Rank the "1 and Done" Oscar-Winning Actors
Saturday, November 12, 2016 at 11:19AM
NATHANIEL R in Best Actor, Oscar Trivia, Supporting Actor, Yul Brynner, gender politics, musicals

Did you catch the out of focus Yul Brynner robot in the background of a darkly lit scene in last week's episode of Westworld? That charismatic movie star had a lot of success in action films (see also the original Magnificent Seven) but he won his only Oscar race for a musical, The King and I. Which brings us back around to our "One and done" discussion. We featured the actresses who'd won Oscars for their one and only nomination a week ago and it was so fun we decided we should do the men this weekend. The "One and Done" club includes men, too, and even a few more of them. (As with the women I left out those who would otherwise qualify but for a second round via the Honorary Oscars)

Give us your top ten among them in the comments!

LEAD
A few differences worth noting that differ from leading actresses. Only 9% of leading actresses win from their sole nomination. For men, it's quite different with around 21% belonging to the 1 and done club...

That said none of the "1 and done" women had nominations in other types of categories as the men do which points to another gender divide within Hollywood, with men getting to wear hats on prestige films and men were much older when they won on average. This suggests on the surface that they're more eager to nominate their leading ladies again but we suspect it has more to do with the age of the winners; women win when they're much younger, statistically, so there is more time in their careers to get a second nomination.

 

 

SUPPORTING
About 39% of the winners in this category are one time only nominees... so Supporting Actor is slightly less novelty oriented than Supporting Actress which has about 50% of its winners being one competition only. One curious statistic is that men AND women who've won Oscars for supporting performances in musical films 7 of them all together were 'one & dones' except for Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables. On the leading side, it's the opposite; Yul Brynner is the only "1 and done" among male or female musical leads that won. (Rex Harrison, Bing Crosby, James Cagney, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, etcetera all had multiple nominations)

Brynner wasn't the only man to win his 1 and done for a Musical performance

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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