Since the inaugural Academy Awards were held on 16 May 1928 to honour to the best films of 1927 and 1928, over 10,000 nominations have been returned across a changing range of acting, technical and craft categories. As Hollywood prepares in the middle of a pandemic for the delayed 93rd Oscar ceremony, Cinema Paradiso looks back at the biggest winners and losers and points you in the direction of hundreds of classic films that you simply have to see!
Things will have been a bit different at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on 25 April 2021. Instead of the usual scrum on the red carpet, as arriving guests wave to the crowds and pose for the cameras and the TV crews, there will be social distancing, hand sanitising and silence. Fashionistas will still get to comment on the outfits and perhaps the designer masks being worn by Tinseltown's great and good. But, with so much of the usual hullabaloo being reined in because of coronavirus, the focus will be fixed on the destination of the golden statuettes that will be handed out to the privileged few who have been allowed to attend in person.
During the course of the evening, a few records will be set and/or broken, as Hollywood edges its way towards overcoming the institutional prejudices that have shaped America's cinematic consciousness since the 1890s. Sadly, diversity hasn't always been a watchword at the Oscars. But sentiment and a certain middlebrow worthiness have meant that quality hasn't always been rewarded, either. Neither has box-office success. Nevertheless, the annual jamboree always throws up talking points and fascinating titbits of trivia.
Most Oscar Nominations
The Oscars were instituted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to reward the efforts of the Hollywood studios and publicise their films. Such was the corporate nature of the American cinema that the awards for Best Picture were initially presented to the sponsoring studio rather than to the individual producers. Contractual arrangements also meant that the heads of crafts like production design and costumes had their names attached to pictures on which they had done little or no work.
During a career at MGM that saw him transform the way in which sets were researched and constructed, Cedric Gibbons racked up around 1500 credits. As a founding member of the Academy, he was invited to design the 13.5-inch gold-plated statuette that was sculpted by George Stanley and acquired its famous nickname through the intervention of columnist Sidney Skolsky, actress Bette Davis or Academy librarian Margaret Herrick, despending upon which tall tale you choose to believe. In all, Gibbons would be nominated on 39 occasions and win 11 times, with George Cukor's thriller Gaslight (1944), Vincente Minnelli's musical An American in Paris (1951) and Robert Wise's boxing drama, Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), being available to rent on high-quality disc from Cinema Paradiso.
Another designer with a talent for picking up credits was costumier Edith Head, who spent 44 years at Paramount before moving on to Universal in 1967. She would have greatly exceeded her tally of eight wins from 35 nominations if the category of Best Costume had existed before 1949, when she and Gile Steele shared the prize for black-and-white films for The Heiress, William Wyler's adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square. Few come close to Head in terms of nominations and Cinema Paradiso users can marvel at her creations in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951) and George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973). They should note, however, that her victories for William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953) and Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954) are slightly tainted by the fact she chose not to give either Sonja de Lennart or Hubert de Givenchy any credit for the iconic costumes they had designed for Audrey Hepburn.
There's markedly less controversy involved in the multiple nominations amassed by composers John Williams, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and Randy Newman. Famed for his work on the blockbusters that have dominated Hollywood since 1975, Williams is the most nominated living person, with 52 nods to his credit and five Oscars to add to his seven BAFTAs, four Golden Globes, three Emmys and 25 Grammys. He is also the only person to be nominated in seven different decades. Forty-six of Williams's citations are for Best Score, with the others coming in the Best Song category, and Cinema Paradiso viewers can turn up the volume on the DVD, Blu-ray or 4K discs of Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993), and George Lucas's Star Wars (1977).
Born in Vienna, Max Steiner arrived in Hollywood at the start of the sound era and composed scores for over 300 features at RKO and Warner Bros. Working at a time when Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklós Rózsa were also at their peak, Steiner was perhaps unlucky to convert only three of his 25 nominations. But his scores for John Ford's The Informer (1935), Irving Rapper's Now, Voyager (1942) and John Cromwell's Since You Went Away (1944) have definitely stood the test of time.
