Match the Best Supporting Actor - 1970s Quiz

Answer: John Mills

With his sole Academy Award nomination, Sir John Mills won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as village simpleton Michael in "Ryan's Daughter". Due to his character being mute, he was the first actor to win an Oscar for a non-speaking role in the sound era (Jane Wyman and Patty Duke had previously done so in the "actress" categories).

In the post WWI film set in an Irish village, the pub keeper Tom Ryan (Leo McKern) served as an informer for the nearby British army camp, while his daughter Rosy (Sarah Miles) had an affair with the camp commander (Christopher Jones). Michael (Mills) accidentally betrayed Rosy to the villagers while mimicking the British officer.

The other nominees in the category were Richard Castellano ("Lovers and Other Strangers"), Chief Dan George ("Little Big Man"), Gene Hackman ("I Never Sang for My Father"), and John Marley ("Love Story").

Answer: Ben Johnson

Another winner with his sole Academy Award nomination, Ben Johnson won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Sam the Lion in "The Last Picture Show". A veteran of early westerns, Johnson had to be cajoled into accepting the role by John Ford who reportedly asked him if he wanted to be known as "the Duke's sidekick forever". "The Last Picture Show" took place in a crumbling Texas town during the early 1950s where a group of teens were finishing their last year of school.

In the film, Sam was a businessman who was sort of the patriarch of the town, and he considered it his duty to keep the kids on the right path.

The other Best Supporting Actor contenders were Jeff Bridges ("The Last Picture Show"), Leonard Frey ("Fiddler on the Roof"), Richard Jaeckel ("Sometimes a Great Notion"), and Roy Scheider ("The French Connection").

Answer: Joel Grey

At the forty-fifth Academy Awards ceremony, Joel Grey picked up the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Master of Ceremonies in "Cabaret", a role which he had originated on Broadway and for which he had won the Tony award. The Bob Fosse musical "Cabaret" was set against the rise of Nazism in 1930s Berlin where an American singer, Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), was a performer at a bawdy nightclub called the Kit Kat Klub. Joel Grey was the enigmatic emcee at the club, and the musical numbers performed displayed the gradual acceptance of anti-Semitism in the era.

The other nominees in the category were Eddie Albert ("The Heartbreak Kid"), James Caan ("The Godfather"), Robert Duvall ("The Godfather"), and Al Pacino ("The Godfather"). Pacino boycotted the ceremony because he believed that he should have been nominated in the Best Actor category since he had more screen time than Best Actor winner Marlon Brando.

Answer: John Houseman

With his sole acting Academy Award nomination, John Houseman won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as demanding law professor Charles W. Kingsfield in "The Paper Chase", a role he reprised for the subsequent television series of the same name.

He had a previous nomination for Best Picture as a producer for "Julius Caesar" in 1954. Prior to "The Paper Chase", Houseman was known as a producer, not an actor; he only had one credited performance - a small role in a 1938 Orson Welles film, "Too Much Johnson", and he also had an uncredited appearance in the 1964 film "Seven Days in May".

But after "The Paper Chase", he took on many acting roles. "The Paper Chase" followed James Hart (Timothy Bottoms) and a group of students during their stressful first year at Harvard Law School, in particular their time with the intimidating Professor Kingsfield.

The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were Vincent Gardenia ("Bang the Drum Slowly"), Jack Gilford ("Save the Tiger"), Jason Miller ("The Exorcist"), and Randy Quaid ("The Last Detail").

Answer: Robert De Niro

With his first Academy Award nomination, Robert De Niro won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as young immigrant Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II". He became the first actor to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance, as all of his lines were in Italian (Sophia Loren had been the first actress to do so, also in Italian, in the film "Two Women" in 1962). Marlon Brando had won the Best Actor Oscar two years earlier for his older portrayal of Corleone, making Brando and De Niro the first performers to win Oscars playing the same character. "The Godfather Part II" was the first sequel to win a Best Picture Oscar, but the film was actually both a prequel and a sequel. De Niro appeared in the prequel portion, which followed the rise of Vito Corleone from his days as an orphaned youngster in Sicily in 1901 to his success as an oil olive magnate in New York in the 1920s.

