The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1958
I hate talking about 1958. It’s so — middling. All the nominees for Best Picture feel weak. And the winner is just — fluff. Gigi is a fine film and all, but it shouldn’t have won Best Picture. None of the nominees really should have. The Defiant Ones was probably the best choice among the bunch.
Vincente Minnelli won Best Director for Gigi (talked about here), which actually was a good decision. The dude was owed two by this point. David Niven wins Best Actor for Separate Tables (talked about here) and Wendy Hiller wins Best Supporting Actor for the film as well (talked about here). Both were veteran Oscars and are acceptable to varying degrees. And Best Actress was Susan Hayward for I Want to Live! (talked about here), which she’d earned by this point. I just wish she’d won earlier and someone else could have won here (especially since Deborah Kerr and Rosalind Russell never won Oscars, and if Elizabeth Taylor won here she wouldn’t have had to win in 1960).
And then this category. I fucking love this category. So much. I’d have wanted to vote for Burl Ives without having seen the performance. But having seen it, and the other performance he gave this year that he wasn’t nominated for — oh man, does he win this in a landslide. What a great decision for all time.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1958
And the nominees were…
Theodore Bikel, The Defiant Ones
Lee J. Cobb, The Brothers Karamazov
Burl Ives, The Big Country
Arthur Kennedy, Some Came Running
Gig Young, Teacher’s Pet (more…)
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