Happy Birthday to the Oldest Living 'Best Supporting Actor'
Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 9:15AM 10 DAY UNTIL OSCAR! Random Oscar Trivia This Morning...
Today is the 91st birthday of George Kennedy. In addition to getting to spend a lot of shirtless sweaty hours with Paul Newman (mmm) in Cool Hand Luke, he's the oldest living Best Supporting Actor winner. But who, you ask, are the others? (Just humor me and ask okay?)
Okay, okay. I'll tell you!
The Five Oldest Living Best Supporting Actor Oscar Winners
after the jump...
01 George Kennedy Happy 91st birthday!
Won for: "Dragline" alpha male of a rural prison in Cool Hand Luke (1967)
He beat: John Cassavetes (The Dirty Dozen), Gene Hackman and Michael J Pollard (both: Bonnie & Clyde), and Cecil Kellaway (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)
Career Peak: 67-70 he also co-starred in The Dirty Dozen and Hurry Sundown in '67 so he won his statue in a career peak year and a few years later, another awards run.
Other Famous Roles: "Detective Ed Hocken" in the Naked Gun series, "Carter McKay" on Dallas, and "Joe Patroni" in the Airport (1970) disaster movie franchise (Golden Globe Nomination)
Where is he now: Seven years ago EW tracked the reclusive retired winner down and he shared a story about the filming. But he came out of hiding recently, appearing in the Mark Wahlberg version of The Gambler (2014)
02 Martin Landau 87 years old
Won for: "Bela Lugosi," washed up heroin addict movie star in Tim Burton's wonderful Ed Wood (1994)
He beat: Samuel L Jackson (Pulp Fiction), Chazz Palminteri (Bullets Over Broadway), Paul Scofield (Quiz Show) and Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump)
Career Peak: The usual bumpy road of peaks and valleys but the late 80s through mid 90s were particularly golden
Other Famous Roles: "Rufio" in Cleopatra (1963), "Rolin Hand" in Mission: Impossible (1966-1969), "Commander Koenig" in Space 1999 (1975-1977), "Judah Rosenthal" in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Where is he now: He was in Entourage (the movie) recently and has two movies in the can called The Last Poker Game and Without Ward.
Did You Know?: That Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is his daughter?
03 Christopher Plummer 86 years old
Won for: "Hal" a gay father in Beginners (2011)
He beat: Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn), Jonah Hill (Moneyball), Nick Nolte (Warrior), and Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
Career Peak: Difficult to say. He's always worked. An astounding 190+ credits in film and television. And that's not even where he's most celebrated since he's considered one of the premiere stage actors. He's won two Tonys from seven nominations stretching from 1958 through 2007
Other Famous Roles: "Mike Wallace" in The Insider (1999), "Leo Tolstoy" in The Last Station (2009), and "Captain Von Trapp" in The Sound of Music (1965), "Doctor Parnassus" in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Where is he now: Still a work horse as always. Next up is The Kaiser's Last Kiss (TBA) . He plays the Kaiser but the lead is Jai Courtney as a soldier sent to infiltrate his home.
04 Gene Hackman 86 years old
Won for: "Little Bill Daggett" in Unforgiven (1992). It was his second Oscar, having previously won in lead as "Jimmy Doyle" in The French Connection (1971).
He beat: Jaye Davison (The Crying Game), Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men), Al Pacino (Glengarry Glen Ross), and David Paymer (Mr Saturday Night)
Career Peak: Fairly steady as one of Hollywood's most revered actors but the 70s were particularly kind.
Other Famous Roles: "Buck Barrow" in Bonnie & Clyde (1967), "Harry Caul" in The Conversation (1974), "Harry Mosby" in Night Moves (1975), "Lex Luther" in Superman franchise (1978-1987), "Captain Frank Ramsey" in Crimson Tide (1995), "Senator Kevin Keeley" in The Birdcage (1996), "Royal Tenenbaum" in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Where is he now: Retired for 12 years now in New Mexico. Surely people have tried to convince him to return to the big screen but it's been a firm no.
