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1981
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 1981
Actor:
HENRY FONDA in "On Golden Pond", Warren Beatty in "Reds",
Burt Lancaster in
"Atlantic City", Dudley Moore in "Arthur",
Paul Newman in "Absence of Malice"
Actress:
KATHARINE HEPBURN in "On Golden Pond", Diane Keaton
in "Reds", Marsha Mason in "Only When I Laugh",
Susan Sarandon in "Atlantic
City", Meryl Streep in "The
French Lieutenant's Woman"
Supporting Actor:
JOHN GIELGUD in "Arthur", James Coco in "Only
When I Laugh", Ian Holm in "Chariots of Fire",
Jack Nicholson in "Reds", Howard E. Rollins, Jr. in "Ragtime"
Supporting Actress:
MAUREEN STAPLETON in "Reds", Melinda Dillon in "Absence
of Malice", Jane Fonda in "On Golden Pond", Joan
Hackett in "Only When I Laugh", Elizabeth McGovern
in "Ragtime"
Director:
WARREN BEATTY for "Reds", Hugh Hudson for "Chariots
of Fire", Louis Malle for
"Atlantic City", Mark Rydell for "On Golden Pond",
Steven Spielberg for "Raiders of the
Lost Ark"
 The
Best Picture winner this year was a surprise and major upset win
for British producer David Puttnam's low-budget Chariots
of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, with seven nominations
and four wins. It also took top honors for Best Screenplay
(Colin Welland), Best Original Score (Vangelis' rich electronic,
throbbing score, especially during the iconic opening credits
sequence) and Best Costume Design.
The win signaled the start of another mini-British
renaissance of film awards for this year and the next - with Gandhi
(1982) soon breaking all British film Oscar records. (It
had been 13 years since another British-made film had won Best
Picture, Oliver! (1968)) Chariots of Fire was
also the second sports film to win Best Picture (the
first was Rocky (1976)). It
also marked the first of four biopics to win the top award
during the 80s, joining Gandhi (1982), Amadeus (1984),
and The Last Emperor (1987).
Of the top five competitors for Best Picture,
two were historical epics, two were about senior-citizens,
and one was a throwback to the action/adventure films of the
past:
- Chariots of Fire was the inspirational
story of the 1924 Olympics running event in Paris and the
motivations of two of Britain's runners, Cambridge University
students - English Jew Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Scottish
Christian missionary Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson). Its tagline
was: " This is a story of two men who run...not to run...but
to prove something to the world. They will sacrifice anything
to achieve their goals...Except their honor." The film,
which contained an anti-Semitism subplot, soon became the
most-successful foreign film in US box-office history
- Warren Beatty's $35 million, three-hour long
American epic masterpiece and front-runner in the competition, Reds (with
twelve nominations and three wins) including Best Director
(Warren Beatty), Best Supporting Actress (Maureen Stapleton),
and Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro, the winner of
the same award for Apocalypse
Now (1979).) Reds was the film biography of
American communist and romantic figure John Reed, a left-wing
radical journalist and author of Ten Days That Shook the
World, who journeyed from Oregon to Greenwich Village
and then to Russia to cover first-hand the 1917 Bolshevik
Revolution on the streets of Petrograd
[Beatty received simultaneous nominations as producer, director,
co-writer (with English dramatist Trevor Griffiths), and star
actor for the film. Only one other director, Orson Welles,
had accomplished such a feat (for Citizen
Kane (1941)). Beatty was repeating his acquisition
of quadruple nominations - his earlier film Heaven Can Wait
(1978) had earned him the same distinction.]
