The Oscars In Black And White - African American actors and the Academy Awards

Aldore Collier

Black have faced formidable barriers in winning top film prize

IT began quietly in 1927. The first winners didn't sit on pins and needles because they knew in advance that they had won, and the first losers went home with honorable mention citations. But it didn't take long for the Academy Awards ceremony to become the premier award ceremony in the world and to become tainted by America's No. 1 problem--race.

The most obvious indication of this is that the Academy has repeatedly overlooked sensational, award-winning performances by Blacks. In the 73 years since the first Oscar was awarded, 144 Whites have been cited for the top acting award--best actor and best actress. In all that time, only 13 Blacks, compared to more than 300 Whites, have been nominated for the top award, and only one--Sidney Poitier--has actually won the top award. Three actors, Poitier, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington, have been nominated twice for the best actor award. Washington, also nominated for Malcolm X, is the only Black actor nominated four times for best actor or best supporting actor.

The first Black performer to win the coveted Oscar statuette was Hattie McDaniel, who played a "mammy" in Gone With The Wind, and who received the best supporting actress award in 1939, beating her co-star Olivia de Havilland. The film, which has been criticized for whitewashing slavery and racism, raised the ire of the NAACP at the time it was being shot. Certain concessions reportedly were made to appease the civil rights organization, such as taking the N-word out of the dialogue. When the film premiered in Atlanta, not a single Black cast member was invited to the three days of festivities.

The Academy Award ceremony was held in those days at Los Angeles hotels, and when Oscar-winner H attic McDaniel and her escort arrived, they were shown to a special table for two in the rear of the hotel's Coconut Grove.

Dorothy Dandridge was the first Black performer to be nominated in the best actress category for her performance in Carmen Jones. She lost in 1954 to Grace Kelly. Even though Dandridge's performance was much-her-alded by critics, she was never given much chance of winning the Oscar because of her race. Some felt that her nomination was tantamount to victory.

Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for his performance in Lilies of the Field. The citation came in the middle of the Black Revolution and in the same year as the March on Washington, and certain people said the Poitier victory was a response not only to an exceptional performance by a world-class actor but also to the increasing weight of African-Americans in the world.

James Earl Jones took Jack Johnson and the award-winning Broadway hit The Great White Hope to the big screen and was nominated in 1970. But he lost to the man who made all the acting headlines, George C. Scott, who had said he would not accept an award even if he won. And he kept his word. The producers accepted for him.

One of the most unusual Oscar controversies erupted in 1972 when, for the first--and last--time two Black actresses were nominated for Academy Awards in the top category--Diana Ross for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, and Cicely Tyson for her portrayal of a sharecropper's wife in Sounder. Some Hollywood insiders said the two actresses cancelled each other out, thereby allowing the award to go to Liza Minnelli, who was already the front-runner. Historically, the only times performers were ever thought to cancel each other out have been when both appeared in the same movie.

Sandra Evers-Manly, former president of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP and current president of the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, says overlooking Tyson was the biggest oversight in Oscar history. "That was the biggest. She gave the most outstanding performance that year," she says. "It was dramatic and emotional and I thought she was so deserving of the award. I think they gave it to Liza Minnelli [for Cabaret] because of her mother, Judy Garland, not because of her performance. They never gave Judy her dues. That year there was all kinds of talk about Judy Garland."

Many felt that an even more gargantuan oversight occurred in 1989 when Morgan Freeman failed to nab an Oscar for his role in Driving Miss Daisy. The film was named best picture and its female lead, veteran stage and film actress Jessica Tandy, picked up a best actress nod. But Freeman, who had a bigger role in the film, lost to Daniel Day-Lewis, who played a quadriplegic in the Irish film My Left Foot.

Freeman also was nominated for his understated but movingly eloquent performance in The Shawshank Redemption in 1994, but lost to Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Critics like Roger Ebert hailed Wesley Snipes' performance in the hit film New Jack City, but it, too, was ignored by the Academy.

Other overlooked performances, constantly cited by critics and moviegoers, especially in Black America, are Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction and A Time to Kill; Debbi Morgan for Eve's Bayou, and the creative talents of directors Spike Lee, John Singleton (the only Black director ever nominated for the top award) and Kasi Lemmons.

Many Academy voters do not see all of the numerous movies that are made in a given year and rely instead on the ones that make big news and big box-office.

Even that doesn't always work to the advantage of Black performers. Eve's Bayou was a box-office hit and a critical hit, making many of the critics' Top 10 lists, with all the performers getting huge praise. Yet, it, too, was ignored by the Academy.