The sequel portion of the film picked up in the late 1950s with Vito's son Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) running the family operation.

The other nominees in the category were Fred Astaire ("The Towering Inferno"), Jeff Bridges ("Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"), Michael V. Gazzo ("The Godfather Part II"), and Lee Strasberg ("The Godfather Part II").

Answer: George Burns

With his sole Academy Award nomination, George Burns picked up the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as vaudeville straight man Al Lewis in "The Sunshine Boys". He was the last person born in the 1800s to win an acting Oscar, having been born in 1896.

At the time, he was also the oldest winner of an acting Oscar at the age of 80 years and 69 days. In "The Sunshine Boys", Lewis (Burns) and Clark (Walter Matthau) were a feuding vaudeville comedy team who hadn't spoken to each other for over a decade until Clark's nephew (Richard Benjamin) tried to unite them for a "history of comedy" television special.

The other contenders for the award were Brad Dourif ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), Burgess Meredith ("The Day of the Locust"), Chris Sarandon ("Dog Day Afternoon"), and Jack Warden ("Shampoo").

Answer: Jason Robards

Jason Robards won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar on his first nomination for his portrayal of no-nonsense "Washington Post" editor Ben Bradlee in "All the President's Men". The film followed two "Washington Post" journalists, Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), as they investigated the Watergate scandal. Ben Bradlee was the detail-oriented executive editor who pushed the journalists to get credible sources and provide reliable reporting.

The real Bradlee wanted George C. Scott to portray him in the film, but Redford had bought the rights to the book and envisioned Robards in the role.

The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were Ned Beatty ("Network"), Burgess Meredith ("Rocky"), Laurence Olivier ("Marathon Man"), and Burt Young ("Rocky").

Answer: Jason Robards

At the fiftieth Academy Awards ceremony, Jason Robards picked up his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of world-weary author Dashiell Hammett in "Julia". It was his second nomination, and he became the first actor to win back-to-back Best Supporting Actor Oscars.

The titular "Julia", played by Vanessa Redgrave, was the childhood friend of writer Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda). The film followed both Hellman's career, as encouraged by her partner Hammett (Robards), and Hellman's involvement in Julia's anti-Nazi activities in Europe.

The other contenders for the award were Mikhail Baryshnikov ("The Turning Point"), Peter Firth ("Equus"), Alec Guinness ("Star Wars"), and Maximilian Schell ("Julia").

Answer: Christopher Walken

With his first Academy Award nomination, Christopher Walken won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as mentally-tormented Nick Chevotarevich in "The Deer Hunter". The film followed three friends (Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Walken) from a steel town in Pennsylvania from their days before shipping out to Vietnam to the aftermath of their experiences.

The three were captured during the war and forced to play Russian roulette by their guards before managing to escape, but the incident affected Nick (Walken) who later suffered from amnesia and ended up being used by hustler to earn money playing Russian roulette.

The film also featured a terminally ill John Cazale as one of their friends. De Niro paid for Cazale's cast insurance since the studio wasn't able to get insurance for him, and all of Cazale's scenes were filmed first; he died shortly after filming wrapped.

The other nominees in the category were Bruce Dern ("Coming Home"), Richard Farnsworth ("Comes a Horseman"), John Hurt ("Midnight Express"), and Jack Warden ("Heaven Can Wait").

Answer: Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Douglas picked up the second Best Supporting Actor Oscar of his career for his role as terminally ill businessman Benjamin Rand in "Being There". He had previously won for "Hud" in 1964 and been nominated in the Best Actor category for "I Never Sang for My Father" in 1971. "Being There" was a dramatic showcase for Peter Sellers in which he portrayed a simple-minded man known as Chance the gardener.

When he was hit by the chauffeur-driven car of Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), she took him home to meet her bed-ridden elderly husband (Douglas). Eve had misheard Chance's name and introduced him as Chauncey Gardiner, and Gardiner soon became a close confidant and advisor to Rand and his high-profile friends.

The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were Robert Duvall ("Apocalypse Now"), Frederic Forrest ("The Rose"), Justin Henry ("Kramer vs. Kramer"), and Mickey Rooney ("The Black Stallion").