Trivia Contest #1: And the Winner Is…

Last week, I wrote about how The Godfather II and Fast Times at Ridgemont High feature 3 actors who later went on to win Best Actor. I also mentioned that there was a third movie in this category, and challenged you to name it for a chance to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate.

Well, we do indeed have a winner: John Halbert, from Los Angeles, California.

However, I should point out that John didn’t actually guess the right answer. Instead, film buff that he is, he discovered another movie that by a razor-thin technicality also fits into this category.

The correct answer (or at least the answer I was thinking of) is an old war movie called The Real Glory (1939). It stars Gary Cooper, Broderick Crawford and David Niven, all of whom went on to win Oscars for Best Actor. (Cooper for Sergeant York in 1941, and again for High Noon in 1952; Crawford for All the King’s Men in 1949; and Niven for Separate Tables in 1958).

However, while searching for the answer, Mr. Halbert found another movie in this category: How the West Was Won. This large ensemble film about the westward expansion features John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck. Wayne and Fonda would end up winning their Oscars years after the film came out, Wayne in 1969 for True Grit, Fonda in 1981 for On Golden Pond. Peck, on the hand…well, this is where it gets tricky.

How the West Was Won came out in the U.K. in late 1962, but didn’t come out in the United States until February of 1963.

In April 1963, Peck received the Oscar for Best Actor for his career-defining performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird (1962). How the West Was Won wasn’t up for anything that year; due to its U.S. release date, it wasn’t eligible for any Oscar nominations until the following year.

However, since How the West Was Won came out in the U.S. two months before Peck actually won his Oscar, this technically puts the film in our Best Actor Trio category.

And thus I’m declaring Mr. Halbert the winner! Great job, John. (Nice to know somebody is as obsessive about scouring Wikipedia for movie trivia as I am.)

Now if only Leo, Mark, and Matt would hurry up and win Best Actor already, we could add The Departed to this list!

P.S. – Here’s a cool article written by a guy equally obsessed with Best Actor trivia, although from a slightly different angle. It’s quite a fun read.