News from the Boston Becks

David Lean directing Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Best Director: Rise of the Foreign Films and Writers-Directors

Billy Wilder was, hands down, king of the writer-directors. With 2 Oscars and 6 other nominations, there is no one else who is even close. Oddly enough, Wilder was nominated 5 times in the 50′s, but both his Oscars came outside that decade (in 45 and 60). (more…)

John Huston directing Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

If you’re interested in Great Directors, for the next year, every few days or so I will be covering the 100 Greatest Directors of Alltime.  Check back starting a few days after the Oscars.  (Yeah, that whole series was finished back in October and you can see the complete list here which links to all the individual posts).

There was a loose connection between Best Director and Best Picture right from the start, with at least two of the Best Picture nominees getting a Best Director nomination, but it took off in 1932.

From 1932 to 1943 (the era of the 10 Best Picture nominations) only two films were nominated for Best Director but not Best Picture, both of them oddities. One was Angels with Dirty Faces, which was one of two nominations for Michael Curtiz that year. According to Inside Oscar (on page 1015), the next year they changed the rule to only allow one nomination for a director in any given year (so I do what I do with the acting and if a Director has two worthy films, I list it as “also for”). (more…)

1970 is an easy place to make a break because it’s about half way through, but it’s also appropriate because here is where we have the first Best Actor nomination for the man who would come to dominate this list: Jack Nicholson. (more…)

If you go to the story here, you can read more about today’s court decision.

I’m putting this up front on the main page rather than on the Family News page, because of how important it is.

One of the most frustrating things about having a child with autism is that so many people want to tell you that vaccines cause autism. They don’t. Science does not support this theory. It’s not true.

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Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper and Tom Hanks all have two Oscars. Neither Richard Burton or Orson Welles won an acting Oscar. They seemed to like the underplaying.

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As has already been pointed out by an astute reader, only one actress has won Best Actress in her 50′s: Shirley Booth. Best Actress is definitely a younger woman’s game; the average age of a winner is 35.6. Only 9 women have won past the age of 50 and 3 of those were Katharine Hepburn. Only 12 have won past the age of 42.

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First there was Norma Shearer. She was followed by Bette Davis. Then there was Katharine Hepburn. Then came Meryl Streep. There. That’s the history of this category.

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Until 1988, only three times did an actress get nominated in both categories in one year: Fay Bainter in 1938, Teresa Wright in 1942 and Jessica Lange in 1982, and they all won Supporting and lost Actress. Sigourney Weaver in 1988, however, lost in both categories, as did Emma Thompson in 1993, Julianne Moore in 2002 and Cate Blanchett in 2007. But in 1993, Thompson faced off against Holly Hunter in both categories and Hunter won Best Actress and lost Supporting. (more…)

In 1936, the Academy finally thought, hey, maybe we should give an award to all the other actors in the film. The most glaring omission by waiting was Elsa Lanchester in her brilliant, but small role in The Private Life of Henry VIII, the film that won her husband the Oscar for Best Actor.

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I just have to say that the above speech is my favorite Oscar acceptance speech in the 26 years I’ve been watching.

The median age for a Supporting Actor winner is 49.6. The mean is 49.5. Yet, people don’t win at that age – no one has ever won when 48 or 50 and only one winner was 49 (Burl Ives). A lot of people win in their 30′s and 40′s. A good amount even win in their 70′s (9 winners). The youngest was Timothy Hutton (20) and the oldest was George Burns (79). (more…)