Alexandra Petri's New Oscar Categories (Taken More Seriously Than She Intended) (Part One)

One of the Monkey's favorite fixtures on the Washington Post op-ed page is Alexandra Petri, who is, by turns, amusing, thoughtful, insightful and deep but always non-ax-grinding, which is why the non-ax-grinding Monkey likes to read her.

Today, Ms. Petri suggests that the Academy Awards ceremony would improve with "better categories than Best Actor and Best Actress." Categories such as "Best Performance in an Arty Movie No One Saw" and "Best Appearance in Movie Where the Dog Dies." It's a funny column and you can read it for yourself here.

But, of course, I couldn't help but start wondering who in movie history might actually deserve to win these awards. Here are my suggestions. Feel free to offer up your own in the comments section below.

Although there are 34 categories in the online edition, I'm strictly a read-the-paper-over-breakfast-print-man, so I'm going with the Sunday edition's 26 (assuming I counted correctly). This is going to take the rest of the week.

Best Performance by Someone Old Who Deserves to Win Something
There have been many such Oscars handed out over the years, some deserved, some not (Don Ameche's win for Cocoon being perhaps the most egregious—to quote my late mother: "Don Ameche?! He never could act!"). The best such Oscar-winning performance was probably by Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful. Did you know she was nominated eight times, winning in her last chance? She died the next year.

Of those who were nominated but didn't win, I'd probably go with Peter O'Toole in Venus—hard to believe the guy has never won anything. But then the Academy has a history of neglecting great actors—not only did Cary Grant never win, Edward G. Robinson was never even nominated! Imagine that.

Best Performance in a Biopic of a Person the Audience Actually Recognizes
Which counts out Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, I'd think. Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc is pushing it—we all know who Joan of Arc was, but would we actually recognize her if we saw her on the street? So I'm going with George C. Scott in Patton.

Best Performance in an Arty Movie No One Saw
Now that would be Maria Falconetti. No one saw The Passion of Joan of Arc upon its release, then the negative was destroyed in a fire and the film was presumed lost for decades. In 1981, it was rediscovered in a janitor's closet in a Norwegian insane asylum. Great movie, great performance.

Least Embarrassing Golden Globes Speech
Honestly, I've never watched the Golden Globes, so I couldn't say, and let's face it, on some level, all awards speeches are embarrassing. Instead, I'll go in the other direction and guess that the most embarrassing Golden Globes speech was when Ving Rhames gave away his award to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon. Actually dragged Lemmon on stage in a moment of enthusiastic self-deprecation and shoved the award into his hands, to Lemmon's mortification. And I say this as a guy who loves both Ving Rhames and Jack Lemmon. Haven't seen nearly enough of ol' Ving since then, by the way.

Best Acting With a Green Screen
Without doing an extensive search, I'm going with Naomi Watts in the remake of King Kong. She made the relationship between her character and the forty-foot CGI monkey not just plausible but touching.

Best Performance for Which You Gained Weight Intentionally
Given that it's one of the best performances by anybody ever anyway, I'm going with Robert De Niro in Raging Bull.

Tomorrow: awards for heartstring-tugging children, difficult directors, James Franco and recovering addicts.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1970)

The editor of my other internet gig, Sharpologist, has asked for a new post so I'll be working on that. Which means this is the last of the Katie Award posts for a while.

Beginning this weekend, I'll start promoting Monty's March Madness Greatest Actress Tournament. As I mentioned the other day, I'll be hosting the Silent Era/1930s bracket—32 actresses competing for a shot at the Final Four. Long-shot entrant Irene Dunne won the whole thing last year and she'll be defending her title right here at the Monkey. But she's got some tough competition, including Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow.

Voting starts March 5.

Meanwhile, enjoy this iconic scene from Five Easy Pieces:



PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Five Easy Pieces (prod. Bob Rafelson and Richard Wechsler)
nominees: Airport (prod. Ross Hunter); The Boys in the Band (prod. Mart Crowley); Colossus: The Forbin Project (prod. Stanley Chase); Little Big Man (prod. Stuart Millar); Patton (prod. Frank McCarthy); Ryan's Daughter (prod. Anthony Havelock-Allan); Tora! Tora! Tora! (prod. Richard Fleischer and Elmo Williams)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: M*A*S*H (prod. Ingo Preminger)
nominees: The Ballad of Cable Hogue (prod Sam Peckinpah); Gimme Shelter (prod. Porter Bibb and Ronald Schneider); Kelly's Heroes (prod. Sidney Beckerman and Gabriel Katzka); Let It Be (prod. Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans); Scrooge (prod Robert H. Solo); The Twelve Chairs (prod. Ronald H. Gilbert and Michael Hertzberg); Woodstock (prod. Bob Maurice)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Il conformista (The Conformist) (prod. Maurizio Lodi-Fè)
nominees: Le Cercle Rouge (prod. Robert Dorfmann); Le boucher (prod. André Génovès); Domicile conjugal (Bed & Board) (prod. Marcel Berbert and François Truffaut); L'enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) (prod. Néstor Almendros); Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) (prod. Arthur Cohn, Gianni Hecht Lucari and Artur Brauner); Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee) (prod. Pierre Cottrell and Barbet Schroeder); El topo (prod. Mick Gochanour, Juan López Moctezuma, Moshe Rosemberg and Saúl Rosemberg); Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) (prod. Marina Cicogna and Daniele Senatore); Tristana (prod. Luis Buñuel and Robert Dorfmann)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: George C. Scott (Patton)
nominees: Melvyn Douglas (I Never Sang for My Father); Ben Gazzara (Husbands); Dustin Hoffman (Little Big Man); James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope); Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces); Fernando Rey (Tristana); Jean-Louis Trintignant (Il conformista a.k.a. The Conformist)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alan Arkin (Catch-22)
nominees: Clint Eastwood (Two Mules for Sister Sara and Kelly's Heroes); Albert Finney (Scrooge); Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H); Jack Lemmon (The Out of Towners); Jason Robards (The Ballad Of Cable Hogue); Donald Sutherland (M*A*S*H); Gene Wilder (Start the Revolution Without Me)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Glenda Jackson (Women In Love)
nominees: Catherine Deneuve (Tristana); Sarah Miles (Ryan's Daughter); Tuesday Weld (I Walk The Line)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Carrie Snodgress (Diary Of A Mad Housewife)
nominees: Julie Andrews (Darling Lili); Sandy Dennis (The Out of Towners); Glenda Jackson (The Music Lovers); Shirley MacLaine (Two Mules for Sister Sara)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Bernardo Bertolucci (Il Conformista a.k.a. The Conformist)
nominees: Vittorio de Sica (Il giardino dei Finzi Contini a.k.a The Garden of the Finzi-Continis); David Lean (Ryan's Daughter); Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Cercle Rouge); Arthur Penn (Little Big Man); Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces); Eric Rohmer (Le genou de Claire a.k.a. Claire's Knee); Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Altman (M*A*S*H)
nominees: Mel Brooks (The Twelve Chairs); Ronald Neame (Scrooge); Mike Nichols (Catch-22); Sam Peckinpah (The Ballad of Cable Hogue); François Truffaut (Domicile conjugal a.k.a. Bed & Board)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Chief Dan George (Little Big Man)
nominees: Robert Duvall (M*A*S*H); Gene Hackman (I Never Sang For My Father); Frank Langella (Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Twelve Chairs); Karl Malden (Patton); Telly Savalas (Kelly's Heroes); Orson Welles (Catch-22)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces)
nominees: Helen Hayes (Airport); Sally Kellerman (M*A*S*H); Lois Smith (Five Easy Pieces); Lee Grant (The Landlord); Stella Stevens (The Ballad of Cable Hogue)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) (screenplay), from a story by Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) (Five Easy Pieces)
nominees: Bernardo Bertolucci, from the novel by Alberto Moravia (Il Conformista a.k.a. The Conformist); Ring Lardner, Jr., from the novel by Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H); Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, based on factual material by Ladislas Farago and Omar N. Bradley (Patton)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Suicide Is Painless" (M*A*S*H) music by Johnny Mandel; lyrics by Michael Altman (Song); Jerry Goldsmith (Patton) (Score); The Beatles (Let It Be) (Original Song Score); Woodstock (Documentary Feature)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1964)

As a lifelong Lennon man, it pains me a bit to choose a McCartney tune, "Can't Buy Me Love" from A Hard Day's Night, as the best song of 1964, even if Sir Paul is his generation's Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Hoagy Carmichael all rolled into one. I mean, the guy has already collected every accolade ever invented by man—does he really need one more from me?

Still, you've got to give the devil his due: "Can't Buy Me Love" is the best use of an original song in a movie in 1964.

This is what Roger Ebert wrote about it—with a straight face—in his review of A Hard Day's Night for his Great Movies series:

The most powerful quality evoked by A Hard Day's Night is liberation. ... When the boys are freed from their "job," they run like children in an open field, and it is possible that scene (during "Can't Buy Me Love") snowballed into all the love-ins, be-ins and happenings in the park of the later '60s. The notion of doing your own thing lurks within every scene.

