Day Five: Best Supporting Actress, 1968

And so we wrap up our first week with one of the most uncontroversial wins in Oscar History, from Best Supporting Actress. After the jump.

Day Four: Best Actor, 1968

Do y'all know the podcast This Had Oscar Buzz, in which Joe Reid and Chris Feil "perform the autopsy" on films that "at one time or another had lofty Academy Awards aspirations, but for one reason or another, it all went wrong?" In a recent episode, Reid pointed out that they mainly cover films from the late-90s and beyond, as that period - coinciding with the domination of Miramax - is where Oscar Buzz and the Awards Season as we know it really came into its own. True! But I could not help thinking of the failed 1968 Oscar prospects of Petulia and The Boston Strangler. Neither landed a single nomination; both were early favorites for Best Actor.

Petulia's George C. Scott (as a divorcing doctor entangled with an unhappy socialite) was critically praised, even a runner-up for Best Actor honors from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. But The Boston Strangler's Tony Curtis (as the real-life serial killer who terrorized the Massachusetts capital in the early 60s) is a prime example of what Reid and Feil have in mind: in John Gregory Dunne's 20th Century Fox exposé The Studio, the Oscar campaign is discussed even during pre-production; Ebert 's uneasy review still calls Curtis's performance his best in a decade; LA Times columnist Joyce Haber predicted a nomination (according to Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's Inside Oscar); and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama.

Oscar watchers were stunned, then, that it all came to naught, with room instead being made for NYFCC Award winner Alan Arkin, Golden Globe winners Ron Moody and Peter O'Toole, National Board of Review winner Cliff Robertson and...Alan Bates for The Fixer? Have any of you even heard of The Fixer? I hadn't before I started this project, and I have to say...well, you'll see what I have to say. After the jump.