Best Actor 1970

[OscarGoesTwo]

The only two who I think deserve the nomination here is

Jack Nicholson and James Earl Jones

But my vote goes to James Earl Jones and it's for the scene in his mother's apartment when he sneaks out of the house with the baseball team, that one scene was the done deal for me. Such versatility in emotion and all around great acting

[ITALIANO]

Back - and tanned - from a too short but very intense holiday in Thessaloniki and the Calcidic peninsula (the second finger), don't have much time now to explain why, but yes, I voted for George C. Scott too (plus, we all know that we have countless chances to vote for Nicholson in the future).

And is Ryan O'Neal's the blandest performance ever nominated in this category? I should check, but it's quite possible...

[mlrg]

Geroge C. Scott - Patton

[Mister Tee]

Hackman was 40 and a previous nominee, and back in that time he had about the same track record as Scott and Nicholson award wise, and seemingly about the same matinee idol potential as they had – strange.

Nicholson is certainly an appropriate analogy, having had only the one supporting breakthrough role prior to Five Easy Pieces. But Scott had by then established himself as a leading player in critics' terms if not Oscar's -- The Flim Flam Man and Petulia had been major roles for him just prior, and his Petulia work gave him a second place finish in the NY Critics' best actor voting. You could make the case it was lingering memories of that performance that helped him win over even the iconoclastic National Society for such a square-jaw movie as Patton.

As far as Hackman/Nicholson...this is again probably hard to see in retrospect but, in strictly anatomy-is-destiny terms, NIcholson 1970 was seen as a good-looking, sexually-vital leading man (albeit an offbeat one), whereas Hackman was still viewed as schlubby character actor. Not to tip my hand too much for our next poll, but you don't want to underestimate how much Hackman's image changed a year later. It was a small-scale version of Hoffman's Midnight Cowboy breakthrough -- an actor who'd seemed solid enough suddenly bursting forth with a star-making performance. In the rear view everything is obvious, but, in 1970, I doubt many saw Gene Hackman as likely to have the strong career with which he ended up.

[Uri]

I went with Scott too.

As for I Never Sang for My Father – the same way they did two years later with The Godfather, the Academy placed the protagonist, the obvious lead part of the son in the supporting category while honoring the more celebrated, veteran actor playing the father in the lead for his substantially smaller, if showy, role. While I get the Pacino case – he was young, relatively unknown actor, one of several sons in the film and so on, Hackman was 40 and a previous nominee, and back in that time he had about the same track record as Scott and Nicholson award wise, and seemingly about the same matinee idol potential as they had – strange.

[Big Magilla]

Jack Nicholson was amazing as the well connected societal dropout in I Never Sang for My Father, arguably the year's best film.

A ''minor'' correction needed in Magilla's statement.

LOL. I'd say that required a major adjustment.

[MovieFan]

George C. Scott gets my vote. Outstanding work from this great actor

[Reza]

Jack Nicholson was amazing as the well connected societal dropout in I Never Sang for My Father, arguably the year's best film.

A ''minor'' correction needed in Magilla's statement.

Voted for Scott, easily the best of this bunch of nominees. Nicholson and Jones are also very good.

My picks for 1970:

George C. Scott, Patton
Robert Mitchum, Ryan's Daughter
James Earl Jones, The Great White Hope
Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces
Albert Finney, Scrooge


The 6th spot: Oliver Reed, Women in Love

[Big Magilla]

Just for the record since neither Tee nor I seem to have remembered it correctly, Dustin Hoffman's character in Little Big Man was 121.

[Mister Tee]

Those of who had been crushed by Dustin Hoffman's loss to John Wayne the previous Spring spent much of the year expecting he'd be back with Little Big Man -- just hearing that he played a 100-year-old made it seem like Oscar bait supreme. And Hoffman was quite good in his role, in one of the few movies worth seeing that year. But he didn't reach the heights of Ratso, and he was never in the conversation for the win. Why he wasn't nominated -- why the film got nothing beyond the Dan George supporting nod -- may have had something to do with its being released by the fledgling (and quickly expiring) National General Pictures.

I like Robert Mitchum well enough in Ryan's Daughter -- certainly better than much else in that elephantine thing -- but I liked him better a few years down the road. Of the other omittees, I'd highlight Peter Boyle in Joe. I'm sure Joe doesn't hold up very well -- it was a mess then, if an energetic one, and mainly got by on its extreme timeliness: dealing with blue collar rage at the counter-culture mere months after hard-hats had beaten war protestors in downtown NY. But one thing I'd expect would survive as watch-worthy is Peter Boyle's vivid, subversively funny performance.

All of these folks were clearly superior to Ryan O'Neal, one of the least distinguished actors to ever be nominated for an Oscar. (A friend of mine said at the time, If he wins, the Academy Awards will never mean anything again) The nomination proves that oftentimes simply being connected to an in-focus movie has more to do with getting noticed than any talent. Think of all the fine actors who've never been cited (Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Donald Sutherland, just off the top of my head), and deal with the fact that Ryan O'Neal has.

Melvyn Douglas was quite highly praised, even by some of the tougher critics (and some friends of mine), but I found I Never Sang for My Father such a wan thing that none of it really moved me enough to get me to vote for it.

I spoke my piece about Five Easy Pieces under the supporting actress thread. The film just never did for me what it did for so many. I did like Nicholson's performance, though, and I imagine it's a performance that must look near-astonishing in the rear-view -- the idea that Jack used to do such human-scale, relatively restrained work must come as an amazement to those who checked in after Batman.

I'd seen the stage version of The Great White Hope on tour, with Brock Peters, and he's an estimable actor -- but he didn't have the swagger and charisma that James Earl Jones brought to the role. Thus, even though the material creaked on screen (it somewhat creaked onstage, to be honest), I savored seeing an actor so relish a great role. He's my runner-up.

But it was George C. Scott's year. I looked at some of Patton on AMC over Memorial Day, and concluded that Scott had the award won after the opening scene -- a rip-roaring monologue that Coppola (one presumes) filled with some of that vainglory he later conjured up for Duvall when he talked about napalm in the morning. I feel like everything has already been said about why the Scott peformance works so well: chiefly that, in a divided time, he managed to create a character liberals could point to as the epitome of the war machine and conservatives could point to as the most heroic of Americans...and they'd both be right.

Magilla is correct, that Patton as a film looks weaker than it did in 1970. But from what I can tell, Scott's performance still works at a very high level, and deserves the Oscar he so flamboyantly rejected.

[Big Magilla]

This is annoying. I wrote a long post, should have copied it in case it got lost but didn;t, and of course it got lost.

Here's the jist of it:

Ryan O'Neal's preppie in Love Story was a surprise nomination over the more deserving Dustin Hoffman as the 110 year-old man lookign back on his life in Little Big Man; Robert Mitchum as the cuckholded schoolmaster in Ryan's Daughter and Albert Finney as the singign and dancing Scrooge.

James Earl Jones was sensational recreatign his Tony award winnign performnace as Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope but was up against three then more popular actors.

Melvyn Douglas had his best starring role ever as teh crotchety old geezer still making life hell for his middle-aged son (Gene Hackman) in I Never Sang for My Father. This performance came about midway between his two supporting wins.

Jack Nicholson was amazign as the well connected societal dropout in Five Easy Pieces, arguably the year's best film.

While Patton may not have deserved its Best Picture win, George C. Scott's towering portryal of the egomaniacal WWII general was well deserved despite his protestations to the contrary. My vote goes to him.