He might be overstating his case—then again, he might not—but that he can make such a statement and not sound like an idiot doing it is a testament to the influence of the Beatles. I only wish I could pile up even more Katies in their honor.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Goldfinger (prod. Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman)
nominees: Fail-Safe (prod. Max E. Youngstein); A Fistful Of Dollars a.k.a. Per un pugno di dollari (prod. Arrigo Colombo and Giorgio Papi); Marnie (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); The Night of the Iguana (prod. Ray Stark); Nothing But A Man (Michael Roemer, Robert Rubin and Robert M. Young); Seance On A Wet Afternoon (prod. Richard Attenborough); Seven Days In May (prod. Edward Lewis)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (prod. Stanley Kubrick)
nominees: The Americanization of Emily (prod. Martin Ransohoff); A Hard Day's Night (prod. Walter Shenson); Mary Poppins (prod. Walt Disney); My Fair Lady (prod. Jack L. Warner)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Les parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) (prod. Mag Bodard)
nominees: Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (prod. Anouchka Films and Orsay Films); Kaidan (Kwaidan) (prod. Shigeru Wakatsuki); Onibaba (prod. Hisao Itoya, Tamotsu Minato and Setsuo Noto); Suna no onna (Woman In The Dunes) (prod. Kiichi Ichikawa and Tadashi Ôno); Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According To St. Matthew) (prod. Alfredo Bini)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Anthony Quinn (Alexis Zorbas a.k.a. Zorba the Greek)
nominees: Richard Attenborough (Seance on a Wet Afternoon); Richard Burton (Becket and The Night of the Iguana); Sean Connery (Goldfinger); Ivan Dixon (Nothing But A Man); Henry Fonda (The Best Man and Fail-Safe); Burt Lancaster (Seven Days In May); Lee Marvin (The Killers)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
nominees: The Beatles (A Hard Day's Night); James Garner (The Americanization of Emily); Cary Grant (Father Goose); Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady); Rock Hudson (Man's Favorite Sport?)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Ava Gardner (The Night of the Iguana)
nominees: Anne Bancroft (The Pumpkin Eater); Bette Davis (Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte); Tippi Hedren (Marnie); Anna Karina (Bande à part a.k.a. Band of Outsiders); Deborah Kerr (The Night of the Iguana); Kyôko Kishida (Suna no onna a.k.a. Woman of the Dunes); Nobuko Otowa (Onibaba); Nina Pens Rode (Gertrud); Kim Stanley (Seance On A Wet Afternoon)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Paula Prentiss (Man's Favorite Sport?)
nominees: Julie Andrews (The Americanization of Emily); Catherine Deneuve (Les parapluies de Cherbourg a.k.a. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg); Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady); Ann-Margret (Viva Las Vegas); Geraldine Page (Dear Heart); Debbie Reynolds (The Unsinkable Molly Brown); Margaret Rutherford (Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy); Tippy Walker (The World Of Henry Orient)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Hiroshi Teshigahara (Suna no onna a.k.a. Woman In The Dunes)
nominees: Bryan Forbes (Seance on a Wet Afternoon); Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger); John Huston (The Night of the Iguana); Masaki Kobayashi (Kaidan a.k.a. Kwaidan); Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars a.k.a. Per un pugno di dollari); Pier Paolo Pasolini (Il vangelo secondo Matteo a.k.a. The Gospel According To St. Matthew); Michael Roemer (Nothing But A Man)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
nominees: George Cukor (My Fair Lady); Jacques Demy (Les parapluies de Cherbourg a.k.a. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg); Arthur Hiller (The Americanization of Emily); Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night); Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: George C. Scott (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
nominees: Wilfrid Brambell (A Hard Day's Night); Gert Fröbe (Goldfinger); Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb); Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady); Slim Pickens (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb); Ronald Reagan (The Killers); Harold Sakata (Goldfinger); Victor Spinetti (A Hard Day's Night); David Tomlinson (Mary Poppins); Peter Ustinov (Topkapi); Dick Van Dyke (Mary Poppins)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins)
nominees: Gladys Cooper (My Fair Lady); Grayson Hall (The Night of the Iguana); Lila Kedrova (Alexis Zorbas a.k.a. Zorba the Greek); Abbey Lincoln (Nothing But A Man); Agnes Moorehead (Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, from the novel Red Alert by Peter George (as "Peter Bryant") (Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
nominees: Paddy Chayefsky, from the novel by William Bradford Huie (The Americanization of Emily); Alun Owen (A Hard Day's Night); Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, from the novel by Ian Fleming (Goldfinger); Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, from the novel by P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins); Anthony Veiller and John Huston, from the play by Tennessee Williams (The Night of the Iguana)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Can't Buy Me Love" (A Hard Day's Night) music and lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Song); Gilbert Taylor (A Hard Day's Night) (Cinematography); Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman (Mary Poppins) (Original Song Score); Norman Wanstall (Goldfinger) (Sound Effects); Cecil Beaton (My Fair Lady) (Costume)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1961)

I think most people would go with George C. Scott in The Hustler for best supporting actor, but I'm going with his co-star Jackie Gleason. Both were nominated for Oscars, both deserved to win (both lost to George Chakiris in West Side Story).

