Widmark should have won the Oscar

I'm sure Gwenn won in a runaway; what's not to like about Santa, what's not to like about a feel-good Christmas movie that's still a TV staple 60 years later. A safe choice.

The competition:

Charles Bickford in The Farmer's Daughter. Bickford received three Best Supporting Actor nominations in four years in the 1940s. He was a professional, but typecast into crusty, blustery, avuncular kinds of roles. This one was no different.

Thomas Gomez in Ride the Pink Horse. Directed by Robert Montgomery who also stars. A very peculiar film but a very good one. An off-kilter film noir, but then it's hard to categorize. Gomez plays a very original character who's a carnival owner. (Been a long time since I've seen this one.) He stands out, though, and probably deserved the Oscar, but I'm sure very few members of the Academy saw this film.

Robert Ryan in Crossfire. Like Widmark, Ryan received his only Oscar nomination in this category and in 1947. His turn as murder suspect good, not great. Robert Mitchum steals the show in this one. (Crossfire one of two mainstream films to deal with anti-Semitism in 1947. The other was Gentleman's Agreement, which won three Oscars including Best Picture.)

Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. Evil through and through, Tommy Udo is the kind of character that when played this well could force an actor into typecasting. Widmark was too good an actor to let that happen. This may not be his best role, but it's surely his most memorable. I'm afraid Udo was too unsavory a character to be awarded an Oscar in that day and time. (Contrast Widmark's brand of evil with that of Javier Bardem's Oscar-winning sadist in No Country For Old Men in 2007.)

I agree - Just because it's memorable doesn't mean it's good. He's a parody of a crook. Widmark didn't remind me of anything I've ever observed in life. It's pretty silly.

But hey, push an old lady down a stairway, and someone will say you deserve an oscar.

A friend of mine reminded me that Tatum O'Neal also won an Oscar for her debut in "Paper Moon".

Ngor won Best Supporting Actor.

I'm happiest...in the saddle.

You're right about Haing S. Ngor. He's the only male to get an Oscar in a debut performance. However, it's been done quite a few times by females. Not sure what that means.

I much enjoyed Sydney Greenstreet’s screen debut (at the age of 61) in The Maltese Falcon.
Greenstreet was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost out to Donald Crisp in How Green was My Valley.

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Comparing Gwenn and Widmark is like comparing apples and oranges. How do you judge two completely different performances and assess them on the same scale?

I can't bring myself to say that Gwenn deserved to lose, having grown up on MIRACLE ON 34th STREET like countless other Americans. But sentimentality aside, it takes a high amount of intelligence to play a sentimental part like Santa Clause/Kris Kringle; one which so many actors would have (and in some cases, did) ruin if they a) took the part too seriously or b) didn't take it seriously enough, neither of which Gwenn did. So, that, alone, is nothing short of miraculous and deserving of a nomination, if not an award.

Plus, with his win, you got that priceless "now I know there is a Santa Clause" line upon his acceptance, lol.

For sure, this should not have been Widmark's LAST Oscar nod, however, which it was.

Receiving a Best Supporting Actor nod for your first film, and losing to a seasoned professional who had been in the business for years and who was also in a "light commercial vehicle" like his own, is impressive enough for a young newcomer, and something tells me Widmark wasn't too disapointed.

But, in the long run? IMO, he should have been nominated for his work in NO WAY OUT, SAINT JOAN, THE ALAMO, BROKEN LANCE, and, of course, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG. That he received recognition for none of these performances by the Academy is outright unfair.