05 Sean Connery 85 years old
Won for: "Jim Malone" in The Untouchables (1987)
He beat: Albert Brooks (Broadcast News), Morgan Freeman (Street Smart), Vincent Gardenia (Moonstruck) and Denzel Washington (Cry Freedom)
Career Peak: The 1980s. Shaking off such a definitive character as James Bond with stardom intact and more hit films - something no other Bond has truly done.
Other Famous Roles: the original "James Bond" (1962-1983), "Michael McBride" in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), "Mark Rutland" in Marnie (1964), "Robin Hood" in Robin & Marian (1 "William of Baskerville" in In the Name of the Rose (1986), "Professor Henry Jones" in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), "Marco Ramios" in The Hunt For Red October (1990),
Where is he now: Retired. His last film role was "Allan Quatermain" in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
If you're curious about who the oldest living screen stars, Oscar wins or not, we keep that list here.
How would you rank these five Oscar winning performances?
Reader Comments (31)
I know George Kennedy most from Death On The Nile (1978) and my favourite Christopher Plummer performance is Commodus in The Fall Of The Roman Empire (1964).
Um, apparently RobMiles and I are the same person!
I will add that when I was in third grade, I used Martin Landau as inspiration for my Halloween costume: Bela Lugosi, complete with cane, hat, and a debate over whether or not to add needle marks (my dad said no).
Plummer > Landau > Hackman > Connery, a carrer award definitively
Never seen Kennedy.
LOL there was a supporting actor contender in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Curiously enough, another Best Supporting Actor winner, Jack Palance, would have been 97 today.
Walter - LOL.
Hayden, yeah, that is weird. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is so horribly dated, and Kellaway made absolutely no impression on me whatsoever.
Ranking the post Bond careers of everyone who's played him, though?
1. Sean Connery (Yeah, no question here. The Man Who Would be King ALONE was an indicator his career would have legs post Bond.)
2. Timothy Dalton (This is mostly based on 2007-now, but he's been consistently killing it for nearly a decade now. With the right offer, after the end of Penny Dreadful, it might be Dalton, not Craig, who becomes the second Bond to get an Oscar.)
3. Pierce Brosnan (Not as consistently on fire as Dalton, but his high points (The Ghost Writer, that cameo in The World's End) are still worthy of note.)
4. George Lazenby (Yeah, in spite of being the consensus pick for worst Bond, he had a few pretty awesome post Bond moments (Game of Death, The Kentucky Fried Movie and, the one actually classy pick, Gettysburg), but he was also a fixture in the Emmanuelle franchise.)
5. Roger Moore (Probably the worst actor to make more than one of these and you can't blame him for mostly retiring after the lucky gold-mine that was Bond.)
? Daniel Craig. (I'm suspecting he'll have a Connery style finisher to his career, but you can never know for sure.)
Hayden W:
Cecil Kellaway (nominated for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) already had a nomination for The Luck of the Irish in 1948. He didn't have much to do in Guess..., but he was a beloved character actor of the golden years of Hollywood, with roles in Wuthering Heights, 1939, The Letter, 1940, The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1947, Interrupted Melody, 1955, and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964, among more than 160 movies and TV shows. There was also a Best Supporting Actress candidate in Guess...: Beah Richards, who was more deserving than Kellaway.
I agree with Ben in that many of the films of the 1960s-1970s are terribly dated. I even hesitate to watch some of them again.
Coming back to Kennedy, I believe that his win was favored by the fact that he was in two other notable films of 1967: The Dirty Dozen and Hurry Sundown. Also in 1967 Sidney Poitier was not that lucky. He was in To Sir With Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and yet he cancelled himself out and was not nominated in anyone of them. If it were today, of course, they would have promoted him for Supporting Actor in Guess...!
Martin Landau, Ed Wood
Gene Hackman, Unforgiven
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
George Kennedy, Cool Hand Luke
Sean Connery, The Untouchables
dan: In terms of sheer quality? Kennedy > Landau > Plummer > Hackman > Connery. Accounting for outside factors? Landau > Plummer > Connery > Hackman > Kennedy. Hackman's outside factor is being a prior winner, Kennedy's is that nominating him there is category fraud. Especially since, well, Strother Martin got the shaft. To paraphrase "the line", "What we've got here is, failure to nominate."