Together with his brother, Lionel, sons David and Thomas, and nephew, Randy, Alfred Newman is part of the most nominated family in Oscar history. They can boast a massive 92 nominations and 12 wins, with Alfred and Randy contributing 43 and 22 nominations respectively (the latter total being matched by fellow composers Victor Young and Dimitri Tiomkin). Such are the caprices of disc availability in the UK that Cinema Paradiso can only present Alfred's work on Henry King's The Song of Bernadette (1943), Walter Lang's The King and I (1956) and Joshua Logan's Camelot (1967), But we can share Randy's Oscar-winning songs, 'If I Didn't Have You' and 'We Belong Together' from Pete Docter and David Silverman's Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3 (2010).
Another songwriter to feature on the Most Nominated list is lyricist Sammy Cahn, who collected 26 nominations between 1942-74. It says much for the calibre of his work that three of his four Oscar-winning songs were introduced by Frank Sinatra: the title tune to Jean Negulesco's Three Coins in the Fountain (1955). 'All the Way' from Charles Vidor's The Joker Is Wild (1957), and 'High Hopes' from Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head (1959). The latter pair were co-written with Jimmy Van Heusen (who also has four wins, as does Johnny Mercer), with whom Cahn also teamed on 'Call Me Irresponsible' from George Marshall's Papa's Delicate Condition (1963).
Although they were at the top of their tree, Tin Pan Alley types like Cahn had a much lower profile than the likes of Woody Allen and Billy Wilder, who have 24 and 21 Oscar nominations to their respective credit. Although he seems set to remain under the cloud that has irreparably tarnished his reputation, Allen was once the darling of the Academy, even though he refused to attend the Monday night shindigs because he was playing live jazz with his band in New York. In addition to winning the Oscar for Best Director for Annie Hall (1977), Allen has also received the Best Original Screenplay award for the same film (for which he was also nominated for Best Actor), Hannah and Her Sisters (1987) and Midnight in Paris (2012). Moreover, he has guided seven performers to Oscars from 18 nominations, an achievement only surpassed by William Wyler (14) and Elia Kazan (9).
Cinema Paradiso has already covered the career of Billy Wilder in an Instant Expert's Guide. But he has earned six Academy Awards from his 21 nominations, notably doubling up twice as writer and director on The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Apartment (1960), which brought him a hat-trick by also taking Best Picture. His other competitive win came for his contribution to the screenplay of the self-directed Sunset Boulevard (1950), although he also accepted the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1988.
The last two people in the 20 Nominations Club are a sound mixer and the founder of a studio nicknamed the House of Mouse, to whom we shall return in the Most Oscar Wins section. Kevin O'Connell is perhaps the least familiar name in this overview, even though he held the record for the most nominations without a win until he broke his luck at the 21st attempt with Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge (2016). O'Connell was first nominated for James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment (1983), but is better known for action fare like Tony Scott's Top Gun (1986), Simon West's Con Air (1997), Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001) and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), all of which were nominated and all of which are available from Cinema Paradiso on such superior quality discs that you'll feel surrounded by the movie sound.
Most Acting Nominations
The stats reveal that it's much harder to secure an Oscar nomination for acting than it is for some of the technical and craft categories. Indeed, only five performers in the 94-year history of the awards have reached double figures across the four acting berths.
A long way out in front is Meryl Streep, whose tally of 21 is made up of 17 nominations for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress. The first of her three wins came in the latter division, when she was rewarded for playing half of the eponymous couple in Robert Benton's Kramer vs Kramer (1979). Her triumphs in the former category came for her deeply moving portrayal of Zofia Zawistowski in Alan J. Pakula's adaptation of William Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice (1982), and for her knowing impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Law's The Iron Lady (2011).
