Oscar's Rare "Sole Nomination" Lineups

One of my favorite under-reported aspects of this year's Oscar race has been around the randomness of the Best Original Song category.  The field is a bit weak this year; Disney seems to be in a position of power with probable nominations for Frozen II and The Lion King (the allure of giving Beyonce an Oscar is going to be too hard for Oscar to ignore), but overall there's no clear frontrunner for the win, and quite frankly you'd be hard-pressed to find a song that's an obvious frontrunner this year for even a nomination (pretty much everything is "on the bubble")?

One of the tunes that has been getting praise and buzz, despite coming from an under-seen movie, is "Glasgow" from Wild Rose, a British musical film that came out earlier this year with little fanfare.  The song in it, though, is written by Oscar-winning actress Mary Steenburgen.  Steenburgen, star of films like Melvin and Howard, Ragtime, and The Help, is not a noted songwriter, and isn't even in the film as an actor, but contributed the song and as a result could be looking at her second Oscar nomination nearly forty years after she won Best Supporting Actress.

Steenburgen's potential nomination also sets up something unique for Oscar trivia lovers-it could put to end one of the rarest of acting fields: a list of people who won their only nomination for that specific performance.  This is a wonky bit of trivia, so let me explain.  In 1980, the nominees were all first-timers: Steenburgen, Cathy Moriarty, Eileen Brennan, Eva La Galliene, and Diana Scarwid.  This is unusual, but not totally rare-in 1999, for example, all of the Best Supporting Actress nominees were first-timers as well.  What is strange for 1980 is that none of these women would ever be nominated for an Oscar again (in 1999, for comparison's sake, Angelina Jolie, Samantha Morton, and Catherine Keener would all be cited in the future).  This is extremely rare-in fact, it's only happened five times in the history of the Academy.

Steenburgen's nomination would end this streak, though it'd be one of the rare times this happened because of a non-acting nomination (another case of this is 1973's Best Supporting Actor race, where John Houseman is the only double nominee, not for acting but instead producing 1953's Julius Caesar).  I thought since we haven't done an Oscar trivia article in a bit that it'd be fun to look at the five times this has happened, and whether any other years will ever be broken.

Honorable Mention: This has never happened in Best Actress (all other categories have had it happen at least once).  1928-29 and 1932-33 are the only years where only one woman was nominated more than once (Ruth Chatterton and Katharine Hepburn, respectively), and considering how much they like to repeat in this category with actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and of course Hepburn herself, it's probable that this may never have an all-new lineup again, much less one that stays "only one nomination for the full field" indefinitely.

1927-28 Best Actor

The Nominees: This is the only Best Actor contest this has happened in, and part of that is that there were only two nominees: Emil Jannings (winning for The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh) and Richard Barthelmess (The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose).
Who Got the Closest: Arguably this one doesn't count, since while the nomination was together, both men were cited for two different films, so you could argue Barthelmess, at the very least, got two nominations in the same year (some people count him as a double-nominee).  If it does count, though, the closest to another nomination was Jannings.  He would star the following year in the Best Picture nominee The Patriot, which has the unfortunate distinction of being the only "lost film" to ever be nominated for Best Picture; his costar Lewis Stone got the Best Actor nomination instead.
Could We See This Broken?: No-Jannings died in 1950, after a horrible career turn starring in Nazi propaganda films during World War II, and Barthelmess died in 1963, after also fighting in the war (for the Allies).

1962 Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: Ed Begley (the father of actor and activist Ed Begley Jr.) won for Sweet Bird of Youth over Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz), Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia), and Terence Stamp (Billy Budd)
Who Got the Closest: Considering the legendary status of a few of these actors, I'm stunned it wasn't broken at some point.  Sharif certainly came the closest, as he is one of only four people (the others being Spencer Tracy, Anthony Franciosa, & Jim Carrey) to win the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama (for Doctor Zhivago) and not go on to get an Oscar nomination.  Savalas would also get a Globe nod for film acting (for 1965's Battle of the Bulge) and was surely in the conversation for 1967's The Dirty Dozen.  And of course there's Terence Stamp, who won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Prize in 1965 (The Collector-a film that Oscar would cite for Best Actress, Director, & Screenplay but not Best Actor) and was cited by the Globes & BAFTA in 1994 (for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) but was never nominated again.
Could We See This Broken?: Yes, it could.  The only living person from this lineup is Stamp, who is now 81-years-old and regularly works in high-profile projects (just this past year he starred opposite Adam Sandler & Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery).  His recent filmography is notable for a man in his 80's, but doesn't necessarily lend itself credence to "on track for another Oscar nod."  Next year he'll be seen in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho with Thomasin McKenzie & Diana Rigg.

