Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1974

The Contenders:

Jack Nicholson: Chinatown
Al Pacino: The Godfather Part II
Art Carney: Harry and Tonto (winner)
Dustin Hoffman: Lenny
Albert Finney: Murder on the Orient Express

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1974

The Contenders:

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Chinatown (winner)
The Conversation
Day for Night
Harry and Tonto

That Darn Cat

Film: Harry and Tonto
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s mildly shocking when you look at Harry and Tonto, to realize that Art Carney was only 58 when playing the first of the two title roles. Carney’s character, Harry Coombes, is a widower in his 70s, and Carney does not look out of place at all. Some of that is going to be the cosmetics, of course, but a great deal of that is Carney himself. He did, after all, win the Oscar for this performance.

It’s worth saying at the start here that Harry and Tonto is much more a character study than it is a film with a serious plot. Harry is a widower living in New York. The building he has lived in for years has been bought and sold, condemned so that a parking lot can be put up. Harry doesn’t want to move, though, and is eventually forced out of his apartment. He and his cat Tonto move in with his older son, Burt (Philip Bruns) and his family. But bickering seems to be the norm here, in part because of Harry’s presence. He decides to go to Chicago to visit his daughter.