Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1970

The Contenders:

Carrie Snodgress: Diary of a Mad Housewife
Jane Alexander: The Great White Hope
Ali MacGraw: Love Story
Sarah Miles: Ryan’s Daughter
Glenda Jackson: Women in Love (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong: Best Actor 1970

The Contenders:

Jack Nicholson: Five Easy Pieces
James Earl Jones: The Great White Hope
Melvyn Douglas: I Never Sang for My Father
Ryan O’Neal: Love Story
George C. Scott: Patton (winner)

Pride Goeth

Film: The Great White Hope
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

James Earl Jones has been nominated for a single Oscar. I find that surprising, although a look through his filmography, there’s a lot of schlock. It’s that voice, though. The man has a voice that can say just about anything and make anyone listening happy. That one Oscar nomination comes in The Great White Hope, an interesting title for a film that stars James Earl Jones. This is a boxing movie, at least nominally. In truth, it’s a drama with something like a romance thrown in. Even more, this is a film about just how good at racism Americans were 100 years ago. I say that, as an American, with no small amount of shame regarding my country’s past.

The Great White Hope is the story of Jack Jefferson (James Earl Jones), a character loosely based on the life and career of boxer Jack Johnson in and around the first two decades of the 20th century. As the film starts, Jefferson has been winning bout after bout, but the current champion Brady (Larry Pennell) has retired. This makes Jefferson kind of a de facto world champion. Brady is forced out of retirement to defend his title and Jack Jefferson pastes him as well, giving him the belt and the title for real, something that doesn’t sit well with white America.