Chill Wills’ Big Blunder: Best Supporting Actor, 1960

The 1960 nominees for Best Supporting Actor:

Peter Falk, Murder, Inc.

Jack Kruschen, The Apartment

Sal Mineo, Exodus

Peter Ustinov, Spartacus

Chill Wills, The Alamo

Peter Ustinov won, but that win has been overshadowed by Chill Wills’ infamous awards campaign. Wills, who’d been in the business a good long time and figured this was his one short at the gold, hired a publicist named W.S. Wojciechowicz, aka “Bow-Wow”. Apparently, he did not consult with Wills, the actor trusting the professional to know his business. So Wills was blindsided when an ad appeared in the Hollywood Reporter purporting to be from the cast and crew of The Alamo: We of The Alamo cast are praying harder - than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo - for Chill Wills to win the Oscar…” 

Tacky! Tasteless! And, for some I’m sure, proof that every element of this film was just ego and Oscar-hunting. The Alamo’s director-producer-star John Wayne condemned the ad, Wills sent Bow-Wow to the doghouse, and Ustinov went home with the gold. 

My rankings, from fifth to first:

Delays: 1960, Part Four

Well, it's been a week, but things get busy in life. Let's return to Summer 1960.

In June 1960, two Best Picture nominees debuted in cinemas. One, The Apartment, would finish at #8 in the Top 10 Box Office Performers of the Year, win Best Picture, and inspire a Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical called Promises, Promises, which won many Tonys across the decades and gave us "I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love Again." The other, Elmer Gantry, so burrowed into my brain when I watched it in college that I then read the book, gave the book to my mother, got the opera on CD from the library, plotted out a remake, and still quote to this day.

They are but two of the ten releases I want to talk about today: