1941 – Charles Coburn
The Devil and Miss Jones
First of all, this nomination was for the wrong category. If anything, Charles Coburn should have been nominated in the Best Actor category. After all, he was the lead character in the story, and was in no way a supporting character. The movie started with him, followed his character arc, and ended with him. But all you have to do is look at the poster to see that this movie was a vehicle for Jean Arthur, even though she was by far the supporting character. In fact, if you read the two sentence synopsis of the film on Wikipedia, Jean Arthur’s character isn’t even mentioned. “The plot follows a department store tycoon who goes undercover in one of his Manhattan shops to ferret out union organizers…”
He started off a mean old rich man that nobody liked, and about fifteen minutes into the movie, turned into a nice enough guy that a few people liked. But by the end, he was a happy, generous man who everybody liked. And Coburn played it all pretty well. Unfortunately, the script really made the transitions between these three phases too abrupt and out of the blue. One minute he wants to fire everyone in his department store, the next, he is ready to fight for their rights.
But I’ll say again that Coburn played all three aspects of Mr. Merrick very well. He was able to be the stern wealthy man who is angered when he learns of union workers that are protesting his treatment of them as employees. Coburn played Merrick as grumpy, mostly coming from the eyes. But after he takes a job as a salesman in his own store, he gets to know the union people, and actually falls for one of them. Then his eyes got softer and more sympathetic. And finally, once it is time for his ruse to end, he took on a wide-eyed expression that made him look like a slightly confused, kindly old grandpa.
Coburn did a good enough job, and I suppose I don’t mind his nomination. But I just have to think that if he’d been put in the correct category, he wouldn’t have been nominated for anything, not when I consider the competition in the Best Actor category. Gary Cooper, Carey Grant, Walter Huston, Robert Montgomery, and Orson Wells. All that is to say that he was good, but not great, and there was no shame in losing the Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley. That one would have been a hard one to beat.