- director Mark Rydell's favored, all-star family
drama On Golden Pond (with ten nominations and three
wins), a screen adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play about
the members of the Thayer family who conflict and reconcile
with each other during one summer at a lakeside New England
cabin
The other Best Picture nominees were:
- director Louis Malle's long-shot Atlantic
City (with five nominations and no wins), the dual
stories of an aging, small-time hood and a struggling oyster-bar
waitress in the casino town
- director Steven Spielberg's (and George Lucas'
written and produced) block-busting, entertaining genre film Raiders
of the Lost Ark (with nine nominations and five wins,
mostly technical awards), an old-style action/adventure film
about the heroic exploits of archaeologist Indiana Jones
searching for the Ark of the Covenant against the Nazis
All five of the directors of Best Picture nominees
were likewise nominated in the Best Director category - the third instance
in Oscar history. [It also happened in 1957 and 1964 and would
not occur again for another 24 years, in 2005.] Warren Beatty
won the award as Best Director for Reds. [He was one
of the few actors/stars that was also an Oscar-winning director
(but without winning an acting Oscar), along with Robert Redford
for Ordinary People (1980) the previous year, Kevin
Costner for Dances With Wolves (1990) and Clint Eastwood
for Unforgiven (1992) and Million
Dollar Baby (2004).]
Reds had nominations of its actors in
all four categories, but only one of the four performers won
- Best Supporting Actress. All four of the acting awards winners
were elderly, aging actors - the oldest collection of
acting winners ever assembled, averaging 70.75 years old:
- 76 year old Henry Fonda (Best Actor for On
Golden Pond)
- 74 year old Katharine Hepburn (Best Actress
for On Golden Pond)
- 77 year old Sir John Gielgud (Best Supporting
Actor for Arthur)
- 56 year old Maureen Stapleton (Best Supporting
Actress for Reds)
Other elderly nominees joined the acting winners:
- 68 year old Burt Lancaster (Best Actor nominee
for Atlantic City)
- 57 year old Paul Newman (Best Actor nominee
for Absence of Malice)
- 50 year old Ian Holm (Best Supporting Actor
nominee for Chariots of Fire)
The sentimental favorites and actual winners
for Best Actor and Best Actress were legendary actors, both
co-starring in the same film, On Golden Pond. This was
only the fifth film in Oscar history to have Oscars
wins for Best Actor and Actress in the same film (it also occurred
in 1934, 1975, 1976, and 1978). This was the only time
that Henry Fonda was teamed with his real-life daughter Jane,
and the only time he starred with veteran actress Katharine
Hepburn:
- Henry Fonda as the gutsy, nearly-80 year-old
Norman Thayer, a former college professor who is facing senility,
but enjoys sharing life on the lake with the young son of
his daughter's boyfriend in On Golden Pond. Henry
Fonda's Best Actor award for the film was his first Oscar.
It was undoubtedly a 'career' Oscar win - a tribute to his
long, distinguished career of film-making. [At 76 years of
age, Fonda was the oldest nominee and winner in the
Best Actor category in Academy history.] Fonda had been nominated
for Best Actor only once before - forty one years
earlier for The
Grapes of Wrath (1940), but had lost the award. The
gap of time between acting nominations was a record in itself.
(Fonda's daughter and co-star Jane accepted her father's
Oscar, because he was too ill to attend. He died about four
months later. His win made it the first time that
a father-daughter team were Oscar-winners: Henry Fonda (for On
Golden Pond (1981)) and Jane Fonda (for Klute (1971) and Coming
Home (1978)). The second father-daughter Oscar
winners occurred in 1999 - for Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie.)
- Katharine Hepburn as his wise and quietly-strong
wife Ethel who urges her crusty husband to reconcile with
his daughter (Jane Fonda) in On Golden Pond. The couple
portrayed bickering but devoted protagonists. [At 74 years
of age, Hepburn became the oldest Best Actress winner
up to that time - she was surpassed 8 years later by 80 year
old Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Hepburn
also set a record with her fourth (and final) Oscar
- she became the first performer to win that many
Best Actress awards with a record of twelve nominations.
