OSCARS LISTS:
RECORDS AND CURIOSITIES...
Over the years since its inception in 1927/8, the Oscars awards ceremony
has led to a number of curious records and coincidences, and even the
occasional incident. Below are detailed just a few...
INCLUDING:
Sweeping the Board
Singled Out
Best Films
Foreigners
Directors
Music
Colour
Actors
Actresses
Tied Votes
Protests and Refusals
Acceptance Speeches
SWEEPING THE BOARD
- Two films share the record for the highest number of awards received:
the 1952 epic BEN-HUR achieved 11 out of a possible 15
Oscars, and in 1997 James Cameron's TITANIC was awarded 11 out
of a possible 17. This site includes a comparison of
the awards for each film. The film currently in 3rd place for total Oscar awards is
the 1961 musical WEST SIDE STORY, which won 10 Oscars.
- TITANIC shares a different record for
most nominations - 14 of 17 possible - with Joseph L.Mankiewitz's
ALL ABOUT EVE (winner of Best Film in 1950),
nominated in 14 of 15 categories.
- The most Oscar-successful British film to date is Richard Attenborough's
epic bio-pic GANDHI, which achieved 8 awards for 1982,
including Best Film, +Director, +Original Screenplay, +Actor.
- A complete sweep of all five major Oscars (for Best Picture, Director,
Screenplay, Actor and Actress) has only occurred three times:
for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934),
for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975), and
for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991).
- 1964 was exceptional for being the one year that all four acting awards were won
by non-Americans. Sweeping the board were three from England and one from Greece:
REX HARRISON ( for "My Fair Lady"),
PETER USTINOV ( for "Topkapi"),
JULIE ANDREWS ( for "Mary Poppins") and
LILA KEDROVA ( for "Zorba The Greek").
- Although the musical CABARET swept the 1972 Awards
ceremony with eight Oscars, it failed to win Best Picture (which went to
"The Godfather" instead). "Cabaret" therefore has the
unfortunate distinction of having the most Oscar awards of any film without
winning Best Picture.
- WARREN BEATTY (brother of Shirley
MacLaine and recipient of a 1999 Honorary Thalberg Award) is the only
person in Academy history to have been nominated as producer, as director,
as writer and as actor all in the same film. Furthermore he has
achieved this distinction twice: for "Heaven Can Wait" in 1978
(a remake of 1941's "Here Comes Mr.Jordan" rather than the
1943 "Heaven Can Wait") and for "Reds" in 1981 (for which
he won the Best Director award).
SINGLED OUT
- WALT DISNEY
holds the record for the highest number of individual Oscars awarded...
In his lifetime he received 20 Oscars, but he was posthumously
awarded a further 6, making a total of 26. Of all the statuettes awarded him,
the most famous "set" were an Oscar and seven miniature statuettes in 1938
for the film "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs".
- A rather unique Oscar was awarded to
JOSEPH FARNHAM
in 1928 for "Best Title Writing". It was given at the very first
Awards ceremony, when the first-ever soundtracked film "The Jazz Singer"
also received a Special Oscar, and by the next year "talkies" had arrived in
full - making further Awards for silent film titles completely redundant.
- PETER FINCH is the only person to have
won the Acting Award posthumously. Sadly the British-Australian star of
such films as "A Town Called Alice", "Far From The Madding
Crowd" and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" died soon after completing
the film "Network", in which his role as a manic tv-presenter
finally earned him the top male Oscar for 1976.
- The circumstances of MAGGIE SMITH's
award for Best Supporting Actress in 1978 (for "California Suite")
were somewhat unusual: in the film (a Neil Simon comedy set in a Hollywood
hotel), she played an English actress nominated for an Oscar Award...
- Strangely, Maggie Smith was also the first of four women in succession
to win Best Supporting Actress with the same initials ("M.S.")!
From 1978-81 it went to Maggie Smith, then to Meryl Streep, then to Mary
Steenbergen, then to Maureen Stapleton... The theme immediately continued
in "reverse" fashion for 1982-3, with Best Actress being won by "M.S."
