Actor Round-up: 1931-1932

Wallace Beery, The Champ

as CHAMP/ANDY PURCELL

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Wallace Beery will forever be in the annals of Oscar history for being "tied" with Fredric March for Best Actor, the first and only tie the category has seen in its 85 year history. The strange thing is Beery isn't the true winner--he actually had one less vote than March, but for some reason 81 years ago the Academy had a rule that stated having 1 less vote than a winner meant that you too were a winner. And with that, Beery got an Oscar, even though he ought to have been a runner-up, which is rather contextually ironic given that he'd won for playing a drunken loser and former champion in a movie called The Champ. With March's excellent turn, you'd think that Beery's performance would be just as great, no?

Alfred Lunt, The Guardsman

as THE ACTOR

The opening scene of The Guardsman features The Actor and The Actress performing the last few moments of Elizabeth The Queen, the real-life Broadway hit in which Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt starred. This scene, included as a funny little life-meets-work homage, is also highly theatrical (they are acting on stage after all) and essentially gives the viewer a hint of what we're about to witness for the next hour and a half: high drama, high exaggeration, and acting that can be seen and heard from way up in the rafters. It's the context of this theatricality that makes it tough for me to determine how much I enjoyed Lunt's performance--just how much of it is excessively overdone on accident and how much of it is on purpose?

Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

as DR. JEKYLL / MR. HYDE

  Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | Venice Film Festival - Audience Referendum, Most Favorite Actor

For as long as I've been interested in the Oscars, I've always thought that Fredric March's win for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was a little perplexing--mostly because it's an acting win for a science-fiction/horror film. These wins, or even nominations, are basically unheard of nowadays. "How good could an early 1930's film about a dude who turns into a monster possibly be?" I thought. And while I've read a few articles in recent years praising March's performance, a part of me couldn't help but continue to judge this book by its cover.