This has come up in some of the trivia questions, so I thought I'd start a list of acting Oscars that came in years when the winner had another film (or sometimes two) in which he or she could easily have been nominated had it not been for the one he/she was.

In some cases, the win can be more easily explained because of the other film(s) (Lee Marvin for example). In more than one, the win might not have happened without voters remembering the other film, or seeing the person in other contending films.

Whether this was a factor in Winslet's win, I'm not sure. I think she likely would have won anyway, and with the reaction to Revolution Road as negative as it was from Academy members and their going out of their way not to nominate her for it, it isn't as clear a case as most of the ones below.

This is different from career awards, make-up awards from previous years. I also exclude those cases where someone had two nominations and won for one of them - those are self-evident examples.

This is not complete, but I am pretty sure every case here is a clear example of the huge boost the winner had from being in the other film(s).

Interestingly, it seems to have nearly disappeared as a factor in recent years among winners - this shows that the pool of Oscar films is shrinking. There are nominees (like Kidman - Moulin Rouge when The Others was also around) where it didn't seem to help.

Most of the cases I mention were also Oscar contenders there years in other categories.

The ones with asterisks are cases where I think the winner would not have won without the other films.

+George Clooney/Syriana - Good Night & Good Luck

+Michael Douglas/Wall Street - Fatal Attraction

Meryl Streep/Kramer Vs. Kramer - Seduction of Joe Tynan, Manhattan

+Diane Keaton/Annie Hall - Looking for Mr. Goodbar

+Lee Marvin/Cat Ballou - Ship of Fools

+Julie Christie/Darling - Dr. Zhivago

Julie Andrews/Mary Poppins - Americanization of Emily

+Margaret Rutherford/The VIPs - Murder at the Gallop, The Mouse on the Moon

+Burl Ives/The Big Country - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the clearest example ever)

+Yul Brynner/The King and I - The 10 Commandments, Anastasia

+Ernest Borgnine/Marty - Bad Day at Black Rock

+Grace Kelly/The Country Girl - Rear Window, Dial M for Murder

William Holden/Stalag 17 - The Moon Is Blue

+Gloria Grahame/The Bad and the Beautiful - Sudden Fear, Greatest Show on Earth

+Charles Coburn/The More the Merrier - Princess O'Rourke, Heaven Can Wait

+Mary Astor/The Great Lie - The Maltese Falcon

+Thomas Mitchell/Stagecoach - Gone With the Wind

+Spencer Tracy/Boys Town - Test Pilot

+Claudette Colbert/It Happened One Night - Imitation of Life, Cleopatra

I haven't gone before 1934 mainly not wanting to sort out what was eligible with the overlapping years.

Any examples I've missed?

(A more obscure but real situation is when a winner had a new film in release in the new year as the voting was going on - far less likely these days with the earlier date and the lack of quality films first quarter. But Jane Fonda was greatly helped when China Syndrome opened while the campaign for Coming Home was in full swing).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

Kate Winslet last year and Leonardo DiCaprio in '06, obviously.

John C. Reilly in '02 had a truckload of films coming out.

I'm talking about winners. As I said, I'm not sure Winslet counts the way the others do. DiCaprio and Reilly of course did not win.

How about Cher, who also had "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Suspect" in 1987? She probably got helped more by the former but she did play a lawyer in the latter which showed she had range.

Definitely that qualifies, although neither of those films ended up an Oscar contender (most in my examples did). She had a career-year, never remotely approached that before or after in a single year.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

How about Jessica Lange in 1982?

Did she win Supporting Actress
because it was a given that
Meryl Streep was winning Best Actress?

She's covered above in the group who won one Oscar while nominated for a second. It's a given that those in that situation get a boost.

Sean Penn - Mystic River/21 Grams
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona/Elegy
Jamie Foxx - Ray/Collateral (nominated for both though...)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bocaboy7,

Jim Broadbent.

Ian McKellen was probably gonna steal his thunder, it sure seemed like he would. But Broadbent, who had won a lot of awards before McKellen arrived, was excellent in three films, and voters were gonna see them all anyways since his three leading ladies were Best Actress nominees.

