The Oscars

[Ladylethal 12]

I love Helen Mirren and I am really happy she won.

I haven't seen Dreamgirls but I have a feeling it won't be my favorite musical.

Poor Peter O'Toole probably won't have another chance of getting an Oscar.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I was not a huge fan of Dreamgirls, thought it was okay but Jennifer Hudson really does steal the show

I thought Forest Whitaker deserved his Oscar but I really liked Leo in Blood Diamond - I kinda fel if he never did Titanic, people would take him a lot more seriously.

I really liked the Departed but I lack the enthusiasm of most other people I know -- if you've seen the original, Infernal Affairs, a lot of the pivotal scenes kind of suck in comparison. Plus Jack Nicholson was too over-the-top psycho in it - the character in the original was a lot more charismatic, which does better to explain the loyalty of the Leo/Tony Leung character.

[Marilyn. 340]

I was trying to find out if Jennifer Hudson is the first person to win an Oscar in her film debut and this is what I found out...

Gale Sondergaard was the first performer to win an Oscar for her film debut. She won the very first Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1936 for her film debut in Anthony Adverse. He career was sadly derailed in the 1950's when she became a victim of the McCarthy witchhunts.

Paul Muni was the first performer nominated for a film debut. He created a sensation in his film debut as a murderer who refuses to divulge his identity or motive in The Valiant and was nominated for the 1928/29 Best Actor Oscar (he repeated the role on television in 1948 for The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre).

Other actors to be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for their film debut were...

Laurence Tibbet in The Rogue Song (1929/30)

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941)

Montgomery Clift in The Search (1948)

James Dean in East of Eden (1955)

Alan Arkin in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966)

http://www.madbeast.com/quiz-51.htm?

Mercedes McCambridge debuted in the original All the King's Men in 1949, won Best Supporting Actress, and was off on a run of fine, ferocious character parts in Johnny Guitar, Giant, and as the voice of Satan in The Exorcist.

Shirley Booth's tour de force as a deluded housewife in 1952's Come Back, Little Sheba resulted in a Best Actress statue, a handful of big-screen follow-ups, and a well-deserved payday playing the title maid in the TV sitcom Hazel.

Likewise, supporting nominations for debuting actors

Sydney Greenstreet (the ''fat man'' of The Maltese Falcon, 1941), Maureen Stapleton (Lonelyhearts, 1958) and Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull, 1980) led to busy careers if not Oscar gold (except for Stapleton, who was nominated in the category three more times and finally won for 1981's Reds).

And then there's the singular case of Miyoshi Umeki, Best Supporting Actress winner for her role as GI Red Buttons' wife in Sayonara (1957) and the first Asian actor to win in Academy history. A popular singer in her native Japan, where she appeared in only one small role, Umeki translated her victory into one more half-decent film, the 1961 musical Flower Drum Song, a handful of supporting roles, and the part of Mrs. Livingston in the TV boomer classic The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Only twice has a debuting Visitor From Another Medium won the Oscar and gone on to greater glory in the movies, and both winners came from Broadway.

For Julie Andrews, the Best Actress Oscar for 1964's Mary Poppins was sweet revenge. Her 1956 stage portrayal of Eliza Doolittle in the original My Fair Lady had made her the toast of New York, but Andrews was passed over for the 1964 movie version, when Jack Warner went with Audrey Hepburn, an established movie star who lacked the newcomer's vocal chops. Andrews accepted Disney's offer to play P.L. Travers' magical nanny and her first screen performance proved to be the spoonful of sugar her career needed. Hepburn wasn't even nominated for My Fair Lady.

Conversely, no one short of General Patton and the Seventh Army was going to keep Barbra Streisand from re-creating her 1964 Broadway triumph in Funny Girl. Columbia wanted someone better-known to play legendary stage comedian Fanny Brice, but Brice's son-in-law, producer Ray Stark, stuck by Streisand, who already had a reputation as an unstoppable force of nature on screen and off. Streisand somehow managed to become a voting member of the Motion Picture Academy even before 1968's Funny Girl was nominated, and lucky for her she did. In the most notable case of an Oscar tie in Academy history, the Best Actress statue went to both Streisand and Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20009865,00.html

Edited February 26, 2007 by MarilynP

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I'm pretty sure The Piano was Anna Panquin's debut for which she won an Oscar (at age 11, I believe)

[Marilyn. 340]

I'm pretty sure The Piano was Anna Panquin's debut for which she won an Oscar (at age 11, I believe)

yup, it was.....

Other young first-timers have been nominated — from Mary Badham in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird to Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2003's Whale Rider — but so far the only other debuting moppet to win has been 11-year-old Anna Paquin as Holly Hunter's daughter in 1993's thundering period romance The Piano. Having nabbed the role by tagging along to her older sister's audition, Paquin astounded critics, audiences, and her own parents with the rich maturity of her performance. When she unexpectedly beat out the likes of Winona Ryder and Emma Thompson, though, she accepted the Oscar like the awestruck tweener she was.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20009865,00.html