HOW THE CREW OF THE ORCA DID AT THE OSCARS…BEFORE AND AFTER JAWS

At the 1976 Academy Awards, Jaws took home three of the four Oscars it was nominated for.

It won Best Score for John Williams, Best Editing for Verna Fields and Sound for Robert L. Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter. It was also nominated for Best Picture, but lost out to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Despite the usual studio pre-nomination campaigns ‘for your consideration’, none of the crew of the Orca, that’s the main cast of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, were nominated.

Dreyfuss would however go onto to receive a Best Actor nomination for his role as Matt Hooper at the BAFTAs. There was no biting for the actors who played Chief Brody or Quint.

But that doesn’t mean they haven’t hooked Oscar nominations before or since the release of Jaws.

Robert Shaw

Shaw was the first of the main cast to receive an Oscar nomination, which he got for the role of Henry VIII in A Man For All Seasons (1966).

It’s hard to even think that this was the same actor who had been battling Sean Connery’s James Bond three years earlier.

This was the second time an actor playing Henry VIII had gained an Oscar nomination, the first being for Charles Laughton.

It’s fair to say that A Man For All Seasons was king of the Oscars at the 1967 awards ceremony, walking away with six awards, which included Best Picture, Best Actor for Paul Scofield and Best Director for Fred Zinnemann. The Director had commented that it was the easiest film he had ever made, due to the sheer talent involved behind and in front of the cameras.

Shaw’s Best Supporting nomination lost out to Walter Matthau for his role in The Fortune Cookie. It was clearly good fortune for Matthau.

Matthau and Shaw would cross paths on screen in 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which was the last film Robert Shaw made before he boarded Jaws. Pelham also happened to be helmed by the future director of Jaws the Revenge, Joseph Sargent.

This was Shaw’s one and only Oscar nomination, with many audiences surprised today that he never even got nominated for his role as Quint in Jaws.  For many, the delivery of the USS Indianapolis speech was worthy of a nomination alone, at the very least.

Sadly, Shaw died in 1978, meaning we were denied future such mesmerising performances that he would have brought to the 1980s and beyond.

Roy Scheider

The actor who played Chief Brody also came to Jaws with an Oscar nomination under his belt, and likewise this was also a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It was however for a very different kind of film, his was for William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971).

Scheider’s co-star, the always great Gene Hackman, took home the Best Actor award for his role as Popeye Doyle, whereas Scheider lost out to Ben Johnson (who would later be in Steven Spielberg’s big screen debut, The Sugarland Express) for his part in The Last Picture Show.

Post Jaws and Jaws 2 Scheider would get nominated for an Oscar for a second time, this time in the category of Best Actor. It was for the role of Joe Gideon in All That Jazz, a thinly veiled story about Bob Fosse and the life and highs and lows of a Broadway dance choreographer. Fosse also directed.

Scheider said the role the most challenging of his career as it called for him to sing, dance and act, sometimes all at the same time. It was a role, film and challenge he remained immensely proud of.

That year’s winner was Dustin Hoffman – who Scheider had starred alongside in Marathon Man the year after the release of Jaws. Hoffman won for Kramer vs Kramer, but it was a strong field of actors in that category at the 52nd Academy Awards. Nominees in that category included Jack Lemmon for The China Syndrome, Al Pacino for …And Justice For All and Peter Sellers for Being There.

Richard Dreyfuss

The Matt Hooper actor is the only crew member of the Orca to win an Academy Award, and at the time of winning the Best Actor Oscar at the 1978 Academy Awards for The Goodbye Girl (1977), he was – at aged 30 – the youngest Best Actor recipient. The previous youngest had been Marlon Brando.

It was a record that would stand for 25 years, until Adrien Brody – just three weeks short of turning 30 – would win the Best Actor Oscar for The Pianist.

On Oscar night Dreyfuss beat out the likes of Woody Allen for Annie Hall, Richard Burton for Equus and John Travolta for Saturday Night Fever.

The Goodbye Girl is a Neil Simon written romantic comedy about the trials and tribulations of a struggling actor, which after the success of Jaws, Close Encounters and now an Oscar, Dreyfuss was anything but that. It is also believed that the box office hits of Jaws, Encounters and Goodbye meant that Dreyfuss was the first star to have three consecutive films pass the $100 million mark.

Not that Dreyfuss Originally Robert De Niro was cast as the Dreyfuss character, but was let go before shooting began.

And Dreyfuss was nominated in the Best Actor category again at the 1996 Academy Awards, for the wonderful Mr Holland’s Opus (1995). He was beat out by Nicolas Cage for Leaving Las Vegas.

Words by Dean Newman

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