Best Actor 1968

[Jefforey Smith]

1) I liked the book Flowers for Algernon; in fact, worked on a scene from it for an Interp class in college. The scene -- Charly visiting the shop of the father who abandoned him and now doesn't recognize him,,,,)

No kidding!

I was on my junior high school's speech team and one girl did a reading from Flowers for Algernon in the Prose category.

Small world.

[Mister Tee]

It was also an early instance of the writing prize going to a film with the niftiest concept -- a trend that grew in later years, with The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, all the way through to Get Out and Promising Young Woman. Though, weirdly, the plot of The Producers -- widely thought fresh and original -- is basically there in another format in 1944's The Falcon in Hollywood.

For anyone interested in checking this for themselves, I see that The Falcon in Hollywood is running on TCM tomorrow morning from 10-11:30 AM EDT.

[Mister Tee]

Well, I'm sure there is/was, but I think it's still appropriate to be surprised that The Producers failed even a nomination for Best Comedy or Musical Picture considering its Golden Globe nomination and eventual Oscar win for screenwriting. Then again, the DGA cited The Odd Couple over The Producers that year so what do I know.

The Producers wasn't a box-office hit or even an especially big cult hit at the time; its reputation grew over the years. I agree with Magilla, that its victory at the Oscars stemmed from weak competition. The Academy that had chosen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? over Bonnie and Clyde a year earlier wasn't going to give a screenwriting prize to Faces or 2001; The Battle of Algiers was old news (Foreign Film nominee in 1966); Hot Millions was another light comedy with no widespread commercial appeal. In that context, honoring already-industry-vet Mel probably seemed the best idea.

It was also an early instance of the writing prize going to a film with the niftiest concept -- a trend that grew in later years, with The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, all the way through to Get Out and Promising Young Woman. Though, weirdly, the plot of The Producers -- widely thought fresh and original -- is basically there in another format in 1944's The Falcon in Hollywood.

I don't claim to much understand the dynamic of the 1968 Oscar race. Or the year. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In won "Best TV Show."

Hard to picture now, but in 1967-68, Laugh-In was what Saturday Night Live was in the mid-70s, Seinfeld in the 90s -- different from anything in sight, the freshest/hippest thing around.

[Big Magilla]

At the time, and for a long time thereafter, Rachel, Rachel was a highly respected drama which won Joanne Woodward the NY Film Critics' award for Best Actress and Paul Newman the award for Best Director. Of the ten DGA nominees, Harvey, Kubrick, Newman, Reed, and Zeffirelli and their films seemed to me to be the most likely Oscar nominees for Director and Picture. If the awards were to be voted on now, I see Polanski and Rosemary's Baby easily taking the place of Newman and Rachel, Rachel.

If I were to dump one of the above for a director of a previous Best Foreign Film nominee it would certainly be Menzel for Closely Watched Trains over Pontecorvo for The Battle of Algiers, both of which I think of having been 1967 films due to their New York releases that year.

I think The Producers winning Best Original Screenplay was due to a weak slate. The WGA, which at the time distinguished between genres (Drama, Comedy, Musical) had a separate category for Original Screenplay which it won while the much more popular at the time The Odd Couple won for Comedy.

As for Funny Girl, how that got a Best Picture nomination is still a headscratcher for me. The film was all about "the greatest star". Everyone else was irrelevant. How Kay Medford managed to get a Supporting Actress nomination out of it is even more bizarre. I have the feeling that those who voted for her did so on the strength of her performance on the Original Cast recording. Her songs are completely cut from the film version and her role as Fanny's mother reduced to little more than a walk-on.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
3) I confess I read Who Gets the Drumstick?, the true story of the amalgamation of two large families following spousal deaths that formed the basis of Yours, Mine and Ours. It was the kind of tripe that appealed to me when I was 13-14. I never did see the movie (my tastes had rapidly escalated by then), but I recall it was quite a large hit, and I presume headlining Lucy (still a huge TV star then) and Henry Fonda had something to do with it, along with its being an inoffensive family film. (Probably few of us have seen the Steve Martin Cheaper by the Dozen, but it was a substantial hit this millennium; there's an audience out there, remote from us, that loves this kind of crud.)

