Angela Lansbury and Other Oscar Record Holders

Slow and steady tortoises may win races but sometimes we have to stop to celebrate the hares that sprint. In the case of Angela Lansbury, who celebrates her 85th birthday today, we can do both.

<--- Angela in her Tony nominated role from A Little Night Music last season on Broadway. She's won 6 Golden Globes and 5 Tony Awards. Emmy (18 nominations) and Oscar (3 nominations) have eluded her. 


Slow and Steady. She's been acting for 66 years and her longterm success is such that she means different things to different generations and may even mean different things to you at different times in your life. For example, when I was a wee lad I thought exclusively of Bedknobs and Broomsticks and as an adult, say "Lansbury" to me and it's like a switch has been flipped and I'll start talking about how great she is as Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. Other people will think of Murder She Wrote or her stage work or something else entirely.

Sprint. Lansbury wasn't always 85 and she was no late bloomer either. She actually holds the acting record of Youngest Actor (either sex) to become a Two-Time Oscar nominee. To make that record yet more impressive and an example of "sprinting" she had achieved that within her first three movies!

 Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

We've been in a trivia / statistical mood for days now so here's some more "got there first!" Oscar sprinters. We're limiting it to the Actresses today. But more stat posts are coming. Wheeeee

OSCAR RECORDS
"Youngest" Actress to Become...

• a winner: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon when she was 10.
  runner up: Anna Paquin, The Piano at 11.
• a 2 time Oscar winner: OOPS. I said it was Jodie Foster who won her second for Silence of the Lambs at 29. But Luise Rainer actually still holds this record. She won her two Oscars back to back at the ages of 27 (The Great Ziegfeld) and 28 (The Good Earth). Jodie, then, is runner up.
  
• a 3 time Oscar winner: Ingrid Bergman won her third for Murder on the Orient Express at 60.
  runner up: Katharine Hepburn won her third for Lion in Winter at 61.
• a 4 time Oscar winner: Katherine Hepburn won her last for On Golden Pond at 74.
  runner up: aint no such thing.
  
  

youngest winner & the second youngest double winner

• a nominee: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon by the time she was 10.
  runner up: Mary Badham for To Kill a Mockingbird was also 10 but a month older.
• a 2 time nominee: Angela Lansbury for Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray by 20.
  runner up: Kate Winslet for Sense & Sensibility and Titanic by 22.
• a 3 time nominee: Teresa Wright for Little Foxes, Pride of Yankees and Mrs Miniver by 24. runner up: Natalie Wood for Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger by 25. Neither Teresa nor Natalie were ever nominated again. Too much too soon?
• a 4 time nominee: Jennifer Jones hit #4 with Duel in the Sun by 27.
  runner up: Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8 when she was just turning 29. (Kate Winslet also won her 4th nomination at 29)
  
• a 5 time nominee: Kate Winslet for Little Children at 31.
  runner up: Olivia DeHavilland for The Heiress at 33.
• a 6 time nominee: Kate Winslet for The Reader at 33.
  runner up: Meryl Streep for Out of Africa at 36
  
  from this number on...
  It's all about Oscar's three all-time favorite women. There are a few other women with 7 nods or more but aside from Streep only Jane Fonda is still with us.
  
  
  
• a 7 time nominee: Bette Davis for Mrs Skeffington at 36.
  runner up: Meryl Streep for Ironweed at 38.
• a 8 time nominee: Meryl Streep for A Cry in the Dark at 39.
  runner up: Bette Davis for All About Eve at 42.
• a 9 time nominee: Meryl Streep for Postcards from the Edge at 41.
  runner up: Bette Davis for The Star at 44.
• a 10 time nominee: Meryl Streep for The Bridges of Madison County at 46.
  runner up: Bette Davis for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? at 54. This Letter to Daddy was the last she wrote with Oscar.
• an 11 time nominee: Meryl Streep for One True Thing at 49
  runner up: Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter at  61.
• a 12 time nominee: Meryl Streep for Music of the Heart at 50
  runner up: Katharine Hepburn for On Golden Pond at 74.
• a 13,14,15 and then 16 time nominee?
  It's only MERYL STREEP from there on out.

