Biggest Oscar Snubs #9: Non-Nominated Directors

by Andre Soares | Jan 10, 2010 | | 5 Comments    

Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard in Mutiny on the Bounty

Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard in Mutiny on the Bounty (top); Louis Armstrong, Barbra Streisand in Hello Dolly! (bottom)

Oscar Nomination Snub #9

Biggest Oscar Snubs #10: Gordon Willis, Caleb Deschanel, Michael Nyman

The directors listed above — and I could add several other names to the roster — are those whose films received multiple Oscar nods, including Best Picture, but they (the directors themselves) failed to be shortlisted. Every Academy member (currently close to 6,000) is allowed to vote for Best Picture, but only the members of the Academy’s Directors Branch (about 400 of them) are allowed to vote for Best Direction. That helps to explain why, generally speaking, Best Picture nominees tend to be more mainstream (i.e., accessible or dumbed down) than the Best Direction entries, while the godawfully campy musical number featured on the Hello Dolly! clip above may help to explain why Gene Kelly didn’t get a nod from his fellow directors.

I should add that both Sam Wood and Arthur Hiller received best director nominations in, respectively, 1942 and 1970, for, once again respectively, Kings Row and Love Story, while Laurence Olivier won a special Oscar in 1946. Also of interest: non-nominee Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy went on to win the Best Picture Oscar at the 1990 ceremony.

Another aside: Until 1943, usually 10 (sometimes 12) films were nominated each year for Best Picture, whereas there were only three or, from 1936 on, five slots per year for the Best Direction nominees. Obviously, not every single director could be nominated. On the list above I’ve included Sam Wood’s omission because The Pride of the Yankees earned no less than 11 nominations in 1942 — and directors were allowed to be nominated for more than one film in the same year (e.g., Michael Curtiz in 1938 for both Four Daughters and Angels with Dirty Faces).

As for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws snub (above), it must have been particularly galling for the director because he had a camera crew at his home when the 1975 nominations were announced. "I didn’t get it! I didn’t get it! I wasn’t nominated!" he moaned. "I got beaten up by Fellini!" (Federico Fellini’s Amarcord had won the best foreign-language film Oscar the year before; according to Academy rules at that time, it was eligible in other categories in 1975, the year it opened in the Los Angeles area.)

"It hurts because I feel it was a director’s movie," Spielberg later remarked. "But there was a Jaws backlash. The same people who had raved about it began to doubt its artistic value as soon as it began to bring in so much money."

Considering the intensity of the furor following their publicly announced nominationlessness, a couple of snubbed directors will have their own slots further down (or rather, up) this Biggest Oscar Snubs series.

Clips: Hello Dolly! (martaclaga); Spielberg’s Oscar snub (eriksn)

Spielberg quote: Damien Bona and Mason Wiley’s Inside Oscar

Biggest Oscar Snubs #8: Audrey Hepburn


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5 Responses to “Biggest Oscar Snubs #9: Non-Nominated Directors”

  1. Joao Soares on January 10th, 2010

    You’re also snubbing the snubbing of Barbra Streisand in “The Prince of Tides” (1992 awards, with seven nominations including Best Picture). As snubs go…

  2. Andre Soares on January 10th, 2010

    Hold your horses, Joao!!
    I do say that a couple of *major* directorial snubs will show up elsewhere on the “Biggest Snubs” list.
    In fact they’ll have their own private Snub Listing.
    Hang in there… Barbra S. will be back.

  3. Joao Soares on January 10th, 2010

    lol! Apologies, apologies… I should have known better. Btw, congrats on the acknowledgements on Mark A. Vieira’s “Greta Garbo – A Cinematic Legacy” – I’ve just finished reading it.

  4. Andre Soares on January 10th, 2010

    Hey, Joao,
    I’ve know Mark for a number of years. Very cool guy. And a thorough film researcher and great photographer.
    I’ve been pestering him to do a q&a on his latest Irving Thalberg book.
    Hopefully, he’ll find some time to do it in the next couple of weeks.

  5. sandy shapiro on February 5th, 2010

    Arthur Hiller directed some great movies, but “Airport” was not among them. “Airport” was WRITTEN BY Arthur HAILEY.

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