AND THE OSCAR SHOULD HAVE GONE TO…
by
Rhett Wickham

For over seventy years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been feting their own with an award that legend has it is named after Academy librarian Margaret Herrick’s uncle Oscar®. And for just as long there have been endless debates about who truly deserved the award as opposed to who actually walked away holding it in their hammy little fists. This has included editorials about thespians who never even were nominated, and accusations of campaigning for votes that both the Academy and every major talent agency in Hollywood have denied.

Nominated or not, winner or stoic on-camera loser, the one group of gifted actors that the Academy has yet to properly recognize is animators. So panicked was Hollywood’s elite when one of the precious five slots for Best Picture went to a “cartoon�? in 1992, that they eventually convinced the Board to create a new “Best Animated Feature�? category to stave off the beggars as the feast. Still, the core group of men and women who have delivered some of the great iconic performances of the last century, and quite possibly some of this century’s more memorable turns, have managed to do so through much more than delivering take after take after take before storming off their trailers or trashing the words of great screenwriters and making something up that they felt was better. When one considers the task of building a performance upon the work of another actor – the voice talent who records the character before s/he is animated – and doing it one extreme pose and often frame to frame over the course of several years…well, it hardly seems fair to have left them with their noses pressed against the glass of the Kodak theatre like just another film fanatic who waited all night for a seat in the bleachers.

In anticipation of ABC’s broadcast of the 79th Annual Academy Awards this Sunday, March 25 at 8 Eastern/5 Pacific, I decided to look back through the record books and see exactly who was nominated and who won in years past, to see what competition there was for both the animators and the voice actors who have forged indelible memories in darkened theatres the world over.

In some instances, I have to confess that the “live�? actor competition was so fierce that there simply wasn’t room for an animated nominee among the five chosen. (Turns out that Oscar® often gets it right …who knew?) So as much I may believe Pinocchio the finest accomplishment of the Disney studio during Walt’s reign, it’s difficult to rank it fairly among the contenders at the 1941 Oscar® ceremony Rebecca (the winner), All This and Heaven Too, Foreign Correspondent, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman The Letter, The Long Voyage Home, Our Town (its only decent film adaptation) and The Philadelphia Story. And how do you nominate Pinocchio and not nominate Fantasia? Similarly, as Bill Tytla was setting the bar impossibly high with his work on the Chernabog in Fantasia, the nominees for Best Actor were James Stewart, Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurence Olivier. Tough crowd. Moving forward a half century as deserving as Glen Keane and Robby Benson were for a nod back in 1995, the field was stacked pretty heavy with Anthony Hopkins, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Robin Williams and Nick Nolte. And although I’m a great fan of Ken Duncan’s work on Jane in Tarzan, she still comes in sixth behind Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Annette Bening in American Beauty, Julianne Moore in The End of the Affair, Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart, and Janet McTeer’s personal career high in Tumbleweeds. Therefore, it isn’t always easy to say that animation was a better choice than live action.

However, there were some years when there was room, and even a couple where I think the animator and his or her voice acting partner should have been on stage delivering thank you’s and hearing that much dreaded exit music from the pit. That’s what this is all about. The years when it’s too obvious that the Academy has ignored the real accomplishments of the hardest working group of actors in the industry – the animators. I’ve focused principally on acting, but have thrown in a couple of other categories to mix it up.

As for what qualifies an animated performance for an Oscar® nod, it’s essentially the same thing that qualifies the live action performances - somebody’s opinion. And in this instance, it’s mine. So before you go ripening tomatoes for the tossing, remember that you’re free to disagree with my choices and offer up your own. That said, here’s a partial list of Oscar® caliber contributions that I think the Academy should have recognized in years gone by with at least a nomination, and in some instances with a statuette (remember, films were released in theatres the calendar year prior to the Award year):