Category: Best Actor

1943 – Walter Pidgeon

Madame Curie

Let me just say, right off the bat, I am not exactly sure why Walter Pidgeon was nominated for Best Actor for this role, and here’s why.  We’ve seen him play this character many times before.  I can only imagine that he was just playing himself.  He didn’t stretch himself as an actor.  You look at his performances in How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver, Blossoms in the Dust, and even Flight Command, and I’ll fully admit that these are the only films that featured Pidgeon that I have ever seen, but he played the exact same character in each one.  There wasn’t even a slight varience.  The way he played each roll was exactly the same.

Yes, ha played a likeable character, but there was nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing deep, nothing daring.  He was a nice guy, through and through, and he was very well paired with Greer Garson.  Apparently, Hollywood loved seeing the two of them together on the big screen.  In this film, he played Professor Curie, who was supposed to be a confirmed bachelor who thought that women had no place in a scientific profession.  But really, I didn’t buy his protestations to the female student assigned to work in his lab.  He was too nice, just like he was in all those other films.  And then he became golly-gee-whiz twitterpated, and ended up marying her.

He didn’t have any real dramatic scenes, no real conflict, no real opportunity to show off any acting skills.  The most we got from Pidgeon was mild and well-mannered frustration, or consternation.  Yes, there was one scene where he attempted to defend the honor of his wife in front of a college budget committee, when they tried to pass her over because she was a woman, but there was no real drama there, nor any comedy, for that matter.  He just played a nice man who was speaking up for his wife, as any good husband should.

He seemed to take innocence and wholesomeness to a new level.  But maybe that’s just what audiences wanted to see from him.  Maybe that’s what the rather bland script demanded.  Or maybe, Pidgeon just didn’t turn in a performance that was worthy of an Oscar nomination.  Either way, this is the only time I’ve ever seen Pidgeon sport a beard, and I have to say, it suited him.  He looked very handsome.

1943 – Paul Lukas

Watch on the Rhine

So Paul Lukas took home the Oscar for his performance in Watch on the Rhine.  He also played the role on Broadway before the film.  He was a Hungarian-born actor, but it was a little difficult to place his accent during the film.  He was supposed to be a German who spoke several languages fluently, and I thought I could hear a bit of French when he delivered his dialogue.  He played Kurt Muller, a man who made a profession out of being an anti-fasciest.  And he was very passionate about his work, willing to fight for it, and willing to die for it, if necessary.

Lukas created a character, who, though he ends up murdering a man in order to save the lives of others, he is the hero of the movie.  The film almost, but not quite, treated the murder as a justified act of patriotism.  But he was more than just a freedom-fighter.  He was also a loving father and husband, and he was clearly just as passionate about his family as he was about his work, which I liked. 

So what made Lukas stand out among his competitors to win the Academy Award?  Was it his looks?  Well, he was certainly not a bad looking man, though he wasn’t a Hollywood heartthrob.  Was it his attitude?  He had a very stoic and matter-of-fact attitude, which is a common German trait.  But no, I think it was his passion.  Passion for his work, his family, and his convictions.  It’s what made him a sympathetic character, despite the dark business to which he had to attend.  Lukas did a great job of bringing that passion to the foreground, making it Kurt Muller’s defining characteristic.

But like any gentleman, he never lost control of that passion.  He ruled it, and never let it rule him.  One of his best scenes was one in which he is talking to his eldest son, trying to explain why he had to go back to Germany, even though his very survival was not guaranteed.  He also had to explain to his son, who wanted to accompany him on his dangerous mission, why he had to go alone, but also acknowledging that the boy’s time would come when he would have to fight for his own cause, and that he was proud of him.  I thought it was a wonderful performance, and the Academy voters seemed to agree.

1943 – Humphrey Bogart

Casablanca

Can you imagine anyone except Humphrey Bogart playing Rick Blaine in Casablanca?  Of course not.  That look, that attitude, that swagger, that delivery was all Bogart.  And Bogart was no stranger in front of the camera, but this was the leading role that launched him into super-stardom.  True, he’d just starred in the Maltese Falcon two years before, but Casablanca seemed to be on another level.

Rick was the owner of Rick’s Café Américain, a nightclub and casino in Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco.  A wide variety of people frequented the place, from wealthy war refugees to criminals, from the French Police to high-ranking Nazi officials.  And in Rick’s book, only money mattered, not status.  In that way he remained true to his current convictions of complete political and social nutrality.  And I think this is where Bogart shined.  He totally understood the character and his motivations.  He treated everyone the same, no matter what side of the war they were on.  That was Rick, at least, until Ilsa showed up again.

