The nominees were ...
- Michael Chekhov in Spellbound
- John Dall in The Corn Is Green
- James Dunn in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Robert Mitchum in G.I. Joe
- J. Carrol Naish in A Medal for Benny
... when they should have been ...
- Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not
- Jack Carson in Mildred Pierce
- James Dunn in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Raymond Massey in The Woman in the Window
- Robert Mitchum in G.I. Joe
And the Oscar went to ...
The role of the easygoing alcoholic father was the best one that Dunn ever had. A former vaudevillian who made his first films in 1929 and 1930, and had a leading role in Bad Girl in 1930, Dunn became a contract player at Fox, but aside from four Shirley Temple features he appeared mostly in B-movies. Like Jimmy Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, he was an alcoholic, and the Oscar did little to help him establish a major career. Despite bouts with the disease he continued to work, mostly in television, up to his death in 1967, including a successful sitcom, "It's a Great Life," in the 1954-56 seasons. In it he played a character not far from the one for which he received the Oscar: a deadbeat dreamer.
... when it should have gone to ...
Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not.
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| Walter Brennan |
Maybe it was the fact that Brennan already had three Oscars that kept the Academy from giving him another chance at one for what is probably his best screen performance: the simple-minded drunk, Eddie, in To Have and Have Not. His rapport with Humphrey Bogart and, in her first film, Lauren Bacall, is a miraculously canny bit of scene-stealing. It helps that he is given the benefit of Howard Hawks's direction, not to mention Jules Furthman and William Faulkner's dialogue. Watch Eddie's befuddlement when Bacall turns his own catchphrase, "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" back on him.
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| Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not |
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