Did you catch the out of focus Yul Brynner robot in the background of a darkly lit scene in last week's episode of Westworld? That charismatic movie star had a lot of success in action films (see also the original Magnificent Seven) but he won his only Oscar race for a musical, The King and I. Which brings us back around to our "One and done" discussion. We featured the actresses who'd won Oscars for their one and only nomination a week ago and it was so fun we decided we should do the men this weekend. The "One and Done" club includes men, too, and even a few more of them. (As with the women I left out those who would otherwise qualify but for a second round via the Honorary Oscars)
Give us your top ten among them in the comments!
LEAD
A few differences worth noting that differ from leading actresses. Only 9% of leading actresses win from their sole nomination. For men, it's quite different with around 21% belonging to the 1 and done club...
That said none of the "1 and done" women had nominations in other types of categories as the men do which points to another gender divide within Hollywood, with men getting to wear hats on prestige films and men were much older when they won on average. This suggests on the surface that they're more eager to nominate their leading ladies again but we suspect it has more to do with the age of the winners; women win when they're much younger, statistically, so there is more time in their careers to get a second nomination.
- Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona, 1928)
- Lionel Barrymore (A Free Soul, 1931 ... though he was nominated in the directing category once too)
- Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine, 1943)
- Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend, 1945)
- Broderick Crawford (All the King's Men, 1949)
- Ernest Borgnine (Marty, 1955)
- Yul Brynner (The King and I, 1956)
- David Niven (Separate Tables, 1958)
- Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou, 1965)
- Cliff Robertson (Charly, 1968)
- Art Carney (Harry and Tonto, 1974)
- F Murray Abraham (Amadeus, 1984)
- Michael Douglas (Wall Street, 1987... though he won in the producing category once, too)
- Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune, 1990)
- Robert Benigni (Life is Beautiful, 1997 ... he received two other nominations in non acting categories for this same film)
- Adrien Brody (The Pianist, 2002)
- Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)
- Jean Dujardin (The Artist, 2011)
- Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyer's Club, 2013)
SUPPORTING
About 39% of the winners in this category are one time only nominees... so Supporting Actor is slightly less novelty oriented than Supporting Actress which has about 50% of its winners being one competition only. One curious statistic is that men AND women who've won Oscars for supporting performances in musical films 7 of them all together were 'one & dones' except for Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables. On the leading side, it's the opposite; Yul Brynner is the only "1 and done" among male or female musical leads that won. (Rex Harrison, Bing Crosby, James Cagney, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, etcetera all had multiple nominations)
Brynner wasn't the only man to win his 1 and done for a Musical performance
- Joseph Schildkraut (The Life of Emile Zola, 1937)
- Donald Crisp (How Green Was My Valley, 1941)
- Van Heflin (Johnny Eager, 1942)
- Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way, 1944*... technically he was nominated twice but both times were for this performance in lead & supporting after which the Academy made that double dipping for the same performance against the rules so we'll count this as one nomination)
- James Dunn (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945)
- Dean Jagger (Twelve O'Clock High, 1949)
- George Sanders (All About Eve, 1950)
- Red Buttons (Sayonara, 1957)
- Burl Ives (The Big Country, 1958)
- George Chakiris (West Side Story, 1961)
- Ed Begley (Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962)
- Martin Balsam (A Thousand Clowns, 1965)
- George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967)
- Jack Albertson (The Subject Was Roses, 1968)
- John Mills (Ryan's Daughter, 1970)
- Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show, 1971)
- Joel Grey (Cabaret, 1972)
- George Burns (The Sunshine Boys, 1975)
- Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, 1980)
- Louis Gossett Jr (An Officer and a Gentleman, 1982)
- Haing S Ngor (The Killing Fields, 1984)
- Don Ameche (Cocoon, 1985)
- Sean Connery (The Untouchables, 1987)
- Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988)
- Cuba Gooding Jr (Jerry Maguire, 1996)
- James Coburn (Affliction, 1997)
- Jim Broadbent (Iris, 2001)
- Chris Cooper (Adaptation., 2002)
- Tim Robbins (Mystic River, 2003... was also nominated for Best Director in another year)
- Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club, 2013)
- JK Simmons (Whiplash, 2014)
- Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies, 2015)