While Streep's record total seems unlikely to be beaten, the same seems true of Katharine Hepburn, whose 12 nominations all came for Best Actress and yielded four Oscars. The first win sees her sparkling as Eve Lovelace, the small-town girl taking Broadway by storm, in Lowell Sherman's Morning Glory (1933). But Hepburn had to wait three decades to snag her second statuette, as she co-starred with off-screen partner Spencer Tracy and niece Katharine Houghton in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). She became a member of an exclusive club of five performers to win consecutive acting awards, when she shared the Best Actress prize for her work in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter with the debuting Barbra Streisand for her ebullient turn as Fanny Brice in William Wyler's Funny Girl (both 1968).
For the record, the other consecutive winners are Luise Rainer for Robert Z. Leonard's The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth (1937), Spencer Tracy for Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937) and Norman Taurog's Boys Town (1938), Jason Robards for his supporting contributions to Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) and Fred Zinnemann's Julia (1977), and Tom Hanks for Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993) and Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994). And, before we forget, Hepburn would win once more Best Actress gong for Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981), when ailing co-star Henry Fonda finally ended his long wait for an Academy Award.
The only other actress to reach double figures for nominations is the great Bette Davis, whose 10 citations all came for Best Actress. She had to settle for victories for Alfred E. Green's Dangerous (1935) and William Wyler's Jezebel (1938), as being pitted against co-star Anne Baxter in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve split her vote and allowed Judy Holliday to win for her comic masterclass in George Cukor's Born Yesterday (1950). Laurence Olivier reached the same score, with a single Best Supporting nod adding to his nine nominations for Best Actor. He only won once, although he had the distinction of becoming the first person to direct themselves to an Oscar in Hamlet (1948).
The most nominated actor is Jack Nicholson, whose 12 citations break down into eight for Best Actor and four for Best Supporting. He won in the latter for Terms of Endearment, while his other victories came for Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and his reunion with James L. Brooks on As Good As It Gets (1997), Nicholson's first Best Actor success came as part of a Big Five sweep, a feat that has only been matched by Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Four features have missed out on one leg of the sweep, Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939), William Wyler's Mrs Miniver (1942), Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Sam Mendes's American Beauty (1999). But spare a thought for the eight pictures that were nominated in the Big Five slots and failed to convert any of them: Richard Brooks's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961), Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Arthur Hiller's Love Story (1970), Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974), Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980), James Ivory's The Remains of the Day (1993) and David O. Russell's American Hustle (2013).
Back at the acting categories, the aforementioned Spencer Tracy is joined on nine nominations by Paul Newman and Al Pacino, who respectively split 8/1 and 5/4, but had to be content with single Best Actor victories for Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money (1986) and Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992). Similarly, Geraldine Page only got to win once, for her Best Actress turn in Peter Masterson's The Trip to Bountiful (1985), despite being nominated on eight occasions (four times in each). She is joined in this figure by Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon (both 7/1) and Denzel Washington (6/2). Brando's two wins came for his Best Actor displays in Eliz Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), while Lemmon and Washington took one in each category, respectively for John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy's Mister Roberts (1955) and John G. Avildsen's Save the Tiger (1973) and for Edward Zwick's Glory (1989) and Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2001).
Things are a bit more crowded on the seven mark, with Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver, 1942), Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies, 1983), Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, 1998), Kate Winslet (The Reader, 2008) and Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart, 2009) all winning once. The four two-timers are Jane Fonda for Alan J. Pakula's Klute (1971) and Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978), Robert De Niro for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974) and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs Kramer and Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988), and Cate Blanchett for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004) and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013).
Having played Katharine Hepburn in the former. Blanchett is the only person to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar winner. However, Maggie Smith did get to follow up her Best Actress win for Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) by essaying fictitious nominee Diana Barrie in Herbert Ross's California Suite (1978). However, there is a sole triple winner among the seven-time nominees, as Ingrid Bergman added a Best Supporting statuette for Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974) to her Best Actress successes in George Cukor's Gaslight (1944) and Anatole Litvak's Anastasia (1956), with the latter suggesting that Hollywood had forgiven the Swede after essentially casting her into exile for her adulterous affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini.