Bogart’s on-screen chemistry with Ingrid Bergman was magical.  Even though Bergman had later stated in interviews that she and Bogart were more co-workers than friends, when they were together on the screen, there was an intimacy between them that felt like they had to be more than mere aquaintences.  Bogart was great as he said, “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”  Such a great line, and so perfectly delivered!

And who can forget that iconic scene in the dark as Rick gets drunk, where he utters that famous line, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”  Bogart was so real, so perfect.  There was depression, anger, self pity, and a dozen other emotions just pouring out of him, and he nailed the scene.  I absolutely think he deserved his Best Actor nomination.  But he lost the top honor to Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine.  I’ve see that film, and looking at it through my modern eyes, with how memorable and beloved as Casablanca is, I think Bogart should have taken home the Oscar.  He was robbed, plane and simple. 

1943 – Mickey Rooney

The Human Comedy

Ok, wow.  This was a stupid movie, but I have to ask, is that only through my modern eyes?  No, I don’t think so.  But here, I’m not judging the movie.  I’m critiquing Mickey Rooney’s performance.  And as far as that went, he did a fine job.  There were actually three members of the cast who I think did a good job with the blatant propaganda dialogue in the script.  Frank Morgan, Fay Bainter, and Mickey Rooney.  Aside from them and a few others, we got some pretty bad acting.

Rooney played a teenage boy in fictional Ithaca, California named Homer.  His father was dead, and his brother had gone off to war.  So at his young age, he was the man of the house, going to school during the day and working at night to bring in some money.  Rooney certainly looked like any boy you might meet anywhere.  He was clean-cut and wholesome, polite, and super-respectful of his elders.  He was a golly-gee-whiz kind of a youth with a good head on his shoulders.  He was athletic and handsome, hard-working and intelligent, kind-hearted and generous, everything a well-brought-up American boy should be.

But what I didn’t like about the film was that it was nothing more than different characters giving a series of monologues about patriotism, duty, and dealing with the loss of loved ones during war-time.  Rooney at least delivered his share of the shoe-horned pontificating with a sense of drama and heartfelt pathos.  And he had to shoulder the lion’s share of the deep drama in the narrative, as he learns that his beloved older brother has died in the war.  And he takes it with stoicism and bravery, knowing why his brother fought and died. And he was actually really great in that scene.  The utter devastation on his face is heart-wrenching.

I actually have only one minor complaint about his performance.  In one scene, he has to run in a track race at school. While running, Homer kept glancing over at his opponent, a bad practice for a real runner.  Taking the time to check on the other runners is only going to slow you down.  Pay attention to what you are doing, not them.  But aside from that and the forced wholesomeness of the script, Rooney was good.  Some have even called it one of the best performances of his career.

1943 – Gary Cooper

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Cooper is back once again, and he seems to be at the top of his game.  Here he plays an action hero.  He was almost Indiana Jones, long before Indiana Jones was even conceived.  He played Robert Jordan, called Roberto or Ingles, an American language teacher who happens to also be a dynamite expert.  During the Spanish Civil War, he joins the resistance and is charged with blowing up a critical bridge.  He enlists the help of a band of anti-fascist guerillas to accomplish his mission.  One of them is a beautiful young girl named Maria, who becomes his love interest.

Cooper, as always, did a fine job.  He handled everything with believability and a clear skill in his craft.  By this time in his career, the romance scenes with Bergman must have been old hat.  The two had a pretty good on-screen chemistry, and they seemed to work well-together.  There seemed to be some real passion there, and the deeper dramatic scenes between them worked.  And just as an incidental thought, I’ve always considered Gary Cooper a handsome man, but never an overtly sexy one.  But there were a few times in this movie where he was pretty darn sexy.  There was a grittiness to the character that contradicted the actor’s wholesome, nice-guy image, and allowed him to show that side of himself.

And Cooper played it perfectly.  He was serious when he needed to be, but there was also humor at times.  There was gravitas, and a single-minded focus on completing his mission, no matter the cost.  And spoiler alert – when he is critically wounded in the end, and he has to convince Maria to go on without him, the love and the longing in his eyes really sold the moment.  But for me, it was the moment after she rides away, as he is fighting to stay conscious long enough to turn the machine gun on the oncoming fascist soldiers, that Gary really gave us something special.  The sweat on his brow and the glazed look in his eyes were powerful.

I’ve never seen Cooper turn in a bad performance.  And this one was no exception.  He was a professional who really knew what he was doing in front of the camera.  Cooper played a great action hero, and he looked good doing it.  And I have to say, he looked good in Technicolor as well.