Critics also praised Diahann Carroll's performance as a single mother trying to make it in Claudine, but she lost in 1974 to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The movie, which also starred James Earl Jones, didn't do well at the box-office.

Comedy is often overlooked even more by the Academy. Eddie Murphy received near-universal high marks for his multiperformance role in The Nutty Professor but received no Oscar nomination.

Movies that come out later in the year are fresher on the minds of Academy voters and often get far more nominations than those that come out early in the year. Movies must have played for at least a week in New York or Los Angeles before December 31 to be eligible for Oscar consideration. Huge box-office successes like Jaws, The Exorcist and Raiders of the Lost Ark are almost guaranteed to get best picture nods. However, Beverly Hills Cop, one of the most successful movies of all time starting Eddie Murphy, was shut out.

Nominees and their sponsors often lobby voters indirectly by doing tons of press interviews, showing up for such events as the Golden Globes and placing major ads in the trade publications.

A major problem, critics say, is that the Academy voters are overwhelmingly White. "So few Blacks are involved in the voting process," the NAACP's Evers-Manly says. "Clearly, the problem is the lack of diversity in the voting members." Which brings us to the catch-22 of the whole process, for you don't become a member until you're nominated. "We're cast out," Evers-Manly says. "Blacks, especially Black women, are not being given roles like their White counterparts. There's a mind-set that says movies with Blacks in leading roles won't sell."

Still, for all the politicking, racism and glaring oversights, the Academy Awards are such a permanent annual fixture in the lives of Americans that the vast majority continues to watch the spring ritual.

By an irony of fate, the biggest Oscar story of the new millennium is the emergence of Denzel Washington as the first Black front-runner for a best actor award since Poitier in 1963. Washington is a veteran performer who has tremendous appeal and who has, more importantly perhaps, paid his dues in the dues-conscious Hollywood community. Perhaps the overwhelmingly positive reception to his depiction of boxing contender Rubin (Hurricane) Carter in The Hurricane will be a wake-up call to Oscar voters that phenomenal performances come in all colors.

If it doesn't happen in the beginning of the millennium, there's always hope that it will happen one day soon because hope always seems to spring eternal in the capital of make-believe.

Black Nominated For Best Actor or Best Actress Awards

NAME                  MOVIE                             YEAR

DOROTHY DANDRIDGE     Carmen Jones                      1954

SIDNEY POITIER        The Defiant Ones                  1958

SIDNEY POITIER        Lilies of the Field               1963

JAMES EARL JONES      The Great White Hope              1970

DIANA ROSS            Lady Sings The Blues              1972

CICELY TYSON          Sounder                           1972

DIAHANN CARROLL       Claudine                          1974

WHOOPI GOLDBERG       The Color Purple                  1985

DEXTER GORDON         'Round Midnight                   1986

MORGAN FREEMAN        Driving Miss Daisy                1989

DENZEL WASHINGTON     Malcolm X                         1992

LAURENCE FISHBURNE    What's Love Got To Do With It     1993

ANGELA BASSETT        What's Love Got To Do With It     1993

MORGAN FREEMAN        The Shawshank Redemption          1994

DENZEL WASHINGTON     The Hurricane                     2000

NAME                  WINNER

DOROTHY DANDRIDGE     Grace Kelly
                      (Country Girl)
SIDNEY POITIER        David Niven
                      (Separate Tables)
SIDNEY POITIER        Sidney Poitier

JAMES EARL JONES      George C Scott
                      (Patton)
DIANA ROSS            Liza Minnelli
                      (Cabaret)
CICELY TYSON          Liza Minnelli

DIAHANN CARROLL       Ellen Burstyn
                      (Alice Doesn't Live
                      Here Anymore)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG       Geraldine Page
                      (The Trip To
                      Bountiful)
DEXTER GORDON         Paul Newman
                      (The Color of Money)
MORGAN FREEMAN        Daniel Day-Lewis
                      (My Left Foot)
DENZEL WASHINGTON     Al Pacino
                      (Scent of a Woman)
LAURENCE FISHBURNE    Tom Hanks
                      (Philadelphia)
ANGELA BASSETT        Holly Hunter
                      (The Piano)
MORGAN FREEMAN        Tom Hanks
                      (Forrest Gump)
DENZEL WASHINGTON     --

COPYRIGHT 2000 Johnson Publishing Co.
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