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."

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1962)

"Oh, Mr. Buñuel! I had a nice idea for a movie for you."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. A group of people attend a very formal dinner party and at the end of dinner when they try to leave the room, they can't."

"Why not?"

"They just can't seem to exit the door."

"But why?"

"Well, momento. When they're forced to stay together, the veneer of civilization quickly fades away and what they're left with is who they really are—animals."

"But I don't get it. Why don't they just walk out of the room?"

"All I'm saying is just think about it. Who knows—maybe when you're shaving one day, it'll tickle your fancy."

—Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) to Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van) in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

Maybe there was something in the water that year, but 1962 was a great one for movies. And not just any movies, but a group of movies that taken separately or together represent the most jaundiced view of humanity ever to sell a sackful of tickets. Lawrence of Arabia, The Manchurian Candidate, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita, Ride the High Country and even The Music Man with its con-man hero, consistently showed human beings at their greedy, violent, lying worst with very little hope that as a species, we'll ever evolve into anything better.

The bleakest—and funniest—of the year's films was Luis Buñuel's black comedy The Exterminating Angel, about a group of aristocrats who attend a dinner party then for reasons straight out of the Twilight Zone find themselves unable to leave. Buñuel isn't just saying that civilization is a thin veneer easily cracked apart in stressful times, he's saying that civilization is an illusion we have faith in only because we're habituated to the inhuman behavior of ourselves and our fellow inmates in the asylum of life, a fact we only occasionally notice when circumstances are so out of the ordinary that they throw our actions into stark relief.

Or to put it another way, we're just big animals with clothes on.

Too harsh? Well, maybe, but then maybe you didn't read the day's headlines. Which day's? Any day's.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Lawrence Of Arabia (prod. Sam Spiegel)
nominees: To Kill A Mockingbird (prod. Alan J. Pakula); The Longest Day (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (prod. Willis Goldbeck and John Ford); The Manchurian Candidate (prod. George Axelrod and John Frankenheimer); Ride The High Country (prod. Richard E. Lyons); What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (prod. Robert Aldrich)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Music Man (prod. Morton DaCosta)
nominees: Gypsy (prod. Mervyn LeRoy); Lolita (prod. James B. Harris)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (prod. Gustavo Alatriste)
nominees: L'eclisse (prod. Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim); Jules et Jim (prod. François Truffaut); Sanma no aji (An Autumn Afternoon) (prod. Shizuo Yamanouchi); Seppuku (Harakiri) (prod. Tatsuo Hosoya); Il sorpasso (The Easy Life) (prod. Mario Cecchi Gori); Tsubaki Sanjûrô (Sanjuro) (prod. Ryûzô Kikushima and Tomoyuki Tanaka); Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Vivre Sa Vie) (prod. Pierre Braunberger)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Peter O'Toole (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Kirk Douglas (Lonely Are the Brave); Burt Lancaster (Birdman of Alcatraz); Jack Lemmon (Days of Wine and Roses); Joel McCrea (Ride the High Country); Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear); Tatsuya Nakadai (Seppuku a.k.a Harakiri); Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird); Randolph Scott (Ride the High Country); Frank Sinatra (The Manchurian Candidate)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Preston (The Music Man)
nominees: Dirk Bogarde (The Password Is Courage); James Mason (Lolita); Toshirô Mifune (Tsubaki Sanjûrô a.k.a. Sanjuro)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim)
nominees: Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker); Bette Davis (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); Katharine Hepburn (Long Day's Journey Into Night); Geraldine Page (Sweet Bird of Youth)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shelley Winters (Lolita)
nominees: Shirley Jones (The Music Man); Corinne Marchand (Cléo de 5 à 7 a.k.a. Cleo From 5 To 7); Rosalind Russell (Gypsy); Natalie Wood (Gypsy)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: David Lean (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?); John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); John Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate); Masaki Kobayashi (Seppuku a.k.a Harakiri); Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird); Yasujirô Ozu (Sanma no aji a.k.a. An Autumn Afternoon); Sam Peckinpah (Ride The High Country); François Truffaut (Jules et Jim)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Luis Buñuel (El ángel exterminador a.k.a. The Exterminating Angel)
nominees: Morton DaCosta (The Music Man); Mervyn LeRoy (Gypsy); Stanley Kubrick (Lolita); Akira Kurosawa (Tsubaki Sanjûrô a.k.a. Sanjuro); Dino Risi (Il sorpasso a.k.a. The Easy Life)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Omar Sharif (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Ed Begley (Sweet Bird of Youth); Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); Khigh Dhiegh (The Manchurian Candidate); Paul Ford (The Music Man); Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate); Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); Robert Ryan (Billy Budd); Peter Sellers (Lolita); Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz); John Wayne (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate)
nominees: Mary Badham (To Kill A Mockingbird); Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker); Hermione Gingold (The Music Man); Mariette Hartley (Ride The High Country); Janet Leigh (The Manchurian Candidate)

SCREENPLAY
winner: George Axelrod, from the novel by Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate)
nominees: Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, from the writings of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence Of Arabia); James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck, from the story by Dorothy M. Johnson (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); Horton Foote, from the novel by Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Anne V. Coates (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Film Editing); Freddie Young (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Cinematography); Maurice Jarre (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Score); La Jetée (Short)