[Tig] Lawrence of Arabia / AMPAS

[Joe Owens]

How did O'Toole not win that Oscar?  Read on...
Quote:

There were five strong Best Actor nominees, with the winner being a  
sentimental, long-overdue favorite - Gregory Peck won for his role as  
a thoughtful, soft-spoken, ethical small-town Alabama lawyer/widower  
of 1932 named Atticus Finch who defends a wrongly-accused black man  
of rape in director-nominated Robert Mulligan's  To Kill a  
Mockingbird. (This was Peck's sole Oscar win in a long career which  
accumulated five Oscar nominations. With his win, he became the first  
California-born actor to ever win.)

Another Best Actor nominee was the critically-favored Best Picture's  
main star, Irish-born stage actor Peter O'Toole as British military  
hero T. E. Lawrence, the mysterious, complex and often remote leader  
of Arab troops/Bedouins on the Allied side against the Turks, who  
helped British Gen. Allenby destroy the infamous Ottoman Empire. [It  
was O'Toole's first major film and first nomination out of a total of  
eight Oscar nominations. His seven other nominations include Becket  
(1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The  
Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982),  
and Venus (2006). Coincidentally. O'Toole also has the distinctive  
record of being nominated twice for the same role as King Henry II in  
Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968). O'Toole's long string of  
losses was also experienced by actor Richard Burton (who was  
nominated and lost seven times for his roles in My Cousin Rachel  
(1952), The Robe (1953), Becket (1964), The Spy Who Came in From the  
Cold (1965), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Equus (1977), and   
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)).]

Other Best Actor nominees included:

first-time nominee Marcello Mastroianni as Ferdinando - a Sicilian  
count who wishes to murder his unattractive wife so that he can  
legally re-marry in the comical farce by Pietro Germi, the director- 
nominated Divorce-Italian Style. [Mastroianni would end up with more  
Oscar nominations for his foreign language roles - three - than any  
other actor. His other two nominated films include A Special Day  
(1977), and Dark Eyes (1987). His nomination in 1962 was seen as an  
"apology" for being un-nominated the previous year for his most  
memorable career role as gossip columnist Marcello Rubini in  
Fellini's Best Director-nominated La Dolce Vita (1961).]
Burt Lancaster (with his third of four career nominations) for the  
role of imprisoned, convicted murderer and bird expert Robert Stroud  
in director John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (with four  
nominations and no wins). [Lancaster's other career nominations were  
for From Here to Eternity (1953), his sole career win for Elmer  
Gantry (1960) two years earlier, and later for Atlantic City (1981).]
Jack Lemmon (with his fourth of eight nominations and his third Best  
Actor nomination), for his first serious, dramatic role, was  
competing as alcoholic advertising man Joe Clay in director Blake  
Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses (with five nominations and one win -  
Best Song)
Excuse me....   Marcello Mastroianni, Burt Lancaster, Jack Lemmon  
were the "also-rans"?   And he's in the same category of multiple  
'non-winner' as Richard Burton.....   good company?  Sort of like  
1979, when "All That Jazz", "Apocalypse Now", "Breaking Away", and  
"Norma Rae".. in which the Academy really liked Sally Field, were  
judged in some way inferior to "Kramer vs. Kramer".  That's why.

I'm still waiting for the 70mm Imax version of "Kramer vs. Kramer  
Redux"....

Highly rewarded writers could not come up this kind of farce....  
nobody would believe it, which is the hard part about composing fiction.

Joe Owens
Presto!Digital Colourgrade
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