by Nathaniel R
We love to throw random Oscar trivia at you. We love you for not even trying to dodge it! So here's a top ten for you. Here's something we were pondering the other day quite randomly: pictures that Oscar voters obviously loved but somehow skipped in the Best Picture race. This trivia is now a different game entirely given that there are so many Best Picture nominees each year. Unless Oscar returns to the days of 5 nominees, we aren't likely to see this list change ever again. But do you think any film this year might see a lot of nominations without a Best Picture bit. Anyway here is the all-timers list of such things...
The "Most-Nominated" Films That Missed Best Picture
01. Nine nominations
THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY (1969)
Director Sydney Pollack would make multiple classics in his career, among which The Way We Were (1973) and Tootsie (1982) are arguably the best loved today, and win two Oscars for Out of Africa (1985). His fifth, which preceeded those "greatest hits" catapulted him into greatness. This bleak masterpiece about a Depression-era dance marathon is still an intense watch a full half century after its debut. The performances by Jane Fonda, Susannah York, and Gig Young are sensational and the film is never less than riveting. It was nominated for 9 Oscars, more than any of the Best Picture nominees that year save Anne of a Thousand Days, but won only supporting actor for Gig Young. Perhaps it was too bleak... or those Academy members with a taste for grit and edge were all already in Midnight Cowboy's pocket that year?
02. [TIE] Eight nominations plus a non-competitive special achievement Oscar
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
Two effects-heavy spectacles are the runner up to the all-time record for "most nominations without a Best Picture citation". Both were enormous hits in their years, landing in the top three of their respective years box office top ten, but curiously missed out on the top category. The Poseidon Adventure is perhaps understandable as it's very broad and nearly camp today but Close Encounters, one of Steven Spielberg's all-time finest films, is less explicable given its widespread critical acclaim at the time. In other words it wasn't just a "populist" choice. The films had very similar Oscar success. Both films were up for Best Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Sound, Film Editing, and Art-Direction. Furthermore they won the exact same number of Oscars, each taking one competitive win (Best Song for Poseidon and Best Cinematography for Close Encounters) and one non-competitive "special achievement" Oscar in categories that were traditionally "off & on" with the Academy (Visual Effects for Poseidon Adventure and "Sound Effects Editing" for Close Encounters). Neither of those categories stabilized until much later, alternating between non-competitive and competitive, and "no awards given". Sound Editing stabilized in 1988 and Visual Effects in 1991.
04. [TIE] Eight nominations
RAGTIME (1981)
DREAMGIRLS (2006)
THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
Three very different films within three very different genres, though two of them had black protagonists back when Oscar was more resistant to movies about the black experience. Ragtime was a costume drama about a pianist involved with a rich white family at the beginning of the 20th century, Dreamgirls was a stage-to-screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical about a Motown group, and The Dark Knight a Batman sequel that was, more importantly, the zeitgeist moment when the superhero genre completed its ascension to the top of Hollywood's foodchain. As near as we can tell only one of these films caused an Oscar-changing backlash roar by being left out of the top category... but it should be noted that Dreamgirls also helped cause a small Oscar change. After its 3 nominations for Best Original Song (which Enchanted repeated the very next year) the category rules changed to allow only 2 songs to be nominated from a single film. Some campaign teams take it a step further now and submit only one to up their chances of a win (think "Shallow" from A Star is Born, though it still would have won with another of its songs as a nominee).
One more note about this grouping. Dreamgirls (2006) holds the very strange honor of being the most-nominated film of its year, period, without a Best Picture nomination. The BP lineup that year (Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, Departed, Babel, and Letters from Iwo Jima) had an atypically low collective nomination count in terms of how Oscar usually behaves with its most-beloved top five.
07. Seven nominations plus an Honorary Award
JOAN OF ARC (1948)
In the early days of Oscar they were much freer with "Honorary" prizes and special awards ass those things had not yet settled into a routine. Take this well meaning lengthy epic. It was the kind of prestige biopic that's more respected than loved at the time (note the lack of a best picture nomination) but they felt the need to give it an Honorary Award in addition to its 7 nominations. The honorary award was for producer Walter Wanger, who had actually already received both an Honorary Award and a Irving J Thalberg Memorial award in the ten yars preceding this picture. The award was for...
...distinguished service to the industry in adding to its moral stature in the world community by his production of the picture Joan of Arc.
Wanger would have one last run with Oscar as a nominee for producing Cleopatra (1963) which would also prove to be his last motion picture.
08. [TIE] Seven nominations
This has only been accomplished by 12 films so it's essentially a top 20 we're talking about rather than a top ten. (again, we're only talking non Best Picture players). One third of the final 12 pictures in this list share the same movie star!!!. The movies are...
COME TO THE STABLE (1949)
PEPE (1960)
HUD (1963)
HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964)
ALIENS (1986)
DICK TRACY (1990)
BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (1994)
COLD MOUNTAIN (2003)
Of the pre-1980s movies only Hud and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte have really lived on due to the eternal starpower of Paul Newman and Bette Davis, respectively, and the latter has also been helped by its connection to Bette's feud with Joan Crawford. Though we should note that Cantinflas, the legendary Mexican star of Pepe, recently got his own biopic. Of this sextet it is absolute insanity that Hud missed a Best Picture nomination since it towers over the actual nominees that year in terms of quality (Tom Jones, America America, Cleopatra, Lilies of the Field, and How the West Was Won) and is also a serious drama with pedigree. Aliens is also an unthinkable miss but it was dealing with heavy genre bias AND sequel bias.
...and, look, an Unofficial Julie Andrews Tetralogy also received seven nominations without a Best Picture nod.
HAWAII (1967)
THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (1967)
STAR! (1968)
VICTOR/VICTORIA (1982)
Star! was regarded as an hubristic debacle from the start for Julie Andrews but Oscar at least was partially onboard. Victor/Victoria's miss is harder to read in retrospect since it was such a delightful success in the early 80s when "genderbending" was all the rage... but perhaps Tootsie stole its comic thunder for Best Picture? And no one speaks of Hawaii despite its large success at the time; we've never had the opportunity to see it.
RUNNERS UP?:
Films that have managed six nominations without a Best Picture nomination include but are definitely not limited to: The Rains Came (1939), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), Empire of the Sun (1987) and both Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Thelma & Louise in 1991. But once you get to six nominations or less there are a ton of films that hold that distinction.
Most impressively and frustratingly My Man Godfrey (1936) and Carol (2015), two masterpieces of their respective genres, arrived in time periods in history wherein the Academy was nominating more than 5 movies for Best Picture each year and yet they were still denied their richly deserved status as nominees for the top prize despite six nominations and some in major categories ---ARRRRRGH.