1936 – Walter Brennan
Come and Get It
So here we are with the first winner of the Best Supporting Actor award. At the time of receiving his award, Walter Brennan was a character actor who had been acting for about eleven years, appearing in nearly 130 films in mostly uncredited roles. But here he was brought a little more into the forefront, given a name and a unique character. He plays lumberjack Swan Bostrom, a walking Swedish stereotype, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, I’d like to mention a little interesting tidbit I found concerning the character of Swan Bostrom. The original novel was written by Edna Ferber. Its focus was on the rape of the North American frontier in the late 1800s by the logging industry. Instead, it became a story about a man who tries to recapture his youth by falling for the daughter of a woman he’d once loved. In the novel, Swan was described as “the strongest man in the North woods.” Clearly, that was not the slightly statured Brennan, who looked like he weighed all of 140 lbs.
Several times in the first act of the movie, he is called a crazy Swede. He was more of a caricature than a character. He greets his friend Barney by literally jumping on him and wrapping his legs around Barney’s waist while exclaiming “yumpin’ yiminey!” Sometimes his Swedish accent is overdone, while at other times it is nearly non-existent. They dyed his hair and moustache blond, which looked a little fake at times. Even as the character aged, he still talked about his yob, instead of his job. He was so Swedish, he never learned to pronounce his “Js”
But Brennan played the part for all it was worth. He made Swan one of the most likable characters in the film. There was an innocence about him that bordered on naiveté, and he was always ready with a smile. But he also handled the more sensitive parts with skill and care. There were two scenes in particular where he shined. The first was when he had to tell Lotta that Barney has left her to marry another woman. The other is when he professes his love for Lotta on the day he marries her, saying that he hopes he is worthy of her. It was a sweet moment, and Brennan did a good job. A nice start to the Best Supporting Actor category.