Gary Cooper, High Noon

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | Golden Globe (Drama) - Best Actor

Years ago, before Oscargasms came to fruition, I was haphazardly watching and reviewing various movies that piqued my interest. One of those films was Wings. For a picture that had very little surprises outside of Buddy Rogers' drunken hallucinogenic bubble episode, one moment that I can usually recall is that of Gary Cooper’s cameo at the half hour mark. We see Cooper waking up from a nap, hair perfectly coiffed, where in typical old-Hollywood fashion, he then smolders his way through his 2 or so minutes of screen time. Moments later, Cooper's character dies in a plane accident while practicing figure eights. While brief, he had about him a radiant energy in those moments that are effortless yet impactful. I ramble on about this because I find it ironic — and fitting — that my journey with Cooper should end at High Noon. For what Cooper delivers in the film is heavily silent, and there is a forcefulness in his presence I’d not felt since that very cameo in Wings.

Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Humphrey Bogart's victory for The African Queen checks off two common tenets that come with rewarding Academy Awards - the first being that Bogie defeated performances which've become much more iconic or revered in time, and the second being that Bogie won for a performance not widely perceived as being as "good" as other works in his filmography. Needless to say, I was not expecting to have much of a reaction to this particular performance, but was surprised to have liked it as much as I did.

José Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac

as Cyrano de Bergerac

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor • Golden Globe Award - Best Actor (Drama)

With it's unusual title and a goofy looking, oft-smirking main character bearing a giant honker of a nose while draped in doublets and feathered hats, at face value I had thought Cyrano de Bergerac to be some sort of cartoonish caper B-movie instead of the verbose tragic dramedy it revealed itself to be. Edmond Rostrand's story veers into an array of different directions, but the tale itself remains an intelligible and compelling piece of drama, all the more perpetuated by José Ferrer's magnetic work as the eponymous character.

Broderick Crawford, All the King's Men

as WILLIE STARK

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor (1949) | Golden Globe - Best Actor

I was surprised to find that All the King’s Men features two lead characters. The intertwined storylines between Jack Burden and Willie Stark make the picture a less fluid and less compelling viewing experience than it could have been had the film primarily keyed in on the Stark character, but it’s obvious how Broderick Crawford reigned in everyone’s attention here. His is a compelling albeit slightly unvaried performance.

Laurence Olivier, Hamlet

as HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor | Golden Globe Award - Best Actor

It's Laurence Olivier's most famous Shakespearian performance! I had my doubts going into Hamlet, primarily because I've been fairly underwhelmed by his method of acting in his first three nominated performances. But those roles - Heathcliff, Max de Winter, Henry V - those are different, more stoic men to Hamlet. So it was nice to see from the get-go an instant change of tone in Olivier, who appears as a more tender, vulnerable individual than I am used to.

Ronald Colman, A Double Life

as ANTHONY JOHN

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | Golden Globe Award - Best Actor

Ronald Colman's one of those actors who, no matter what he plays - a convict, an eccentric thrill-seeker, an amnesiac, an actor so method he inherits his role's murderous impulses - always invokes a heavy sense of self, meaning I'm never under the impression that he truly transcends his roles to become who he's playing. And when we're dealt with a role which literally involves a man consumed by the spirit of Othello, I think that that lack of metamorphosis creates a minor void, even if the performance itself ends up being enjoyable.

Fredric March, The Best Years of Our Lives

as AL STEPHENSON

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Fredric March appears in The Best Years of Our Lives much older and seasoned than the Freddie I had gotten to know so well the decade before. And with this age comes something new that hadn't been there prior--a profound sense of translucence, the ability to make the simplest of expressions into exhaustive significance.

Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend

as DON BIRNAM

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor
Cannes Film Festival - Best Actor | Golden Globe Award - Best Actor

Ray Milland's performance in The Lost Weekend swept just about any and all the Best Actor prizes that were available to be won back in 1945. It's the type of performance that has been heralded for its greatness to this day, and it's also the kind of performance that completely lives up to the hype.

