Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1959

The Contenders:
James Stewart: Anatomy of a Murder
Charlton Heston: Ben-Hur (winner)
Paul Muni: The Last Angry Man
Laurence Harvey: Room at the Top
Jack Lemmon: Some Like It Hot

Calm Down

Film: The Last Angry Man
Format: TCM Watch on laptop.

I know that in general I’m writing for a movie geek crowd. It’s sad in that respect that Paul Muni is so little known and little remembered. This is a guy who was nominated for five Best Actor Oscars. Five, with one win. For reference the fact that Muni is so little remembered now would be like other five-time nominees being forgotten. Guys like Gary Cooper, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, and James Stewart. So why don’t we remember him?

The Last Angry Man was Muni’s fifth and final official Oscar nomination (he was an unofficial write-in in 1935) as well as his final film appearance. A great deal of Muni’s career was, more or less, turning character parts into leading roles, and his work here is no different. Dr. Sam Abelman (Muni) is a Russian immigrant and a doctor who lives in a downscale Brooklyn neighborhood. He treats patients, most of whom can’t pay and many of whom are ungrateful, out of his home. As the film opens, a group of young thugs drops off an unconscious woman (played by no less a luminary than Cicely Tyson) on his doorstep and drive away.