The ten Most Controversial Oscar Snubs Of All Time

Love them or hate them, obsess over them or ignore them altogether, the Academy Awards are a cultural artifact whose historical past mirrors the very historical past of American movie. Granted, as a gatekeeping and taste-managing establishment, the Oscars have all the time been higher at belatedly following and responding to winds of change within the trade than at anticipating or frightening them, and you would most likely depend in your fingers the variety of instances that the Oscar statuette in any given class went to a genuinely daring, bracing, game-changing winner. However they’re pretty much as good a summation of the congealing of crucial and business mainstream consensus over the a long time as we movie buffs have. And, as such, it is fascinating to take a look at the situations of the last word winner being so out of lockstep with that consensus as to trigger an uproar.

As we gear up for the 97th Academy Awards in March 2025, it is a good time to take a look on the 10 most controversial snubs in Oscar historical past. After all, it could be unimaginable to account for all the good films and achievements that unfairly missed out on a nomination — “Do the Proper Factor” being neglected of Greatest Image was scandalous, sure, however what number of actors in that solid deserved Oscar consideration and have been by no means even in consideration? — so “snubs” will probably be outlined, right here, as nominated movies and artists that finally did not win. A few of these have been upsets; some have been disappointing however not stunning; some solely turned notorious with historic hindsight. Groan and gasp at your personal discretion.

Probably the most infamous snub within the historical past of the Academy Awards could also be that the long-held crucial and educational consensus choose for greatest film of all time didn’t win Greatest Image. What makes the defeat of “Citizen Kane” on the 1942 ceremony particularly beautiful is its standing as an anomaly: Amongst different comparable totems of American movie, “Casablanca” and “The Godfather” and “Gone with the Wind” all received, and the different American film that has been duking it out with “Citizen Kane” for the #1 spot for the past two decades — Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” — was a kind of “initially hated, later reappraised” classics, so it could not actually have been in rivalry again in 1959.

“Citizen Kane,” although? That film was acclaimed as a masterwork and a watershed second for the medium just about from the leap, as evidenced by the truth that it acquired nominated for Greatest Image and received Greatest Unique Screenplay. The primary cause it misplaced the primary prize was that, after being smeared for months on finish by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst as a part of a full-blown marketing campaign that almost kept “Citizen Kane” from theaters, Welles had grow to be massively unpopular with the contingent of extras who made up a big proportion of Academy voters. Let the report present, nonetheless, that the film that did win — John Ford’s Welsh household saga “How Inexperienced Was My Valley” — was additionally a masterpiece, and has been unfairly maligned by historical past for snatching the gold away from “Kane.”

It is uncommon that the Oscars get an opportunity to reward a efficiency as seismic, iconic, and medium-defining as Bette Davis’ in “All About Eve.” It is even rarer that they get two possibilities in the identical 12 months: On the 1951 ceremony, in possibly the most competitive Oscars category of all time, Davis’ legendary work as Broadway celebrity Margo Channing went head-to-head with none aside from Gloria Swanson in “Sundown Boulevard.” For Davis, it could have been a 3rd profession Oscar crowning her as the good capital-A Actress of her Hollywood era. For Swanson, it could have been the end result of probably the most sensational comeback narrative in movie historical past, a light silent film icon outshining each talkie starlet on the town within the function of a light silent film icon.

Alas, neither lady finally received. As an alternative, the Oscar went to a much less well-known actress in a a lot lesser-known movie: Judy Holliday, reprising the half she’d honed to perfection on the Broadway stage within the display adaptation of Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday.” “All About Eve’s” snub was compounded by the truth that it turned the primary — and still the only film — to attain Oscar nominations for 4 actresses, with each Davis and Anne Baxter stepping into Greatest Actress, whereas Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter snagged Supporting Actress slots. Ultimately, the one actor from the movie to win an Oscar was a person: George Sanders, who took residence the Greatest Supporting Actor statuette.

Stanley Kubrick was nominated for the Academy Award for Greatest Director 4 instances, and misplaced each single one in all them. His loss for “Dr. Strangelove” might be excused on account of the Academy’s bias in opposition to comedies; his loss for “A Clockwork Orange” is straightforward to know in mild of the movie’s extremely controversial reception, which stays removed from unanimous to at the present time; his loss for “Barry Lyndon” might be written off as an unlucky results of getting caught in probably the most crowded Greatest Director fields of all time (additionally together with Federico Fellini for “Amarcord,” Robert Altman for “Nashville,” Sidney Lumet for “Canine Day Afternoon,” and the winner, Miloš Forman for “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). His loss for “2001: A Area Odyssey,” nonetheless, cannot actually be defined in any satisfying approach.

Kubrick’s — and, for some, the movie medium’s — debatable masterpiece did not win Greatest Director on the 1969 Oscars for the exact same cause that it continues to dumbfound and anger moviegoers each informal and inveterate to at the present time: It was just too bizarre, too difficult, too experimental to lock down a consensus vote. Sarcastically, Kubrick’s defeat prevented one other legendary filmmaker from ending his profession with zero Greatest Director statuettes, as Carol Reed’s swan-song triumph for “Oliver!” — a win that marked Old Hollywood’s last gasp of life — was his just one ever within the class. By the way, “2001” additionally received Kubrick his solely Oscar, for Greatest Particular Visible Results.