Cruz was excellent in Elegy, but virtually no Academy members saw it, so I don't think it counts.

Penn/21 Grams definitely.

Broadbent probably qualifies as well, although he won mainly because Ian McKellan showed up everywhere Oscar season with his 20 something boy-toy friend, which really upset a lot of people.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

Also, Steven Soderbergh. And I don't think there would've been vote splitting, Traffic was clearly his frontrunner nomination, I doubt people were undecided about which movie they should've voted for. It was either Traffic or...another nominee, not Erin Brokovich, but it definitely helped.

quote:

Originally posted by seanflynn:
Cruz was excellent in Elegy, but virtually no Academy members saw it, so I don't think it counts.

I know, I know. But Cruz got great reviews for Elegy, it was just overshadowed by VCB because it was more popular. Had VCB not been released last year, Cruz could have possibly scored a nomination for Elegy...

Judy Holliday had "Adam's Rib" besides "Born Yesterday".

Glenda Jackson had her Elizabeth I-mini series (even though it was on TV, it surley helped Glenda) in the year she won for "Women in Love".

Faye Dunaway was in "Voyage of the Damned" in the year she won for "Network" (not sure if it helped being in that mess, but Lee Grant was nominated for it, so some Academy members must have seen it).

Jane Fonda was also in "California Suite" when she won for "Coming Home" (again, not a great movie, but Maggie Smith won for it, so again, Academy members must have seen it)

Adam's Rib was 1949, Born Yesterday was 1950 - certainly her already having gotten attention helped, but it wasn't the same year.

Voyage of the Damned didn't hurt, but Dunaway never would have been nominated for it (she is lucky it didn't hurt to be honest; she's not very good in it).

California Suite probably aided Fonda, as did the release of China Syndrome during the voting.

quote:

Originally posted by bocaboy7:

quote:

Originally posted by seanflynn:
Cruz was excellent in Elegy, but virtually no Academy members saw it, so I don't think it counts.

I know, I know. But Cruz got great reviews for Elegy, it was just overshadowed by VCB because it was more popular. Had VCB not been released last year, Cruz could have possibly scored a nomination for Elegy...

I think Elegy came out in theaters before VCB showed at, was it Cannes? In any case it didn't really have enough buzz to begin with to score a nomination had VCB fallen through. My opinion is, if Cruz had fallen out of the running and Winslet didn't get nominated in supporting for The Reader (leaving the door open for DeWitt to be nominated - she was surely 6th on the ballot if you don't count supporting votes for Winslet), either Davis or DeWitt would have won.

I know that "Adam's Rib" was officially in 1949 but it didn't qualify for the Academy Awards that year. The only nomination for it was in 1950 (Best Screenplay), the same year, Judy was nominated for Born Yesterday.

I had not realized that LA opened in 1950; it seems to have opened in NY in Nov. 1949. Not sure of the reason - this rarely happened for a whole profile film (Casablanca is one exception, but I suspect that Adam's Rib was a bigger deal for MGM pre-opening than Casablanca was for WB.

Thanks for the information.

Greer Garson definitely benifited from the fact that in 1942 she had two monster hits. Mrs. Miniver was the film she won for, but Random Harvest was also a big hit and was nominated for several other Oscars including Best Picture and Actor.

And by the way she so totally should have won for Random Harvest and not Mrs. Miniver.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: GloFish,

Greer Garson should definitely be included.

quote:

+Burl Ives/The Big Country - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the clearest example ever)

This is and Mary Astor of course are the most obvious examples.

but I have a question to anyone who can answer,

Ives was great in "Big Country" (doesn't come on for a log time in though) but he was definitely more electrifying in "Cat...",his iconic role. My question is how come they went for the former film instead of the latter. "Cat..." had a bigger campaign and pedigree for it that year with nominations across the board, including Best Picture, Writing, Directing and also for its leads. Surely Ives had a campaign going for him for "Cat..."?

I find it really perplexing (though he was great in his Oscar and Golden Globe winning role, his Big Daddy is undeniable) that Ives wasn't nominated for the other role. I'd be really thrilled to find out why.