Most Wins From the Fewest Acting Nominations
With his three Oscars for Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis stands alone in the category. He has converted half of his six nominations and given very different performances as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989), Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012). But Walter Brennan has improved upon his achievement in the Best Supporting Actor strand, as he only failed to win once on the four occasions he was nominated. He's not a recognisable name today, however, which explains why only William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) is available on disc, while Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson's Come and Get It (1936) and David Butler's Kentucky (1938) are not.
Three performers have landed a brace of Oscars from their six nominations. But, while Michael Caine and Jessica Lange may have to be content with their respective rewards for Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Lasse Hallström's The Cider House Rules (1999) and Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982) and Tony Richardson's Blue Sky (1994), Frances McDormand has added her third Best Actress victory for Chloé Zhao's Nomadland (2020) to her previous successes for Joel Coen's Fargo (1996) and Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). Check out Cinema Paradiso's Getting to Know article on this truly outstanding actress.
One of the busiest Oscar coteries is the Two From Five Club. Despite tying with Wallace Beery in King Vidor's The Champ, Fredric March followed his dual role in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) with a second Best Actor win for William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Olivia De Havilland owed a debt to the same director, as her Best Actress success in The Heiress came three years after her win for Mitchell Leisen's To Each His Own (1946). Gary Cooper and Elizabeth Taylor similarly won twice in the top acting categories, with Howard Hawks's Sergeant York (1941) and Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952) and Daniel Mann's Butterfield 8 (1960) and Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) respectively.
More recently, Sean Penn also doubled up as Best Actor for Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003) and Gus Van Sant's Milk (2008), while Gene Hackman also benefited from Eastwood's nous in taking the Best Supporting award for Unforgiven (1992) after winning Best Actor for his turn as Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971).
Six performers have won twice from four nominations, with Anthony Quinn (Viva Zapata!, 1952 & Lust For Life, 1956) being the sole male alongside Shelley Winters (The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959 & A Patch of Blue, 1965), Glenda Jackson (Women in Love, 1970 & A Touch of Class, 1973), Sally Field (Norma Rae, 1979 & Places in the Heart, 1984), Jodie Foster (The Accused, 1988 & The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) and Renée Zellweger (Cold Mountain, 2003 & Judy, 2019). With her wins for a pair of Woody Allen comedies, Dianne Wiest (Hannah and Her Sisters & Bullets Over Broadway, 1994) finds herself in good company with Peter Ustinov (Spartacus, 1960 & Topkapi, 1964) and Melvyn Douglas (Hud, 1963 & Being There, 1979), who also won twice from three nominations.
But the most select band contains those whose dual wins have come from their only two nominations. Vivien Leigh was the first to achieve this feat for playing Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois in Gone With the Wind and Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She has since been followed by Helen Hayes for Edgar Selwyn's The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and George Seaton's Airport (1970) and Hilary Swank for Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999) and Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004). On the male side of the divide, the doubling up has occurred more recently, with Kevin Spacey's wins for Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995) and American Beauty being subsequently followed by Christoph Waltz's Quentin Tarantino twosome of Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) and Mahershala Ali's own Supporting double for Barry Jenkins's Moonlight (2016) and Peter Farrelly's Green Book (2018).
Most Acting Nominations With No Wins
Two names stand out when it comes to multiple acting nominations without a single statuette to show for it. Glenn Close (4/4) might still come good this time round with Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy (2020), but she's likely to remain on Eight and Zero alongside serial Best Actor loser, Peter O'Toole, who was unlucky to come up against Gregory Peck in Robert Mulligan's adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird when he had headlined David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962) with such dashing intensity.
One notch behind this pair is Richard Burton, who failed to convert any of his seven nominations, including his Best Supporting nod for Henry Koster's take on Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel (1952). He sits alone on this mark, while Deborah Kerr, Thelma Ritter and Amy Adams keep each other company on six shut-outs and Irene Dunne, Arthur Kennedy and Albert Finney follow behind with five.
