The nominees were ...
- Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men
- Kirk Douglas in Champion
- Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High
- Richard Todd in The Hasty Heart
- John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima
... when they should have been ...
- James Cagney in White Heat
- Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men
- John Garfield in Force of Evil
- Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol
- John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
And the Oscar went to ...
Crawford inherited the "big lug" stereotype of his fellow Oscar winners Wallace Beery and Victor McLaglen, though with somewhat less success than theirs. He is chiefly known for two film roles -- this one and Judy Holliday's junkyard-millionaire sugar daddy in Born Yesterday -- and for "Highway Patrol," the late-1950s TV series that seemed to run forever in syndication. He was the son of two vaudevillians, Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick (best-known for her wise-cracking sidekick roles in the Astaire-Rogers movies Top Hat and Swing Time), and dropped out of Harvard to become a stevedore. He got his first big break when he was cast in the role of Lenny in the 1937 Broadway adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. He went to Hollywood on the strength of his New York success, but was passed over for the part of Lenny in the film version in favor of Lon Chaney Jr. He found regular work, mostly as a B-picture heavy, until Robert Rossen chose him to play the charismatic Willie Stark -- a role that had been offered first to John Wayne. He landed his other major film role, in Born Yesterday, after Paul Douglas, who had played the part on Broadway, decided not to reprise it in the film. Although he also starred in one of the early films of Federico Fellini, Il Bidone (1955), he failed to find satisfactory work in movies, and turned to TV, where in addition to "Highway Patrol," he had a long career, mostly in guest appearances. Despite severe alcoholism, he managed to work regularly until his death in 1986.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| James Cagney and Margaret Wycherly in White Heat |
If Cagney's Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which he played the ultimate song-and-dance man, honored one side of his career, then he certainly should have won for White Heat, which is his gangster apotheosis, a Gangsterdämmerung. He pulls out all the stops and throws them away as Cody Jarrett, the gangster with a fixation on his mother (Margaret Wycherly), who is as ruthless and loony as he is. Directed by Raoul Walsh, everyone in this film noir with a fiery finish gives a terrific performance, even Virginia Mayo, so often the epitome of bland blondness, as Cody's moll, Verna. The movie deservedly made the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2003, but it received only one Oscar nomination, for the story by Virginia Kellogg on which it was based.
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| "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Cagney's immolation scene in White Heat |
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