Well, I'm sure there is/was, but I think it's still appropriate to be surprised that The Producers failed even a nomination for Best Comedy or Musical Picture considering its Golden Globe nomination and eventual Oscar win for screenwriting. Then again, the DGA cited The Odd Couple over The Producers that year so what do I know.

I don't claim to much understand the dynamic of the 1968 Oscar race. Or the year. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In won "Best TV Show."

It seems to me that The Lion in Winter was the frontrunner on the basis of its Golden Globe -- Drama win, New York Film Critics Circle victory, and Directors Guild nomination and eventual win. The DGA nominated ten films so it's hard to parse out which films were taken seriously and which weren't. The Lion in Winter was the only Golden Globe Drama selection that was nominated for a DGA (the others being Charly, The Fixer, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Shoes of the Fisherman) and somehow Comedy or Musical fared better with three being nominated (Funny Girl, Oliver!, and The Odd Couple) and two not (Yours Mine and Ours and Finian's Rainbow). Of the two Foreign slates at the Golden Globe (both of which were very impressive), only Romeo and Juliet was nominated but it had five nominations, which would suggest a breakthrough hit. The charming Closely Watched Trains was nominated in the foreign categories the previous year and wouldn't have been a bad forerunner to the 1970s trend of a movie winning the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film one year and being nominated for a slew of nominations the next. Rachel, Rachel was nominated at the DGA and won Best Actress and Director but didn't have a Best Picture nomination. Rosemary's Baby had a DGA nomination and picked up four Golden Globe nominations (including Actress, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Score) but no Best Picture. And 2001 was [understandably] shut out. I understand that the Golden Globes didn't necessarily mean as much back then.

I didn't have this conclusion in my mind when I started writing this but I guess if presented with this information above, I would probably forecast nominations for Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, Oliver!, Rachel Rachel, and Romeo and Juliet. And, y'know, maybe one of them gets left off for Best Director and that slot would go to Stanley Kubrick. Maybe if one got left off, it would be Rachel, Rachel and the replacement might be I don't know... one of the other countless films listed above.

[Big Magilla]

The Shoes of the Fisherman was clearly an off-the-wall pick for Best Picture by the NBR, but Morris West's novel was one of the better page-turners of the day and I quite liked Anthony Quinn's restrained performance, a rarity for him at that time. The scenes in the Vatican were first-rate, but those outside its walls were pretty bad. David Janssen was especially annoying as the investigative reporter.

[Mister Tee]

1) I liked the book Flowers for Algernon; in fact, worked on a scene from it for an Interp class in college. The scene -- Charly visiting the shop of the father who abandoned him and now doesn't recognize him -- didn't make the movie, which is just one of many bad decisions made by the filmmakers. The movie is pretty dreadful.

2) I remind Sabin that, along with choosing Cliff Robertson, the NBR picked The Shoes of the Fisherman -- a genuinely ghastly, borderline incompetent movie -- as best film that ear. As much a joke as NBR has always been, it reached its zenith of silliness in those late 60s/early 70s years. Also: being nominated for the Golden Bear merely means being screened at Berlin, not that it was in contention for any prize.

3) I confess I read Who Gets the Drumstick?, the true story of the amalgamation of two large families following spousal deaths that formed the basis of Yours, Mine and Ours. It was the kind of tripe that appealed to me when I was 13-14. I never did see the movie (my tastes had rapidly escalated by then), but I recall it was quite a large hit, and I presume headlining Lucy (still a huge TV star then) and Henry Fonda had something to do with it, along with its being an inoffensive family film. (Probably few of us have seen the Steve Martin Cheaper by the Dozen, but it was a substantial hit this millennium; there's an audience out there, remote from us, that loves this kind of crud.)