Bing Crosby, Going My Way

as FATHER CHUCK O'MALLEY 

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

The Role: as the young incoming priest to St. Dominic's Church whose happy-go-lucky nature proves to be too modern and unconventional for the parish, this was the role that helped make Bing Crosby one of the most popular movie stars of his time. The movie as we know was a massive hit that year, and the performance was dubbed by the New York Times as one of "the best" and "sturdiest" of Crosby's career, two terms I find to be rather sensational.

Paul Lukas, Watch on the Rhine

as KURT MULLER

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Award - Best Actor | Golden Globe - Best Actor

The Role: As the mysterious transplant from Germany with a troubling and confidential political past, Paul Lukas won every damn Best Actor prize there was to win in 1943 (my count is 4, if you also include the National Board of Review's unorthodox "Best Actors" rewards), signaling to me that this is a bravura type of performance. His is a role that sounds really interesting on paper, so naturally I came into the film pretty interested.

James Cagney, Yankee Doodle Dandy

as GEORGE M. COHAN

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor

Yankee Doodle Dandy is quite literally a two hour commercial about how great America is / a two hour WWII recruitment video. I wanted nothing more but to straight up hate it (and I pretty much did for much of the first half) but ultimately beyond the shitty dialogue it's still a solid song and dance show, and I love me a good song and dance show. I had my qualms with James Cagney--because like Gary Cooper before him, I wondered if he had won the Best Actor prizes that year because the picture and role pandered flawlessly to America's fears and mindset at the time. Like Alvin York, George M. Cohan is damn near saintly, without a single flaw to be mentioned of (though apparently the picture ignored the fact that Cohan was married twice). You and I both know that there was most likely a sentimental bias that factored into Cagney's victory, but I was pleased to find that he's pretty good.

Gary Cooper, Sergeant York

as ALVIN C. YORK

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor

The internet tells me that Gary Cooper moved to Los Angeles from Montana on Thanksgiving day exactly 90 years ago, where he was influenced by a few friends to work as a film extra (what a perfect little coincidence!), and thus a movie star was born. I must admit that I don't "get" Cooper. By now I've seen a handful of his films and I've yet to have a lightbulb moment in which I am able to rationalize his appeal. In spite of my hatred of Spencer Tracy's triple nominations, I still liked him enough in Libeled Lady (and I hear he's great in Fury) to believe that beneath the crappy nominations and wins lies a true-to-heart actor. I may have been indifferent towards Paul Muni, but at least he had a chameleonic schtick he was working with. Clark Gable, probably the closest contemporary I can think of to Cooper in terms of their man! images, had a palpably engaging charm about him. But what of Cooper? What exactly does he bring to the table? I don't know if I can say that he was born to act, and it's not as though he has much versatility. And I don't find Cooper very compelling either...he's kind of just always there--this rather aloof presence, an embodiment of qualities that a 1940's public would embrace...handsome, tall, masculine, Republican, Caucasian. Read his profile on IMDB and he's summed up quite perfectly: "This tall, silent hero was the American ideal for many people of his generation" So it's no surprise that this living, breathing "American ideal" would win an Academy Award for playing a religious WWI war veteran in a time when WWII was unfolding.

James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story

as MACAULAY "MIKE" CONNOR

Won - Academy Award - Best Actor

Sometimes actors put out several top-notch, heavily acclaimed performances and will consistently lose the Oscar until finally, one year, everything falls into place and they achieve their moment of golden glory for a performance that doesn't hold up to the excellence of their prior work. Or sometimes actors get recognized for one amazing performance, lose the Oscar for that year, and are handed one the next year. The latter is the story of James Stewart, who, after earning much praise from critics and yours truly for his fine work in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and who would go on to have a storied career filled with many other iconic performances, somehow managed to nab his only Best Actor Oscar for...The Philadelphia Story, a film that doesn't revolve around his character, a film that's much more strongly associated with his female costar, and a film in which there's arguably no male lead. It's kind of screwy how our beloved Academy Awards go about their business.

