If there’s one factor the Oscars love, it is a huge second. The envelopes containing the winners of essentially the most prestigious movie awards in Hollywood could also be sealed, however that does not cease the powers-that-be behind every year’s Oscars telecast from setting the night time up for optimum shock, drama, and inspiration. It would not at all times work, like when, on the 93rd Oscars, the classes have been rearranged so the telecast may finish with Chadwick Boseman’s posthumous Finest Actor win (or so many presumed, though producer Stephen Soderbergh denied this). Besides Boseman did not win, and class winner Anthony Hopkins wasn’t on the ceremony, so the seemingly pre-planned huge end turned out to be a clumsy dud.
Once in a while, although, the Academy’s penchant for making an attempt to plan round potential wins leads to some completely satisfied accidents. Such was the case in 1947, when Harold Russell made historical past as the primary non-professional actor to win an Oscar — and the solely actor to ever take dwelling two statuettes for a similar position — for his flip in “The Finest Years of Our Lives” (per The Guardian).
Russell’s casting in William Wyler‘s post-war drama, itself that yr’s Finest Image Oscar winner, was an early case of a disabled actor taking part in a disabled position, because the younger World Battle II veteran misplaced each arms throughout a coaching accident. His on-screen character, Homer Parrish, was a star athlete who had additionally had each arms amputated in the course of the struggle, and who feared his relationship along with his fiancee can be ruined by the metallic hooks he’d been given of their place.
Harold Russell gained an honorary award in 1947
RKO Radio Photos
“The Finest Years of Our Lives” is commonly considered probably the most sensitively instructed on-screen portrayals of PTSD and the after-effects of struggle in America. It earned a then-staggering sum of money on the field workplace and practically swept the Oscars, successful seven of the eight classes for which it was nominated. Journalist Kristen Lopez, whose work focuses on incapacity on display, as soon as known as the film “the most effective portrayals of incapacity I can advocate.” When the Library of Congress started including essentially the most culturally and traditionally essential American films ever made to its archive within the late ’80s, “The Finest Years of Our Lives” was one of many very first batch chosen.
Regardless of all this, it looks like Russell wasn’t anticipated to win his Finest Supporting Actor class. He wasn’t an expert actor, however had been scouted for the movie by Wyler after showing in a brief government-made documentary titled “Diary of a Sergeant.” As a primary time actor, it appeared probably that Russell would not beat out trade veterans like Claude Rains, Clifton Webb, and Charles Coburn, all of whom had been nominated for Oscars earlier than 1946. Nonetheless, his flip within the film was outstanding, and the Academy clearly needed to acknowledge it by some means. Thus, they gave Russell a particular Oscar, introduced to him by Shirley Temple for “bringing hope and braveness to his fellow veterans” (per the LA Occasions).
Later that night time, Russell defied expectations by successful Finest Supporting Actor in any case, making historical past on the nineteenth Academy Awards for his unprecedented double win. Sadly, the publicity did not result in a Hollywood profession for Russell, as The Guardian famous that Wyler instructed him to return to varsity as an alternative of pursuing appearing “as a result of there wasn’t a lot name for a man with no arms within the movement image trade.” The Oscar winner fought ableism in different methods, serving on a committee for the employment of disabled individuals below a number of totally different presidential administrations. He handed away in 2002, however his reminiscence lives on in “The Finest Years of Our Lives,” in his historic Oscar second, and in his work on behalf of disabled individuals all over the place.