[mlrg]

The source material has remained popular.

It had been turned into a London and Broadway musical, Flowers for Algernon with Michael Crawford in London, Charlie and Algernon with the unknown P.J. Benjamin on Broadway where it flopped circa 1980.

Kids were still reading it in High School and College in the 00's. One of my nephews was a big fan.

Still, the movie is dreadful

[Big Magilla]

The Producers was not even nominated for Best Comedy or Musical Picture at the Golden Globes. They somehow found five better comedies to nominate than year than The Producers, and they were (*checks notes*), Finian's Rainbow, Funny Girl, The Odd Couple, Oliver!, and something called Yours, Mine, Ours.

Yours, Mine, and Ours which preceded The Brady Bunch TV series by a year, was a highly popular comedy based on a true story about a blended family starring Henry Fonda and Golden Globe nominated Lucille Ball. It was remade in 2005 with Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo.

[Big Magilla]

The source material has remained popular.

It had been turned into a London and Broadway musical, Flowers for Algernon with Michael Crawford in London, Charlie and Algernon with the unknown P.J. Benjamin on Broadway where it flopped circa 1980.

Kids were still reading it in High School and College in the 00's. One of my nephews was a big fan.

[Sabin]

Looks like some people were a fan of the film. It got a National Board of Review citation for best of the year as well as won Cliff Robertson a Best Actor award. It was nominated for a Golden Bear. And it had three Golden Globe nominations and won for Sterling Siliphant's screenplay over The Fixer, The Lion in Winter, The Producers, and Rosemary's Baby, which makes *SOME* amount of sense considering that The Fixer and The Lion in Winter were the only other projects up for Best Picture. Yes, I'm surprised to learn as well that The Producers was not even nominated for Best Comedy or Musical Picture at the Golden Globes. They somehow found five better comedies to nominate than year than The Producers, and they were (*checks notes*), Finian's Rainbow, Funny Girl, The Odd Couple, Oliver!, and something calls Yours, Mine, Ours.

[Big Magilla]

I've been catching up with old acting winners and nominees and yesterday I put myself through Charly.

After having seen more than 80 best actor winners this is certainly the most dreadful thing of them all. The film itself looks like a (bad) acid trip, specially during the second and third act. The editing choices really contribute to this.

Cliff Robertson's nomination was the only nomination the film had. Was he a surprise winner? I know that historically the Academy is a sucker for mentally challenged roles but the film itself is very far fetched for the Academy taste.

That wasn't it. As I wrote in 2011:

"Cliff Robertson, who won, milked the fact that two of his previous TV plays (The Hustler; Days of Wine and Roses) were filmed with other actors so he bought the rights to Flowers for Algernon determined that this one wouldn't get away. He's good in it, but the plot is a bit obvious and formulaic."

[mlrg]

I've been catching up with old acting winners and nominees and yesterday I put myself through Charly.

After having seen more than 80 best actor winners this is certainly the most dreadful thing of them all. The film itself looks like a (bad) acid trip, specially during the second and third act. The editing choices really contribute to this.

Cliff Robertson's nomination was the only nomination the film had. Was he a surprise winner? I know that historically the Academy is a sucker for mentally changelled roles but the film itself is very far fetched for the Academy taste.

[mayukh]

Just chiming in again – Mister Tee absolutely summed up my feelings on this year. Revisiting The Lion in Winter last night, I was almost shocked by how artificial the whole affair was, the very lazy way in which the source material was treated (ie there was a clear lack of self-aware humor which could've made the proceedings, you know, kind of fun). I love Peter O'Toole but he absolutely didn't deserve to win for this. Or, rather, the film he was in didn't deserve to win anything.

On the other hand, Arkin was, as others have said, astonishingly subtle. I can't even describe how moved I was when I first saw this performance. For a long time, this was one of my favorite turns ever.

[Big Magilla]

I'm traveling - so am not in any rush to move along. We can easily wait a few more days before getting into 1969.

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