Best Actor 1930: Results

7. Wallace Beery in The Big House- Beery's performance just is laughable when he tries to act tough, he gets better later in the film, but never very good.

6. Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond- Chevalier sure is charming here, but his charm just is not utilized well enough for anything to really come from it.

5. George Arliss in The Green Goddess- Arliss' stiff approach sort of works at times as the cruel Raja, overall it still is a rather boring effort, and really Arliss actually is rather hard to believe as an Indian ruler.

4. George Arliss in Disraeli- Arliss is most certianly more believable as Benjamin Disraeli than as the Raja of Ruhk, but still his performance suffers from similar problems. He is sometimes just frankly boring, there are moments of strength but not enough of them.

3. Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade- Chevalier, better utilized in this film, gives a nice winning performance actually as the romantic Count. He is very charming, rather humorous, and really brings a great joy to his performance.

2. Ronald Colman in Condemned- Colman gives a good relaxed performance as the suave thief who falls in love with the wrong woman. Not his best, but easy to watch, with charm in every moment.

1. Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond- The only performance that could be Colman in Condemned, is Colman in this. Colman is even better in this because he has even more to do, is even more charming, far more humorous, and this performance just is hard not to watch. Colman's whole performance is one great moment after another, he makes Drummond one character easy to watch all the way through his investigation. He even manages to make the lacking performances work in his favor, he is amazing here.

Deserving Performances:
Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Actor 1930: Wallace Beery in The Big House

Wallace Beery received his first Oscar nomination for portraying 'Machine Gun' Butch Schmidt in The Big House.

The Big House tells the story of the various inmates of a prison including a thief who tries to reform himself, a snitch who got in prison due to his drunken driving killing someone, and a murderous gunmen.

Wallace Beery plays the murderous gunmen Butch who is suppose to be some sort of a cold blooded killer, but Beery is not for a second believable as a cold blooded killer. He plays the part at the begining basically the same way he played the champ, making me possibly see that performance may be even worse than I said.

Either way Beery is almost laughable when he tries to act tough in the early scenes of the film. It just is not believable at all, he never has single moment of menace in his entire performance. I think a problem may be he tries to be likable as well as mean and fails to be either.

Beery I will admit gets a little better later on in the film. He stops trying to do the Wallace Beery things so much, and his later attempts at being tough are a little more believable. They certainly are not amazing, but no longer laughable. His performance though on a whole really is small, since he is supporting.

Beery really is not given a lot to work with, and the part only really wants him to be a tough guy who is semi likable, which does not really work anyways. Beery never tries really to show much more to his character, other than what is written. It is a performance that improves over the course of the film, but unfortunately it never really improves into all that much.

Best Actor 1930

And the Nominees Were:

Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond

Ronald Colman in Condemned

George Arliss in The Green Goddess 

George Arliss in Disraeli

Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond

Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade

Wallace Beery in The Big House

Lawrence Tibbett in The Rogue Song

That's right eight nominations total. Unfortunately though since only two short clips of Tibbett's performance survive so I will only be doing a very brief review of his performance that will not be ranked with the others, or rated.

Best Actor 1932: Results

3. Alfred Lunt in The Guardsman- Lunt plays a hammy actor in a hammy way, which would be fine if he was funny, or had some great chemistry with his co-star. Unfortunately Lunt never becomes more than slightly enjoyable on occasion, and there is absolutely no chemistry between he and his real life wife.

2. Wallace Beery in The Champ- There is never anything special about Berry portrayal as the Champ. He fails to add depth to his character when there is easily could have been, and fails to create a strong relationship with his co-star Cooper.

1. Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- Good prediction Dinasztie since you correctly predicted I would completely agree with the ranking the academy supposedly gave them in terms of votes. March is a very easy winner for me. His is not a perfect performance, and certianly is from its time, but where it succeeds it really succeeds. I think a lot of actors would play each side of man on a one note, but Fredric March plays them both in a far more complex fashion

Deserving Performances:
Jackie Cooper in The Champ

Best Actor 1932: Wallace Beery in The Champ

Wallace Beery won his Oscar from his second nomination for portraying Andy "Champ" Purcell in The Champ.

The Champ is a film that tells the story of a washed up boxer and his son Dink (Jackie Cooper).

 Wallace Beery I think has one major problem with his performance that is extremely hard to forget, and that is he is not a very believable boxer. He does not seem like he had ever been a boxer, and certainly not the champion of the world. Beery is never for a moment convincing as a boxer, nor does he suggest of any of the supposed greatness that the Champ once had.

Wallace Beery I think has another problem in that he read some of his lines in a very memorized way. He really dials to put behind certian lines the right emotion, and frankly just sort of says some of his lines. He does not say them in a stilted fashion really, but in a fashion that conveys nothing. Also there are plenty of really obvious acting moments when he does big smile to indicate happiness, and a big frown to indicate sadness, without very much in between sometimes.

Another problem with Beery is Champ seems to a be a little more complicated of a character as written than as Beery played him. Champ is washed up because he failed to ever stop gambling, and to stop drinking. Champ in Beery's performance just seems to do these thing, Beery really never suggests any deeper reason for why the Champ does this self destructive behavior, he just simply does it.

His on-screen relationship with Jackie Cooper has been described as movie magic, but is it really. Well I do not think so, because I find Beery does not really work with Cooper a lot of the time, and seems to visibly try to do his own thing to separate himself from Cooper. Cooper who gives the better performance, frankly creates a more fully realized character, and Beery fails to capitalize on this in most of the film, failing to create a real father and son relationship between the two.

Is Beery's performance entirely without quality, no it is not. Beery still does have a screen presence, he knows how to act with the camera in mind, rather than some actors of this time who cannot even do that. Beery also has a certain charm, and appeal in his whole big gentle guy persona. Although most of his relationship with Cooper seems off, he has two good moments that do suggest what the rest of the performance could have been where he shows a real love and care for his son, that is when Champ tells Dink to live with his mother, as well as when Champ is boxing at the end refuses to lose the fight for Dink. Beery is likable enough, but honestly I want to like this performance more than I really do. It is not entirely bad, but I just can't say that it really is good either.

Best Actor 1932

And the Nominees Were:

Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

Wallace Beery in The Champ

Alfred Lunt in The Guardsman

Poor Alfred Lunt, that year it would have been faster to announce, and the loser is....