Among the 16 performers with a 0-4 record are the married couple of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. Thanks to Bonnie and Clyde and the self-directed Reds (1981), Beatty also has the misfortune to appear in two of the 15 features that have been nominated in all four acting categories without completing a clean sweep. Indeed, this feat has never been achieved, with Marlon Brando and Ned Beatty preventing A Streetcar Named Desire and Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) from scooping the elusive quartet. The aforementioned Mrs Miniver, Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953) and Coming Home took two from four, while Sam Wood's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Jean Negulesco's Johnny Belinda (1948), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2011) had to settle for a single win. Spare a thought for Gregory La Cava's My Man Godrey (1936) and Russell's American Hustle, as they missed out across the board.
Most Directing Nominations
The name of William Wyler has cropped up several times in this article. No wonder Cinema Paradiso has devoted an Instant Expert's Guide to him. He received 12 nominations for Best Director across a long career that also saw him win the category on three occasions, for Mrs Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and Ben-Hur (1959). This trio also meant that William Wyler directed three Best Picture winners from a record 13 nominations. He also holds the record for the most consecutive nominations (seven between 1936-42) and stands alone when it comes to directing nominated (36) and victorious (14) lead and supporting performances.
Yet John Ford pips him in the Best Director stakes, having won four times for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952). Frank Capra also matched Wyler's achievement with three wins from six nominations for It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).
No one else has won the Oscar for Best Director more than twice, but some of the biggest names in the field have doubled up: Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights, 1927 & All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930), Frank Borzage (7th Heaven, 1927 & Bad Girl, 1931), Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady, 1929 & Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth, 1937 & Going My Way, 1944), Billy Wilder (The Lost Weekend & The Apartment), Elia Kazan (Gentleman's Agreement, 1947 & On the Waterfront, 1954), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives, 1949 & All About Eve), George Stevens (A Place in the Sun & Giant, 1956), Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity & A Man For All Seasons, 1966), David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957 & Lawrence of Arabia), Robert Wise (West Side Story, 1961 & The Sound of Music, 1965), Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest & Amadeus, 1984), Oliver Stone (Platoon, 1986 & Born on the Fourth of July, 1989), Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven & Million Dollar Baby), Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List, 1993 & Lincoln), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005 & Life of Pi 2012), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, 2013 & Roma, 2018), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), 2014 & The Revenant, 2015).
The first Asian to win Best Director, Ang Lee is unusual in that neither of his winning films went on to take Best Picture. By contrast, Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz and Steven Soderbergh share the rare attainment of having been nomintated twice in the category in the same year. Yet none won for either Romance and Anna Christie (both 1930), Angels With Dirty Faces and Four Daughters (both 1938) or Erin Brockovich and Traffic (both 2000). Curtiz would go on to win for Casablanca (1942), but, as Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert's Guide reveals, Soderbergh is still waiting for the big prize.
With six overlooks, Clarence Brown is one worse off than King Vidor, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman when it comes to converting Best Director nominations. The poor chap didn't even get the consolation of an honorary award. Four more big names, Federico Fellini, Sidney Lumet, Stanley Kubrick and Peter Weir, have 0-4 records. At least Hitchcock got to enjoy winning Best Picture with his Hollywood debut, Rebecca (1940), while Martin Scorsese got to end his long losing streak when he won at the sixth time of asking with The Departed (2006). And don't forget John Huston, who was nominated 15 times in four different categories, but his sole wins came as the writer and director of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), for which he made history by directing father Walter Huston to the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He would also guide daughter Anjelica Huston to the Best Supporting Actress award in Prizzi's Honor (1988).
In all, 20 genuine first-timers have been nominated for Best Director, with Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) following Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, 2017) in being the only female debutants to be nominated. Similarly, only two African American neophytes have been acclaimed, John Singleton for Boyz N the Hood (1991) and Jordan Peele for Get Out (2017). A quarter of the cabal went on to win the Oscar, namely Delbert Mann for Marty (1955), Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (which he co-directed with Robert Wise), Robert Redford for Ordinary People (1980), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment, Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves (1990) and Sam Mendes for American Beauty. Somewhat scandalously, Orson Welles not only didn't win on debut for Citizen Kane (1941), but he was also never nominated again.