Wow, I've seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner a couple of times (though it's admittedly been a long time) and I have no recollection of Cecil Kellaway in it whatsoever. Def had to have been a career nom for this beloved actor, clearly just for showing up (see also: Gladys Cooper in My Fair Lady and Anne Sothern in The Whales of August).
Walter - I also used Martin Landau as inspira....oh wait, I didn't...Sorry!
PS. I know Martin Landau most from North by Northwest
I love love love Hackman in Unforgiven. He was a villain, but his characterization showed his villainy wasn't forced and felt authentic. I could watch those jail scenes with him, Richard Harris and Saul Rubinek all day long.
Hackman > Landau > Kennedy > Plummer > Connery
But, those top four all all fantastic.
George Kennedy and Joe Pesci are actually my two favorite oscar wins, but I'm clearly biased since both Cool Hand Luke and Goodfellas are my favorite films.
Gene Hackman has exactly 100 credits to his resume, according to IMDB, so maybe that's why he retired. HOWEVER, did the last one have to be "Welcome to Mooseport"?
I just don't see the talent in Christopher Plummer. He is Mr. Stiff to me.
Hackman turned down Nebraska I think after Nicholson also passed,Connery turned down Finney's role inSkyfall.
Landau!
I L O V E that performance.
Landau and Wiest is my favorite supporting "couple" ever.
Then Hackman, Connery, Plummer and Kennedy.
Kellaway is great as the Monsignor in Dinner, if we can use "great" to describe anything in that movie. I guess "serviceable and surviving with dignity intact" (also see Isabel Sanford and supporting actress nominee Beah Richards) is more to the point.
Weren't Plummer and Connery co-stars in The Man Who Would be King?
And I always think of Charade first when I think of George Kennedy, even though his role wasn't huge. It was just the first time I saw him.
And I really need to see Ed Wood.
We should all be grateful to have a space where ranking the five oldest living supporting actor winners is a normal everyday activity.
And it obviously goes:
Landau
Hackman
Plummer
Kennedy
Connery
I've also seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner several times—and have a bigger soft spot for it than most people—but I have to admit I forgot all about Kellaway. It's weird to me that a four-hander (Hepburn, Tracy, Poiter, Houghton) got four nominations and two were off the main billing.
Granted, it probably deserved two acting nominations total for Tracy and Hepburn. And if a supporting player deserved attention, it's the lady who got read to filth by Katharine Hepburn in the driveway.
They are all wonderful and were formidable in their ways - Lowest to Highest:
George Kennedy for Charade then Cool Hand Luke.
Martin Landau will always be "Mission Impossible" & "Ed Wood" for me
Sean Connery - post Bond really took off after "Murder on the Orient Express" & "The Man Who Would Be King" - (Plummer played Kipling)
Christopher Plummer - loved him in "The Beginners" - anyone seen his "Barrymore"?
Gene Hackman - 2 wins, "Ungorgiven" & leading Oscar for "The French Connection".
Peggy Sue posted my ranking. But my all-time fav of the five actors is definitely Gene Hackman,. due mostly to my early obsession with The French Connection. Also, I'll will always watch Enemy of the State and Behind Enemy Lines whenever they're on TV.
Landau - well deserved
Plummer - well deserved
Hackman - Davidson should have won
Kennedy - Pollard should have won
2 cases of older veterans winning on sentiment (just like this year) over more deserving younger nominees.
Connery - any one of the nominees more deserving.
Kennedy's cameo in The Gambler is quite moving due to his frail state. It's a stark reminder of our fragile humanity.
@ Hayden - Being read to filth by Katharine Hepburn is enough reward. No need for an Oscar nom! ;)
Ordering the four performances I saw (haven't seen Kennedy's):
- Landau
- Plummer
- Hackman
- Connery
It is funny that I like Landau's performance better than Plummer's, because in his year I would totally have voted for Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction, while in Plummer's run I was 100% behind his winning.
Interestingly, both Plummer and Landau star are both in a new film this year called REMEMBER!
Happy birthday wishes to legendary actor.
some birthday wishes for share with special one
some wishes for share, get good birthday to remember..