Gleason as Minnesota Fats doesn't have much to say but he inhabits the character as fully as any actor I've seen play a role. Written on his face and in his body language is every compromise he's ever had to make to do the thing he does better than anybody else, and one look at him tells you everything you need to know about the empty world of big time pool hustling.

But you'll get no kick from me if you go with Scott. It's one of the best performances of his very great career.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Hustler (prod. Robert Rossen)
nominees: The Guns of Navarone (prod. Carl Foreman); The Innocents (prod. Jack Clayton); Judgment At Nuremberg (prod. Stanley Kramer); A Raisin in the Sun (prod. Ronald H. Gilbert, Philip Rose and David Susskind)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: West Side Story (prod. Robert Wise)
nominees: Breakfast At Tiffany's (prod. Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd); Lover Come Back (prod. Martin Melcher and Stanley Shapiro); One Hundred and One Dalmatians (prod. Walt Disney); One, Two, Three (prod. Billy Wilder)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Yôjinbô (Yojimbo) (prod. Akira Kurosawa)
nominees: Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce—Italian Style) (prod. Franco Cristaldi); L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (prod. Pierre Courau, Anatole Dauman and Raymond Froment); Ningen no jôken (The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer) (prod. Masaki Kobayashi and Shigeru Wakatsuki); La notte (prod. Emanuele Cassuto); Såsom i en spegel (Through A Glass Darkly) (prod. Allan Ekelund); Viridiana (prod. Gustavo Alatriste)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Paul Newman (The Hustler)
nominees: Clark Gable (The Misfits); Sidney Poitier (A Raisin in the Sun); Vincent Price (Pit and the Pendulum); Maximilian Schell (Judgment At Nuremberg)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rock Hudson (Lover Come Back)
nominees: James Cagney (One, Two, Three); Fred MacMurray (The Absent-Minded Professor); Marcello Mastroianni (Divorzio all'italiana a.k.a. Divorce—Italian Style); Toshirô Mifune (Yôjinbô a.k.a. Yojimbo)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Piper Laurie (The Hustler)
nominees: Anouk Aimée (Lola); Harriet Andersson (Såsom i en spegel a.k.a. Through A Glass Darkly); Deborah Kerr (The Innocents); Marilyn Monroe (The Misfits); Natalie Wood (Splendor in the Grass)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Audrey Hepburn (Breakfast At Tiffany's)
nominees: Doris Day (Lover Come Back); Anna Karina (Une femme est une femme a.k.a. A Woman Is A Woman); Hayley Mills (The Parent Trap); Margaret Rutherford (Murder She Said)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alain Resnais (L'année dernière à Marienbad a.k.a. Last Year At Marienbad)
nominees: Michelangelo Antonioni (La notte); Luis Buñuel (Viridiana); Masaki Kobayashi (Ningen no jôken a.k.a. The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer); Robert Rossen (The Hustler)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (West Side Story)
nominees: Blake Edwards (Breakfast At Tiffany's); Pietro Germi (Divorzio all'italiana a.k.a. Divorce—Italian Style): Akira Kurosawa (Yôjinbô a.k.a. Yojimbo); Billy Wilder (One, Two, Three)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Jackie Gleason (The Hustler)
nominees: Gunnar Björnstrand (Såsom i en spegel a.k.a. Through A Glass Darkly); George Chakiris (West Side Story); Montgomery Clift (Judgment At Nuremberg); Tony Randall (Lover Come Back); George C. Scott (The Hustler)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Rita Moreno (West Side Story)
nominees: Edie Adams (Lover Come Back); Fay Bainter (The Children's Hour); Ruby Dee (A Raisin in the Sun); Marlene Dietrich (Judgment At Nuremberg); Judy Garland (Judgment At Nuremberg); Lotte Lenya (The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone); Pamela Tiffin (One, Two, Three)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Robert Rossen and Sidney Carroll, from the novel by Walter Tevis (The Hustler)
nominees: George Axelrod, from the novel by Truman Capote (Breakfast At Tiffany's); Luis Buñuel (story and screenplay) and Julio Alejandro, from the novel Halma by Benito Pérez Galdós (Viridiana); Akira Kurosawa (story and screenplay) and Ryûzô Kikushima (screenplay) (Yôjinbô a.k.a Yojimbo)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Moon River" (Breakfast At Tiffany's) music by Henry Mancini; lyrics by Johnny Mercer (Song); Dede Allen (The Hustler) (Film Editing); Edward Beyer (The Hustler) (Sound); Eugen Schüfftan (The Hustler) (Cinematography)