The billboard ads for Insomnia tote three: “Acadamy Award Winner Al Pacino,” “Acadamy Award Winner Robin Williams” and “Acadamy Award Winner Hillary Swank.”
I saw a movie preview last week (don’t remember which movie) which featured “Acadamy Award Winner Dustin Hoffman” “Acadamy Award Winner [some lead actress that I don’t remember right now]” and “Acadamy Award Winner Holly Hunter.” Jake Gyllenhaal is also in this same movie, and I couldn’t help but think to myself that if he were to win an Oscar for Donnie Darko, there could be 4 Acadamy Award Winners starring in this movie.
So:
What is the record for most Acadamy Award Winners appearing in a movie (and I suppose we should say that mere cameos don’t count)?
What about the record for most Acadamy Award Winners at the time the movie was released (as opposed to movies where some of the stars were to win their first Oscars in later years)?
What about just most Lead Actor/Actress winners or just most Supporting Actor/Actress winners? In The Insomnia lineup, for example, Pacino and Swank both have won their Oscars for lead roles, whereas Robin Williams won for a Supporting role (even though he had been nominated 3 times without winning for lead roles prior to his win for Supporting.)
Anyone have a handy link to a site where someone actually figures this stuff out (and keeps it updated as new movies are released)?
You may have to look to big-budget epic films, the kind that have MANY high-profile stars.
Example: the 1965 biblical epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told” featued the following performers:
BEST ACTORS:
John Wayne (the centurion)
Sidney Poitier (Simon of Cyrene)
Jose Ferrer (King Herod)
Charlton Heston (John the Baptist)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Van Heflin (Bar Amand)
Martin Landau (Caiaphas)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Shelley Winters (leper woman)
That makes 7 Oscar winners in the cast. I don’t know if that’s the most, but that’s certainly the KIND of movie to look at.
Edmond O’Brien was also in The Longest Day–that’s 6.
The Greatest Story Ever Told also had Joseph Schildkraut. That’s 8.
A Bridge Too Far has Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Maximilian Schell, and Robert Redford (OP never said it had to be an Acting Oscar). That’s 7.
Around the World in 80 Days has David Niven, John Gielgud, Ronald Colman, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Coburn, Frank Sinatra, Victor McLaglen, and John Mills. That’s 8.
Robert Altman’s The Player has Whoopi Goldberg, Sydney Pollack, Cher, James Coburn, Louise Fletcher, Joel Grey, Anjelica Huston, Jack Lemmon, Marlee Matlin, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, and Rod Steiger. That’s 12.
Of course, the OP did suggest ruling out cameos, so that might eliminate most of these movies…
The Swarm has Michael Caine, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Henry Fonda, Jose Ferrer, and Patty Duke. Quite possibly the worst movie ever with 7 Oscar-winners.
As for other disaster movies Airport, Airport 1975 and Airport `77 join Poseidon with 5 while Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, When Time Ran Out, Meteor and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure have 4 each.
How the West Was Won has Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, John Wayne, Walter Brennan, and Spencer Tracy as narrator. That’s 7. It also has Agnes Moorehead and Thelma Ritter, who between them received 10 Supporting Actress nominations but never won.
The earliest movie I found with at least 6 is 1943’s Forever and a Day, with Ray Milland, Victor McLaglen, Edmund Gwenn, Charles Coburn, Charles Laughton, and Donald Crisp.
And of course The Oscar has Ernest Borgnine, Ed Begley, Walter Brenna, Broderick Crawford, James Dunn, Frank Sinatra, and costume designer Edith Head, for 7. So I take back what I said about The Swarm.
Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet has Julie Christie, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, Charlton Heston, Jack Lemmon, John Mills, Robin Williams, and Richard Attenborough, for 8.
The documentary Looking for Richard has Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Estelle Parsons, F. Murray Abraham, Kevin Kline, John Gielgud, and Vanessa Redgrave for 7.
As to answer #3 of the OP given the films listed thus far, the leading film with Lead Oscar winners is The Player with 7, followed by How the West Was Won with 5
The Player also leads with Supporting winners with 5, along with Hamlet. Several other films having 4.
As for #2 (how many had Oscars at the time, as opposed to in the future), The Player again leads with 9, followed by The Oscar and Looking for Richard with 7 and The Greatest Story Ever Told and Hamlet with 6.
Are we allowed to count the director, producer, writer, etc.? If so, Dinner at Eight (1933) has got to be right up there:
Cast
Wallace Beery: 1931 Oscar
Marie Dressler: 1930 Oscar
Lionel Barrymore: 1931 Oscar
Jean Hersholt: 2 Honorary Oscars
Crew
Geo. Cukor: 1964 Oscar
Herman Mankiewicz: 1941 Oscar
Frances Marion: 1930 & '31 Oscars
Doanld Ogden Stewart: 1940 Oscar
David O. Selznick: 1939 and '40 Oscars
Wm. H. Daniels: 1948 Oscar
Douglas Shearer: 11 Oscars!
Does this count?
Here’s a theatrically released movie that had clips from zillions of other great movies, so it might have had several dozen Oscar winners within it.
That’s Entertainment I guess could count, but then you could pick a lot of those short films with lots of clips in them. Like the AFI’s 100th anniversary of film short.
Of the principal narrators of the film, Bing Crosby, Liza Minelli, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor won Oscars.
Of the people listed in the IMDb who also appear in the film you would get"
Joan Crawford
Clark Gable
Judy Garland (Best Juvenile Actor, 1940)
Not that many, primarily because MGM musicals haven’t won a lot of Academy Awards.
If you had a clip show of a lot of English-oriented dramas, then you’d be getting Oscar winners by the score.
This is probably the most original trivia question I’ve read in years!
All right, let me put “The Swarm” up against this bad-boy movie:
“Marooned” (aka “Stranded in Space”)
Featuring 3 Oscar winners: Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman (“oh, he’s good in everything”) and Lee Grant.
This has a personal meaning to me. I saw it in the theaters as a 9-year-old in 1969, then again on MST3K, and it took several minutes of head-scratching before I realized it was the same movie!
For JFK (made in 1991), there are five previous winners and one future winner.
Previous winners
Kevin Costner - director for Dances With Wolves (1990)
Sissy Spacek - actress in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1981)
Jack Lemmon - supporting actor in Mister Roberts (1956) and actor in Save the Tiger (1973)
Walter Matthau - supporting actor in The Fortune Cookie (1966)
Joe Pesci - supporting actor in Goodfellas (1991)
Future winner
Tommy Lee Jones - supporting actor in The Fugitive (1994)
