My Favorite Performances By An Actor in the 1960s

Back in January, I posted a list of my favorite performances by an actress in the 1960s, and a couple of weeks ago, Mary Field challenged me to come up with a similar list of actors. Ms. Field has posted her own list of the top ten greatest acting performances here. Nothing so ambitious for me — I can barely narrow down the top ten performances of any given year — but here is a short chronological list of my personal faves from between 1960 and 1969.

Jack Lemmon (The Apartment) — his finest non-drag performance, maybe his finest, period. And in one of my all-time favorite movies, too.

"Mrs. MacDougall, I think it is only fair to warn you that you are now alone with a notorious sexpot."

James Cagney (One, Two, Three) — not one of Billy Wilder's better-known comedies, but Cagney's performance is finger-snapping good and Katie-Bar-The-Door quotes him every time we go to a baseball game.

"You know what the first thing is I'm going to do? I'm going to lead the workers down there in revolt!

"Put your pants on, Spartacus!"

Tony Randall (Lover Come Back) — My favorite Tony Randall performance, here playing a millionaire CEO living in the shadow of his late father.

"You don't realize how completely he dominated me ever since I was a little boy. Just once I spoke back to him. He cut a switch from a tree and gave me such a whipping, in front of this girl. It was a shattering experience."

"Pete, all kids get whippings."

"But I was twenty five! The girl was my fiancée!"

Robert Preston (The Music Man) — True story: in law school, my pals and I learned all the words to "Marian the Librarian" and sang it to a girl. Named Marian. Who was an undergraduate librarian. Sometimes life just serves it up to you on a platter.

"Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays."

Steve McQueen (The Great Escape) — technically, my favorite performance here is by Steve McQueen's motorcycle, but he's the one riding it, so ...

"Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"

"Yeah, about 99 percent."

The entire cast of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb — you know, a friend once confessed she watched this movie and didn't understand why it was supposed to be a comedy. We're not friends anymore.

"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

The Beatles (A Hard Day's Night) — if you have to ask, I can't tell you.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, yeah. The lads frequently sit around the telly and watch her for a giggle. One time, we actually sat down and wrote these letters saying how gear she was and all that rubbish."

"She's a trendsetter. It's her profession."

"She's a drag. A well known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things."

Michael Dunn (TV's The Wild, Wild West) — maybe the greatest television villain ever. My favorite, anyway.

"I thought you were dead."

"Oh, no, Mr. West! I'm afraid I shall never die. Death is too ordinary. The humiliation would kill me."

Charlie Brown (TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas) — reaching deep for pathos, comedy and blistering insight into the emptiness of our consumer-driven culture, this round-headed kid really brought it.

"How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia."

"Well, sort of, but I'm not sure."

Paul Newman (Harper) — I like Paul Newman. I like his movies, I like his pizza, I like his salad dressing. I like everything there is to like about Paul Newman. Except Paul Newman. How do you account for that? I kid. But I do like Paul Newman.

"What do you do this kind of crummy work for, anyway?"

"What, are you trying to be funny? I do it because I believe in the United Nations and Southeast Asia, and — you think it's funny if your life depends on what goes through the Panama Canal? What about the English pound? I'll tell you something — as long as there's a Siberia, you'll find Lew Harper on the job."

"Are you putting me on?"

"Jeez, I don't think so. "

Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen) — Katie-Bar-The-Door once gave me this movie as a Valentine's Day present. No wonder I love her!

"I owe you an apology, colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight-lipped officer. But you're really quite emotional, aren't you?"

Zero Mostel (The Producers) — probably one of the three most quoted movies when my pals Muleboy and Bellotoot get together.

"Oh my God!"

"You mean 'oops,' don't you? Just say 'oops' and get out! "

Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) — saw this in the theater as a kid in 1968, and I say, while a lot of computers turned in fine work in the 1960s, particularly the Robot on Lost in Space, the Hal 9000 topped them all.

"I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid."

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.

For KC

I fiddled around with different font sizes and taglines—hopefully one will work for you!

Rejected Banners #3

No mas, Monkey, no mas!

Okay, okay ...

