Stephen Boyd
Hugh Griffith walks off with the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor, yet Boyd's performance totally ignored. Incomprehensible.
Another reason why a "best" Oscar, in any category, really does not cut it. Some years there are several Really Good entries, all of which deserve an award - and some years, there are none.
... and Not that there was any problem with what Hugh Griffith did in Ben Hur - because there wasn't.
As for Stephen Boyd - it has been argued that his performance in Ben Hur is "over the top."
I would submit that it is his Character that is over the top - and that Boyd's performance of it is Exactly what is called for.
Can anyone imagine, for one little minute, that Boyd did not come across as Messala, Just the way William Wyler wanted him to?
If it was really the „prevailing opinion“, that Stephen Boyd acted "over the top" in his role as Messala, he certainly would not have won the Golden Globe Award – but he did (BTW: Charlton Heston, who was also nominated did not win).
For me, Stephen Boyd manages to steal all his scenes in Ben-Hur, even when he is seen together with Heston as the leading actor and popular figure.
I recently found this article concerning this issue:
http://bobbyriverstv.blogspot.de/2012/11/overlooked-by-oscars-stephen-boyd.html
Totally agree, always thought that Stephen Boyd's Messala was superb.
shareYes, superb. It was really fortunate that Stewart Granger refused or missed the role. I mean, he was fine in films like 'Bhowani Junction' (1956) as a British army colonel in India (Colonel Savage!), among other things because he really was or had been a British army officer and was the son of another British army officer, or as a British adventurer in Colombia in 'Green Fire' (1954), but as Messala...
As Apollodorus in 'Caesar and Cleopatra' (1945) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlevWsB9nc8 he was somewhat ridiculous, but well, maybe he was too young... Messala required a tough guy like Stephen Boyd, born in Northern Ireland, 18 years younger than Stewart (born in Kensington, London), who was superb, as you say. In 'The Man Who Never Was', three years before Ben Hur, he was pretty good too as Patrick O'Reilly, an IRA man working as a spy for the Germans in 1943, in the Second World War.
Rower No. 42: "Forty-one, why did he do that?" Rower No. 41: "I don't know".