By the time you read this, the Academy Award nominations should be public knowledge.
I don’t pay too much attention to this annual celebration of wretched excess.
Some of it is petty – all those great-looking, rich, famous and young movie people. They should all gain weight!
But, in addition to my own psychopathology, there is another reason, in fact, lots of good reasons, I don’t value the Academy Awards.
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Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar.
Robert Mitchum never won an Oscar.
Barbara Stanwyck never won an Oscar.
Cary Grant never won one.
Edward G. Robinson never won an Oscar.
Neither did Robert Altman.
Nor did Richard Burton.
Nor has Glenn Close.
Or Orson Welles, Deborah Kerr, Peter O’Toole, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Greta Gardo, Kirk Douglas or Montgomery Clift.
Need I go on?
Lots of great actors and directors never received an Academy Award.
Yet, Elizabeth Taylor has won two Oscars. Go figure.
So, what I want to say about the Oscars is that they really don’t matter, at least not in terms or artistry and craftsmanship.
Which is some balm for most of us. Most people don’t receive awards for the work they do, and not much, if any, praise.
Most people are lucky if they don’t get downsized while their jobs are exported to some other country.
That’s why it is instructive to look at show folk who never won an Oscar.
It’s not the award that makes the work great. It’s the work itself.
Great work is its own – and often its only – reward.
Right, Edward G,?
Nyah.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
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