The four remaining Best Actor nominees included
the following:
- Warren Beatty (with his third Best Actor nomination)
for his role in Reds as radical American communist
and journalist John Reed, who faced increasing resistance
to the spread of Communism in isolationist 1920s US, witnessed
the Russian Revolution and then wrote the book, Ten Days
That Shook the World
- Burt Lancaster (with his fourth and last career
nomination) as small-time hood Lou in Atlantic City
- Paul Newman (with his fifth career nomination)
as Michael Gallagher, the innocent victim of an unscrupulous
Miami newspaper columnist's report in Sydney Pollack's examination
of the ethics of journalism, Absence of Malice (with
three nominations and no wins)
- Dudley Moore (with his sole Oscar nomination
in his career) as the drunk, spoiled, amiable and millionaire-rich
playboy and title character Arthur Bach in Arthur (with
four nominations and two wins)
The four remaining Best Actress nominees included:
- Diane Keaton (with her second of four Best
Actress career nominations) as Louise Bryant, Reed's lover
(and then wife) and fellow radical in Reds
- Marsha Mason (with the last of her four unsuccessful
nominations) as the brilliant, self-destructive, divorced
alcoholic Broadway actress Georgia in Neil Simon's adaptation
of his own play (The Gingerbread Lady) in the film Only
When I Laugh (with three nominations and no wins)
- Meryl Streep (with her third nomination and first Best
Actress nomination, and her first of three consecutive nominations
in the early 80s) as the enigmatic heroine Sarah Woodruff/Anna
of the title in two parallel stories in the complex film
adaptation of John Fowles' best-selling novel, director Karel
Reisz' The French Lieutenant's Woman (with five nominations
and no wins)
- Susan Sarandon (with her first nomination)
as aspiring casino croupier Sally who becomes involved in
a drug deal and who sexily rubs lemon juice on her breasts
to remove the smell of fish in Atlantic City
[Coincidentally, Streep lost the Best Actress
bid to Hepburn when she won her final Oscar with her 12th
nomination. Eighteen years later in 1999, Streep would tie
Hepburn with her 12th nomination, and in 2002, Streep would
surpass Hepburn with her 13th nomination, and then in 2006
garner her 14th nomination.]
Classical actor Sir John Gielgud won the Best
Supporting Actor award for his role (not in Chariots of
Fire as Master of Trinity) as drunken Arthur's kindly,
no-nonsense, sarcastic, deadpan butler/valet Hobson in the
comedy Arthur. [His only other Oscar nomination
was in his role as King Louis VII in Becket (1964).]
The four other Best Supporting Actor nominees included:
- James Coco (with his first and only career
nomination) as an unemployed gay actor in Only When I
Laugh
- Ian Holm (with his first and only career nomination)
as Liddell's trainer Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire
- Jack Nicholson (with his sixth career nomination
and second Best Supporting Actor nomination) as Eugene
O'Neill in Reds
- Howard E. Rollins, Jr. (with his first and
only career nomination) as the black ragtime piano player
Coalhouse Walker, Jr. in Ragtime
Maureen Stapleton won the Best Supporting Actress
award for her portrayal of earthy, disillusioned, and despairing
revolutionary-anarchist Emma Goldman in Reds. This was
her fourth and final career nomination and only successful
one - she had been nominated three times previously for Best
Supporting Actress in 1958 (for Lonelyhearts (1958)),
1970 (for Airport (1970)), and in 1978 (for Interiors
(1978)). All of her nominations were for films with one
word titles! The other Best Supporting Actress nominees included:
- Melinda Dillon (with her second and last Best
Supporting Actress nomination) as tragically-suicidal Teresa
in Absence of Malice
- Jane Fonda (with her sixth of seven career
nominations, and her sole supporting nomination) as
Henry Fonda's screen daughter Chelsea Thayer in On Golden
Pond [the only time that Jane and Henry acted together]
- Joan Hackett (with her first and only career
nomination) as a socialite in Only When I Laugh
- Elizabeth McGovern (with her first and only
career nomination) as millionaire Harry K. Thaw's sexy showgirl
wife (and Stanford White's mistress) Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime
Four-time Best Actress Oscar-defeated Barbara
Stanwyck (in 1937, 1941, 1944 and 1948) accepted an Honorary
statuette from the Academy, "for superlative creativity
and unique contribution to the art of screen acting."
