What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1973

The Year: 1973
What the Nominees Were: American Graffiti, Cries and Whispers, The Exorcist, The Sting, A Touch of Class
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: The Academy missed out on most the great American films that year, including The Last Detail, Scarecrow, Mean Streets, Serpico, Badlands, and Paper Moon.

What Did Win: The Sting
How It’s Aged: It’s delightful. I considered sticking with it just so I could watch it again. But ultimately, it doesn’t quite have the dramatic heft of our winner, which was a very similar movie.

What Should’ve Won: Paper Moon
How Hard Was the Decision: A very hard choice between Mean Streets, Serpico, The Sting and Paper Moon. Mean Streets and Serpico are masterpieces, but if I chose either, that would mean that I might have to do three (or maybe even four, depending on what I choose for 1975) Italian-American crime sagas in a row, and that’s tiring (of course, at the time, they couldn’t’ve known that might be a problem, but I’m granting myself retrospective vision.)

Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Writer: Alvin Sargent, based on the novel “Addie Pray” by Joe David Brown
Stars: Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal, Madeline Kahn and John Hillerman

The Story: Petty con man Mose Pray stops off at the funeral of a former lover only to get saddled with a kid named Addie who may just be his daughter. He first intends to palm her off on relatives, but she starts helping him with his cons and they bond, so he keeps her around.

Any Nominations or Wins: Kahn and Tatum went up against each other for Supporting Actress and Tatum won (she’s still the youngest winner of a competitive Oscar). It also got nominations for Adapted Screenplay and Sound but lost both.
Why It Didn’t Win: It’s surprising that it didn’t get a picture nomination, since the Academy liked it well enough to give it Best Supporting Actress. It is, of course, very similar to The Sting (both about depression-era conmen) and maybe the Academy decided it could only have one movie in that vein.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. This movie is best remembered for Tatum O’Neal’s performance as Addie, and it remains one of the all-time great marvels of acting. Obviously it helped to have her real father as her co-star, giving his own best performance, but she acts circles around him and everyone else, as outwardly hard-as-nails, but secretly very self-conscious Addie. When her little moments of weakness poke through her exterior, it’s heartbreaking every time.
   
2. Kahn, who was in 18 minutes of the movie, was not happy about having to compete for Best Supporting Actress with Tatum, who was in all but 3 minutes. Indeed, Tatum should have been nominated for (and won) Best Actress and Kahn should have won Supporting, because she’s also phenomenal as a floozie who travels with the pair for a while, before Addie gets rid of her. Kahn, like everyone else in this movie, would never get a part this good again.
   
3. Alvin Sargent wrote a wide range of screenplays, from Ordinary People to Spider-Man 2 (the Tobey Maguire one, which remains one of the best super-hero movies). At 103 minutes, this is a master class in economy that today’s screenwriters desperately need to take.
4. Bogdanovich’s mentor was John Ford, and watching this movie’s astounding rural-Kansas compositions, one can’t help but think of the scene in Spielberg’s The Fabelmans where Ford (played by David Lynch) teaches a young Spielberg where to put the camera. Clearly, Spielberg wasn’t the only one Ford gave that advice to.
   
5. But the real star of this movie is unfairly credited merely as the production designer. Polly Platt was Bogdanovich’s wife until he left her for Cybil Shepherd, the star of their movie The Last Picture Show. Astoundingly, Platt was willing to keep working with him and found this novel then did most of the work of making this movie happen. Listen to Karina Longworth’s excellent (but long!) season of “You Must Remember This” about her to learn more. Bogdanovich’s first four movies, the ones he made with Platt, are all brilliant films. After this movie, their working relationship finally fell apart and Bogdanovich never made a great movie again.

Ah, 1973: Romantic!