The dust still hasn’t settled on the 96th annual Academy Award nominations due to the uproar over the “Barbie” snubs for Best Actress for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig for Best Director. They still earned Oscar nominations for the cultural phenomena that was the No. 1 film of 2023 with an international box office of $1.4 billion. Robbie and Gerwig received noms as producer for the Best Picture nominee and Gerwig also was garnered a nomination for co-writing the adapted screenplay. But the film is about female empowerment, so it’s beyond ironic it was Ken (Ryan Gosling), not Barbie, who received Oscar recognition.
Gosling wasn’t happy: “Against all odds with nothing but a couple of soulless, scantily clad, and thankfully crotchless dolls, made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.”
America Ferrera, who earned a supporting actress nomination, also expressed her feelings. “I was incredibly disappointed that they weren’t nominated,” she told Variety. “Greta has done just about everything that a director could do to deserve it.”
The Margot controversy recalled the anger over Bette Davis’ failure to be nominated for the 1934 drama “Of Human Bondage.” Davis was just at the beginning of her career having made her film debut three years earlier in “The Bad Sister” and hadn’t had the type of her she could sink her teeth into. And then came the powerful adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel.
With her shock of blonde hair and Cockney accent, Davis set the screen on fire as Mildred Rodgers, a boozy teahouse waitress who is the object of affections of a shy medical student (Leslie Howard) whom she treats like trash. “You can, you dirty swine!” Mildred shrieks. “I never cared for you, not once! I was always makin’ a fool of ya! Ya bored me stiff; I hated ya! It made me sick when I had to let ya kiss me. I only did it because ya begged me; ya hounded me and drove me crazy! After ya kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth! Wipe my mouth!”
The New York Times review praised Howard’s performance, while waxing poetic over Davis: “Another enormously effective portrayal is that of Bette Davis…that waitress who continually accepts Carey’s (Howard) generosity and hospitality and reveals herself as a heartless little ingrate.”
Davis was considered a shoo-in for anOscar nomination, but she was shut-out. When the nominations were announced on Feb 6, 1935, Claudette Colbert (“It Happened One Night”), opera singer Grace Moore (“One Night of Love”) and Norma Shearer (“The Barretts of Wimpole Street”) were contention for the top prize. Academy members were angry and so were fans.
As Vulture notes, Movie Classic magazine “printed an indignant reader letter questioning whether the academy voters were ‘near-sighted’ or simply terrified of Davis’ ‘bad-girl’ performance. The outrage extended to the industry, which rallied around its newly minded talent. In order to quell the widespread criticism, the academy announced an extraordinary revision to the rule: Voters could now write in their own Oscar picks. It was anyone’s game and, with that, the campaign for Davis was officially on.”
Colbert ended up winning; Davis came in third. The following year, she won her first Best Actress Oscar for a far inferior film “Dangerous” as down-and-out alcoholic actress. Many consider this her consolation prize for “Human Bondage.”.
At the 1936 ceremony, cinematographer Hal Mohr was a write-in winner for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” After that win, the academy rang the curtain down on write-ins.
Just as with Gerwig, Barbra Streisand’s snub for a Best Director nomination for 1991’s “The Prince of Tides” had Hollywood talking. The film based on Pat Conroy’s novel earned seven Oscar nominations including picture, actor for Nick Nolte, supporting actress for Kate Nelligan and adapted screenplay. Streisand was nominated as producer of the film but ignored in the directing category. Streisand, like Gerwig, earned Golden Globe and DGA Award nominations.
Back in 1992, Streisand told the AP that she couldn’t “deny I’m disappointed, but I’m thrilled to get seven [nominations]. Still, she noted soon to the Los Angeles Times soon after the nominations were announced that “resistance to women directors may have played a role in denying her the nomination. ‘We’re still fighting it. It’s as if a man was allowed to have passion and commitment to his work, but a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.”
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