Wild as it could appear, the planets aligned in such a approach on the 1975 Academy Awards that Jack Nicholson’s work in “Chinatown” and Al Pacino’s work in “The Godfather Half II” have been each up for Greatest Actor concurrently. In hindsight, it appears virtually unbelievable that the Academy would miss out on the prospect to award both of the 2 most iconic New Hollywood stars for possibly their single most definitional movie performances. Much more unbelievable is the truth that they misplaced to a veteran sitcom supporting actor in the one Oscar nomination of his profession.

However that is the way it panned out on the forty seventh Oscars, when Nicholson and Pacino each watched Artwork Carney take the stage to gather a statuette for his work within the Paul Mazursky street comedy “Harry and Tonto,” a few widowed retired trainer happening a nostalgic cross-country journey within the firm of his cat. Carney’s efficiency was broadly acclaimed, and possibly would have made an uncontroversial Greatest Actor winner in any 12 months with out such heavyweight competitors. In 1975, nonetheless, he was certain to go down in historical past because the man who beat Jack and Al — particularly in mild of “Godfather Half II” and “Chinatown” being the 12 months’s two most nominated movies at 11 nods apiece, with the previous profitable six awards together with Greatest Image and the latter nabbing the Greatest Unique Screenplay prize.

There have been no scarcity of controversial wins within the Oscars’ Greatest Unique Track discipline over the a long time — going all the way in which again to 1936, when “Cheek to Cheek” from “High Hat” misplaced to the significantly much less iconic “Lullaby of Broadway” from “Gold Diggers of 1935” within the class’s second 12 months of existence. Within the Seventies, as musicals went out of fashion in Hollywood and the Greatest Track class largely turned a repository of one-off theme songs and credit needle drops, the controversy went into overdrive. From there on out, the Academy fell into an alarming tendency to all the time reward the showiest, most standard, most “Oscar”-sounding ballad. No snub demonstrated this extra clearly than the “Rainbow Connection” and “It Goes Like It Goes” debacle.

“Rainbow Connection,” sung by Kermit (Jim Henson) on the banjo at the start of “The Muppet Film,” is a) an ideal track, b) probably the most iconic musical numbers in movie historical past, and c) precisely the form of huge crossover smash hit that the Greatest Unique Track ought to be made to acknowledge within the post-musical period, having climbed to a surprising #25 spot on the Billboard Scorching 100 in November 1979. But it misplaced to “It Goes Like It Goes” from “Norma Rae” — a snub that was instantly derided by critics, with The Washington Post‘s Tom Shaley, as an illustration, lamenting “Rainbow Connection’s” defeat to an “already forgotten ballad.”

An interesting award season narrative gave the impression to be afoot in 1999. Practically a 12 months after profitable the Berlinale Silver Bear for Greatest Actress for “Central Station,” Brazilian display titan Fernanda Montenegro was cited as a Greatest Actress runner-up by the Nationwide Society of Movie Critics, dropping to Ally Sheedy in “Excessive Artwork.” Then, she received one other runner-up placement from the New York Movie Critics Circle — second to Cameron Diaz in “There’s One thing About Mary,” one of many NYFCC’s boldest picks ever. Then, Montenegro received Greatest Actress from the Los Angeles Movie Critics Affiliation, tied with Sheedy, and from the Nationwide Board of Assessment. By the point Oscar evening rolled round, with Sheedy and Diaz each snubbed, Montenegro was by far the Greatest Actress nominee with probably the most crucial help, placing her on observe to presumably grow to be the primary Latin American winner within the class.

Ultimately, Miramax campaigning spoke louder than crucial ardour, and “Shakespeare in Love” star Gwyneth Paltrow prevailed over Montenegro in addition to fellow frontrunner Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth” — a win that turned probably the most notorious in Greatest Actress historical past. In 2020, the record-holding actress for many Academy Award nominations with no win, Glenn Shut, cited Montenegro’s loss for instance of the publicity-driven nature of Oscar voting: “I keep in mind the 12 months Gwyneth Paltrow received over that unimaginable actress who was in ‘Central Station’ and I assumed, ‘What?’ It would not make sense,” she advised ABC Information (by way of IndieWire).

Should you have been to call the 2 biggest American filmmakers to have damaged out post-1970, you would do so much worse than Robert Altman and David Lynch, who, every in their very own approach, epitomized singular methods of constructing and interested by movie that went on to have a large affect on your entire spectrum of arthouse cinema, each within the U.S. and internationally. On the 2002 Oscars, Lynch was up for Greatest Director for “Mulholland Drive,” the greatest film of the 21st century for a lot of, whereas Altman was within the combine for his late-career masterwork “Gosford Park.” Not solely have been each movies richly deserving of the Greatest Director honor, but it surely was a treasured alternative for the Academy to honor one in all two giants, neither of whom had ever received an Oscar. And, as ever, the Academy missed it.