1980 Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: As I mentioned above, the nominees were Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin), Eva Le Gallienne (Resurrection), Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull), Diana Scarwid (Inside Moves), and the victorious Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard)
Who Got the Closest: Surely Steenburgen.  The year after her win for Melvin and Howard, Steenburgen would get a Golden Globe nomination for her work in Ragtime, though Oscar would pick one of her costars Elizabeth McGovern when they were giving out citations.  If not Steenburgen, one could make the argument that Brennan had a shot at a nomination years before Private Benjamin had she been included for The Last Picture Show, which also favored her costars (in this case Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn), despite Brennan getting a BAFTA nod for the film (I have seen the film, and Brennan is significantly better than Burstyn, and the two have such similar names I'm still suspicious that Oscar voters just mixed up the names).
Could We See This Broken?: Obviously, as I mentioned above, Steenburgen is in play and could end this category's streak this year if she's nominated for Wild Rose.  Otherwise, this remains the most promising list regardless; Steenburgen works regularly (she was on big screens last year in Book Club), as does Moriarty (she had a notable role in Patti Cake$ a few years back).  Scarwid is still alive, but hasn't made anything in either years, while Brennan passed away in 2013 and Le Gallienne (who was always more of a stage actress anyway) died in 1991.

1985 Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: Legendary actor Don Ameche (Cocoon) won, beating Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa), William Hickey (Prizzi's Honor), Robert Loggia (Jagged Edge), and Eric Roberts (Runaway Train)
Who Got the Closest: Roberts was a Golden Globe nominee for 1983's Star 80 before he made it to the Oscars (four years before his sister) with Runaway Train.  Otherwise none of these actors really (before or after) had a shot at the Oscar.  Don Ameche had been working in films for decades before his career revival in the 1980's with Trading Places and Cocoon, but none of those films stand out as near misses or even "I should get a Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Truth" style contenders.
Could We See This Broken?: Probably not.  Of the nominees, the only two that are still living are Brandauer and Roberts, but Brandauer very rarely works in America (usually preferring German television), and Roberts works constantly (though it's hard to quantify such things, it's claimed he has more film and TV credits than any other actor), his work in more mainstream Hollywood films that people might actually see is more in films like The Expendables and Lovelace than in prestige fare such as Inherent Vice (his most noted film of the decade)...and mostly he just appears in pictures that aren't even worth creating a Wikipedia page they're so small.

1987 Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: Oscar went with Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's cousin Olympia (for Moonstruck) with the other nominees being an eclectic bunch of character actors & screen legends: Norma Aleandro (Gaby: A True Story), Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction), Anne Ramsey (Throw Momma from the Train), and Ann Sothern (The Whales of August)
Who Got the Closest: Aleandro, maybe?  Her work in The Official Story definitely had buzz in 1985 (it would win the Oscar Best Foreign Language Film as well as be nominated for Original Screenplay, and Aleandro would take the top prizes from the NYFCC and Cannes), so I think she would have been in contention that year before eventually being cited for Gaby.  Otherwise Sothern had a significant role for A Letter to Three Wives (perhaps skipped due to internal competition from costars Jeanne Crain and Linda Darnell?), and Anne Archer was a part of the gigantic cast of Short Cuts.
Could We See This Broken?: I doubt it, as most of these women were far more known for their work in television (Sothern, Ramsey, Dukakis) than for movies.  Dukakis, Aleandro, and Archer are all still alive, but they don't star in movies that would get this kind of recognition, and mostly relegate themselves to infrequent work in TV and the stage.

