Match the Best Actor Oscar Winners - 1960s Quiz

Answer: Burt Lancaster

On his second nomination, Burt Lancaster won the Best Actor Oscar for playing the titular con artist preacher in "Elmer Gantry". He had a prior nomination in the same category for "From Here to Eternity". In "Elmer Gantry", Gantry was a con artist who successfully teamed up with an evangelist (Jean Simmons) in a traveling revivalist show.

But his fame drew the attention of a woman he'd wronged (Shirley Jones), and she plotted her revenge against him. The other Best Actor nominees were Trevor Howard ("Sons and Lovers"), Jack Lemmon ("The Apartment"), Laurence Olivier ("The Entertainer"), and Spencer Tracy ("Inherit the Wind").

Answer: Maximilian Schell

Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor on his first nomination for his role as German defense attorney Hans Rolfe in "Judgment at Nuremberg". The film was a fictionalized account of the Judges' Trial - the third of the twelve trials held against the Nazi leadership following World War II.

In the film, Rolfe was defending German judges and prosecutors against charges of supporting the Nazi regime, and he did so by pointing out the hypocrisy of American jurists, the Vatican, and Stalin.

The other contenders in the category were Charles Boyer ("Fanny"), Paul Newman ("The Hustler"), Spencer Tracy ("Judgment at Nuremberg"), and Stuart Whitman ("The Mark").

Answer: Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird". He had four prior nominations, all in the same category: "The Keys of the Kingdom", "The Yearling", "Gentleman's Agreement", and "Twelve O'Clock High". Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" was a film about a lawyer (Peck) who had to defend an African-American accused of raping a white girl in the Deep South.

The other Best Actor nominees were Burt Lancaster ("Birdman of Alcatraz"), Jack Lemmon ("Days of Wine and Roses"), Marcello Mastroianni ("Divorce Italian Style"), and Peter O'Toole ("Lawrence of Arabia").

Answer: Sidney Poitier

History was made at the 36th Academy Award ceremony when Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win the Best Actor Oscar for his role as handyman Homer Smith in "Lilies of the Field". He had previously been nominated in the same category for "The Defiant Ones" when he became the first African-American actor to receive an acting nomination.

In "Lilies of the Field", while on a trip across the Arizona desert, Smith was gently conned by a group of immigrant nuns into building a church. The other nominees for Best Actor were Albert Finney ("Tom Jones"), Richard Harris ("This Sporting Life"), Rex Harrison ("Cleopatra"), and Paul Newman ("Hud").

Answer: Rex Harrison

On his second nomination in the category, Rex Harrison won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Professor Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady". He had been nominated the previous year for "Cleopatra". In "My Fair Lady", Higgins was a professor of phonetics who accepted a challenge to pass a Cockney flower girl (Audrey Hepburn) off as a lady. Harrison also won the Tony Award for portraying Professor Higgins when the play debuted on Broadway, the fifth performer to manage the dual feat (Jose Ferrer, Shirley Booth, Yul Brynner, and Anne Bancroft were the first four).

The other contenders for the award were Richard Burton ("Becket"), Peter O'Toole ("Becket"), Anthony Quinn ("Zorba the Greek"), and Peter Sellers ("Dr. Strangelove").

Answer: Lee Marvin

With his sole Academy Award nomination, Lee Marvin won the Best Actor Oscar for his dual role as has-been gunfighter Kid Shelleen and his hired-killer brother Tim Strawn in "Cat Ballou". In the film, the drunken Shelleen was hired by Catherine "Cat" Ballou (Jane Fonda) to protect her father, but after her father was killed, Shelleen had to clean up his act to help her get revenge.

The other nominees in the category were Richard Burton ("The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"), Laurence Olivier ("Othello"), Rod Steiger ("The Pawnbroker"), and Oskar Werner ("Ship of Fools").

Answer: Paul Scofield

On his first Academy Award nomination, Paul Scofield won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the historical drama, "A Man for All Seasons". Scofield originated the role on Broadway, and like Rex Harrison, won both the Tony Award and the Oscar for his performances.

The film, which also picked up the Best Picture award, was a fictionalized account of six years during the reign of Henry VIII (Robert Shaw), during the period when More opposed the king's desire to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

The other Best Actor nominees were Alan Arkin ("The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming"), Richard Burton ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"), Michael Caine ("Alfie"), and Steve McQueen ("The Sand Pebbles").

Answer: Rod Steiger

At the 40th Academy Awards ceremony, Rod Steiger picked up the Best Actor award for his role as southern police chief Bill Gillespie in "In the Heat of the Night". It was his third Academy Award nomination, having previously been nominated in the Best Actor category for "The Pawnbroker" and in the Best Supporting Actor category for "On the Waterfront".

In the film, Gillespie worked with an African American detective from Philadelphia (Sidney Poitier) to solve the murder of a businessman in a small, racist Mississippi town.

The other contenders for the Best Actor Oscar were Warren Beatty ("Bonnie and Clyde"), Dustin Hoffman ("The Graduate"), Paul Newman ("Cool Hand Luke"), and Spencer Tracy ("Guess Who's Coming to Dinner").

Answer: Cliff Robertson

With his sole Academy Award nomination, Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as test subject Charly Gordon in "Charly". Based on the book "Flowers for Algernon", Charly was an intellectually-disabled man who underwent surgery to become smarter since the same process appeared to have been successfully used on a test subject mouse, Algernon.

The other nominees in the category were Alan Arkin ("The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"), Alan Bates ("The Fixer"), Ron Moody ("Oliver!"), and Peter O'Toole ("The Lion in Winter").

Answer: John Wayne

John Wayne won the only Academy Award in his career for his role as elderly marshall Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn in "True Grit". He had a prior acting nomination in the same category for "The Sands of Iwo Jima" and a Best Picture nomination as a producer for "The Alamo".

In the western "True Grit", the curmudgeonly Cogburn was hired by a feisty young girl (Kim Darby) to go after the man who killed her father. The other nominees for Best Actor were Richard Burton ("Anne of the Thousand Days"), Dustin Hoffman ("Midnight Cowboy"), Peter O'Toole ("Goodbye, Mr. Chips"), and Jon Voight ("Midnight Cowboy").