The Oscars ‘Not Always Special Relationship With Britain’, Part 4
How Hollywood’s Attitude Towards The Academy During That Remarkable Decade May Have Made The British Actors Seem Classy
As a critic I have three separate observations about the Academy Awards during the 1970s, considered by aficionados and observers as one of the greatest decades for film in history.
The first is that, by and large, I think the Oscars has one of the best track records when it comes to nominations and actual wins for major awards then it does in most decades collectively. There were blips to be sure — the nominations for films such as Airport and The Towering Inferno for Best Picture are the most obvious example — but overall the Oscars did a superb job in a decade filled with masterpieces. One can quibble about who actually ended up winning, but this decade is the rare one where there were very few poor choices in any of the major categories and I doubt that would brook much debate.
The second is surprising given what was being made during the decade but perhaps not given the belief in nostalgia: during that period the reaction of many critics and people in the industry was that the quality of movies in general and the nominated movies was subpar compared to the past. Assessing the quality of movies in 1975 Variety, still the bible of show business said: “It wasn’t a bad year for movies, it was a terrible year.” We are now about to celebrate half a century since the Oscars nominated for Best Picture: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Nashville, each directed by one of the greatest directors in history and each considered among the greatest films of all time. Among the other major films that year up for consideration were Hal Ashby’s Shampoo which earned an Academy Award for Lee Grant for Best Supporting Actress and the rock opera Tommy. This was hardly a year of mediocrity.
And this leads to the third fact about the Oscars during the 1970s. Perhaps at no time in the Academy’s near century of existence have the majority of the nominated actors in particular thought so little of the Oscars. In the past they had considered them an inconvenience and of little relevance; but in the 1970s by and large the performers thought being nominated was something of a degradation.
During this decade as fans are aware, two veteran actors George C. Scott and Marlon Brando declined to accept their Academy Awards for Best Actor. Scott made it clear that in the lead up to the awards that if the Oscars honored him for Patton not only wouldn’t he be there to receive it, they could essentially keep it. Marlon Brando, more infamously, sent a proxy named Sacheen Littlefeather to give a speech on his behalf in which he would state his views on the mistreatment of what were then known as Native Americans and that he refused his Oscar in protest. (In keeping with the tradition of Hollywood both Scott and Brando were nominated for Best Actor the year after they declined it: Scott for Paddy Chayefsky’s black comedy The Hospital and Brando for Last Tango in Paris.)
Yet these two veterans were only the most obvious example of performers who increasingly seemed to think the Oscars were barely worth their time. Al Pacino was nominated five times during the 1970s for some of his most iconic roles and didn’t show up on Oscar night for any of them. Robert DeNiro wasn’t present when he was awarded his first Oscar for The Godfather Part II and didn’t officially attend a ceremony until he was nominated for Raging Bull. When he was nominated for Best Actor for his work in Lenny (the same year DeNiro received his Oscar) not only did Hoffman say he wouldn’t attend, he was very vocal on the fact that he considered the Academy Awards ‘an obscene evening.” And not only did Woody Allen not show up to accept any of his Academy Awards for Annie Hall (the start of what would be a tradition lasting a quarter of a century) he made it very clear in the aftermath of his wins that he didn’t think the Oscars meant that much to him or in general.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why, despite the fact that attendance among British actors and actresses was no better than it had been in the previous decade, this was not commented on as excessively as it had been in the 1960s by Hollywood critics. Given how ungrateful so many of the current American actors were acting there was something to be said for politely declining to show up year after year. Although in one critical case, Hollywood really wished one particular British winner had decided to stay in England.
I should mention that many of the great British actors of the previous decade and before were still getting nominated and still not showing up: Laurence Olivier was nominated for Sleuth and Marathon Man and bypassed both ceremonies and Alec Guiness stayed home for his nominations for his most famous role as Obi-Wan Kenobi for Star Wars. (Guiness notoriously hated his work there.) However both men had mellowed enough to show up to accept Lifetime Achievement Awards in 1978 and 1979, respectively. Olivier gave a speech that has gone down in Oscars history for sounding impressive but ultimately signifying nothing while Guiness simply said: “I’m getting out of here when the getting’s good,” and left the stage. And in a way Albert Finney’s simple decline to attend for his nomination for playing Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express in 1974 seemed far less of an offense than the attitude nominees like Hoffman showed that year. (To be fair to Hoffman, he mellowed and has been present for all of subsequent nominations.)
