Hollywood: Prizes & Surprises

The Academy Award nominations are usually like a children’s party: hardly anyone goes home without a gift. This year, favors were distributed liberally to some older participants: Katharine Hepburn (best actress) for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; Dame Edith Evans (best actress) for The Whisperers. Younger guests were also smiled upon: Hollywood Newcomers Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross for best actor and supporting actress (The Graduate).

As usual, some nominations had nothing to do with quality. Dr. Dolittle, despite its collection of pans, is in the running for the Oscar as the year’s best picture; so is the bloated comedy of miscegenation, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Sentiment presumably dictated the unexpected candidacy of Cecil Kellaway for best supporting actor in Dinner, a movie in which that kindly old character actor once again played a kindly old character. Spencer Tracy, also in Dinner, was nominated posthumously for best actor as a farewell gesture; he died less than three weeks after the film was finished.

More surprising were some omissions. Sidney Poitier was good in Dinner, better in To Sir, with Love, best of all in In the Heat of the Night. But this plethora of creditable performances apparently worked against him. Poitier got no nomination at all. One of the year’s best-selling single records was the title tune from To Sir, with Love; a rock ballad, it was absent from the always conservative best-song list.

Still, the majority of nominations were beyond controversy. Bonnie and Clyde is up for ten Oscars. Paul Newman received his fourth nomination for Cool Hand Luke; the protean Rod Steiger got his third, for superbly playing the gum-chewing redneck sheriff opposite Poitier in Night. Perhaps the most important fact about this year’s nominations is not the who but the where. All five best-actor citations went to stars of U.S.-made films. In the best-picture category, for the first time in nine years, all five candidates are domestic products.