7 worst best-actor Oscar winners of all time

Maybe it was a weak year. Maybe a split vote for worthier winners allowed lesser ones to slip in. Maybe there were bribes. Maybe half the Academy members had a stroke as they were filling out their ballots.

There are some Oscar wins baffling enough to lead to that sort of speculation. Some were outrageous from the start while others only revealed their awfulness with the benefit of hindsight.

Whatever the explanation, these 7 Oscar wins for best actor have not stood the test of time, even if the actors themselves have.

Oscar winners: The 10 worst best pictures

Gary Cooper, “Sergeant York” (1941)

The film is very much a product of its time, a curious artifact of an America that was rallying forces for WWII shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One doesn’t want to begrudge 1941 America for falling for Cooper’s hillbilly marksman, a conscientious objector who turns war hero when he’s moved by the spirit. Even seen through rose-colored glasses, it’s obvious pandering propaganda. Cooper’s plodding, reluctant hero would be a more palatable win if it hadn’t come at the expense of Orson Welles, who should have taken home the award for “Citizen Kane.”

Rex Harrison, “My Fair Lady” (1964)

Audrey Hepburn sprinkles her charm over films like pixie dust in a way that makes lesser works feel like magic. That’s the only explanation for the enduring popularity of “My Fair Lady,” a musical take on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” about Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn) getting a makeover from proper professor Henry Higgins (Harrison). He awkwardly sing-talks his way through the forced romance in a performance that especially pales in comparison to his competition, Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole in “Becket,” and especially Peter Sellers’ three brilliant parts in “Dr. Strangelove.”

John Wayne, “True Grit” (1970)

Wayne was a gifted performer worthy of an Oscar win, but for films for which he was never nominated – “The Searchers,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” etc. “True Grit,” though, grates, and though Wayne’s gruff portrayal of one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn is a bright spot in an otherwise lacking adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel, it’s for purely sentimental reasons. It was a certainly unworthy of beating out Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight for their roles in best-picture winner “Midnight Cowboy.” The Academy awarded not Wayne the actor, but Wayne the American icon.

Art Carney, “Harry and Tonto” (1974)

One fervently hopes that a split vote is the reason Carney took home an Oscar in ’74, because the only other explanation is gin, and lots of it. It was a banner year for best-actor nominees, a field populated by performances so fresh and powerful they became iconic as they were happening, especially Al Pacino in “The Godfather Part II” and Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown.” But instead the award went to Carney for his unconvincing portrayal (in equally unconvincing old-age makeup) of an elderly New Yorker who embarks on a cross-country adventure with his pet cat.

7 worst best-actress Oscar winners

Al Pacino, “Scent of a Woman” (1992)

Clint Eastwood doesn’t want for Oscars – he’s got two for best picture and two for best director prettying up his mantle, but none for best actor, despite delivering a career-best performance in “Unforgiven.” Pacino was already slipping into self-parody by the time he won an Oscar for playing a blind, irascible-but-still-lovable alcoholic who teams up with a student to learn Important Life Lessons. It was clearly a make-up Oscar to compensate for his losses for “The Godfather” films and “Dog Day Afternoon.” He also beat out Denzel Washington (also turning in a career-best performance) in Spike Lee’s criminally underrated “Malcolm X.”

Roberto Benigni, “Life Is Beautiful” (1998)

What universal delusion did we all suffer in the late ’90s to think it was artistically sound to marry heartwarming comedy with the Holocaust? While not quite “The Day the Clown Cried” levels of tone deaf, “Life Is Beautiful” is nonetheless cringe-worthy as a showcase for Benigni’s manic comedy as his character clowns it up in a concentration camp to protect his son from the horrors that surround them. Benigni’s infamous Oscar-ceremony antics made the awards mistake instantly apparent, never mind the fact that he beat Tom Hanks for “Saving Private Ryan” and Ian McKellen for “Gods and Monsters.”

Sean Penn, “Mystic River” (2003)

Most acting is not synonymous with best acting, though the Academy often thinks it is, which would account for why Sean Penn, the most overacting actor who ever acted, has two Oscars. It wasn’t the most competitive of years when he won his first statue for playing a grieving and angry father of a murdered daughter in the Clint Eastwood-directed drama. But for anyone who watched the awards ceremony, it’s impossible to forgive Penn the sad reaction shot of American treasure Bill Murray losing for his superb and understated turn in “Lost in Translation” as he realizes his best shot of ever winning an Oscar has just passed him by.

Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.