The Oscar Quest: Best Actor – 1959
1959 was Ben-Hur. Game over, man. But that’s just Best Picture and Best Director. The acting categories are fair game. Just because it won two acting awards does not necessarily mean it should have. That’s this category’s major issue. It’s like with Lawrence of Arabia. How much does just simply carrying a film of this scale count toward voting?
I like this. We have a theme. It only really counts for one performance, but fuck it, let’s run with it. As for the rest of the year, as I said, Ben-Hur swept Picture, Director and also Supporting Actor, which went to Hugh Griffith. Best Actress was Simone Signoret for Room at the Top, which I am so not happy about and will get to at some point. And Best Supporting Actress was Shelley Winters for The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a deceptively okay year. It seems like the decisions were fine because of the obvious choice in Ben-Hur, but, in actuality, I really don’t agree with any of the acting choices. I’m okay with one, maybe two of them, but, really, I think they could have picked better.
BEST ACTOR – 1959
And the nominees were…
Laurence Harvey, Room at the Top
Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur
Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot
Paul Muni, The Last Angry Man
Jimmy Stewart, Anatomy of a Murder (more…)
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