As an alternative, that 12 months’s Greatest Director award went to Ron Howard, for a movie that would not even qualify as a excessive watermark of Howard’s profession: “A Lovely Thoughts.” Granted, “A Lovely Thoughts” additionally received Greatest Image, an award that goes hand in hand with Greatest Director as a rule. However controversial Greatest Image wins are a dime a dozen; Greatest Director defeats that anticlimactic are one thing else solely. It is no surprise Lynch and Altman’s reaction to the announcement, mutually consoling one another whereas Altman appears to whisper “It is higher this manner,” is a cyclical cinephile meme.

The 2006 Academy Award nominees for Greatest Image have been “Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote,” “Crash,” “Good Evening, and Good Luck,” and “Munich.” Out of these, “Brokeback Mountain” was the far-out frontrunner by each conceivable metric: A deeply touching, masterfully acted and directed Western romance, it had received the Golden Lion at Venice, topped nearly all of critics’ year-end lists, snagged Greatest Image awards from over 15 critics’ associations, and accomplished the quadrifecta of first-prize precursor wins on the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild Awards, and the Administrators Guild Awards. On the Oscars correct, it amassed eight nominations, probably the most of any movie that 12 months, and took residence Greatest Director for Ang Lee, Greatest Tailored Screenplay, and Greatest Unique Rating. However, when the time got here for Greatest Image, a visibly shocked Jack Nicholson introduced “Crash” — an oft-reviled movie even then — because the winner.

The almost certainly rationalization for that history-making upset, sadly, is moderately uninteresting: “Brokeback Mountain” was a homosexual film. Previous-guard Academy members like Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine famously lambasted the movie, with Curtis arguing that “This image shouldn’t be as essential as we make it. The one factor distinctive about it’s they put it on the display. And so they make ’em cowboys” (by way of Contactmusic). Borgnine, in the meantime, brazenly confessed, “I did not see it and I do not care to see it … If John Wayne have been alive, he’d be rolling over in his grave” (by way of The Advocate). Not till “Moonlight” 11 years later would a gay-centered movie lastly win Greatest Image.

Disney’s notorious maintain on the Oscars’ Greatest Animated Function class has resulted in loads of controversial wins, together with “Frozen” beating “The Wind Rises” in 2014, “Zootopia” beating “Kubo and the Two Strings” in 2017, and “Encanto” beating “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” in 2022. And, whereas every of these winners may very well be excused as a large viewers smash and cultural lightning-in-a-bottle second, one occasion of a Disney film defeating the crucial favourite was patently absurd regardless of the way you slice it: “Huge Hero 6” beating “The Story of the Princess Kaguya.”

An epic, beautiful, astonishingly-animated masterpiece, “The Story of the Princess Kaguya” was probably the most acclaimed movies of 2014 by far, animated or in any other case, in addition to a momentous late-career comeback for Isao Takahata, the underappreciated half of Studio Ghibli behind “Grave of the Fireflies” and “Solely Yesterday.” With no American cultural sensations within the taking part in discipline in 2015, it was broadly anticipated that the Academy would take that chance to reward an animation legend for the best, most envelope-pushing work of his profession. 

As an alternative, to the outrage of animation followers the world over, the Academy went with “Huge Hero 6” — a fairly first rate superhero film with fairly first rate opinions and fairly first rate field workplace earnings, which most individuals had already forgotten about within the time between its fall launch and the Oscar ceremony. The one discernible cause for its victory was the studio emblem on the prime.

The 2019 Greatest Image race was, in some ways, a battle for the soul of the Oscars. Following the years of Academy membership renewal which had resulted in welcome, refreshing outcomes like a Greatest Image win for “Moonlight,” 2019 symbolically pitted the brand new — within the type of “Roma,” a Spanish and Mixtec-language arthouse Mexican movie giving epic consideration to the lifetime of an indigenous Mexico Metropolis maid (performed brilliantly by then-newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) — in opposition to the previous — within the type of “Inexperienced E-book,” a mawkish and traditionally inaccurate race-relations dramedy wringing feel-good fuzziness and white savior antics out of Jim Crow-era segregation.

“Roma” had the critics, the excitement, the status weight; “Inexperienced E-book” had the mass enchantment, the field workplace, the TIFF Individuals’s Selection Award. “Roma” had worldwide cinema deity Alfonso Cuarón doing his most private and impressive work but; “Inexperienced E-book” had Hollywood raunch-com Midas Peter Farrelly proving his mettle as a “severe” filmmaker. “Roma” had Netflix; “Inexperienced E-book” had Common Footage.

It is unimaginable to know what was on the thoughts of every Academy voter who finally went with “Inexperienced E-book.” A method or one other, Farrelly’s victory was broadly interpreted because the Academy willfully — possibly even reactionarily — choosing the previous. Critics instantly christened “Inexperienced E-book” as the brand new benchmark for embarrassing Greatest Image picks, supplanting “Crash,” and the ensuing backlash could nicely have contributed to the Academy course-correcting the next 12 months by not snubbing the foreign-language film and showering “Parasite” with glory.