And there were starting to be signs of the British character. When he was nominated for Best Actor for his incredible work in Sleuth Olivier, knowing that Brando was likely to win declined with humor: “My face will not look better with egg on it.” Michael Caine, who was also nominated for Sleuth that year, did show up and had some choice words to say about how little class Brando had shown when he won. “If a man makes $2 million for a movie, he might want to give some of that to the Indians instead,” he pointed out shrewdly.
Perhaps the strangest contradiction during that decade was held by one of the most awarded performers. In Neil Simon’s California Suite (which I will be discussing below) Neil Simon has an English Actress say: “Glenda Jackson never shows up and she’s nominated every goddamn year.” It was very close to the truth: Jackson received four Oscar nominations for Best Actress between 1970 and 1975 and two Academy Awards for two very different roles: Gudrun Brangwyn in Ken Russell’s controversial Women in Love and Vickie in Melvin Frank’s Touch Of Class.
Few actresses were busier during the 1970s than Jackson who in 1971 alone had roles in Russell’s The Music Lovers and The Boy Friend, John Schlesinger’s groundbreaking Sunday Bloody Sunday (a British film that deal with a love triangle involving a bisexual man), the title role in British TV’s Elizabeth R (she received an Emmy for that) and then played Elizabeth I again in Mary Queen of Scots which earned five Oscar nominations including Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. (Redgrave was pretty busy herself during that period as we’ll see.) She received her Oscar nomination for Sunday Bloody Sunday that year and later received a fourth in 1975 for the title role in Hedda. And she never showed up for any of them. You got a since with Jackson that she had no time for the foolishness of awards: when she showed up to present the Best Actor in the 1975 ceremony, she said with no smile at all: “Thank you, thank you twice in fact, now let’s move on.”
Jackson never placed much value on celebrity or fame in America but England loved her unconditionally. She would eventually be named commander of the British empire, prominently became an opponent of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party and eventually ran for Parliament. She would be a Labour Party activist but may have been too far left for England, which meant she probably would fit in with Hollywood around that time, particularly considering the political nature of so many of the actresses.
This was clear of Redgrave in particular who was becoming known as one of the more outspoken actresses of her time. When she chose not to attend the Oscars after being nominated in 1972 Hollywood was relieved but not that much, mainly because Jane Fonda had also been nominated for Best Actress for Klute and by comparison to anyone in Hollywood or England at the time, Redgrave would have Queen Victoria. When Fonda did win that year she was, for once, modest: “There’s a lot to be said right now, but that is for another time.” One could almost hear the collective sigh of relief in the theater in studios across the nation.
Julie Christie was among the more active performers during the 1970s, known mostly for the films she made with Warren Beatty, her lover at the time. Christie was nominated for her work in the classic Robert Altman film McCabe & Mrs. Miller — the only nomination the film received and oddly enough the only nomination Christie herself received during the 1970s, despite having the lead female role in such classic movies as Don’t Look Now, Shampoo (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination) and Heaven Can Wait. After that she slowed her acting pace considerably and didn’t work more frequently until the 1990s.
It should also be mentioned that, with the notable exception of Jackson, the majority of the British actors and actresses who were nominated and winning Oscars during the 1970s were primarily doing so for American movies. John Mills would win Best Supporting Actor for David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter but the film was a critical and box office disaster for Lean and did much to scorch his accomplishments in Hollywood to that point. Ken Russell was nominated that year for Best Director for Women In Love but it was the only nomination he would ever receive in that category; by and large the movies he made were too controversial to have crossover appeal (and in truth, had difficulty finding acceptance even in Britain at the time) John Schlesinger would be the filmmaker who had the most acceptance from the Oscars during the 1970s; Sunday Bloody Sunday and his adaptations of Nathaniel West’s Day of The Locust and Marathon Man would all receive Oscar nominations for their acting and Schlesinger would be nominated for Best Director for Sunday. But by and large this was an outstanding decade for American directors and the nominations throughout the 1970s demonstrated that. (It was also a great decade for international films, but that’s another story.)
