comment #1

RoyBatty says ...

"... who nearly won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in this 1964 film..."

So the Academy finally started releasing the vote tallies for Oscar tabulations. Wow, this is amazing - and no one is reporting on it! We can finally see how close the race between ROCKY & NETWORK really was. See if Ben Kingsley barely squeaked by Paul Newman. Or if THE RETURN OF THE KING was really the runaway choice that year.

What's that?

Oh, you were just making shit up. Damn, got my hopes up there for a second.

comment #2

ArchiveGuy says ...

I would've put it a little nicer, but the "almost" is pretty dubious. It's unlikely anyone was within spitting distance of Rex Harrison that year, and the fact that "Becket" went 1-for-12 suggests there wasn't a whole lot of underlying support for the film when it came to the final ballot.

And anyway, by that time, co-star Richard Burton had more previous Oscar losses (going back a decade) than O'Toole, who was still the new kid on the block.

comment #3

Alan Cerny says ...

Don't give a shit about any possible Oscar tally. I want this film on DVD as soon as possible because it's a fantastic goddamn fuckin' movie, that's why. Some of the best dialogue ever uttered.

comment #4

jeffreywells says ...

Wells to Roy Batty, Archive Guy, et. al. -- Of course I don't know the 1964 Oscar vote tallies so I shouldn't have written that O'Toole nearly won the Best Actor Oscar. It just came out that way -- my apologies. What I meant was, looking back on the choice between Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady" and O'Toole in "Becket" from today's perspective, the Harrison win is a JOKE. Any 1964/65 Academy member with a smidgen of taste or decency (and who wasn't just a go-alonger aping or parroting the mushy emotional sentiments of the time, or voting for the most blandly "likable" character) would have voted for O'Toole in a New York minute. His Henry II is quite likable, if you ask me. Likable as in real, emotionally vibrant, intellectually alive, vulnerable, shrewd, teeming with ambition and schemes and opinions. I was just thinking rather foolishly that there couldn't be that many shallow people in '64/'65 who really and truly thought Harrison gave a richer, "better" performance, and somehow that made it onto the page as O'Toole "nearly" winning, because it seems inconceivable to me that it wasn't some kind of close race. Please, God...please tell me that PEOPLE AREN'T THAT THICK! Especially with O'Toole being high respected by the industry only two years after his knockout lead performance in the 1962 Best Picture winner "Lawrence of Arabia."

comment #5

The Hoyk says ...

It seems MPI has been spending most of their time cultivating their new cult division, Dark Sky Films; with great publicity they have issued new DVDs of the original THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, and they seem to be on a big acquisitions kick. Which is great if you're a cult movie lover like myself.
But I am also a fine arts movie lover as well, so I'm very upset that MPI has had control over BECKET for all this time and has done nothing with it. As stated before, they turned down offers from other people with plenty of cash and enthusiasm to reissue it. You gotta wonder if they even appreciate what they have.