All four acting nominees from movies that won no other awards. First time?

Cafe Society
1

Last night all four acting award winners won for movies that didn’t take home a single other award.

George Clooney for Syriana; Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote; Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line; and Rachel Weitz for The Constant Gardener.

It’s not all that unusual for all four winners to be from separate movies, but is this the first time all four acting winners won for movies that won no other awards?

2

It seems if you add 2 other categories - Best Director and Best Film - it becomes even more unusual. All 6 winners in those categories are from six different films.
(Granted some of those 6 films might have won another Oscar for, oh let’s say “Best Assistant Gaffer”.) However, this might have been the first time that the 6 major category Oscars went to people involved with 6 different films.

3

It may have been the first time it happened to that extent, but there’s nothing odd about a truly great movie having no Oscar-worthy performances (think every movie Kubrick ever made) or a mediocre movie with a performance that gets a statuette (Louis Gosset Jr. for An Officer and a Gentleman, Martin Landau for Ed Wood, Sean Connery for The untouchables).

It freaks me out a little that X2: X-Men United had two Oscar laureates in its cast, and Sir Ian McKellen wasn’t one of them.

4

Not the first time it happened; it’s the third time since the supporting actor/actress categories were added in 1936:

**1956 (29th) **
ACTOR

  • Yul Brynner – The King and I {“The King”}
    ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Anthony Quinn – Lust for Life {“Paul Gauguin”}
    ACTRESS
  • Ingrid Bergman – Anastasia {“The Woman”}
    ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Dorothy Malone – Written on the Wind {“Marylee Hadley”}
    DIRECTING
  • Giant – George Stevens
    BEST MOTION PICTURE
  • Around the World in 80 Days – Michael Todd, Producer

**1952 (25th) **
ACTOR

  • Gary Cooper – High Noon {“Will Kane”}
    ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Anthony Quinn – Viva Zapata! {“Eufemio Zapata”}
    ACTRESS
  • Shirley Booth – Come Back, Little Sheba {“Lola Delaney”}
    ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Gloria Grahame – The Bad and the Beautiful {“Rosemary Bartlow”}
    DIRECTING
  • The Quiet Man – John Ford
    BEST MOTION PICTURE
  • The Greatest Show on Earth – Cecil B. DeMille, Producer

It also happened four time before the Supporting categories were added.

5

That’s true for wolf_meister comment, but doesn’t answer my question, since in each of those years (which are, BTW, the years of the films not of the Awards) a film an actor won for also won another award.

6

Not true; Crash also won for Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing and Brokeback Mountain won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

7

Sorry; you’re right that neither Crash nor Brokeback Mountain won for acting awards.

8

Given the OP restrictions, it looks like it happened twice since 1936:

**1973 (46th) **
ACTOR

  • Jack Lemmon – Save the Tiger {“Harry Stoner”}
    ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • John Houseman – The Paper Chase {“Professor Kingsfield”}
    ACTRESS
  • Glenda Jackson – A Touch of Class {“Vicki Allessio”}
    ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Tatum O’Neal – Paper Moon {“Addie Loggins”}

**1969 (42nd) **
ACTOR

  • John Wayne – True Grit {“Rooster Cogburn”}
    ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Gig Young – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? {“Rocky”}
    ACTRESS
  • Maggie Smith – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie {“Miss Jean Brodie”}
    ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
  • Goldie Hawn – Cactus Flower {“Toni Simmons”}

Several times other times prior to 1936, though there were many fewer awards then.

9

Reality Chuck
Great job of researching there !

Still, in order to answer the OP’s question, are we sure that in 1969, “True Grit” only won for Best Actor and no kudos were awarded for that film’s hair stylists, costumers, gaffers, clapper loaders, focus pullers, etc ?

10

According to IMDB, it’s only other nomination was for Best Song, which didn’t win.

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Not all that great: the information is at http://www.oscars.org/awardsdatabase/index.html

I did a preliminary search of the major categories to narrow it down; then I listed all winners for the two years and seached in MSIE for the name of the film to make sure it only came up once.

12

Reality Chuck
Still, a great job of Oscar history researching.