Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1960

The Contenders:

Jack Lemmon: The Apartment
Burt Lancaster: Elmer Gantry (winner)
Laurence Olivier: The Entertainer
Spencer Tracy: Inherit the Wind
Trevor Howard: Sons and Lovers

Take a Bow

Film: The Entertainer
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Every generation has its own greatest actor. A couple of generations ago, that greatest actor was Laurence Olivier, who, despite that appellation, won only a single competitive Oscar in his career. He was nominated plenty of times, though, and since this is Olivier we’re talking about, I’m not going to be the person who says he didn’t deserve all of the acclaim he got. For me, thinking of Olivier immediately calls up images of Shakespearean dramas, which makes a film like The Entertainer not specifically a departure from his career, but a departure from what I think of when I think of him.

The Entertainer is the story of Archie Rice (Olivier), a Vaudeville-style performer whose career has been dying for years and is hanging on by the smallest thread. He has a show in a seaside resort town in England that is drawing smaller and smaller crowds that are becoming less and less enthusiastic. When the movie starts, his daughter Jean (Joan Plowright) has returned to the town. Her brother Mick (Albert Finney in his screen debut) has just shipped out to the Suez Canal, a hotspot at the time. Her other brother Frank (Alan Bates, also in his movie debut) helps out with the show and is somewhat in awe of his father.