1954 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

Alternate Oscars: Best Supporting Actor of 1954

Rumor has it that Edmond O'Brien won best supporting actor because a trio of On the Waterfront actors — Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger — split the vote. Given that O'Brien didn't do anything in The Barefoot Contessa but sweat, all I can say is, "Maybe."

No, that's not fair. Edmond O'Brien was actually very good in The Barefoot Contessa, and a lot of other things, too — D.O.A., Seven Days in May and The Wild Bunch, for example.

But the Monkey is all about having your cake and eating it too — I've combined Cobb, Malden and Steiger into a single nominee for your voting convenience. No excuses if they lose this time.

Me? I'm voting for Toshiro Mifune.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

1954 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ.

Rumor has it that Edmond O'Brien won best supporting actor because a trio of On the Waterfront actors, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger, split the vote. Given that O'Brien didn't do anything in The Barefoot Contessa but sweat, all I can say is, "Maybe."

I thought about combining the three of them into a single nomination, ala the Marx Brothers or Laurel & Hardy, but ah to hell with it, as far as I'm concerned, history can repeat itself. You do what you want — me, I'm voting for Toshiro Mifune.

By the way, that Godzilla up there in the middle of the best picture nominees is the original Japanese-language version, Gojira, not the Raymond Burr English-language edit. The former is a somber parable about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Japan's defeat in World War II; the latter, stripped of its subtext, is a hokey Saturday morning B-picture about a monster that stomps Tokyo flat. It wasn't the best picture of the year and it spawned thirty-two (no exaggeration) vastly-inferior sequels, but it's well-worth tracking down.

Alternate Oscars: Vote For The Best Picture Of 1954

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1954)

It's an interesting thing about Hitchcock—where other directors saw light, he saw darkness. And I don't mean in terms of the stories he told, I mean in terms of the actors he chose.

When Americans looked at, say, Ingrid Bergman, they saw virginal purity, but Hitchcock saw a deeply conflicted woman, the one who would eventually run off with Roberto Rossellini. That he liked to tear the wings off Cary Grant and reveal the tortured Cockney kid underneath is a matter of record. Anthony Perkins was the all-American boy prior to Psycho. Why, even in Grace Kelly, an actress so beautiful a better looking one would make you go blind, he saw mostly spoiled petulance.

And while Jimmy Stewart had already revealed a dark side in Capra's It's A Wonderful Life and in all those Anthony Mann westerns, Hitchcock ramped it up in Rear Window to include obsession, misanthropy, voyeurism and impotence, ground they would explore again in Vertigo.

As an artist, I'd say Hitchcock was even a great judge of his own character—after all, Vertigo is largely a self-portrait of his own voyeuristic, controlling, misogynistic impulses—but as a man, he was unable to rein himself in and he eventually drove himself into the bridge abutment that was Tippi Hedren.

But then, I think an artist often see truths that the man himself doesn't.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Rear Window (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: The Caine Mutiny (prod. Stanley Kramer); Creature From The Black Lagoon (prod. William Allard); Dial 'M' For Murder (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); The Far Country (prod. Aaron Rosenberg); Johnny Guitar (prod. Republic Pictures); On The Waterfront (prod. Sam Spiegel); 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (prod. Walt Disney)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: A Star Is Born (prod. Sidney Luft)
nominees: Hobson's Choice (prod. David Lean); Sabrina (prod. Billy Wilder); Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (prod. Jack Cummings)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki)
nominees: Gojira (Godzilla) (prod. Tomoyuki Tanaka); Miyamoto Musashi (Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi) (prod. Kazuo Takimura); Sanshô dayû (Sansho The Bailff) (prod. Masaichi Nagata); Senso (prod. Lux Film); La Strada (prod. Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti); Touchez pas au grisbi (prod. Robert Dorfmann)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Marlon Brando (On The Waterfront)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (The Caine Mutiny and The Barefoot Contessa); Bing Crosby (The Country Girl); Kirk Douglas (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea); Ray Milland (Dial 'M' For Murder); Takashi Shimura (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai); James Stewart (The Far Country and Rear Window)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Mason (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Howard Keel (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers); Gene Kelly (Brigadoon); Charles Laughton (Hobson's Choice); John Mills (Hobson's Choice)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Grace Kelly (Dial 'M' For Murder, Rear Window and The Country Girl)
nominees: Shirley Booth (About Mrs. Leslie); Joan Crawford (Johnny Guitar); Ava Gardner (The Barefoot Contessa); Giulietta Masina (La Strada); Eleanor Parker (The Naked Jungle); Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Judy Garland (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's Choice); Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen Jones); Doris Day (Young At Heart); Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina); Judy Holliday (It Should Happen to You); Jennifer Jones (Beat the Devil); Debbie Reynolds (Susan Slept Here)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Akira Kurosawa (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)
nominees: Edward Dmytryk (The Caine Mutiny); Federico Fellini (La Strada); Alfred Hitchcock (Dial 'M' For Murder and Rear Window); Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront); Kenji Mizoguchi (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff); Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Cukor (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Stanley Donen (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers); David Lean (Hobson's Choice); Billy Wilder (Sabrina)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Toshirô Mifune (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)
nominees: Jack Carson (A Star Is Born); Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront); José Ferrer (The Caine Mutiny); Walter Hampden (Sabrina); Fred MacMurray (The Caine Mutiny); Karl Malden (On The Waterfront); Fredric March (Executive Suite); Edmond O'Brien (The Barefoot Contessa); Rod Steiger (On The Waterfront); John Williams (Dial M for Murder and Sabrina)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Eva Marie Saint (On the Waterfront)
nominees: Nina Foch (Executive Suite); Kyoko Kagawa (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff); Mercedes McCambridge (Johnny Guitar); Thelma Ritter (Rear Window); Kinuyo Tanaka (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff)

SCREENPLAY
winner: John Michael Hayes, from the short story by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window)
nominees: Budd Schulberg (screenplay and story), suggested by articles by Malcolm Johnson (On The Waterfront); Billy Wilder, Samuel A. Taylor and Ernest Lehman, from the play "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel A. Taylor (Sabrina); Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"The Man That Got Away" (A Star Is Born) music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by Ira Gershwin (Song); John Meehan; Emile Kuri (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Loren L. Ryder (Rear Window) (Sound)