TEN OUTRAGEOUS OSCAR SNUBS: ACTORS VOL 1

1) ERIC ROBERTS (STAR 80)

Perhaps it was just too good a performance about a really bad person. Eric humanized Paul Snider, the real life husband/murderer of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratton, and he’s the most interesting character in the film...

2) ANTHONY PERKINS (PSYCHO)

Possibly the biggest mind-boggling snub in Oscar history, maybe this was a result of being too soon for psychotic characters to be recognized for the performance… Either way, Norman Bates remains one of the greatest cinematic characters of all time…

3) ROBERT SHAW (JAWS)

He was reportedly a pain on the set, and was having troubles in real life, and it’s a movie about a big shark and Spielberg wasn’t yet the king of Hollywood, so the Academy figured to let Captain Quinn’s nom sleep with the fishes…

4) ELI WALLACH (THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY)

Everyone thinks of Clint Eastwood since he was the Good (looking), and Lee Van Cleef since he's the Bad, so The Ugly gets shoved under the rug... But this is really Tuco's film... He's hardly missing from any scenes, and plays a gritty bandito who has a real past... And is both menacing and hilarious...

5) SCOTT WILSON (IN COLD BLOOD)

Dick Hickock, the womanizing braggart from IN COLD BLOOD that instigates the infamous Kansas murder of the Clutter Family, played by Scott Wilson, owns the first half of the movie...

6) ROBERT BLAKE (IN COLD BLOOD)

Then is handed off to Robert Blake as Perry Smith, the real killer of the two, after Hickock becomes a mere pawn to the police and the real dark stuff begins...

7) ORSON WELLES (TOUCH OF EVIL)

Orson was already considered box office poison… Thankfully for us, Charlton Heston talked Universal into hiring the maverick to direct as well as playing the villain, crooked border cop Captain Quinlin, who turned out, to Heston's eventual chagrin, being the most memorable character…

8) TIMOTHY BOTTOMS (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW)

Maybe since he remained so laidback as melancholy teenager Sonny, until his breakdown at the end to all the town's "Sons of Bitches," that the Academy felt he just wasn't ready, but Tim's presence, and haunting realism, made the film so moving and palpable... 

9) BRADFORD DILLMAN (COMPULSION)

Sure he won the Cannes Award for his turn as Artie Strauss, the "alpha male" of two young spoiled thrill killers, but Bradford deserved the big golden trophy for his scene-stealing performance...

10) TIMOTHY CAREY (PATHS OF GLORY)

Regarded by some film historians as one of our finest character actors (although his characters were often similar: really tall and utterly uncompromising)… While others consider him too over the top… Either way, Timothy turned in an amazing performance as French Private Maurice Ferol, one of three men sentence to death during World War I in Stanley Kubrick’s antiwar classic…

OSCAR SNUB LIST BY JAMES M. TATE