Most Losses, Most Wins
February 2017 turned out to be a lousy month for sound mixer Greg. P. Russell. In seeking to win an Academy Award after 16 unsuccessful nominations, he contacted fellow members of the Sound branch by phone and had his nomination for Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) rescinded for breaching AMPAS lobbying rules. Worse followed a couple of days later, when Kevin O'Connell won the category at the annual ceremony and Russell inherited his mantle as the most nominated person without a win in Oscar history.
Although he remains busy, with over 230 credits to his name, Russell hasn't been nominated for nearly a decade. He still has a chance, therefore, of passing on his unwanted record, with art director Roland Anderson and composers Alex North and Thomas Newman next in line on 15. Only the latter can break his hoodoo, as he continues to collaborate regularly with Sam Mendes, Steven Soderbergh and John Lee Hancock. Sound engineer Loren L. Ryder will also remain on 14 unsuccessful nominations, although he is something of an anomaly, as he won three Technical Achievement Awards, a Scientific and Engineering Award and an Honorary Oscar for his work on Henry Hathaway's Spawn of the North (1938).
Cinematographer George J. Folsey holds the record in his category of 13 nominations without a win, although he can count himself unlucky not to have triumphed with Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis (1944) and Stanley Donen's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954). Back on the sound beat, Rick Kline has been amassing his 11 unrewarded nominations since 1983. Until recently, he was joined on this number by songwriter Diane Warren, who received her first nod back in 1998. But she has a chance to make it 12th time lucky with 'Io si', which she composed with Laura Pausini for The Life Ahead (2020), which saw Edoardo Ponti direct his mother, Sophia Loren, who is also the subject of a Cinema Paradiso Getting to Know profile.
Animator Walter Lantz is joined on 10 luckless nominations by composer Walter Scharf and sound mixer Anna Behlmer. Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy several discs-worth of fun featuring Lantz's best-known creation, with the pick being Woody Woodpecker and Friends (1945-48). They can also delight in Scharf's work on Charles Vidor's Hans Christian Andersen (1952), William Wyler's Funny Girl and Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and marvel on Behlmer's nominated mixes on everything from Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995) to J.J. Abrams's Star Trek (2009).
By far the biggest name on this Roll of No Honours, however, is that of Italian maestro Federico Fellini, who left empty handed on 12 occasions. Having been nominated for his contributions to the screenplays of Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisàn (1946), Fellini missed out with the scripts for the self-directed La Strada (1954), I Vitelloni (1953) and La dolce vita (1960). The latter also brought him a Best Director nod and he was out-voted in the same category for 8½ (1963), Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973). The first and third of these films brought further writing nominations and he completed his tally with Fellini Casanova (1976). For more details, see Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert's Guide.
Moving on to the major winners, there's a three-way tie for Most Nominated and Most Wins in the Best Picture category. The only film to feature in both lists is James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which has 11 wins from its 14 nominations. All About Eve and Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016) only managed six each from their 14 nods, while Ben-Hur and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) scooped 11 each from their respective 12 and 11 nominations (making the latter the biggest clean sweep picture in Oscar history).
When it comes to the subtitled category whose ever-changing name is currently Best International Film, the winningest country is Italy, which was garnered 14 Oscars from 32 nominations. This total includes Honorary awards for Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948). The actual statuette recipients are Fellini's La strada, Nights of Cabiria (1957), 8½ and Amarcord, De Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and The Garden of the Finzi-Contini (1970), Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1971), Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991), Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1999), and Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2014).
France holds the record for the most nominations for Best Foreign Film and has 12 wins from its 40 citations. Two subtitled pictures have earned 10 nominations each, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma. However, Lee's wuxia shares the record for the most wins with Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982) and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019), which saw its director match a record held by our runaway serial winner (more of whom anon) in landing four Oscars in a single evening.
So there you have it! Oscars biggest Winners and Losers! We hope you enjoyed this insight into film making's most prestigious event. We're sure the Oscars will change dramatically in years to come, but nobody can deny those who have been won and nominated a place in cinematic history!