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1960)

Norman has mother issues. Well, don't we all. At least he can keep his in the fruit cellar.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Psycho (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: Inherit The Wind (prod. Stanley Kramer); The Magnificent Seven (prod. John Sturges); Peeping Tom (prod. Michael Powell); Spartacus (prod. Edward Lewis)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Apartment (prod. Billy Wilder)
nominees: The Little Shop of Horrors (prod. Roger Corman); Ocean's Eleven (prod. Lewis Milestone); Where The Boys Are (prod. Joe Pasternak)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: À bout de souffle (Breathless) (prod. Georges de Beauregard)
nominees: L’Avventura (prod. Amato Pennasilico); La Dolce Vita (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Angelo Rizzoli); Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) (prod. Ingmar Bergman and Allan Ekelund); Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (prod. Goffredo Lombardo); Le Trou (prod. Serge Silberman); Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without A Face) (prod. Jules Borkon)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Anthony Perkins (Psycho)
nominees: Ralph Bellamy (Sunrise at Campobello); Jean-Paul Belmondo (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); Yul Brenner (The Magnificent Seven); Kirk Douglas (Spartacus); Albert Finney (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning); Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry); Steve McQueen (The Magnificent Seven); Spencer Tracy (Inherit the Wind)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jack Lemmon (The Apartment)
nominees: Jerry Lewis (The Bellboy and Cinderfella); Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Jean Simmons (Elmer Gantry)
nominees: Marie Dubois (Tirez sur le pianiste a.k.a. Shoot The Piano Player); Greer Garson (Sunrise at Campobello); Wendy Hiller (Sons and Lovers); Deborah Kerr (The Sundowners); Sophia Loren (La ciociara a.k.a. Two Women); Jean Seberg (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); Monica Vitti (L’Avventura)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shirley MacLaine (The Apartment)
nominees: Doris Day (Please Don't Eat The Daisies); Melina Mercouri (Pote tin Kyriaki a.k.a. Never On Sunday); Paula Prentiss (Where The Boys Are)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)
nominees: Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura); Ingmar Bergman (Jungfrukällan a.k.a. The Virgin Spring); Jean-Luc Godard (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Billy Wilder (The Apartment)
nominees: Jules Dassin (Pote tin Kyriaki a.k.a. Never On Sunday); Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Laurence Olivier (Spartacus)
nominees: Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven); James Coburn (The Magnificent Seven); Jack Kruschen (The Apartment); Charles Laughton (Spartacus); Fred MacMurray (The Apartment); Peter Ustinov (Spartacus); Renato Salvatori (Rocco e i suoi fratelli a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Shirley Jones (Elmer Gantry)
nominees: Anouk Aimée (La Dolce Vita); Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita); Annie Girardot (Rocco e i suoi fratelli a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers); Glynis Johns (The Sundowners); Janet Leigh (Psycho)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (The Apartment)
nominees: Joseph Stephano, from the novel by Robert Bloch (Psycho); Dalton Trumbo, from the novel by Howard Fast (Spartacus)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven) (Score); Alexandre Trauner and Edward G. Boyle (The Apartment) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); George Tomasini (Psycho) (Film Editing)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1959)

At the heart of every Howard Hawks action movie is the concept of the professional doing his job, and doing it well, despite the imminent threat of death, an idealized code of conduct Hemingway called "grace under pressure." We're all going to die sooner or later, Hawks seems to be saying, can't we at least do it with a bit of dignity and honor and laughter and good company?

After nearly three decades of genre defining action pictures—from Dawn Patrol to Only Angels Have Wings to Red River to The Thing From Another World—Hawks topped himself with Rio Bravo, if not the best Western ever made then certainly the most entertaining.

It's also Hawks at his most compassionate, not an attribute I would always associate with his brusque heroes and no-nonsense women. But John Wayne watches over his ragged crew—a drunk, a cripple, and later a girl, a young gunslinger and even the manager of the local hotel—like a mother hen, with a love that is sometimes tough and sometimes tender, but always genuine.

There's a lesson here for purveyors of the modern summer blockbuster: don't confuse a slowing of the action with a flagging of the audience's interest. If you don't give us a reason to invest ourselves in the characters on the screen, the non-stop action, no matter how well choreographed, eventually becomes a tedious bore.

Hawks, for example, takes time after one character's particularly intense personal crisis for a trademark song (here, "My Rifle, My Pony and Me") which not only allows the audience to catch its breath, but also adds another dimension to the friendship between the four men involved that makes the final payoff (one of the greatest shootouts in movie history) so much more satisfying—because by then you really care.