The three major British winners all occurred in consecutive years, starting in 1976. The most well-known is Peter Finch and its worth describing his career prior to that point
Finch had been acting in British movies since he was 19 and for the majority of his career had very little crossover appeal to the American audiences. He’d work with Michael Powell in the late stages of that director’s career, had appeared in The Nun’s Story alongside Audrey Hepburn, had been noticed in such films as The Pumpkin Eater and Flight of the Phoenix which received Oscar nominations. He was cast as William Boldwood in John Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd and five years was cast in the role of Daniel Hersh, a lonely male doctor having an affair with a young make artist who was also involved with a female office worker in Sunday Bloody Sunday
Finch may have been the first actor to be nominated for an Oscar for playing a gay man, which in 1971 was incredibly controversial and still would be twenty years later. He would win the BAFTA prize for Best Actor and the National Society Film Critics Award for that same portrayal and was in a dead heat with Gene Hackman for his work in The French Connection until Hackman went ahead after multiple ballots. Many were impressed by Finch’s work in the film and he had been a major contender for the Oscar only to lose to Hackman. Few doubted the logic behind it: The French Connection was also a classic and won Best Picture and Director for William Friedkin.
Finch then did much to torch his career by appearing in the fiasco musical remake of Lost Horizon, one of the biggest critical and box office bombs of the 1970s. Then he was cast to play Howard Beale in Network, a film that even among a decade of classics ranks as one of the greatest films ever made. (It ranks #235 on imdb.com.).
During the Oscar race of 1976, Network was one of the dominant contenders among four master classes: All The President’s Men, Rocky and Taxi Driver. With an all star cast the studio aimed to accomplish something unparalleled in Academy Award history: to win all four acting awards. In large part the studio’s argued that Finch should allow his name to submitted as Supporting Actor and let William Holden compete for Best Actor on his own.
There was some merit to this: during the awards season Holden and Finch had been competing against each other among the critics and Best Actor was going to Robert DeNiro for Taxi Drive because they kept splitting the vote. (I’ll acknowledge DeNiro’s work might have played a slight factor in that.) Finch adamantly refused: “Howard Beale was not a supporting role!” he demanded.
That’s as may be but in all honesty compared to not only the other performances in Network — particularly Holden but also Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall — and the other nominees such as DeNiro and Stallone — Howard Beale is far less of a developed character than any of the others. He is seen almost exclusively in front of the camera delivering (admittedly brilliant and intense) monologues and is given little character development outside of it. Beale is clearly the impetus of the entire film but much of the brilliance of Network is how everyone at UBS talks about his actions rather than anything he actually does. For all the intensity and extraordinary ability Finch gives him, his character has very little dimension and seems almost passive when he’s off camera. That is one of the points of Chayefsky’s extraordinary screenplay but its also a good argument that Beale was a supporting performance.
In the intensity of the publicity tour for the film, Finch would suffer a massive heart attack and die on January 14th 1977. William Holden would later joke “If that son-of-a-bitch hadn’t died, I might have won my second Oscar.” There is an argument for that fact: Holden was the comeback story for his work as Max, the producer of the news who finds his career and personal life run roughshod because of how UBS tosses him aside for Beale. And his character is the only one in the film with a moral conscience about what the network is doing to his friend and who eventually realizes the affair he is having with Faye Dunaway is more about him and that she is incapable of emotion.
Whether or not that would make a difference will never be known: Finch would win the Golden Globe posthumously, become the first Actor nominated posthumously since James Dean for Giant and on Oscar night his award would be accepted by Finch’s widow. (This was against the show’s wishes: they had insisted Chayefsky accept if Finch had won and he had basically invited his widow on stage in the aftermath.)
