The Contenders:
Richard Burton: Becket
Peter O’Toole: Becket
Peter Sellers: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Rex Harrison: My Fair Lady (winner)
Anthony Quinn: Zorba the Greek
What’s Missing
I have no serious complaints about the collection of Best Actor performances, but there are a few that I think deserve mention. It was far too early in 1964 for anyone to take James Bond too seriously, but I think Sean Connery deserves a nod (or at least a wink) for
Goldfinger. The same is true of spaghetti Westerns, but it’s difficult to ignore Clint Eastwood in
Fistful of Dollars. And the same is true of Roger Corman horror movies, but I genuinely love Vincent Price in
Masque of the Red Death. I didn’t love
Father Goose, but Cary Grant didn’t get nearly enough Oscar nominations during his career. If there is a missing performance, it’s Richard Attenborough in
Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and that’s more of a supporting role.
Weeding through the Nominees
5. I like all five of these performances pretty well, so getting rid of any of them is difficult. As much as it pains me, I’m dropping Anthony Quinn off the top. I think a part of this is that of all of these movies,
Zorba the Greek is the movie I like the least. That’s not Quinn’s fault because he’s excellent in the role. I wanted to like Zorba, both movie and character, and I liked the character more than the movie. But someone has to go first, so as much as I don’t like bumping such a respected actor off the top, he’s the one to go first.
4. I have the exact same issue with Richard Burton’s performance in
Becket. It’s one of Burton’s best roles and one of his best performances, but it falls short with the others of this year. I like this better than his fourth place finish for me, but I like the other three performances better, and that’s really what it comes down to. Burton was nominated for seven Oscars without a win. There’s certainly one he should’ve won. It’s just not this one.
3: I’ve mellowed in my stance on musicals in the past five years, and even when I didn’t like them in general I still liked
My Fair Lady. My favorite part of
My Fair Lady (sorry, Audrey Hepburn) is Rex Harrison. I like Harrison’s “singing” style, which is far more talking in a rhythm than it is singing. But again, we’re in a position where I simply like the other performances more than I like this one. Sorry, Rex. Even though you won, someone else deserved this more.
2: Peter O’ Toole was nominated for an Oscar eight times and never won. That’s tragic, and if I could rewrite history, I’d give the man a golden statue. I just wouldn’t do it for
Becket. He had amazingly bad luck with the years in which he was nominated. This was actually one of his best chances, and I love his performance here. Where Burton had to simply be stalwart, O’Toole had to do a lot more with this role. It’s grandiose and a hell of a performance. It just comes in second.
My Choice
1: I’ll take some shit from some people for placing Peter Sellers on the top, but I stand by my choice. Sellers had the task of playing three roles for the film. He manages to make each of them completely unique and memorable, even managing to play off himself in conversations between President Merkin Muffley and the eponymous Dr. Strangelove. I get that a lot of people find Sellers over the top as Strangelove, but he’s not in the other two roles. While none of these roles qualifies as a Best Actor performance, all three of them combine to be the best male performance of 1964.
Final Analysis
I have no serious complaints about the collection of Best Actor performances, but there are a few that I think deserve mention. It was far too early in 1964 for anyone to take James Bond too seriously, but I think Sean Connery deserves a nod (or at least a wink) for Goldfinger. The same is true of spaghetti Westerns, but it’s difficult to ignore Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars. And the same is true of Roger Corman horror movies, but I genuinely love Vincent Price in Masque of the Red Death. I didn’t love Father Goose, but Cary Grant didn’t get nearly enough Oscar nominations during his career. If there is a missing performance, it’s Richard Attenborough in Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and that’s more of a supporting role.
