being how thoroughly it ripped the heart out of the original story, but Gyllenhaal just isn't up to the challenge of the film. He isn't capable of the right kind of emotional depth that this film would need in order for the relationship to work. I'm not a fan of Ledger's performance either, but he acts Gyllenhaal off the screen and Gyllenhaal took a slot that could have gone to a good performance from an actor who honestly was a supporting player.
64. Sally Field wins two Oscars for best Actress.
We live in a world where Field has two Oscars but Laura Linney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Laura Dern, Gena Rowlands and Julianne Moore don't have any. That's all I have to say about that.
63. Humphrey Bogart wins best Actor for The African Queen.
It's not a film I've ever really been a fan of, for numerous reasons, but Bogart winning his sole Oscar for this bit of fluff instead of In a Lonely Place, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep or Sierra Madre is just perverse.
62. Henry Fonda wins best Actor for On Golden Pond
Another case of the Academy's perverse thinking and the way they ignore the great actors for freak winners. Fonda could have won for Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Ox-Bow Incident, My Darling Clementine or The Wrong Man and it would have been a thrilling and deserved victory. Instead they give it to him for this sentimental nonsense in a rush to award him before he died. The great actor deserved better treatment.
61. John Wayne wins best Actor for True Grit.
Actually, John Wayne wins best actor is all I really need to say. If this was him at his best, being challenged and driven by a director like Ford in The Searchers, I could be ok with it. But for True Grit? This is one of the worst cases of awarding the celebrity rather than the performance.