In recognition of Father’s Day coming up on June 15, now is a great time to focus on actors who’ve either been nominated or won Oscars for playing fathers on screen.
Actors who’ve won Best Actor Oscars for playing characters on screen whose role as a father is important to the plot, include George Arliss in Disraeli, Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul, Wallace Beery in The Champ, Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII, Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine, Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives, Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men, Yul Brynner in The King and I, Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs, Kramer, Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful, Kevin Spacey in American Beauty, Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea, Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, Anthony Hopkins in The Father. Will Smith in King Richard, Brendan Fraser in The Whale, Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer, and Adrien Brody in The Brutalist.
Acors who’ve won Best Supporting Actor Oscars for playing similar on-screen roles include Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley, James Dunn in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Burl Ives in The Big Country, Ed Begley in Sweet Bird of Youth, Melvyn Douglas in Hud, Jack Albertson in The Subject Was Roses, James Coburn in Affliction, Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, Troy Kotsur in CODA, and Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
There have also been winners in both categories who won for playing surrogate fathers – priests, teachers, bosses and so on, including Spencer Tracy in both Captains Courageous and Boys Town, Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Bing Crosby in Going My Way, and John Wayne in True Grit in lead roles, and Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street and Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show in support.
Then there are also many dads and surrogate fathers who received nominations but not wins for their performances. While there are too many to name in the space we have here, I have to give a shoutout to both Gregory Peck and James Stewart for their unique places as fatherly icons in screen history.
In addition to winning an Oscar on his fifth nomination for playing a father in To Kill a Mockingbird, Peck’s previous nominations were for playing actual fathers in The Yearling and Genteman’s Agreement and surrogate fathers in The Keys of the Kingdom and Twelve o’clock High.
Stewart’s iconic role as a father in It’s a Wonderful Life, for which he received his third of five Oscar nominations, became a Christmas staple nearly thirty years later and has remained one ever since.
Here are my five favorite screen fathers:
ESSENTIAL FILMS
ROBERT DONAT in THE CITADEL (1938), directed by King Vidor and GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939), directed by Sam Wood
Donat had already established himself as a major player of compassionate heroes in 1934’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller The 39 Steps, and 1René Clair’s 1936’s comedy, The Ghost Goes West, before being cast as the crusading doctor in the film version of A.J. Cronin’s The Citadel who loses his way when he abandons the poor but makes his way back into our hearts by operating on the little girl at the end of film. He earned an Oscar nod for that and then won for the following year for his portrayal of the beloved schoolteacher in the first film version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips which ends with his hearing someone says as he lies dying, “it’s a pity he never had any children” to which he opens his eyes for the last time and says, “But you’re wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them… and all boys.”
SPENCER TRACY in BOYS TOWN (1938), directed by Norman Taurog and THE LAST HURRAH (1958), directed by John Ford
Tracy played many on-screen fathers from 1932’s Me and My Girl to his last, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but his finest fathers were the surrogate ones from Father Flanagan, the founder of the still thriving Boys Town, which also takes in girls, and as the Boston mayor whose cronies are his real children, not the actual son he hardly acknowledges. In both Boys Town and The Last Hurrah, he seems to be a surrogate father to the film’s cast as well as to the characters they’re playing, Mickey Rooney and Gene Reynolds in the former, Jeffrey Hunter, Pat O’Brien, and James Gleason, his real-life mentor, in the latter. He even has a death scene straight out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips in The Last Hurrah in which someone says that if he had to live his life all over again, he’d do it differently to which he opens his eyes for the last time to say, “To hell I would.”
GREGORY PECK in THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1944), directed by John M, Stahl and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), directed by Robert Mulligan
From his surrogate father in his first Oscar nominated performance as the missionary priest in the film version of A.J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom to his portrayal of the small-town lawyer and widowed father of two impressionable children, Peck played a man of genuine compassion and warmth who was a friend to everyone from Thomas Mitchell, Benson Fong, Rosa Stradner, Cedric Hardwicke, and Vincent Price among them in the former, and Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, John Megna, Brock Peters, and more in To Kill a Mockingbird. His other Oscar nominated characters in The Yearling with Jane Wyman and Claude Jarman, Jr., Genteman’s Agreement with Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield, Celeste Holm, June Havoc, Anne Revere, and Dean Stockwell, and 12 o’clock High with Dean Jagger and Hugh Marlowe among them, were their equal.
JAMES STEWART in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), directed by Frank Capra and SHENANDOAH (1966), directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
A moderate success when first released, Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life became a Christmas staple in the 1970s when Capra forgot to renew the film’s copyright and it could be shown for free on local TV stations. Stewart’s everyman who is shown by his guardian angel, Henry Travers, what life would have been like had he not been born, from his relationship with his family and friends, still grabs you no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Stewart and Travers are wonderful as are Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore (as the principal villain), Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi and the rest of the cast. Stewart had one of his last successes as the Civil War father who goes looking for his missing youngest son, returning home to find another son and his wife murdered. The absolute joy of the final scene is as moving as the ending of It’s a Wonderful life.
PETER O’TOOLE in THE LION IN WINTER (1968), directed by Anthony Harvey and GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1969), directed by Herbert Ross
O’Toole received the third of his eight Oscar nominations for his portrayal of England’s Henry II in his later years opposite Katharine Hepburn as his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who he has let out of prison for Christmas. The two bicker in grand style over which of their three sons, Richard the Lionhearted, Geoffrey or John should become king upon his death while he also plots to divorce Eleanor and marry her former ward. Anthony Hopkins, John Castle, and Nigel Terry are the princes, Timothy Dalton the French king and Jane Merrow the ward. O’Toole is just as brilliant in the musical version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips for which he received his fourth nomination a year later. The story has been updated to the 1920s and the character of his wife played by Petula Clark is now a former musical comedy star, but it still works brilliantly.