<--- Saoirse Ronan is 16. She's already been nominated once for Atonement. She'll need a second nomination by January 2014 to beat Angela's record. Can she do it?

All of this is a long way of saying... Winslet better get back to feature work if she wants to truly challenge Meryl Streep. And Saoirse Ronan, Dakota Fanning and the other teen drama queens of Hollywood had better work fast if they want to steal Angela Lansbury's "fastest to two noms!" crown away from her. She's held that record for an incredible 65 years.

So, um, happy birthday Angela Lansbury!?
I get distracted, I do.

Tony Nominations Or, Hollywood on Stage

There are so many movie and television faces nominated for the Tony Award this year that one begins to worry about how any stateside stage actor can earn a living. The answer, appears to be get famous in another medium in order to get plum stage roles.

Jude Law (Hamlet) is equally at home on screen or stage

This can work against the audience, this self destructive drive to only see the familiar, if it robs them of great stage trained actors in meaty roles. But thankfully this isn't a problem with actors who are adept at changing their "scale" for any medium. Take The Lovely Laura Linney, for instance, who no one would dare accuse of being out of her element whether she's on the silver screen, the living room telly or treading the boards on Broadway.

Lead Actor in a Play
Jude Law, Hamlet
Alfred Molina, Red
Liev Schreiber, A View from the Bridge
Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane
Denzel Washington, Fences

There's 9 Oscar nominations and 3 wins between these nominees and even the Tony contenders from this shortlist that haven't contributed to that movie-centric total (Liev & Alfred are both still waiting for Oscar's approval) are familiar screen actors. Who would you root for, sight unseen for this Tony race? Or if you're lucky enough to have seen any, who did you find deserving?

Lead Actress in a Play
<-- Viola Davis, Fences
Valerie Harper, Looped
Linda Lavin, Collected Stories
Laura Linney, Time Stands Still
Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family

Viola Davis made her name on stage some time ago so this lead role isn't as 'Look what Doubt did for her!' specific as you may suspect. But it's still great that her career is going so well. Valerie Harper carried Looped on her glamourous shoulders and made it sing with her filthy mouth. I'd say I was rooting for her but hers is the only one I've seen AND it's also movie-related (it's all about Tallulah Bankhead's final looping session) so that's perhaps unfair.

And we're always rooting for Laura Linney in one way or another. And another. And another.

Lead Actor in a Musical
Kelsey Grammer, La Cage aux Folles
Sean Hayes, Promises, Promises
Douglas Hodge, La Cage aux Folles
Chad Kimball, Memphis
Sahr Ngaujah, Fela!

I'm kind of horrified that Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) is nominated but maybe pickings were slim? When I last saw him on stage in Damn Yankees it was like a textbook case of how unfortunate it is that tv stars get Broadway parts over stage stars. Stage acting requires different skills or at least a different discern about how to deply the shared skills. He was basically just doing "Just Jack" only in longshot as opposed to closeup. Didn't work for me at all.

I assume it doesn't matter since one of the La Cage boys will probably win. I keep hearing that this revival is wondrous... but it's revived so often that I'm still struggling to generate any excitement about seeing it.

Lead Actress in a Musical
Kate Baldwin, Finian's Rainbow
Montego Glover, Memphis
Christiane Noll, Ragtime
<--- Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture
Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Little Night Music

The immediate noticeable snub is Bebe Neuwirth in Addams Family though people weren't really expecting that nomination to happen given the critical reception. The sad snub is arguably Broadway darling turned TV star Kristin Chenoweth in Promises Promises. People say she's miscast but that you still can't take your eyes off her. (What else is new? I mean the 'can't take your eyes off her' part is always the case) Since I haven't seen any of these shows -- I hate being poor! -- I'm rooting for Sherie Rene Scott, one of my all time favorite Broadway babies, in her personal memoir show. Finally, I was always hoping that CZJ would get another musical post Chicago. I guess I just didn't expect it would be on stage and that I wouldn't be able to afford to see it.

