Womb to Tomb – an appreciation of solidly Oscar-less work.

Some day, perhaps, Hollywood will devise an awards ceremony to honor all of those noble filmmakers who toil, day in and day out, turning in respectable and honored work that just. doesn’t. cut it. And I’m not talking about the journeymen of film like Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman who have, over time, transcended their everyman status to a new kind of Blockbuster Yet Not Really Leading Man quality that does, in fact, garner awards. No: I’m talking about lesser-knowns, the ones who could’ve, who might’ve, who – perhaps by now – should’ve.

On this day, February 19th, Jeff Daniels was born. Consider the steady and skillful yet somehow consistently under-the-radar career of Daniels, an actor so watchable and intriguing that he can bring earnest charm and pathos to a character like Terms of Endearment’s Flap Horton, yet also frequently appears in such audience- brutalizing friendly films as Trial and Error, My Favorite Martian and – *yay!* – RV. Would it surprise you to learn that Daniels has never been nominated for an Oscar? No? Well, me neither.

• But still, Daniels did some admirably sad sack-like work as ill-fated Harry Temple in Speed alongside the man who was discouraged to “attempt to grow a brain,” Keanu Reeves.
• Keanu sought thespianic credibility – with not much success outside of his fans – by acting all actorly in My Own Private Idaho with the similarly ill-fated River Phoenix.
• Phoenix might have worked his way to an Oscar had he not taken detours along the lines of one of my personal guilty pleasures, Sneakers, which featured the similarly slumming Sidney Poitier.

And Poitier…well, okay. Poitier has earned quite a bit of respect and credibility, not to mention one acting Oscar win and another Oscar special award. But perhaps this serves my point after all, because Poitier’s illustrious and celebrated career stands in contrast to that of director/producer Stanley Kramer, who famously directed Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner AND The Defiant Ones. What’s more, Kramer was Oscar-nominated for those two films as well as for such classics as The Caine Mutiny, High Noon and more – yet he never won. Kramer succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 88 on this day, February 19th.