I'll take Rio Bravo with its ups and downs of pacing and mood over all the empty, rote action movies ever made.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Rio Bravo (prod. Howard Hawks)
nominees: Anatomy of a Murder (prod. Otto Preminger); Ben-Hur (prod. Sam Zimbalist); Imitation of Life (prod. Ross Hunter); North By Northwest (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); Shadows (prod. Maurice McEndree); Room at the Top (James Woolf and John Woolf)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Some Like It Hot (prod. Billy Wilder)
nominees: I'm All Right Jack (prod. Roy Boultin); The Mouse That Roared (prod. Walter Shenson); Our Man In Havana (prod. Carol Reed); Pillow Talk (prod. Ross Hunter and Martin Melcher); Sleeping Beauty (prod. Walt Disney)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (prod. François Truffaut)
nominees: Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (prod. Satyajit Ray); Ballada o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier) (prod. M. Chernova); Hiroshima mon amour (prod. Anatole Dauman and Samy Halfon); Ningen no jôken (The Human Condition) (prod. Shigeru Wakatsuki); Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) (prod. Sacha Gordine); Ukigusa (Floating Weeds) (prod. Masaichi Nagata)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Cary Grant (North By Northwest)
nominees: Peter Cushing (The Hound of the Baskervilles); Charlton Heston (Ben-Hur); Jean-Pierre Léaud (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); Dean Martin (Rio Bravo); Paul Muni (The Last Angry Man); James Stewart (Anatomy of a Murder); John Wayne (Rio Bravo)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot)
nominees: Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot); Alec Guinness (Our Man In Havana); Rock Hudson (Pillow Talk); Peter Sellers (The Mouse That Roared and I'm All Right Jack)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Simone Signoret (Room At The Top)
nominees: Audrey Hepburn (The Nun's Story); Katharine Hepburn (Suddenly Last Summer); Eva Marie Saint (North By Northwest); Lana Turner (Imitation Of Life)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot)
nominees: Dorothy Dandridge (Porgy And Bess); Doris Day (Pillow Talk)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo)
nominees: John Cassavetes (Shadows); Alfred Hitchcock (North By Northwest); Masaki Kobayashi (Ningen no jôken a.k.a. The Human Condition); Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder); Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life); François Truffaut (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); William Wyler (Ben-Hur)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot)
nominees: Marcel Camus (Orfeu Negro a.k.a. Black Orpheus); Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk); Yasujirô Ozu (Ohayô a.k.a. Good Morning); Carol Reed (Our Man In Havana)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Walter Brennan (Rio Bravo)
nominees: Joe E. Brown (Some Like It Hot); Ben Gazzarra (Anatomy of a Murder); Hugh Griffith (Ben-Hur); Martin Landau (North By Northwest); James Mason (North By Northwest); Arthur O'Connell (Anatomy of a Murder); Tony Randall (Pillow Talk); George C. Scott (Anatomy of a Murder); Orson Welles (Compulsion)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Juanita Moore (Imitation Of Life)
nominees: Eve Arden (Anatomy of a Murder); Angie Dickinson (Rio Bravo); Susan Kohner (Imitation of Life); Jessie Royce Landis (North By Northwest); Lee Remick (Anatomy of a Murder); Shelley Winters (The Diary of Anne Frank)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, from the story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan (Some Like It Hot)
nominees: Karl Tunberg, from the novel by Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur); Ernest Lehman (North By Northwest); Graham Greene, from his novel (Our Man In Havana); François Truffaut (scenario and adaptation), Marcel Moussy (dialogue and adaptation) (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, from the short story by B.H. McCampbell (Rio Bravo)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Saul Bass (Career Achievement Award); Jazz on a Summer's Day (Documentary); William A. Horning and Edward Carfagno; Hugh Hunt (Ben-Hur) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Franklin E. Milton (Ben-Hur) (Sound); Ralph E. Winters and John D. Dunning (Ben-Hur) (Film Editing); Elizabeth Haffenden (Ben-Hur) (Costumes); A. Arnold Gillespie, Robert MacDonald and Milo Lory (Ben-Hur) (Special Effects)