(Meryl Streep) and then "S.M." (Shirley McLaine).
- The youngest person ever to receive an Oscar was the 5-year-old
SHIRLEY TEMPLE in 1934, when she received
an Honorary one (called a "Special Oscar" at the time) for achievements
in several films. Otherwise the youngest person to win a competitive Academy Award is
TATUM O'NEAL, who was 10 years old when she
achieved Best Supporting Actress for 1973's "Paper Moon"
(in which she starred alongside her father Ryan O'Neal).
- GEORGE BURNS was the oldest Oscar
winner in a competitive category when he won the 1975 award for
"The Sunshine Boys" at age 80, until at the 1989 awards
80-year old JESSICA TANDY won Best Actress for
"Driving Miss Daisy". She later surpassed even that mark by
receiving her second Oscar nomination in 1991 at age 82 (for
"Fried Green Tomatoes").
However GROUCHO MARX was the
oldest recipient of any Oscar, having been given an Honorary Award
in 1973 when he was 83 years old.
- The turn of the 70s/80s saw something of a revived interest in older
actors, and the oldest group of acting winners occurred at the 1980 Awards:
Henry Fonda (aged 77), John Gielgud (also 77), Katharine Hepburn (72) and
Maureen Stapleton (56) had a combined average age of 70·5 years old.
- Forerunner of them all, CHARLES CHAPLIN (1889-1977),
genius of over 100 silent screen comedy classics, was presented with a Special
Oscar at the first Awards ceremony in 1927/8 for producing "The Circus"
and continued making films for many years after, until receiving an Honorary Oscar in 1971.
However the only Academy Award he ever won competitively was for music - with Best Original
Dramatic Score (1952) for "Limelight".
BEST FILMS
The Winners List
- It is rare for the "top" Oscar to be awarded to anything other than
an "epic" drama or war film, or a "feelgood" film touching on illness or
disabilities (eg.
Mrs.Miniver, The Lost Weekend, Marty, Rainman, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump,
A Beautiful Mind).
- The 1998 winner SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE was
the first "romantic comedy" to win Best Film since
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT 64 years earlier in 1934
(although some argue that Woody Allen's 1977 neurotic comedy
ANNIE HALL comes close enough to be in the same
category).
- DANCES WITH WOLVES
(1990) was the first "western" for 60 years to win the Oscar for Best Film,
despite it being the only American-invented film genre.
The previous western winner was
CIMARRON in 1930/1, and since 1990 the only
other western to achieve the top award has been Clint Eastwood's
UNFORGIVEN in 1992.
- An era of "musical" Best Films ended suddenly with
OLIVER! in 1968, since when no musical
(except for 2002's CHICAGO) has won
the award. Yet in the previous decade from 1958-67 the top Oscar had also
gone to four other musicals
(Gigi, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, The Sound Of
Music). Biggest victim of the apparent decline in musical
appreciation was 1972's Cabaret (8 awards but not best Best Picture).
- David Lean's 1962 epic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
is unique in being the only film to win the Best Film award without
containing a single female speaking role. In fact the only female featured
in the entire film is a camel named Gladys!
BEST FOREIGNERS
The Winners List
- The 1987 Chinese/Italian co-production
THE LAST EMPEROR by Bernardo Bertolucci is
the only film produced outside of America or Britain to have received the
ultimate award for Best Motion Picture. However it was not a foreign language film,
and so was not nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
- In 1998 ROBERTO BEGNINI (who won
Best Actor and Best Foreign Film awards as the writer/director/star of
"Life is Beautiful") became only the second person to have won an
Oscar for acting in a foreign language film.
SOPHIA LOREN, who presented Begnini with the
award for Best Foreign Film, was the first: she won Best Actress
in 1961 for her performance in "Two Women".