Robert Donat, Goodbye, Mr. Chips

as CHARLES CHIPPING / MR. CHIPS

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Every few years or so a performance like that of Robert Donat's in Goodbye, Mr. Chips comes along and like clockwork, people can't help but pay attention. Nicole Kidman in The Hours, Charlize Theron in Monster, Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club are just a few recent-ish examples of acclaimed performances that nabbed Oscars and generated buzz in part because of the makeup and prosthetics. By 1939, a 12 year old Oscar had already shown signs of fascination with the transformation--and it's a word that you'd be hard pressed not to use when talking about performances where makeup plays a huge role in delivering a certain character. Say what you will about Warner Baxter's Portuguese bandit, Fredric March's monstrous brute, Helen Hayes' grandmafication and Luise Rainer's Chinese peasant, but it's hard to deny the impact of makeup in shaping our perceptions of an actor's work. But does a makeup-heavy performance really equate to a great one? Transformation talk aside, how much does visual stimulus really translate to quality?

Emil Jannings, The Last Command

as GRAND DUKE SERGIUS ALEXANDER

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

George Arliss, Disraeli

as BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Spencer Tracy, Boys Town

as FATHER FLANAGAN 

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Third time's a charm, right? After somehow getting nominated in lead for a supporting role as a priest who helps reform a morally unruly man, and after winning an Oscar the subsequent year for playing a Portuguese fisherman who helps reform an unruly boy, Spencer Tracy comes back (in his third consecutive attempt to win my heart) as another priest who puts it upon himself to build an orphanage that'll serve to reform a couple hundred unruly boys. And he got a second consecutive Oscar for doing it. So by now it just feels as though the members of the Academy back in the mid-to-late thirties were fixing to troll us all. I know I know, it's of the norm for Oscar to get his panties in a bunch over someone and spoil them rotten with his love in the process, but this is frankly the most preposterous instance I've ever seen where blind, unadulterated adulation is being flung on an actor for literally rehashing the same monotonous schtick over and over again.

Spencer Tracy, Captains Courageous

as MANUEL

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Sometimes first impressions tell you everything you need to know. When we first meet Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous, he is sitting in a little fishing boat out in the middle of the ocean screaming "OOOH! OOOH!" because he's imitating a ship's fog horn. So in that moment when I realized I was watching a grown man do an impression of a ship instead of out at the local college bar drinking dollar beers, I rolled my eyes, laid back, and cursed my obsessively completist mentality regarding these Oscar-nominated performances. Because without it I certainly would have no reason to watch Captains Courageous, which is an amalgamation of a number of things I really don't like (a children's film, a child star, an all-male cast, a poorly acted ethnic role by an American actor, and a schmaltzy narrative).

Paul Muni, The Story of Louis Pasteur

as LOUIS PASTEUR

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | Venice Film Festival - Best Actor

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess. Oscar has always been fascinated by "important" pictures, even more so if it feels important and is about a real person. No other studio made better films of this niche back in the 1930's than Warner Bros., and it seems no other actor was good enough for these vehicles than Paul Muni. After having tackled real-life stories about chain gang injustice and coal miner unions, in 1936 Warner Bros. and Muni set off into the annals of history to tackle...microbiology. The Story of Louis Pasteur is about the man who discovered the cures for anthrax and rabies, so if you're expecting intrigue and excitement, look elsewhere. And while Muni's performance here wasn't as bad as his horrid turn in Black Fury, it's also really nothing to write home about.

Victor McLaglen, The Informer

as GYPO NOLAN

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

When Victor McLaglen makes facial expressions, all the lines and wrinkles on his mug are so vivid and harsh. There's a bit of wear and tear on that face of his, and it looks as if he's been through it all--and that may have just been true. Prior to his Hollywood career, he had worked in a circus, was a successful heavyweight boxer, and also fought for Britain in World War I. The latter two work experiences alone ensures that he's got just the right amount of machismo for the role of Gypo Nolan. But I couldn't help but wonder if McLaglen had to channel any wartime memories for his performance, as it's certainly one of the most distraught and vulnerable pieces of work from a male actor I've seen since I began plowing through the nominees of Oscar's earliest years.