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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 18:15:18 GMT
John Wayne's only acting Academy Award was for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" (1969)
Was this more of a Lifetime Achievement award from the Academy? One of those years where there wasn't an OUTSTANDING performance and it was the perfect time to give John Wayne an Oscar after so many years acting.
He delivers a strong performance, no doubt, but still...
And if so, do you know of any other instances where you think this occurred in Oscar History?
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 21, 2017 18:34:27 GMT
Wayne was nominated as actor one time previously for "The Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949). Broderick Crawford won for "All The King's Men." Crawford won against some pretty heavy hitters. In addition to Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Gregory Peck were also in the running. British actor Richard Todd was the fifth nominee.
Yes, the award was deserved. Not only did The Duke bring both humor and seriousness to a very colorful character but he topped it off with a very slight taste of ironic poking fun at his own image as a western hero. A tough balancing act that he pulled off wonderfully.
I have my doubts about the whole concept of "the Academy" giving a competitive Oscar as a "make-up" or "lifetime achievement." One reason for my doubting is that there is NO "the Academy." It is not the administrators of the AMPAS nor any other committee who gets together to decide who gets awarded or who gets "snubbed." It is an election by a very large number of movie industry members. There are no political parties nor block votes. It would be almost impossible, to my mind, to reign in that number of independent and creative people to tell them who they have to vote for. I might be convinced that a split vote between two front runners could result in a win for an underdog (like the Broderick Crawford win), but even this can never be proved because we never learn the vote totals. (In the first few years of the Oscar - late 1920s - the vote totals were read out after each award, but it soon became clear that movie star egos were too fragile to find out how badly they lost.)
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Post by Wesley Crusher on Mar 21, 2017 19:01:28 GMT
John Wayne is my favorite Actor, of course I think he deserved his Oscar.  If the Academy was in the business of giving out lifetime Oscars I'm sure Alfred Hitchcock would have 1. Hitchcock Best Director Nominations: Rebecca Lifeboat Spellbound Rear Window Psycho Hitchcock ... Zero Best Director Wins? |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 22, 2017 3:02:13 GMT
Alfred Hitchcock AwardskFWIW he did get the "Irving Thalberg Memorial Award" in 1968. "The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is voted by the Academy’s Board of Governors and is presented to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”" No small potatoes to get that one ! Wesley Crusher
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Post by flasuss on Mar 22, 2017 5:28:58 GMT
It was probably the most blatant "lifetime achievement" Oscar ever. Hollywood knew The Duke was ill and likely wouldn't have another chance, plus he was genuinely robbed of at least a nomination, if not a win, for The Searchers.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2017 5:31:03 GMT
It was a lifetime achievement award. I am a fan of his and he did well in True Grit, but as another poster mentioned, they knew he was dying so it was a tribute and probably an apology for decade of oversight as much as the film itself.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2017 10:36:38 GMT
It was probably the most blatant "lifetime achievement" Oscar ever. Hollywood knew The Duke was ill and likely wouldn't have another chance, plus he was genuinely robbed of at least a nomination, if not a win, for The Searchers. I thought he deserved at least a nom for "The Searchers" |
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Post by Popeye Doyle on Mar 22, 2017 10:50:11 GMT
I've yet to watch an entire John Wayne movie. He holds little interest for Popeye.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Mar 22, 2017 23:32:52 GMT
John Wayne's only acting Academy Award was for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" (1969) Was this more of a Lifetime Achievement award from the Academy? One of those years where there wasn't an OUTSTANDING performance and it was the perfect time to give John Wayne an Oscar after so many years acting. He delivers a strong performance, no doubt, but still... And if so, do you know of any other instances where you think this occurred in Oscar History? ... yes, definitely, and it also showed what many people, and especially Academy members, tend to respond to. Wayne had offered much better, more nuanced or daring performances in the past— Red River (Howard Hawks, 1946), The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (John Ford, 1962)—but he had received just one acting nomination (for 1949's Sands of Iwo Jima) and no trophies. So he puts on an eye patch and delivers a caricatured performance in True Grit, and people go, "That's acting." One could also argue that Wayne was better in some of his roles after True Grit, most notably in The Cowboys (Mark Rydell, 1972), which was perhaps his best film after Liberty Valence. As a man pushing retirement age whose cowboys are literally "boys," he must temper his aggressive masculine instincts. The result is a thoughtful, nuanced, balanced performance, at once stern and humane, without sentimentality —more impressive work, in my view, than what he does in True Grit. |
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Post by mslo79 on Mar 23, 2017 3:41:22 GMT
Yeah, i am thinking more along the lines of the OP.
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