- Only six films have won both an Oscar for Best Foreign
Language Film and other Academy Awards as well:
The 1963 winner, Fellini's "8½" (Italian) also
won an Oscar for Best Costume Design;
"A MAN AND A WOMAN" (French, 1966) also won the
Best Original Screenplay Oscar;
Costa-Gavras's "Z" (French/Algerian) in 1969
also won for Film Editing;
and Ingmar Bergman's "FANNY AND ALEXANDER" (Sweden, 1983)
won 3 further Oscars for Cinematography, for Art Direction and for Costume Design.
1998's winner, "LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL" (Italian) also
received the Best Actor award for Roberto Benigni and a music award for Best
Original Dramatic Score.
And most recently, Ang Lee's "CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON"
(Taiwan, 2000) won 3 further Oscars for Cinematography, for Art Direction & Set Design, and for
Original Music Score.
DIRECTORS
The Winners List
- JOHN FORD
holds the record for most "Best Directing" awards - four in total, from
1935 (for "The Informer"), 1940 ("The Grapes Of Wrath"),
1941 ("How Green Was My Valley") and 1952 (for "The Quiet Man").
Intriguingly for the architect of the cinematic American west, none are
Westerns. As for other achievers, only
FRANK CAPRA and
WILLIAM WYLER stand close with three awards each...
- JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ
deserves a special mention for his efforts in Directing for 1949.
He achieved Best Director in that year for "A Letter To Three
Wives", but the film itself failed to achieve Best Picture - instead
that honour went to "All The King's Men"... also directed by
Joseph L. Mankiewicz!
- MANKIEWICZ also went on to achieve a
rare "follow-on" Oscar in the next year (1950) for directing
"All About Eve", something that has otherwise only happened to
JOHN FORD (in 1941 and 1942 for
"The Grapes Of Wrath" and "How Green Was My Valley").
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK
(the renowned "Master of Suspense") never won a single award for Best
Director -
not even when his film "Rebecca" (1940) was voted Best Motion
Picture... Among the film profession, many (who ultimately also do the
voting) found the Master difficult to work with...
- STANLEY KUBRICK
(who died in 1999 and was responsible for such films as "Spartacus",
"Paths Of Glory", "Dr.Strangelove", "A Clockwork Orange",
"2001: A Space Oddysey" and "The Shining") never won a Best
Director's award either. Nor has the independent film-maker
ROBERT ALTMAN,
nor MARTIN SCORSESE (whom many film critics
call "the greatest American director alive today"...)
- nor have any of their various films achieved Best Motion Picture...
MUSIC
The Songwinners' List
- From 1934 until 1971, every award for Best Original Song went to
a "Tin Pan Alley"-type ballad only (although most of the winning songs were
and have remained classics). But after the start of popular rock'n'roll in
the mid-1950s, still no rock, soul or blues song won the top award - not
even an Elvis movie song - until ISAAC HAYES
broke the mould with 1971's soul music "Theme From Shaft"".
- Since then, the awards have recognised other rhythmic song-styles but
the preferred choice among Academy voters is still for laid-back or MOR
songs with lyrics usually associated with romance. Only three songwriters have
won the top award with uncompromising lyrics - the performing artists
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN with "Streets of
Philadelphia" for 1993, BOB DYLAN with
"Things Have Changed" for 2000, and EMINEM
with "Lose Yourself" for 2002.
- The prolific popular songwriter RANDY NEWMAN was
nominated for Best Original Song 13 times before finally winning at his 14th
attempt with "If I Don't Have You" at the ceremony for 2001.
- At the other end of the musical scale, maestro
composer and arranger JOHN WILLIAMS remains
at the top of the lists for Best Dramatic Score with 30 nominations by 2001
and 4 awards. His works include
"Jaws" (1975),
"Star Wars" (1977),
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) and
"Schindler's List" (1993).
COLOUR
- Throughout its first 73 years until March 2002, the Best Actor Oscar
had only been won by a black man once: by
SIDNEY POITIER for
"The Lilies In The Field" in 1963. In the same period no black
female had ever won Best Actress, despite the emergence of strong roles
for coloured actors and actresses from the 1960s onwards.
