This new category was a necessary addition to the Awards, recognizing the importance of performances other than in the lead roles. It may have been created in response to the 1934 Oscars, when Frank Morgan, in a supporting role in The Affairs of Benvenuto Cellini, received a nomination for best actor instead of Fredric March, who had the leading role, the title character. But the problem the Academy has always been up against is determining what constitutes a leading role and what a supporting one. The first list of nominees shows by its diversity how hard it is to define what constitutes a "supporting" performance. Auer and Erwin were comic types in roles that asked them to do little more than adhere to their established types. Tamiroff was an Armenian-born actor trained by Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theater whose career consisted almost entirely of playing whatever ethnicity the movie needed, from Russian to Turkish, from Spanish to -- in his nominated role -- Chinese. Rathbone, a classically trained actor, became best known as Sherlock Holmes and as a swashbuckling villain, and was nominated for playing a swashbuckling Shakespearean villain, Tybalt. And Brennan was the actor for whom the award seemed to be invented, since he won it three times.
The nominees were ...
- Mischa Auer in My Man Godfrey
- Walter Brennan in Come and Get It
- Stuart Erwin in Pigskin Parade
- Basil Rathbone in Romeo and Juliet
- Akim Tamiroff in The General Died at Dawn
... when they should have been ...
- John Barrymore in Romeo and Juliet
- Walter Brennan in Come and Get It
- Basil Rathbone in Romeo and Juliet
- Paul Robeson in Show Boat
- Akim Tamiroff in The General Died at Dawn
And the Oscar went to ...
Brennan had been in Hollywood since 1923, working as an extra and a stuntman and gradually moving into character roles. But not until 1935, when director Howard Hawks cast him as a character called "Old Atrocity" in Barbary Coast, did Brennan become the prime scene-stealer that won him three supporting actor Oscars -- one every other year from 1937 through 1941. Before he was fired from the film, Hawks also cast Brennan in Come and Get It and built up what was originally a much smaller role. Brennan and Hawks made four more films together: Sergeant York, To Have and Have Not, Red River, and Rio Bravo.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Basil Rathbone as Tybalt confronts John Barrymore as Mercutio |
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| Leslie Howard as Romeo with Barrymore as Tybalt |
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| Barrymore's Tybalt listens in as Juliet's nurse (Edna May Oliver) speaks with Howard as Romeo |
Well, no, it really won't do as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. But as MGM's attempt to pass off some aging, balding actors as Shakespeare's teenagers, it has its moments, especially when Barrymore is around to lighten things up with some prime hamming. He and Rathbone are well-matched as antagonists, though Rathbone is a good ten years younger and in much better physical shape. This would be Barrymore's last distinguished film performance, with the possible exception of a smaller role in Midnight (1939), before alcoholism took its toll.
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