Had Billy Wilder won the previous year and the Academy didn’t feel like awarding him for the second year in a row for “The Long Weekend,” perhaps that could have been the time to award Alfred Hitchcock. He, too, received back-to-back Best Director nominations, this time for the far better remembered “Spellbound,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. “Spellbound” earned a healthy six nominations — just one less than “The Lost Weekend” — and made its way into Best Picture.
Unfortunately for Hitchcock, a couple of things stood in the way. As much as I like my hypothetical Oscars history, that isn’t what actually happened. “The Lost Weekend” was the overwhelming frontrunner this year, having won Best Picture at both the Golden Globes and New York Film Critics Circle Awards. The chances of it not winning big at the Oscars, especially for Ray Milland in Best Actor, were slim to none.
Having acting nominations for your film is always a boon to your movie. While Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck were both nominated that year, they were both for performances in different movies, with Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary” and Peck in “The Keys of the Kingdom.” Strangely enough, they were both playing religious figures, a nun and a priest, respectively. The only acting nomination for “Spellbound” was for Michael Chekhov in Best Supporting Actor, which isn’t the result you want when your film is headlined by two massive movie stars.
This year was always Billy Wilder’s to lose, and he didn’t. It wouldn’t shock me if Hitchcock came in second place, though Leo McCarey once again had the most nominated film of the night with “The Bells of St. Mary,” which is also a sequel to “Going My Way.” And the Academy doesn’t like franchises.