- Meanwhile, only three black American actors had won the Best
Supporting category, and all comparatively late on:
LOUIS GOSSET Jr (1982),
DENZIL WASHINGTON (1989) and
CUBA GOODING Jr (1996); and in the female arena
only WHOOPIE GOLDBERG (1990) had matched the
singular achievement of Best Supporting Actress 51 years earlier by
HATTIE McDANIEL (1939).
- Finally in 2002 the 74th Award show saw Afro-Americans win both top
honours, and both in the same year - Best Actress for the first time, and
Best Actor again at last: first
HALLE BERRY (for her 2001 performance in
"Monsters Ball") and then
DENZIL WASHINGTON (for his portrayal of a
bad cop in "Training Day").
ACTORS
The Winners List
- Several actors have won 2 oscars in their careers, but only
WALTER BRENNAN and
JACK NICHOLSON have achieved a record 3
Oscars for Best Acting in Leading and/or Supporting roles.
- LAURENCE OLIVIER was nominated
11 times (10 for acting roles) during his career - a record only
surpassed recently by JACK NICHOLSON
with his 12th acting nomination in 2002.
- SPENCER TRACY
was the only actor ever to achieve the Best Actor award two years in succession
(in 1937 and 1938, for "Captains Courageous" and "Boys Town") - until
TOM HANKS
repeated the feat in 1993 and 1994 (for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump")...
The only other actor to achieve a near-similar "repeat" accolade is
JASON ROBARDS,
who won the award for Best Supporting Actor in both 1976 and 1977
(for "All The President's Men" and "Julia").
- BARRY FITZGERALD is the only person ever
to have been nominated for the same role in both Best Supporting Actor
and Best Actor categories, after his 1944 performance as a priest in
"Going My Way".
He ultimately won the award for Best Support, the Best Actor award going
instead to the film's fellow priest and crooner
BING CROSBY... Since then, the Academy's rules
have been changed to prevent a nomination in both categories.
- Several people have been nominated for different portrayals of the same
character (either in the same film or in different films), but
MARLON BRANDO (for "The Godfather", 1972) and
ROBERT DeNIRO (for "The Godfather II", 1974) are
the only persons to have actually won Oscars for performances as the same character (being
that of Don Corleone).
- Famous actors who have never won an Oscar include
JAMES DEAN (who d.1955 just after completing "Giant"),
and HARRISON FORD (despite starring in 6 of the top 10
highest grossing films by 1989 - the "Star Wars" trilogy and the "Indiana
Jones" trilogy). However the record for most nominations without a win is shared
by two actors, RICHARD BURTON and
PETER O'TOOLE, each with seven nominations (a record
shared with Geraldine Page until she finally won an award in 1985).
ACTRESSES
The Winners List
- KATHERINE HEPBURN achieved a
record 4 Oscars for Best Female Acting in Leading and/or Supporting roles.
All were for Leading roles only (!) during a span of 48 years, and were
awarded for 1933 (for "Morning Glory"), 1967 ("Guess Who's Coming
To Dinner"), 1968 ("The Lion In Winter") and 1981 (for
"On Golden Pond").
- Among all other actresses only
INGRID BERGMAN has approached close to Hepburn's
unique feat, with 3 Oscars awarded for 1944 ("Gaslight"),
1956 ("Anastasia") and 1974 (with her supporting role in
"Murder On The Orient Express"). Ingrid Bergman's
tally is perhaps all the more remarkable considering that she was ostracised
by the Hollywood community for several years after 1948 for her married affair
with Roberto Rossellini (Italian director of "Stromboli").
- LUISE RAYNER
was the only actress ever to achieve the Best Actress award two years in
succession (in 1936 and 1937, for "The Great Ziegfeld and
"The Good Earth") - until
KATHERINE HEPBURN
did the "double" in 1967 (for "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner")
and 1968 (for "The Lion In Winter").