Network came close to its acting sweep, with Faye Dunaway winning Best Actress and Beatrice Straight winning for her brief — but still memorable — as Supporting Actress. The Oscars that year were essentially divided between Network, All The President’s Men and Rocky, with the latter winning Best Picture and Director. Momentum had been solidly on the classic film for a while; it had already won Best Picture from the Golden Globes and Best Director for John G. Avildsen.)
1977 was a wellspring for Hollywood with the release of Star Wars but no one could see the future as to what that would mean. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Oscars and everyone was hoping for a show to remember. It was — though not for the reason the Academy had hoped.
One of the most nominated films of the night was Julia, a film based on a novel written by one of the most well-known and controversial playwrights of all time: Lillian Hellman. The year before she had addressed the Oscars and argued that she remembered a time: “when the bosses of the studios stood up to the government with all the force of a bowl of mashed potatoes.” Julia was based on Pentimento, a non-fiction novel which told of the relationship between Hellman and a childhood friend she knew from during World War II known only as Julia.
One of the coups for director Fred Zinneman had been the casting of two of the most outspoken actresses at the time in the two major female roles: Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. The film received a total of eleven nominations, tying it with Star Wars and The Turning Point for the most nominations of any movie.
Even before that night Redgrave was already under opposition. That same year she had produced and starred in The Palestinian, a film which followed the activities of the PLO in Lebanon. Multiple Jewish groups criticized it for its perceived anti-Israel slant. When Redgrave was nominated members of the JDL burned effigies of Redgrave and picketed the Oscar to protest against what they saw was her support for the PLO.
As is the tradition of the Oscars Best Supporting Actress was one of the first awards given on Oscar Night 1978. She chose to take that moment to challenge the structure, thanking Hollywood for:
“having refused to be intimidated by the threat of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums — whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to the great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”
There were gasps and boos while she spoke. Later that night, in presenting the Oscar for screenplay Paddy Chayefsky himself called her out to tremendous applause. In the interviews in the aftermath almost to a man everyone present excoriated Redgrave for using her platform in that way, some using more derogatory language then other. Alan King not there actually said: “It’s a good thing I wasn’t there. I would have gone right for the jugular.” Redgrave received enormous backlash from the press and Hollywood and as a result for years and even decades to come her career would suffer immensely though eventually she would find redemption in the mid-1980s. (I’ll get to that in the next piece.)
During Oscar night on Herbert Ross, who had two movies competing for Best Picture that night (The Turning Point and The Goodbye Girl) took the opportunity to film some stock footage for his next movie. He was currently filming an adaptation of Neil Simon’s California Suite, a film which told the story of four different small stories that take place in a hotel room in LA. Among the stories being told was that of Diana, a British actress who is attending the Oscars after being nominated for ‘a nauseating little comedy’. Accompanying her is her former lover who is now out of the closet.
In the movie the two are played by Maggie Smith and Michael Caine and the two of them were filmed going into the theater as they presented an award. California Suite turned out to be a box office hit with most of the critical attention going to Caine and Smith for their superb comic and wry performances. Smith won several critics awards, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy, tying with Ellen Burstyn for her work in Same Time, Next Year. In what was already looking like a crowded category — Jane Fonda was up again for Coming Home — Smith did was Finch hadn’t been willing to do and had her name submitted for Best Supporting Actress.
California Suite was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Smith. (Nominated in that same category for the first time was a 29 year old named Meryl Streep for The Deer Hunter.) Smith ended up prevailing on Oscar night and graciously thanked Michael Caine: “I share this award with him and it should be divided in half.) Smith became the third actress in the 1970s to have won Oscars for both Best Actress and Supporting Actress. In 1970 Helen Hayes had won Best Supporting Actress for her work in Airport and Ingrid Bergman had won Best Supporting Actress for her work in Midnight on the Orient Express. As of this writing three other actresses have joined Smith in this small group, including Renee Zellweger, Jessica Lange — and Meryl Streep.
The changes in Hollywood began to be felt across the board by the end of the 1970s but it would also usher in a new age of recognition for British actors and creative forces that essentially began the ‘special relationship’ In the conclusion to this series I will deal with how so many of the films and filmmakers in the 1980s officially commenced the relationship between Hollywood and British films that it enjoys to this day.