Best Actor 1948

[Big Magilla]

This is really quite a ho-hum line-up considering that those who were overlooked include Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; John Wayne in Red River; Henry Fonda in Fort Apache; Edward G. Robinson in All My Sons and Anton Walbrook in The Red Shoes.

Dan Dailey had no business being nominated for playing another variation on his screen persona in a routine, often boring, vaudeville musical.

If Edmund Gwenn was a supporting player in Miracle on 34th Street then surely Clifton Webb is a supporting player in Sitting Pretty.

I can't really begrudge Lew Ayres his only Oscar nomibation, but, really, he should have had two by now, one as Best Actor for All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929/30 and one as Best Supporting Actor for Holiday in 1938. He was fine as the doctor in Johnny Belinda but the it's Jane Wyman's film and she deservedly won for Best Actress with both Charles Bickford and Agnes Moorehad richly deserving of their supporting nods.

Montgomery Clift was terrific as the sensitive G.I. in The Search, which was his second film, though the first released. His actual first, Red River, in which he plays John Wayne's adopted son, provided him with another great role. His nomination was clearly earned.

I have reservations about Laurence Olivier's Hamlet being the great film it was thought to be at the time, but I have no quarrel with Olivier's win since my real faves this year, Bogart, Wayne, Clift, Fonda and Robinson all have awards from me in other years.