Oldest Living Oscar Winners & Nominees

The recent death of Dame Angela Lansbury has been a bit of a shock, even given her advanced age it shouldn't be.  Lansbury is one of those figures that seemed immortal, someone who couldn't possibly die because they'd been around forever.  Indeed, a friend of mine noted this in conversation the other day, but given that Lansbury was 19 when she got her first Oscar nomination and was still making movies & theater right up until she died (she was in a major Disney musical as recently as 2019), she has literally been famous for as long as any of us can remember.

People are frequently quick to throw out the title "the last living Golden Age Star" and they've been doing it forever.  I remember people saying it about Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Olivia de Havilland...but you'd be forgiven for saying it about Lansbury.  Lansbury was the earliest still-living acting nominee from the Academy Awards and worked with every major figure in Hollywood during her tenure.  Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Elvis Presley, Paul Newman, Ethel Barrymore, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr...she starred with all of them.  You'd be hard-pressed to find another living person who can boast anything near that count (Mitzi Gaynor, who starred with Sinatra & Kelly, in addition to Marilyn Monroe, isn't far off, but even she'd have to demure to Lansbury's tenure).

This got me to thinking-who are the oldest-living Oscar nominees & winners right now, particularly with not only Lansbury's death, but the death of several other recent headliners (specifically Sidney Poitier)?  Here's a look:

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

The earliest (remember-it's not necessarily oldest but earliest for these) lists is Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals she has more than earned an Honorary Oscar that seems destined to never come at this point...she is, after all, the last living person to have danced with both Gene Kelly & Fred Astaire onscreen).  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 in very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who briefly came out of retirement in 2020 to make The Life Ahead).

Best Actor

Nominee: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
--Runner-Up: Dustin Hoffman (1967) for The Graduate
Winner: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Jack Nicholson (1975) for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The death of Sir Sidney Poitier earlier this year results in no living Best Actor nominees from the 1950's being still around, and no living winners from the 1960's as well.  This means that our oldest nominees are actually two men who are still working regularly: Michael Caine, who was just 33 when he got cited for Alfie (the first of six nominations he'd get) and Dustin Hoffman, who was only 30 when he put on the scuba gear in The Graduate a year later.  The winners are far more elusive-both Gene Hackman & Jack Nicholson are still with us, but are both retired & living relatively quiet lives (Nicholson has stated publicly he can no longer remember the lines well enough to be able to be in a movie).

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
--Runner-Up: Nancy Olson (1950) for Sunset Boulevard
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Shirley Jones, like Leslie Caron & Mitzi Gaynor above, made her early moments in musicals providing another twinkling light from that era's song-and-dance flicks (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?).  With Angela Lansbury's death, Ann Blyth, who is most-remembered for her role as Joan Crawford's spoiled daughter in Mildred Pierce, is the last surviving Oscar nominee from the 1940's (though it should be noted that Margaret O'Brien & Claude Jarman, Jr. won Juvenile Oscars during this time period and are still with us).  Blyth's costars number not just Crawford, but also Tyrone Power, Bing Crosby, Burt Lancaster, & Charles Boyer if you want to find someone with impressive Golden Age credentials, though because she was generally a leading lady (and therefore other than Crawford rarely worked with other big-name women) she can't really compare to Lansbury on that front.

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, given Jones, Gaynor, & Caron are all still living in addition to Russ Tamblyn & George Chakiris...perhaps the best recipe for staying alive is being an icon of the Hollywood musical?  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 eligible for Medicare 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 directed or produced movies in the past five years.