1942 – Walter Pidgeon

Mrs. Miniver

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this nomination.  I’ve seen the film several times, and I really never gave the character of Mr. Miniver much thought.  And that’s the problem.  Was he the male lead?  Yes, I suppose, but was he really a leading man in the story?  I’m not really sure.  He seemed very much like a supporting character.  The story had a main character, which was, of course, Mrs. Miniver, played by Greer Garson.  But much of the time, Clem Miniver just seemed to be along for the ride.  He was almost always in the background, or sharing the screen with Greer Garson, and he had very few close-ups of his own.

And I have a particular problem with his performance.  He absolutely created a wonderful character.  He was likeable, handsome, and charismatic.  But he had a distinctly American accent.  I don’t know if that was intentional, trying to give the film an attachment to the American public, but he was the only actor in the movie that was not British.  And a single line would have solved the problem, mentioning somehow that Mrs. Miniver was married to an American man, but his national origin was never addressed.  And every now and then, though it was very inconsistent, he would attempt to have a British accent, but it was muddy, at best.  No, he was American, and there was no mistaking it.

Putting those things aside, he actually did a pretty good job.  He was a husband and father, and he did a wonderful job at both.  He was a loyal British citizen, taking part in the dangerous mission to rescue the soldiers at Dunkirk.  This wasn’t actually shown, of course, because this movie wasn’t about him.  It showed him leaving for the mission, and then he was shown returning from the rescue, but only through the eyes of his wife, Mrs. Miniver.  That was the only subplot that really was all about him… well, kind-of.

I want to make the point that I’m not saying he did a bad job.  He was excellent as Clem Miniver, but maybe a British actor might have served the film better.  Still, he had a wonderful on-screen chemistry with Greer Garson, so I suppose that counted for something.  I’m just glad he didn’t take home the Oscar.

1942 – Gary Cooper

Pride of the Yankees

Gary Cooper is back again, playing the same character.  I mean, let’s be honest.  He was the same character in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1937, and Sergeant York in 1941.  He was that man who is so good and American and wholesome, that he still has that gosh, gee whiz, attitude, even as an adult.  And I’ve seen him do other movies that had some grit, some realism.  But I guess this is the kind of role audiences wanted to see him play at the time.  I look forward to seeing him again in High Noon in 1953.  He still had the same squeaky clean image, but he was kind of a bad-ass there, too.

Here, he plays the historic baseball player, Lou Gehrig.  And I like that the movie wasn’t just about the tragic disease that claimed him.  It was there, but the film was more about his rise to stardom in the world of baseball and his relationship with his wife, Eleanor.  And Cooper was never a bad actor, so of course he did a fine job.  But if it was a role we’ve all seen him in before, more than once, why was he nominated for Best Actor?  I think I might know the answer.

On the surface, he didn’t have to stretch himself much.  It was old-hat for him.  But it you dig a little deeper, you find that he actually had to work very hard for the role.  Lou Gehrig was a famous ball player who was a little different than most of his peers.  He was a lefty, but Cooper was not.  Cooper had to learn to bat left-handed, throw left-handed, and catch right-handed, all completely opposite of what he would have been used to, what would have been natural for him.  And he did it so well, he was believable as one of the most famous lefty players of the time.

And of course, there was the last third of the film, the parts where his debilitating disease started to affect him.  There was drama there, which Cooper knew how to sell.  The scene where he collapses in the locker-room was heartbreaking to watch.  Also, the way he approached the final emotional scene where he says goodbye to the fans at Yankee Stadium was dramatic and heartfelt, a real tear-jerker moment.  So I think Cooper absolutely deserved his nomination.  But I’m also glad he didn’t win, especially since he had just won the previous year for Sergeant York.

1942 – Ronald Colman

Random Harvest

OK, if we discount the basic premise of the movie and just enjoy it, Ronald Colman was actually pretty good.  He played a soldier who had sustained injuries during the war.  He suffered complete amnesia.  He didn’t know his name, where he was from, or what he is doing.  He meets a girl, falls in love, and starts a new life, even going so far as to marrying the girl and fathering a child. Then later, he suffers a slight blow to the head, and is miraculously cured.  Putting aside the fact that one head injury does not cure another, he returns to his old life and forgets about his wife and baby.  Then she finds a way to come back into his life as his secretary. 

Colman was a talented actor, and the first half of the movie really gave him a chance to show off his skills in front of the camera.  The scenes in the mental hospital, and the ones where he was first taken in by Greer Garson, were wonderful.  Colman’s sense of wordless confusion was powerful and intense.  You can see his effort, trying to make sense out of his life, but to no avail.  The second half of the film was pretty standard, but he was also a perfectly good romantic lead.

