The nominees were ...
- Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives
- Laurence Olivier in Henry V
- Larry Parks in The Jolson Story
- Gregory Peck in The Yearling
- James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life
- Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives
- Jean-Louis Barrault in Children of Paradise
- Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine
- Cary Grant in Notorious
- Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
And the Oscar went to ...
At fifty-one, March was too old for his role as the serviceman returning from the war to his boring job at the bank, and the nomination really should have gone to Dana Andrews, whose role was richer and performance deeper. But March brought his usual integrity to the part, and won his second Oscar, fourteen years after the first.
... when it should have gone to ...
 |
| Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in Notorious |
This seems to me one of Grant's greatest performances, a conscious tamping-down of his famous charm and natural gift for comedy to become the icy, determined spy, while maintaining a steady ambiguity about the true nature of his feelings for Ingrid Bergman, the pawn in his attempt to uncover a spy ring. That the film received only two nominations -- admittedly deserved ones, for Claude Rains's supporting performance and Ben Hecht's screenplay -- remains one of the Academy's indelible blemishes. It began as a David O. Selznick production, but Selznick got so involved in his would-be blockbuster Duel in the Sun that he farmed the film out to RKO, and director Alfred Hitchcock wound up as his own producer. This left the film without a powerful backer: RKO was in financial difficulties, and was also releasing Samuel Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and both Goldwyn and Capra had the kind of clout with the Academy that Hitchcock never possessed.
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