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
Director John Boorman's visionary version of
the King Arthur tales - Excalibur, received only one
unsuccessful nomination for Best Cinematography. The four nominations
for The Rose, featuring Bette Midler's remarkable performance,
went unhonored. The endlessly fascinating dinner conversation
film, Louis Malle's My Dinner With Andre was completely
omitted from honors. There were no special recognitions or
nominations for the imaginative Visual Effects in the mythological
fantasy Clash of the Titans, the last film from legendary
stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. Ragtime was awarded
eight nominations (with no wins) without a Best Picture nomination.
And Gallipoli went completely unnominated, including
omissions for Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Weir), Best
Actor (Mel Gibson), and Best Supporting Actor (Bill Hunter).
Director Blake Edwards' semi-autobiographical comedy S.O.B.,
a satire on the film industry which featured his squeaky-clean
wife Julie Andrews exposing her breasts, was devoid of nominations,
as was the crime drama True Confessions, starring Robert
Duvall and Robert DeNiro as two brothers brought together as
a result of a brutal murder in late 1940s Los Angeles.
Many acting nominations were denied to a number
of proven actors and actresses in 1981:
- the previous year's Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek
was neglected for her performance as WWII Texas switchboard
operator and divorced mother Nita Longley in Raggedy Man (with
no nominations)
- Faye Dunaway was bypassed for her role as
abusive mother and actress Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (with
no nominations)
- Candice Bergen was denied a nomination for Rich
and Famous (with no nominations)
- Sally Field was ignored for her performance
in Absence of Malice (with three unsuccessful nominations)
- both Carol Burnett (in a serious role) and
Bess Armstrong were un-nominated for their lead and supporting
roles in director/actor/writer Alan Alda's marriage drama The
Four Seasons (with no nominations)
Other un-nominated stars/directors included:
- director/star/co-writer Albert Brooks for
his role as love-torn Robert Cole in the realistic romantic
comedy Modern Romance
- Harrison Ford - for his defining performance
as courageous, indomitable hero Indiana Jones, and Karen
Allen - for her liberated role as sidekick Marion Ravenwood
in Steven Spielberg's action/adventure tribute Raiders
of the Lost Ark
- John Heard for his anti-hero role as crippled,
angry Vietnam veteran Alexander Cutter in Czech director
Ivan Passer's ignored Cutter's Way (with no nominations)
- Steve Martin (in his first dramatic role)
as Arthur Parker - a Chicago Depression-era traveling sheet-music/song
salesman, and Christopher Walken in a short role as slick
pimp Tom who performed a seductive, almost-lewd striptease/tap-dance
("Let's Misbehave") on top of a bar in a sleazy
joint to entice shy schoolteacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters),
in director Herbert Ross' eccentric, downbeat musical Pennies
From Heaven (with four unsuccessful nominations)
- Donald Sutherland as a deadly Nazi agent in Eye
of the Needle
- Treat Williams as corrupt NY narcotics cop
Daniel Ciello in director Sidney Lumet's Prince of the
City
- William Hurt (as lowlife lawyer Ned Racine)
and Kathleen Turner in her film debut (as conniving and sexy
femme fatale Matty Walker) in Lawrence Kasdan's modern-day
noir Body Heat (with no nominations)
- John Belushi (in his last film appearance)
as a burly newspaperman who falls in love with mountain woman
Blair Brown in Michael Apted's romantic comedy Continental
Divide (with no nominations - and another un-nominated
Kasdan screenplay)
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