The Best Years for Best Actor Nominations

[avuncular_bob]

• 1952 Gary Cooper - High Noon as Marshal Will Kane
  • Marlon Brando - Viva Zapata! as Emiliano Zapata
  • Kirk Douglas - The Bad and the Beautiful as Jonathan
  • José Ferrer - Moulin Rouge as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec / The Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec
  • Alec Guinness - The Lavender Hill Mob as Henry Holland

Comments

[deadmoviestar]

These two were pretty solid, as well:
* 1956 Yul Brynner - The King and I as King Mongkut of Siam
o James Dean - Giant as Jett Rink (posthumous nomination)
o Kirk Douglas - Lust for Life as Vincent Van Gogh
o Rock Hudson - Giant as "Bick Benedict"
o Laurence Olivier - Richard III as Richard III

* 1982 Ben Kingsley - Gandhi as Mahatma Gandhi
o Dustin Hoffman - Tootsie as Michael Dorsey / Dorothy Michaels
o Jack Lemmon - Missing as Ed Horman
o Paul Newman - The Verdict as Frank Galvin
o Peter O'Toole - My Favorite Year as Alan Swann

[avuncular_bob]

It's pretty amazing how frequently Peter O'Toole and Jack Lemmon got nominated from the 1950s through the 1990s.

I don't know if you remember my little kick about three years ago when I decided to correct my mis-impressions about 1950s cinema? I had had the mistaken idea that it was all stiff and anti-intellectual (because McCarthyism had rendered art impossible).

Well, Jack Lemmon is one of those people I had to totally rethink as a result of that self-imposed attitude adjustment. I had always thought of him as strictly a light comic actor and, hence, not good. Boy, was I wrong!

[deadmoviestar]

It's true -- 1982 is a long way from the start for both of those guys. I think Lemmon's a seriously good actor. He's done two performances which have annoyed me to no end -- Days of Wine & Roses and The Out-of-Towners -- but I think it's because he played these really annoying characters SO WELL that it bugged me.

[avuncular_bob]

Well, there you have it.