Curiously Hepburn's "two-in-a-row" feat also happened to match the previous
achievement of her partner SPENCER TRACY...
- Presently MERYL STREEP has only two Oscars,
but with her 12th acting nomination (and 10th in a leading role) for 1999's
"Music Of The Heart" she equalled the record first set by Katherine
Hepburn for most-nominated actress, and surpassed it with her 13th nomination
for a supporting role in 2002's "Adaptation".
- GERALDINE PAGE did share with Richard Burton
and Peter O'Toole the record for most acting nominations without a win (seven),
until her 8th nomination won her the 1985 Best Actress award for
"The Trip To Bountiful".
- Famous actresses who have never won an Oscar include
GRETA GARBO (who famously retired from
movie-making in the 1940s to become a recluse), successful child-to-adult
star JUDY GARLAND, and last but not least the
biggest female screen icon of them all
MARILYN MONROE.
TIED VOTES
- The 1968 Oscar awards ceremony was noteable for producing the
only tie in votes for Best Actress, resulting in 3 female acting Oscar awards
being presented. The tie for Best Actress occurred between
KATHERINE HEPBURN (for "The Lion In Winter") and
BARBARA STREISAND (for "Funny Girl").
- The only other tie in votes for acting occurred in the 1931/2 awards season
(some five years before separate Oscars were created for supporting roles). The 1931/2
tie occurred between
FREDERICK MARCH (for "Dr.Jekyll And Mr.Hyde") and
WALLACE BEERY (for "The Champ").
PROTESTS and REFUSALS
- Only two people have ever refused to accept an Academy Award. Both
were Best Actors.
GEORGE C. SCOTT refused his 1970 award for
the title role in "Patton: Lust For Glory" because he detested the
actual character of the man he had portrayed (although he had also
stated in 1961 that he would never accept an Oscar award), and
MARLON BRANDO refused his 1972 award for
the title role in "The Godfather" as a means of publicising the
cause of Native American Indians. In order to protest Hollywood's
(and America's) poor treatment of Native Americans, Brando sent a woman
who called herself SACHEEN LITTLEFEATHER
to make a "refusal speech" on his behalf. In true Hollywood fashion
however, she was later revealed as not a true Native American but just
an actress playing the part of one...
- In contrast, VANESSA REDGRAVE
used her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress in 1977 (for
"Julia") as a vehicle for speaking out live in favour of the
Palestinian cause to millions of television viewers...
- In 1973 ROBERT OPAL briefly interrupted the
awards ceremony by streaking naked across the stage while live on national
television. Presenter DAVID NIVEN immediately
remarked off-the-cuff in front of millions:
"Just think, the only laugh that man will ever get is for stripping and
showing off his shortcomings."
- In 1956 during the McCARTHY WITCH-HUNT PERIOD
any nominee either declaring Communist Party membership or declining to
testify before the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities was
declared to be ineligible for any Academy Award nomination. This rule only
lasted for two years however, as many of the "blacklisted" performers
and craftsmen continued to be nominated by their fellows in the industry.
The strength of feeling aroused by this issue was echoed as late as 1998,
when many actors and technicians refused to applaud the Honorary Oscar
presented to veteran director ELIA KAZAN (who
notoriously did testify to the Committee against many of his fellows).
ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES
- Actress GREER GARSON holds the record for
delivering the longest acceptance speeeeeech.... (for "Mrs Miniver in
1942). How long? Well, apparently the recommended time was 45 seconds per speech
but Ms.Garson (known in the industry at the time as "the Queen of Hollywood") spoke
for all of seven minutes!
- When JACK PALANCE stepped up to receive his
Supporting Oscar in 1991 (for "City Slickers), the then-73-year-old
actor celebrated by performing several one-armed press-ups onstage...
-
In 1993 TOM HANKS unknowingly "outed" his gay high school
drama coach live on national television by thanking him for his inspiration in his Best
Actor speech (for the role of an Aids victim in "Philadelphia") - an incident
that soon became the basis for a Kevin Kline film "In & Out".