Robert Duvall‘s Network performance is incandescent. His “CCA hatchet man” Frank Hackett is one of the most entertaining and live-wire bad guys in movie history. I’ve no argument with Jason Robards having won the 1976 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, but Duvall wasn’t even nominated.
That’s because Ned Beatty‘s burn-through as CCA chairman Arthur Jensen was, I suppose, but Duvall ruled — he was a huge kick in every scene.
Duvall’s big Network scene (“It’s a big fat, big-tittied hit!”) begins around 5:08 in the above clip. Here’s the isolated scene that I can’t embed. The other ’76 Best Supporting Actor nominees were Burgess Meredith and Burt Young in Rocky (both of them?) and Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.
