The Triple Crown of Cinematic Life Achievement

In the next week, we'll be hearing one of the biggest awards announcements of the year: this year's recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors.  I will be awaiting with baited breath to see who will be in attendance when the President, First Lady, and Washington's elite sit around and give out the highest government honor for the arts.

The Kennedy Center Honors are part of what I consider the Triple Crown of Life Achievement Awards, which are the Kennedy Center Honors, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award.  Some may quibble the SAG Life Achievement Award should be included, but that award is given as much (if not more so) for charitable work than for achievement in the arts.  The Film Society of Lincoln Center annually bestows an award, but it isn't televised and it isn't as well-known (though they do honor the likes of Robert Altman, Catherine Deneuve, and Federico Fellini, so they clearly have solid taste).

The most recent recipient of one of these three awards was Mel Brooks.  He's still missing the DeMille, which made me wonder-who has won all three, and who is just one or two legs away from finishing.  I'm limiting myself to those involved primarily with cinema for the study, though obviously the Kennedy Center Honors and to a lesser extent the Cecil B. DeMille Award honor other aspects of the performing arts.

The weird thing about these accolades is that they are rarely the tail-end life achievements for the performers.  Most of the actors are not only working still, but would go on to do something of significance afterwards.  Taking the AFI Award, for example, seven artists would go on to receive Academy Award nominations after they won the honor, as well as multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.  Brooks, at 86, is oddly old to be getting one of the trophies-the average age for an AFI winner is 69 (which means that over half of the people actually won before they hit seventy).  While the Kennedy Center Honors skews a bit older, keep in mind when we discuss who has a good shot at winning the Triple Crown in upcoming years that your best bets will be people born between 1944-1953.

Starting with Henry Fonda in 1979 all the way up to Dustin Hoffman this past year, twenty people have pulled off the hat trick (listed in order by first-name because that's how Excel arranged them): Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson, James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Martin Scorsese, Morgan Freeman, Robert de Niro, Sean Connery, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, and Warren Beatty.  As you can see, it's fairly star-heavy (only Scorsese and Spielberg haven't doubled as onscreen headliners, and they still get top-billing on their films), fairly male (only three women have won the trio), and surprisingly lively, with twelve of the twenty still with us.

With the Kennedy Center Honors right around the corner, there are only four living people who have never won that have the AFI Award and the DeMille: Al Pacino, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Douglas, and Harrison Ford .  While any of these four could get the award (they're all obviously famous movie stars and highly-deserving), my gut says that Pacino is the most likely.  Pacino, of the four, makes films the most consistently, has the most Oscar nominations, and since the awards like to stagger every couple of years, Pacino's recent win in 2007 (the AFI) means the timing would be perfect.  I'd put Douglas, the youngest of the bunch (at 68), in the next position; his film career isn't quite as accomplished, but he's coming off of a major film role in Behind the Candelabra, and awards shows like to recognize an artist while they're still in the public conversation.  Ford also falls under this umbrella, having made a few films this year (including a potentially huge hit in Ender's Game), but his lack of a Kennedy Center Honor when he won his AFI and DeMille awards over a decade ago makes me wonder if his time is past.  MacLaine just won the AFI Award, is the oldest of the four, and doesn't make films nearly as frequently, so I think she's the least likely (also, the Kennedy Center Honors are a bit sexist in whom they reward each year, with only one woman usually winning a spot).

Three living people have never won the DeMille Award, while still gaining the Kennedy Center Honor and the AFI Award: Mike Nichols, Meryl Streep, and last year's AFI Award Winner Mel Brooks.  Streep clearly stands out here, as she's an enormous favorite of the HFPA, and at 64, is still "young" enough to still win Lifetime Achievement Awards .  Streep, though, has to be rewarded in a year that she isn't nominated (it's extremely rare that an actor gets a DeMille Award when they're nominated in another category-Dustin Hoffman in 1997 was the last one), and it's hard to imagine that Streep, with eight Golden Globes already, deserves a ninth one, even if it's an honorary trophy.  With both August Osage County and Into the Woods being certain to gain her favor with the Golden Globes, it could be a few years (or they could just bite the bullet and risk her winning a trophy on the same night as her DeMille win).  As for the others, Brooks is 87 and Nichols is 81, which would make either of them over twenty years older than the median age of DeMille winners.  Brooks probably deserves this the most, as he is incredibly never won the Golden Globe, despite being an EGOT and having four nominations at the GG's.  Nichols, a fellow EGOT-ter, did win a Globe, but in 1968, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say he's due as well.

Finally, there are the two living actors that have never received the AFI Award: Lauren Bacall and Robert Redford.  Both Bacall (88) and Redford (77) are considerably older than the average winner of the award, though Redford's exclusion in particular is bizarre, considering his work on behalf of the Sundance Film Festival (he's one of the few movie stars, along with Robert de Niro, who could give a very real example of how he has helped the AFI's mission).  Though he's politically active (always a tough call when you're devoting an entire night to someone), I suspect that he will take this award someday.  Bacall, on the other hand, with very few major films in the public memory (she's more famous for her off-screen relationship with Humphrey Bogart and for being one of the last great Golden Age starlets at this point) is probably going to finish her career with two-legs out of three.

That of course turns us over to those that died one award short of the Triple Crown.  Notice how relatively rare it is to win two but not three:

Died without a Kennedy Center Honor: Alfred Hitchcock, Barbara Stanwyck (both oddly enough stars who could never land a competitive Oscar)
Died without a Cecil B. DeMille Award: Lillian Gish, James Cagney, Billy Wilder (Wilder would win three Golden Globes competitively, Gish would lose in her one nomination for The Comedians and stunningly Cagney was never nominated-anyone know what Jimmy did to tick off the HFPA?)
Died without an AFI Award: Bob Hope, Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Paul Newman (Hope, Ball, and Sinatra all won their other awards in part for non-cinematic mediums, which isn't something that helps here, whereas Heston and Newman both had the film careers to win here, but their political activism may have cost both)

Finally, there are the remaining cinematic stars who have only won one of the three trophies.  Again, this is rare-there are twelve living people who have all three, and only a slightly larger sixteen who have just one of the three trophies:

Have Only Won the Kennedy Center Honor: Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones, Joanne Woodward, John Williams, Julie Andrews, Ruby Dee, Shirley Temple Black, Steve Martin (it's worth noting that Woodward won the same year as Paul Newman, which, not to be condescending, probably helped; other than Woodward, only Temple Black didn't have the help of another medium, and her political involvement almost certainly assisted her here, not to mention that we had a Republican president at the time)
Have Only Won the Cecil B. DeMille Award: Anthony Hopkins, Doris Day, Gene Hackman, Jodie Foster, Robin Williams, Sophia Loren (Foster and Williams are both still young enough that they could pick up other awards rather quickly, Day and Hackman are both fairly reclusive which means this is the end of the road for them, and I can't explain Hopkins and Loren-they should have at least gotten the Kennedy Center Honor by now)
Have Only Won the AFI Award: Tom Hanks, George Lucas (both are still under 70-I suspect this will happen eventually for both of them in at least one, if not both of the remaining awards)

And that was my research.  I know it's a bit wonky (gotta love awards trivia though!), but what are your thoughts?  What film titans do you hope the Kennedy Center Honors pick this year?  Who are you most surprised has not been cited on any of these lists?  And who is the next Triple Crown winner?  Share in the comments!