Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

With the passing of Olivia de Havilland earlier this week, obviously we lost a film legend.  We also lost the answer to a lot of longevity questions when it comes to the Oscars.  De Havilland got her first nomination in 1939 for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone with the Wind), her first Best Actress nomination in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn, and her first win for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.  This meant that de Havilland was the earliest (not to be confused with oldest, though she was that too) living Best Supporting Actress nominee, Best Actress nominee, and Best Actress winner.  With her death, I honestly didn't know the answer to who was next in line for these three titles (though I had a correct guess for Supporting Actress), and so I figured it was time to do some research, cause I don't let Oscar trivia questions go unanswered.  Below you will find for the directing and four acting categories who are chronologically the earliest (again, not oldest) living nominees and winners.

Best Actress

Nominee: Leslie Caron (1953) for Lili
--Runner-Up: Carroll Baker (1956) for Baby Doll
Winner: Joanne Woodward (1957) for The Three Faces of Eve
--Runner-Up: Sophia Loren (1961) for Two Women

As you can tell, de Havilland's death truly put an end to the 1940's in terms of Best Actress, as there were no nominees after her that are still with us until 1953 with Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals, possibly alongside Mitzi Gaynor the only real figure left from that era's biggest films, that she should get an Honorary Oscar, and post-haste as she's 89).  Baker, who was just 25 when she was cited for Baby Doll, is next up, though you have to go to 1957 for a living winner with Joanne Woodward (who has been very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who has another movie coming out later this year).

Best Actor

Nominee: Sidney Poitier (1958) for The Defiant Ones
--Runner-Up: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
Winner: Sidney Poitier (1963) for Lilies of the Field
--Runner-Up: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection

Best Actor winners tend to be older than the other three categories, so it's not shocking to me that we have to go back further to find living recent winners here.  Technically Poitier is actually his own runner-up for Lilies of the Field, but I figured that wasn't fun to track so we're going with Michael Caine three years after Poitier's landmark win.  Unlike the Best Actress field, all of these men already have Oscars, though Caine is the only one that still works in film.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Angela Lansbury (1944) for Gaslight
--Runner-Up: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Scratch the above comment-Shirley Jones is also living and obviously in the same league as Caron & Gaynor in terms of classic Hollywood musicals (truly random aside, but I remember many years ago seeing an interview with Jones & her husband Marty Ingels where he let strangers that were there for a yard sale of some sort hold Shirley's Oscar-I can't have imagined this, but have never found the interview...any ideas internet?). Blyth actually ties Angela Lansbury for runner-up as Lansbury was nominated in 1945 for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Up until quite recently Joan Lorring who was nominated that year for The Corn is Green was also alive (she died in 2014) and the other two women nominated that year both lived into the 1990's, so this field might have a record for longevity at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominee: Don Murray (1956) for Bus Stop
--Runner-Up: Russ Tamblyn (1957) for Peyton Place
Winner: George Chakiris (1961) for West Side Story
--Runner-Up: Joel Grey (1972) for Cabaret

There are no provisos here for runners-up.  Don Murray is not only one of the longest-lived Supporting Actors ever, he's also one of the rare ones to have been nominated for his screen debut.  Also, with Tamblyn alive, maybe I should stop pointing out a lack of classic actors from major Hollywood musicals not being alive, but that we should still consider Caron for an Honorary Oscar-who wouldn't want to watch her thank Fred and Gene in the same speech?  Looking ahead here, it's weird to think that just eight years behind Joel Grey is Timothy Hutton, who was so young when he won for Ordinary People that he's not even sixty yet.

Best Director

Nominee: Claude Lelouch (1966) for A Man and a Woman
--Runner-Up: Norman Jewison (1967) for In the Heat of the Night
Winner: William Friedkin (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Francis Ford Coppola (1974) for The Godfather, Part II

Admit it-when I typed Coppola for Godfather II, at least half of you said "wait, what about the first one?" before you remembered Bob Fosse won that year for Cabaret.  Looking at this list, I had never put together that Lelouch was so young when he made A Man and a Woman (I loved this movie, and will surely have to see it again before we do the 1966 OVP, but when I saw it in college I found it intoxicating), being not even 30 when he was nominated for an Oscar for the film.  With the exception of Jewison (whose last film was 2003's The Statement with Michael Caine & Tilda Swinton), all three of these men have made movies in the past five years, though Coppola has threatened frequently to retire.