OVP: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Film: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy
Director: David Lean
Oscar History: 10 nods/7 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Peter O'Toole, Supporting Actor-Omar Sharif, Adapted Screenplay*, Original Score*, Cinematography*, Art Direction*, Film Editing*, Sound)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In college, I majored in Film History, and in order to graduate with honors, I had to do a thesis paper that literally constituted one year of my life focused on the transition period from Classical Hollywood to New Hollywood cinema.  While I saw dozens of films for the project (in fact, that's the reason I started to subscribe to Netflix in the first place), the central thesis of the paper was focused on four movies: The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, The Manchurian Candidate and (in particular) Lawrence of Arabia.  I'm not going to get into the why's and how's of what I argued about these films (if you're curious, go into the comments or slip into my Twitter DM's and I'll share), but suffice it to say I know these movies very, very well, and Lawrence has remained a part of my life ever since in large part because I spent a year focusing on every minute detail of the film, because while I compared the 1962 classic to the three other pictures, it was Lawrence that was the guts of my argument.  So engrained is the film into my psyche, that when I made my bucket list at the age of 25, I only included one "see X film on the big screen" as a requisite for the list, and that was the tale of a complicated World War I colonel.  Thanks to TCM, I got to make this dream a reality last Sunday, and while I've written literally 100 pages worth of thoughts on the film, I haven't shared any of them on this blog, so let's get a review out there for posterity, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead...though seriously-you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia?) The film is 220 minutes long, so trying to summarize it into one paragraph as explanation feels to do it a disservice.  Suffice it to say the film is told in flashback (though it's one extended flashback, so you'd be forgiven for forgetting such a framing device) as we see in the opening moments that a seemingly ordinary man on a morning drive on his motorcycle has been killed, and then suddenly we're at St. Paul's Cathedral, where the man is storied enough to have a bust of him in a place where he literally sits on the ashes of kings.  We learn that Lawrence was a complicated man, as even those who knew him don't really have a way to explain him, and then we are transported into the life of TE Lawrence, as played by a young, beautiful Peter O'Toole.

The film is considered one of the quintessential, undisputed classics of Hollywood cinema for a reason-literally everything works in Lawrence of Arabia, and particularly on the big screen (just an FYI-you can totally see this on Wednesday still in select theaters, and while this isn't a paid plug at all, here's a Fathom Events link if you're interested as I am always willing to shill for a movie this good). The score, sets, cinematography-it's all marvelous.  Freddie Young won one of his three Oscars for lensing this movie, and it shows in the care he brings to the big screen.  The deserts look scorched, blistering in the sun, and he has a remarkable expertise not only with a wide shot, but with the occasional closeup of O'Toole or Omar Sharif's Ali.  The editing is flawless-Anne Coates (who recently died) finds little New Hollywood touches to put into a classic film like Lawrence; look at the way that instead of having an Old Hollywood dissolve between scenes she copies the French New Wave with quick, abrasive cuts between critical scenes, underlining the continued madness of Lawrence, especially in the second half of the film where he's forced to confront his narcissism, latent homosexuality, and bloodlust to varying degrees of failure.  From a sheer craft perspective, the movie rivals pictures like Gone with the Wind and Titanic in getting everything right-few films look as good on all cylinders as Lawrence of Arabia; it's not often that a movie gets ten Oscar nominations and you argue it's too few, but Lawrence gets there (it easily could have gotten an 11th nomination, but if legend is to be believed Phyllis Dalton wasn't submitted by the studio for Costume, and therefore missed out on a certain Oscar).

When an epic is this hot, it's easy to forget the acting, but that would be an insult.  The cast list (all men-Lawrence famously doesn't have any speaking parts for women, who only show up in the occasional crowd scene), reads like a who's who of character actors of the era.  Sharif was the one who won the Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor, and if they were only going to go with one that's probably the right call (Sharif is breathtakingly noble, striking & debonair but never someone who isn't believable as Lawrence's struggling conscience), but you have a smorgasbord of other great turns here.  There's Alec Guinness (in problematic brown face, so the fact that he wasn't cited might be for the best), charming as ever as Prince Faisal, or Anthony Quinn's proud Auda, struggling with modernity.  Even small parts like Jack Hawkins' General Allenby, Jose Ferrer's predatory Turkish Bey, and Claude Rains' glib Mr. Dryden make the film work-this is an epic movie with the casting care of a stage play, every part meticulously fitting to its inhabitant.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the onscreen marvel of Peter O'Toole's Lawrence.  O'Toole is one of the great actors of his generation, but he was never better than in his breakout role.  He instills layers of the character with the mannered walk and sky-blue eyes (you don't need to stretch the imagination to realize that this man was both gay and probably into some kinky shit, as is evidenced by real-life...even though in 1962 showing such a thing would've been impossible onscreen).  There's a madness that sets into his eyes, and a lesser actor wouldn't have been able to use sentences like "I'm extraordinary" without some sort of wink to the audience to show he's in on the joke.  The fact that O'Toole doesn't do that puts this up there with George C. Scott in Patton as a look at what war and death does to a man's sole, and how absolute power can corrupt even the most well-intentioned of leaders.  Lawrence is perfect, but Lawrence himself is a man of great fault, a person who has earned the title of hero, but also of the modern-day reality that comes with such a distinction.