One of the challenges he faced while playing the part of Smithy / Charles Rainier is that he had to play two completely characters, who were really the same person.  And he did it.  Smithy had a much softer, gentler manner, while Charles, while not in any way mean or unfeeling, was harder and more calculating.  Each personality was distinct, but eventually, his curiosity about his missing years led him to investigate his past.  The two sides of his psyche begin to merge, and Colman was able to make that believable.  It was an interesting shift of in the way the part had to be played.  And it was appropriately gradual, not happening all at once.

I think Colman really deserved his nomination for Best Actor, though if I’m being completely honest, I’m shocked that his co-star Greer Garson was not nominated for Best Actress.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Colman played a part that I’ve never seen him play before, that of a man with no self-confidence, and a wounded, confusion always in his eyes.  It made for a rather dramatic role that allowed him to stretch himself as an actor, and he was clearly up to the challenge.

1942 – James Cagney

Yankee Doodle Dandy

James Cagney did it all here, and I guess I can understand why he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  The role was both topical and historical.  It allowed him to sing, well, kind-of, and dance, and be both comedic and dramatic.  And after doing a little reading, my opinion is even stronger that the right man won the Oscar.  He was pretty darn good, better than I remember him being the first time I watched the film several years ago.  He was amazing, and here’s why.

As I was watching the movie, I was thinking that I didn’t care for the way Cagney spoke his way through the songs without really singing much.  And I didn’t care for the way he danced.  His legs were too stiff and his movements seemed jerky.  But apparently, the real George Cohan wanted Fred Astaire to play the part.  Astaire refused to play it because Cohan’s stiff-legged style of dancing didn’t go with his personal style.  Bring in Cagney who was able to mimic Cohan’s style beautifully.  And I picked up on it, not even aware that it was something to be picked up on.  And even the critics agreed that Cagney’s impersonation of Cohan was spot-on.

And it was 1942.  WWII was in full swing and war time films full of hyper-patriotism were needed.  And as an interesting anecdote, I going to quote Wikipedia.  “The New YorkTimes printed a front-page allegation that Cagney was a communist. Cagney refuted the accusation and Martin Dies Jr. made a statement to the press clearing Cagney.  William Cagney, one of the film’s producers, reportedly told his brother “We’re going to have to make the goddamndest patriotic picture that’s ever been made. I think it’s the Cohan story.”  So they did, and it worked.

In light of all that, I think Cagney knocked this out of the park.  He proved that he could sing and dance with the best of them.  He even had a fairly dramatic scene in which his father dies, and he cries over his death-bed.  And he also played the romance with Mary, played by Joan Leslie, quite well.  He was charming and handsome, and he was a delight to watch on the screen.  Many people only know Cagney from his gangster roles in film, but here, he proved that he was much more than that.  Well done, James!

1942 – Monty Woolley

The Pied Piper

I’d seen this movie before and wasn’t terribly impressed with it.  Monty Woolley played a stock character that didn’t have much depth.  Some, but not much.  He played the stereotypical British old man who is thrown into the extraordinary circumstances of World War II.  But I actually enjoyed the film more in this second watching than I did the first time.  I found more to like this time around, and Wooley’s performance was a sizeable part of that.

He is elderly and crotchety, named Howard, and he hates children… or does he?  As he tries to make his way out of France with the two children of some friends who have other responsibilities in those dangerous times, the journey is long and rough.  Along the way more orphaned children join his party, one at a time, until at last he makes it to England with a total of six young kids in tow.  And because of his proper British stoicism and bravery against the officers of the Third Reich, he not only reveals his affection for the children like a kindly grandfather, but he also has time to give the evil Nazi bad-guy a piece of his English mind.

So did he turn in a great performance?  Well, it wasn’t a bad one, but I don’t know If it was worth an Oscar nomination.  He was like an old bearded version of Leslie Howard, you know that British actor who plays the exact same British character in every film he is in, whether the character is British or not.  The same proper English gentleman, the same stereotypical stuffy aristocrat we’ve seen a thousand times before.  Yet, he did the role justice.  After all, that’s the way the part was written.  But I saw nothing new here, nothing out of the ordinary.

He had a couple of good scenes that stand out in my memory.  One was where he confronted the Nazi commander, professing his innocence to the accusation of being a spy.  The other is when he had to pretend to be an addled old man front of the SS.  Wooley did a good enough job, I suppose, but was is worth an Oscar nod?  The problem is that any more intense display of emotion would have been out of character for him.  I don’t know.  The role itself was just too cookie-cutter for my tastes, and Wooley didn’t seem to be challenged by anything about the part.