25 of the Oscars’ Most Egregious Snubs

Robert Mitchum delivered an iconic performance in “The Night of the Hunter” as a sinister preacher who aims to steal money from the children of his former prison cellmate. The film’s tense encounters would go on to inspire horror scenes in movies for years to come, but it was ahead of its time.

Highly stylized and almost surreal, “Night of the Hunter” was critically panned and financially unsuccessful when it came out in 1955. Though it was completely ignored by the Oscars, the film has more recently started to gain recognition as a cinema classic, and Robert Mitchum’s performance is now hailed as legendary.

Just about every ranking of the greatest movies of all time has “The Godfather” somewhere in the top. The film scored 11 Oscar nominations, winning three, including for Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Role, but not Best Director. The Oscar for Best Director” went to Bob Fosse for “Cabaret.”

When Coppola won Best Director in 1975 for the second installment of The Godfather franchise, he started his acceptance speech with a joke: “I almost won this a couple of years ago for the first half of the same picture. That’s not why we did ‘Godfather Part II,’ however.”

Judy Garland was just 17 years old when she delivered one of the most well-known and beloved characters — Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939. Though Garland did win an honorary Oscar for her “outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year,” many feel that Garland deserved at least a true nomination for Best Actress. The category was won by Vivien Leigh for “Gone With the Wind” that year.

“Django Unchained” was nominated for Best Picture at the 2013 Oscars, but the actor playing Django was not. The critically acclaimed movie was a box office hit — Quentin Tarantino’s highest grossing movie at the time. Foxx’s performance of a freed slave on a mission to save his wife also received much acclaim from critics, yet he didn’t receive the nod.

“Fruitvale Station” is based on the actual police shooting of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, on New Year’s Eve. It was widely expected that the movie would win most of the major Oscar categories. That was in 2013, which was supposed to be the year of the Black movie. But the film did not even get a nomination nod.

The movie’s director, Ryan Coogler, is now known for blockbuster and critically acclaimed hits like “Black Panther” and “Creed.” In 2021, Coogler received his first nomination as a producer for “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which is up for Best Picture.