The Academy Awards are the pinnacle of cinematic accomplishment. They represent the definitive choice for the best performance among the best performers. However, not all contests for the Oscars are particularly competitive. Though all the nominees deserve to be there, often there are one or two performances that rise above the rest. But that is not always the case.
During its 95-year history, the Academy Awards have featured many incredible nominee fields but perhaps none better than for Actor in a leading role 1974. This was an extremely tight race comprising entirely of screen legends, featuring five diverse performances. Here is a brief recap of the legendary best actor Oscar field from 50 years ago.
Marlon Brando – Last Tango in Paris
Renowned for his raw style, Marlon Brando may be the most influential actor of the twentieth century. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times during the 1950s but by 1970, he had been officially relegated to the “has been” heap. However, in 1972, Brando gave his most iconic performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather. He won the Oscar for Best Actor and in the process, resurrected his career. Last Tango in Paris immediately followed Brando’s timeless turn as the notorious mafia chieftain.
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango in Paris is a polarizing film that remains controversial to this day. Brando plays a recently widowed American ex-pat who engages in a casual yet torrid sexual relationship with a Parisian woman several decades his junior. Despite being banned or censored in numerous countries, Last Tango was a financial success thanks to what director Martin Scorsese calls a “towering Brando performance.” The role garnered the eminent thespian his seventh and final Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Jack Lemmon – Save the Tiger
For his performance in Save the Tiger, Jack Lemmon won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Actor. With direction from John Avildsen, the film features Lemmon as Harry Stoner, a traumatized WWII vet who has become disillusioned by life and consumed by despair. As Harry tries to navigate his woes and justify a warped moral compass, he longs for the days of his youth. It was an uneasy role which required the actor to participate in his character’s anguish. “I started to crack as the character did,” Lemmon said.
Roger Ebert summed up this picture as “essentially a virtuoso piece of movie acting. Jack Lemmon holds the movie together by the sheer force of his performance”. This was the actor’s fifth of eight career Academy Award nominations. Remarkably, no studio wanted to make Save the Tiger. Paramount pictures consented to do the movie, but at a budget of just $1 million. To make the project work, Lemmon agreed to work for union scale. At the time, it was less than $170 per week.
Jack Nicholson – The Last Detail
Based on the 1970 novel by Darryl Ponicsan, The Last Detail chronicles the brief, but vibrant mission of two hardened Navy men tasked with delivering a junior sailor to prison. Jack Nicholson plays the utterly magnetic Billy “Badass” Buddusky, a Signalman 1st Class who has seen most of what the Navy has to offer. As the combustible Buddusky, Jack scored his third of twelve career Oscar nods.
This is not Nicholson’s most famed performance, but it may be his most important. The visceral intensity that Jack displayed was largely an unknown commodity at the time and it helped him attain revered roles. Producer Michael Douglas cast Nicholson in the landmark film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, only after seeing him as the spirited sailor. “Jack had done passive characters”, said Douglas. “But when I saw him as the flamboyant but sensitive shore patrolman in The Last Detail, I knew he could play the part.” Nicholson won his first career Academy Award for Best Actor in 1976 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Al Pacino – Serpico
This picture was way ahead of its time, both topically and stylistically. Serpico tells the true story of New York policeman Frank Serpico and his efforts to combat a highly corrupt NYPD in the 1960s and 1970s. Adapted from the Peter Mass book of the same name, the film features a gritty style that continues to influence cinema. After showing initial interest in Robert Redford, production opted to cast Al Pacino in the title role. Pacino was perhaps Hollywood’s hottest young actor due to his undeniable success as Michael Corleone the previous year.
Serpico can be considered Al Pacino’s breakout role. It gave the burgeoning thespian a chance to prove his talents independent of the cultural phenomenon that was The Godfather. The critics took note. Al was rewarded for his extensive performance in Serpico with his second of nine career Oscar nominations. Earlier in the year, Pacino beat out Lemmon and Nicholson for the Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) at the 1974 Golden Globe Awards.
Robert Redford – The Sting
With seven Oscars including best picture, The Sting was the big winner at the 1974 Academy Awards. It features a reunion of sorts between director George Roy Hill and actors Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The trio previously collaborated on the massively successful Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. With The Sting, the audience is given an inside look to the long con. The story takes place in 1936 amid the colorful Chicago underworld. Redford plays Johnny Hooker, a small-time confident man who gets in over his head and must turn to a more experienced grifter for help. Together, Redford and Newman turn the tables on a powerful crime boss in this clever period dramedy.
The highly acclaimed performance in The Sting helped cement Robert Redford as a prominent leading man for the rest of the century. It also resulted in his first of four lifetime Academy Award nominations. His only career Oscar win came in 1981, but not for acting. In his filmmaking debut for Ordinary People, Redford won the Academy Award for best director.
Wrapping Up
50 years removed, the field for the 1974 Academy Award for best actor still ranks as one of the most prestigious in history. It was a mix of star power and seminal works that is doubtful ever to be seen again. In the end, it was a career performance from Jack Lemmon that was needed to take top honors. None were more surprised than him as he delivered one of the all-time great Oscar acceptance speeches.
