NOMINATIONS
Best Actor - Walter Matthau
Best Supporting Actor - George Burns (WON)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Neil Simon
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Albert Brenner/Marvin March
Neil Simon was having quite the 1975, wasn't he? First, there was Prisoner of Second Avenue, starring screen legend Jack Lemmon and shoulda-been-nominated Anne Bancroft. Then there was The Sunshine Boys, the adaptation of his hit play about former vaudeville partners reluctantly reunited for a TV special. Lemmon's usual partner in crime, Walter Matthau, took the lead -- Willy Clark, still stubbornly showing up for auditions even though he can't read the copy, remember his lines, or even find the damn studio.
Matthau was doing the usual Matthau thing, and it either works for you or it doesn't. It's an all right performance, but one gets the feeling that Matthau was going through a lazy period -- sleepwalking through The Front Page, hamming it up bizarrely in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and alternating between both modes here. Sure, he got the nomination, but the Academy has often overlooked fine performances in favor of a familiar face.
It's fine, though; everyone knows this isn't Matthau's show.
