by Nathaniel R
Audrey Hepburn giving King Vidor his HonoraryThe Honorary Oscars, which will be given out again tonight to a very deserving quartet (Donald Sutherland, Owen Roizman, Agnes Varda, and Charles Burnett), have always been a curious and quite arbitary distinction. Like competitive Oscars the timing has to be just right. You have to be on people's minds. You have to have a cheerleading section in the right places within the Academy. You mostly have to be of a certain age (so if you die before you're 75 or so, forget about it!). Curiously, though, you don't have to be overdue having lost a bunch of previous Oscars. This year's recipients fit into the tradition of "overdue because they've been under-honored" but this is not always the case. The Honorary Oscars, even since the beginning have often gone to people who've won competitive statues. That's a strange thing, if you ask us, since shouldn't the point be to cover your bases? Quite a few great stars who have never been the single best in any particular year so the Honorary is a perfect way to honor them. At the very least it's a better way to honor them than a competitive statue in a year where they don't really deserve one (and that's happened so often!)
At the 1978 Oscars the 111th through 114th Honorary Oscars were handed out and they illustrate this confusion as to the award's purpose...
The director King Vidor (a five time nominee) and the animator Walter Lantz (a ten time nominee) were the overdue and deserving type having never won. Another recipient, the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film, represented the Academy's now discontinued habit of honoring institutions as well as people with this prize. But the fourth recipient that year could hardly be called "undervalued" or "overdue" though he was an institution if you will. The final honoree was Lord Laurence Olivier "for the full body of his work, for the unique achievements of his entire career and his lifetime of contribution to the art of film."
But why?
Not only was Sir Larry also a nominee for Best Actor that very year (The Boys from Brazil which was his 11th and final nomination) but he had already won a competitive Oscar (Best Actor, Hamlet). What's more he'd even already won a previous Honorary Oscar at the 1946 Oscars for starring in, producing, and directing The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France.
In short this was his third Oscar. And he wasn't even that old, having just turned 70 (he would continue acting for another decade, finally leaving this mortal coil in 1989).
So what is an Honorary for? Should it only be for people who've never won or is it okay to keep handing someone who has been abundantly honored with multiple Oscars and plentiful nominations, yet more trophies? Can we safely expect the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, and Meryl Streep to pick up honoraries in another 10 years despite winning multiple times already?
Have you pondered this same 'what is it for?' question in the past?