Talk:List of posthumous Academy Award winners and nominees/Archive 1

New article
I created this article on August 2, 2008. Please feel free to add comments or suggestions on this Talk Page or on my User Talk Page. Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC))

Number of winners
Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell shared the award for Best Scoring at the 45th awards. They were both dead, so both received statuettes posthumously, although it only counts as one (posthumous) award.

In the Statistics section, we say: I agree with the first one. But wouldn’t the second one be 14 winners? Rasch and Russell are both winners, although they shared the same award. The word “Winner” appears 14 times in the Winner column, not 13. Also, if we count Rasch and Russell as one "winner", there seems little point in separately specfying the number of awards and the number of winners. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Number of posthumous awards: 13 (includes one shared award)
 * Number of posthumous winners: 13


 * The word "Winner" appears 14 times in the winner column ... but two of those wins are for the same individual (William A. Horning). So, essentially, there are 12 "other" winners ... and then Horning won twice (accounting for the 13th and the 14th "winner" designation).  But, as Horning is only one individual, he is only counted once.  Thus, there are 12 "other" winners, plus Horning ... thus, 13 winners in total.  That is, William A. Horning = two distinct awards, but only one winner.  Both Rasch and Russell are counted individually as two separate winners; they both are included in the "other" 12 winners.  That is, Rasch and Russell = only one award, but two distinct winners.  Thanks.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC))


 * Oh, OK. I see now, Thanks.  Thinking in terms of individual statuettes handed out (14), both statistics should lead to the same result, 14.  The first one does that already because the words in parentheses tell you that 2 statuettes were given for one award, so 13 + 1 = 14.  What we need to do is make the second one:
 * Number of posthumous winners: 13 (includes one person who won two posthumous awards)
 * so that 13 + 1 = 14 from that angle as well. I'll fix it.  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * But see the following thread, because I've now added some interpretive guidelines that (hopefully) make any parentheses after individual records unnecessary. --  JackofOz (talk) 01:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Shared nomination/award: one person alive, one dead
Say an Oscar was shared by 2 people, one of whom was still alive but the other person had died. It would certainly count as 1 posthumous winner, but would it count as a "posthumous award"? In the narrow sense of "made after the death of the recipient", it would be neither simply posthumous nor simply non-posthumous; or it could be seen as both simultaneously. That's a little unsatisfactory because it’s ambiguous. We don’t yet define our terms, and I think we need to do that. The definition would also need to accommodate unsuccessful joint nominations where one of the nominees was dead but the other alive.

The situation has already arisen at least once: Geoffrey Unsworth (dead) and Ghislain Cloquet (alive) were jointly nominated, successfully, for Best Cinematography on Tess. We currently show only Unsworth’s name for this award. I appreciate that this article is focussed on nominations and awards made posthumously, and Cloquet’s share of the nomination/award was not posthumous. But at the same time, a reader could well interpret the nomination/award for Tess as having involved one person only (Unsworth), which would be a misleading impression.

I’ve edited Unsworth’s entry by adding a footnote to explain the Cloquet factor; and I’ve made a clarification of when a nomination/award is considered “posthumous” for the purposes of our statistics. Maybe it can be done in a better way, so please improve it if you can. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * On further examination, I see this has happened many times. Most nominees for Best Art Direction are joint, as are most for Best Song (one for the lyrics, one for music).  There are no doubt others.  I don't want to clutter up the article with interminable footnotes, but I also don't want to convey misleading impressions by mentioning only one person's name, without qualification, against a nomination or win, if there were in fact more than just that person's name listed in the nomination.  Maybe a symbol indicating a joint nomination would do the trick, and then if readers want to find out who the other people were they can click on the relevant link and discover it quickly.  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Referencing this list
Interesting list. My discussion refers to the format for referencing it. Editors have been using a format like the following (Academy Award for Film Editing):
 * It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - Frederic Knudtson (posthumous nomination), Robert C. Jones, Gene Fowler Jr.

I feel that this style places too much emphasis on the posthumous character of a nomination, and I'd prefer something more discreet: References
 * It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - Frederic Knudtson, Robert C. Jones, Gene Fowler Jr.

Any comments? thanks, Easchiff(talk) 23:17, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm the editor who made those edits. It seemed a reasonable approach, but I have no objections to your alternative proposal.  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:22, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Heath Ledger
The nominees for the 2009 ceremony have not yet been announced, which makes the listing of Heath Ledger as an Academy Award nominee for The Dark Night erroneous. No matter how much talk there is, it's not official yet, so I've removed it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.187.46.254 (talk) 19:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, guess what, it's official. Let's get it back on there! 142.177.155.75 (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm silly. Someone's beat me to the punch already.  Kudos, you obsessive bunch. 142.177.155.75 (talk) 01:54, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Posthumous acting awards both to Australians
The fact that both posthumous acting awards (Finch, Ledger) have gone to Australians is a curious tidbit. For the life of me, I can't find anywhere relevant to put it though. Manning (talk) 01:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It's now mentioned @ List of Academy Award records (I've just done it). It should probably get a mention here too, but like you, I can't see an obvious place to put it.  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:53, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps you could explain something that has me really confused. Why do you speak of "both" posthumous acting awards going to Australians?  Finch and Ledger have both been honored posthumously, but so too were James Dean and Spencer Tracy.  Doesn't this use of "both" in this context imply that Finch and Ledger are the only so-awarded actors?  Or am I missing something? Unschool 05:04, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Peter Finch and Heath Ledger are the only people who have won Oscars posthumously for acting. James Dean, Spencer Tracy, and others were nominated but didn't win posthumously. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

History
As I recall, until recently, the AoMPA did not accept posthumous nominations for the Oscar, which is why Finch was the only legitimate single posthumous major award winner, as he died after the nominations but before he won. I know this limiting rule was changed fairly recently, which led to Ledger's win and nomination. Mention of this fact and change of rules, along with when it occurred, seems as though it should clearly be mentioned in this piece. I'm not sure when it occurred (it may even have been related to Ledger's death, I dunno). All this seems like this would be/should be part of this piece. OBloodyHell (talk) 08:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, Peter Finch died almost a month before the Oscar nominations came out in 1977. His nomination was posthumous (not just his win). As can be seen from the list, people have been receiving posthumous Oscar nominations literally since the 1st Academy Awards. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Confusing
It is very confusing that it appears that many of the entries seem to have died the year after they received the award: for example: Allen Davey died 1946/03/05 but received an award at the 18th ceremony in 1945 (as it appears). Only an expert would know that the 18th ceremony was held 1946/03/07 (or someone who can be bothered to check the link - not many) which contradicts the Year columns entry of 1945. Knowing that it refers to the year of release of the film is not intuitive. |Ceremony|Year| would imply that |Year| is referring to the Year of the ceremony. I will change the title to |Film Year| but suggest that the column be moved to after |Film| or that it is rearranged thusly |Ceremony|Film|Year|.Angry Mustelid (talk) 01:14, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Academy Awards which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:19, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

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