Day Eight: Best Supporting Actor, 1954

And then there were three...nominees from a single movie, that is! On the Waterfront holds the distinction of being the first film to take up 60% of the Best Supporting Actor category. A rare enough feat that it only happened again twice: for 1972's The Godfather (Caan, Duvall, Pacino) and 1974's The Godfather Part II (De Niro, Gazzo, Strasberg). Please note all the overlap: the Best Actor winner for both 1954 and 1972 was Marlon Brando, for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, respectively; Michael V. Gazzo made his film debut in a bit part in On the Waterfront; Lee Strasberg was director of the Actors Studio from 1951-1982, an organization co-founded by Waterfront director Elia Kazan that boasted among its alumnae...basically everyone I just named. 

As I say, On the Waterfront was the first and The Godfather Part II was the last to go for three-for-five in Best Supporting Actor. But it did happen once before in the Best Leading Actor category. In 1935, all three male leads for Best Picture winner Mutiny on the Bounty were nominated: Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone. The next year, separate categories for supporting players were introduced. Oh, and in 1963, Best Picture winner Tom Jones got three supporting actress nominations: Diane Cilento, Dame Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman.

This much we can take to the bank: three acting nods in one category means your movie's winning Best Picture. But it also means one of the other two nominees is going home with the Oscar. Only once has a nominee from the threesome won, and that was Robert De Niro speaking Italian while "doing" Marlon Brando. In 1954, the honor went to Edmond O'Brien of The Barefoot Contessa - the only nominee from a film not up for Best Picture:

The nominees are:

Day Six: Best Story and Screenplay, 1954

The screenplay categories always have room for surprises. On the Waterfront being nominated is no surprise, and nor, I think, is it particularly shocking that the latest Joseph L. Mankiewicz joint The Barefoot Contessa or a hit biopic like The Glenn Miller Story have spots here as well. But in what other category could you find these three Oscar-friendly titles up against a quaint British comedy about marriage and classic car aficionados like Genevieve, or a Danny Kaye comic thriller about a ventriloquist entangled with spies like Knock on Wood? Writers love weird shit, and God bless them for it.

Let's take a look, after the jump.