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If you're a dead nominee,
do your chances improve?
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Oscar oddsmakers are saying Heath Ledger is a dead certain winner for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award this year and one of the reasons is that he's actually dead.
Think about it: Critics loved Ledger as
The Joker in "The Dark Knight." The movie also was
one of the biggest box office hits of the year. And Ledger, who
died before the film was released in 2008. is sure to be a sentimental
favorite because his career was cut short at his very peak of
popularity by an accidental overdose of painkillers.
Some might even suggest the competition isn't so strong this
year: Josh Brolin as Dan White, the assassin in "Milk";
Robert Downey Jr. in a comic role in "Tropic Thunder";
Philip Seymour Hoffman, already a Best Actor winner, as the accused
priest in "Doubt," and Michael Shannon, as the mentally
ill fellow in "Revolutionary Road."
But consider this: Only one performer in the 81-year history of the Academy Awards actually has won posthumously: Peter Finch, who played the deranged TV anchorman in the 1976 "Network" and gave the world the famous line: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Five other performances in Oscar history also were nominated after the death of the actor. All were male performers. James Dean actually was nominated for Best Actor in two consecutive years after his death in 1955--for his first film "East of Eden" (1955) and for "Giant" (1956). Spencer Tracy, already a two-time winner of the Best Actor award, was nominated for "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" in 1967. Sir Ralph Richardson, the iconic British actor, was nominated for "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes" in the Best Supporting Actor category in 1984. And Massimo Troisi, the star of "Il Postino" ("The Postman") who died of a heart attack just one day after finishing the film, was nominated for Best Actor of 1994.
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JAMES DEAN, shown above in "Giant" (left) and "East of Eden" was nominated in 1956 for Best Actor of 1955 and in 1957 for Best Actor of 1956, even though he died in 1955. He lost twice.
Why were the odds so high against any of these men winning if Ledger is thought by many to be a shoo-in? There's no way to know why Academy members voted as they did, but here are some educated guesses:
1. Some voters may believe the Oscar is of tremendous help to a performer who wants bigger and better roles, so why give it to a performer who's not even around to take a bow? Give the dead actor a special award, but give the Oscar to a living performer who can benefit from it, the argument goes.
2. James Dean's mannered style of acting, widely associated with "method" actors, may not have been appreciated by older Academy members. His wild and crazy lifestyle, which resulted in his death in a high speed auto smash-up, also may have alienated many voters. The winner in 1955 was Ernest Borgnine, a screen villain playing a warm and sympathetic role for the first time in "Marty." Voters may have wanted to reward him for taking such a big step up in his career. (It also may have been "the year of the Italian" because Italian actress Anna Magnani won the Best Actress award.) Dean's loss in 1956 may have reflected a widespread conviction that Dean hadn't finished his work in "Giant" before his death and that some of his scenes, filmed in shadows, may have been played by a double. The winner, Yul Brynner, also was considered a major new star with great potential in movies. He was reprising his acclaimed role in the stage musical of "The King and I," so his momentum going into the competition was much greater.
3. Spencer Tracy faced a wall of other great performances in his year of posthumous nomination: Warren Beatty in "Bonnie & Clyde," Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke" and, the ultimate winner, Rod Steiger in "In the Heat of the Night." Tracy already had won two Oscars back to back in 1937-38 and had nothing more to prove when he died. Another factor: Tracy played a lifelong liberal who's upset when his white daughter decides to marry a black man (Sidney Poitier) in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Many felt the film was too patronizing on the subject and were uncomfortable with Tracy's character. Steiger had the good luck to be playing a racist Southern lawman who's forced to accept the superiority of the big city black detective (again, Sidney Poitier) who helps him solve a murder in a film much more welcomed by liberals in the Hollywood community.
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Left to right: Spencer Tracy, Massimo Troisi, Sir Ralph Richardson all were nominated for
Oscars after their deaths. They all lost to living actors.
4. Ralph Richardson's loss in 1994 was not surprising. "Greystoke" was a film many critics didn't like and his role was not a showy one. Many felt the nomination was a final tribute to his great career as one of England's finest stage and screen actors. He also had the bad fortune to be going up against a huge popular favorite--a non-actor, Dr. Haing S. Ngor, who played a Cambodian refugee tortured by the Khmer Rouge during the Vietnam war. Dr. Ngor actually was a Cambodian refugee himself and his personal story won him enormous sympathy from voters.
5. Massimo Troisi, the star of "Il Postino" ("The Postman") died the day after he finished the film, and was nominated for Best Actor of 1995. That was the year that Nicholas Cage simply blew everybody away with his scorching performance as an alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas" and won the Oscar. Troisi, unknown in the U.S., had little chance that year.
So, how did Peter Finch overcome all the odds and actually win the Oscar after his death?
Finch's win possibly could have been aided by the fact that so many of the other nominees had played characters voters considered distasteful, especially Robert DeNiro's psycho in "Taxi Driver" and Sylvester Stallone's likeable, but inarticulate prizefighter in "Rocky." William Holden, Finch's co-star in "Network," already had won an Oscar, so some voters might have figured that was enough for him. And Giancarlo Giannini, who gave his greatest performance as a Casanova who winds up in a World War II concentration camp in "Seven Beauties," may have had an uphill battle because his performance was in Italian in an art house film. Besides, I have a suspicion that most Academy members had been waiting for somebody to stand up and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" and felt Finch was speaking for them that year.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Feb. 16, 2009.
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