Book Review: Not Even Nominated: 40 Overlooked Costars of Oscar-Winning Performances (2024) John DiLeo
Not Even Nominated: 40 Overlooked Costars of Oscar-Winning Performances (2024) John DiLeo
G Editions, Hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 978-1943876549 (Includes black-and-white photos, actors and directors index, author bio, bookmark ribbon)
John DiLeo understands the futility of trying to find justice at the Oscars. Those prized golden statuettes handed out at each year’s Academy Awards ceremony are frequently given based on popularity rather than merit. At other times, actors are rewarded for a better performance from a previous year, as if a weird sense of balance must be maintained in the Oscar universe. Yet despite all the inconsistencies and injustices of Oscar night, we can’t stop watching, nor can we keep ourselves from reflecting on who should have won. DiLeo’s new book, Not Even Nominated: 40 Overlooked Costars of Oscar-Winning Performances, examines such cases of thievery (or at least neglect), yet adds a twist: Looking at a film’s winning performers in the four major acting categories, DiLeo focuses on actors from the same movie who delivered exceptional performances (sometimes besting the actual winner) yet didn’t even receive a nomination.
These slights often occur due to more reserved characters (whom DiLeo refers to as “feeds”) playing opposite dynamic roles. Think of Margaret Dumont setting up Groucho Marx’s jokes or Bud Abbott playing the straight man to Lou Costello. Without those foils or feeds, the headliners may lack the necessary spark to ignite those performances. DiLeo notes, “In quite a few examples, the showier part was the one to win the award, while the subtler, less-is-more performance was neglected.” But sometimes the spark deserves just as much (or perhaps more) attention as the principal player. The book provides several interesting examples throughout Oscar history.
Case in point: Judy Holliday was the focus of the wildly popular comedy/drama Born Yesterday (1950), playing Billie Dawn, a former chorus girl whose boyfriend Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) seeks to improve her “low-class speech and dimwitted world view” to help lure a congressman’s support for Harry’s business. Not only did Holliday gain film notoriety by reprising a role she had already made famous in the Garson Kanin play, but she also beat out two powerhouse performances (Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard) to win the Best Actress Oscar. Yet Holliday’s Billie required someone to play off of for her role to stand out even more. Crawford certainly did so admirably but received no nomination.
We see the same thing with Gregory Peck backing up Best Actress winner Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953), Ryan O’Neal brilliantly supporting his ten-year-old daughter Tatum in her Best Supporting Actress win for Paper Moon (1973), and others. DiLeo has a gift for delving into those unheralded supporting performances, showing why they were essential to the players who walked away with the gold statuettes.
It may be easy to see these dichotomies in comedic films, but such examples are not limited to comedy. We remember Dustin Hoffman’s character Raymond in Rain Man (1988) far better than his brother Charlie, played by Tom Cruise, but without Charlie, how would we fully appreciate the skill it takes for Hoffman’s Raymond to capture our hearts? Timothy Hutton won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for portraying young Conrad in Ordinary People (1980), but what about Donald Sutherland’s far-from-ordinary performance as his father, Calvin, the man holding the film and his family together?
Consider an even more challenging situation: having your work recognized apart from not one but three other actors. Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, and Meryl Streep were all nominated for The Deer Hunter (1978), but DiLeo makes a solid case for John Savage’s performance as Stevie, which not only deserved an Oscar nod but may be the only character who brings true focus to the film.
Frequently, actors overlooked in one film are eventually rewarded in another, but not always. Some, such as Edward G. Robinson1, never took home an Oscar or were even nominated despite long and successful careers. Again, no one ever said the Academy Awards are fair, but DiLeo champions the underappreciated, not necessarily out of sympathy but in the hopes that we will seek out those films and recognize part of the unsung efforts that made them memorable. While becoming increasingly aware of the “less is more” roles we see in movies, we may also think of other titles featuring other actors who gave brilliant performances that went largely unnoticed.
DiLeo can’t correct those Oscar-worthy performances that weren’t nominated, but he can cause us to reconsider those labors. I know I plan to revisit overlooked performances from stars like Joel McCrea, Kim Darby, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, and more in the coming weeks. The author challenges us to take another look at pictures that have become so familiar we think we’ve seen in them all there is to see. Thanks to DiLeo, you may be surprised.
One of the many pleasures of reading Not Even Nominated comes from actors’ histories and the behind-the-scenes stories from the films. DiLeo provides a wealth of Hollywood history, the paths of performers and directors, and audience reactions throughout the decades. And on top of that, Not Even Nominated is just plain fun. You may discover you’ve spent an entire afternoon or evening reading about one overlooked costar after another, then wanting to watch (or rewatch) several of the pictures. I know I did.
DiLeo has written other books celebrating overlooked performances. You might also enjoy There Are No Small Parts: 100 Outstanding Film Performances with Screen Time of 10 Minutes or Less (2022) and 100 Great Film Performances You Should Remember - But Probably Don’t (2004). He has also written many books on classic films, including the first one I encountered, And You Thought You Knew Classic Movies! 200 Quizzes for Golden Age Movie Lovers (1999), a book Pauline Kael called “…the smartest movie quiz book I’ve ever seen.” If you love classic films, you need to get to know John DiLeo. Not Even Nominated is a great place to start.
Not Even Nominated releases on October 10, 2024, available online and wherever books are sold.
Robinson was posthumously awarded an honorary Oscar in 1973.