Freddie Mercury thus joins George M. Cohan and Ray Charles as show-business celebrities someone depicted well enough on screen to be recognized as Best Actor.
Rami Malek had his name linked with James Cagney and Jamie Foxx, respectively, after being called to the stage at the 91st Academy Awards presentation Sunday night.
For playing the lead singer of Queen, who died in 1991 at age 45 of AIDS, Malek outpolled an ensemble including past Oscar winner Christian Bale, who portrayed former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney in "Vice." As someone should have said to Bale before playing the part, good hunting.
Stepping totally out of character, Cagney was named Best Actor of 1942 for portraying Cohan, a childhood entertainer and later Broadway's greatest showman. Released during wartime, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" featured one of the screen's true tough guys as an American hero chatting it up on screen with someone playing then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the same ceremony, "Mrs. Miniver," depicting war from the British point of view, was named Best Picture, showing that Hollywood could be patriotic and sentimental when it tried.
Foxx nailed the music, but especially the mannerisms, of Ray Charles so well that his 2004 portrayal of the blinded, drug-addicted American singer was a critical success. Foxx was recognized in the same decade as some other black performers, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry in the same year, in Hollywood's way of expressing remorse for past oversights regarding race. Until Sidney Poitier's 1963 Best Actor award for "Lilies of the Field," this was Oscar's Hattie McDaniel wing with Mammy from "Gone With the Wind" as the only occupant.
With Sunday night's show in its fourth hour, "Green Book," another film with race at its core, was named Best Picture. Portraying Don Shirley, a classical and jazz pianist who encountered racism while touring the South in the 1950s and 1960s, Mahershala Ali was named Best Supporting Actor for the second time in three years. Previously cited for his role as a drug dealer in "Moonlight" (2016), Ali is the first black two-time winner as Best Supporting Actor.
With Hollywood more attuned than ever to ongoing struggles in race and gender, it was nice to see a golden oldie dusted off and presented afresh. We speak, of course, of "A Star Is Born," the story of a female entertainer propelling to stardom as her male spouse plunges to oblivion.
Bradley Cooper, who directed the latest version, reprises a role once played by Fredric March, James Mason and Kris Kristofferson. That the movie was nominated for Best Picture without a corresponding nod for its director is another Hollywood puzzler, right up there with Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy being snubbed for a prize that went to Ginger Rogers and Sandra Bullock.
Janet Gaynor, the first Best Actress recipient, played the female lead in the first "A Star Is Born," released in 1937. Not perceived as a singer, Gaynor gave the role a dimension that Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand in later versions could not. That the phenomenally talented Lady Gaga could depict an overnight success on screen defies imagination, although her Oscar for co-writing "Shallow," to which she played piano and sang alongside Cooper at the ceremony, could not be overlooked.
I clapped at home when Lady Gaga received her Oscar, four years earlier breaking into tears with the singer's tribute to the 50th anniversary of "The Sound of Music." I cheered also when Spike Lee received a screenplay award, though Hollywood missed by a mile when it did not recognize the director's "Malcolm X" in 1992, for which Denzel Washington deserved the award for Best Actor that went to Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman."
For what it's worth, John Wayne had several better roles before he won an Oscar as Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit." Wayne was honored in a year (1969) that Dustin Hoffman, two years after making "The Graduate," achieved greatness as Enrico Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy," although it would be another 10 years before Hoffman won his first of two Oscars.
And do not get me started on Meryl Streep, who may someday win an Oscar (or at least be nominated) for playing herself.
Last up in a show with an announcer but no host, they let Julia Roberts present Best Picture, then tell everyone that class was dismissed. Somehow, I expected Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to give it to "La La Land."
Editorial on 02/27/2019