Here she is singing one of musical theater's most iconic numbers...



Featured Actor in a Play
David Alan Grier, Race
Stephen McKinley Henderson, Fences
Jon Michael Hill, Superior Donuts
Stephen Kunken, Enron
Eddie Redmayne, Red

Superior Donuts is the latest play from August: Osage County genius Tracy Letts. It didn't get the "instant masterpiece" status of that epic play but at least it won this acting notice. Elsewhere in the category Film Experience readers will recognize Eddie Redmayne as Julianne Moore's gay son/incestuous plaything in Savage Grace.

Featured Actress in a Play
Maria Dizzia, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play
Rosemary Harris, The Royal Family
Jessica Hecht, A View from the Bridge
Scarlett Johansson, A View from the Bridge
Jan Maxwell, Lend Me a Tenor

Who could have ever imagined that Scarlett Johansson, with that movie face, would get Tony nominated before she was Oscar nom'ed. Strangeness.

Featured Actor in a Musical
Kevin Chamberlin, The Addams Family
Robin De Jesús, La Cage aux Folles
Christopher Fitzgerald, Finian's Rainbow
Levi Kreis, Million Dollar Quartet
Bobby Steggert, Ragtime

If you're curious, Chamberlin plays Uncle Fester in The Addams Family, De Jesus plays La Cage's always scene-stealing housekeeper (Hank Azaria in The Birdcage is the reference point if you've never seen the stage musical) and Bobby Steger played the younger brother in Ragtime (if you've seen the film version -- which is not a musical, pity -- this role is played by Brad Dourif, it's not the same supporting role that was Oscar nominated from that movie back in the day)

Featured Actress in a Musical
Barbara Cook, Sondheim on Sondheim
Katie Finneran, Promises, Promises
Angela Lansbury, A Little Night Music
Karine Plantadit, Come Fly Away
Lillias White, Fela!

If Lansbury wins this one she becomes the #1 most Tony winning actor of all time. Right now she's merely tied for that honor. But she has stiff competition from Katie Finneran who, according to all reports, steals Promises Promises from its stars. When acting with Cheno that has to be regarded as a miracle. This might also well go to Barbara Cook, one of those most revered of all Sondheim interpreters.

Best Play

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (Sarah Ruhl)

Next Fall (Geoffrey Nauffts)

Red (John Logan)

Time Stands Still (Donald Margulies)

I keep hearing great things about Next Fall which is a gay relationship drama between an evangelical and an atheist. Here's an audio piece on the movie which makes it sound like the kind of thing I should see, having had my own religious upbringing drama before coming out as a gay man. Time Stands Still already closed. When I heard Linney speak at that Linneyganza a month back I definitely regretting skipping it. But -- good news -- it's coming back to Broadway in the fall thanks in part to these nominations.

Best Musical

American Idiot

Fela!

Memphis

Million Dollar Quartet

Best Book of a Musical

Everyday Rapture (Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott)

Fela! (Jim Lewis & Bill T. Jones)

Memphis (Joe DiPietro)

Million Dollar Quartet (Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux)

Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

The Addams Family (Music & Lyrics: Andrew Lippa)

Enron (Music: Adam Cork Lyrics: Lucy Prebble)

Fences (Music: Branford Marsalis)

Memphis (Music: David Bryan Lyrics: Joe DiPietro, David Bryan)

This was a controversial category this year because few thought that Addams Family was deserving but there weren't a lot of eligible shows available since many of the acclaimed musicals were using previously written material. Two of the nominees here aren't even musicals. Not that plays can't have worthy music. I suspect Memphis will win this.

Revival of a Play
Fences
Lend Me a Tenor
The Royal Family
A View from the Bridge

We'll let Scarjo and Liev describe their Arthur Miller redo for ya...



Revival of a Musical
Finian's Rainbow
La Cage aux Folles
A Little Night Music
Ragtime

La Cage will win this easily since it's a) still open and b) winning rave 'you must see it' praise.

Have you seen any of the shows? Do you watch the Tonys each June?