In
the years before an independent accounting
firm tabulated the voting, a tie was declared if a nominee
came within three votes of the winner.
Wallace
Beery was announced as being one vote shy of winner Fredric March in the 1931/32
ballotting, so a tie was declared and Beery was given a
Best Actor Oscar
for his performance in The Champ.
March was gracious about the tie vote by
calling attention to the fact that both he
and Beery recently adopted children, joking "it
seems a little odd that we were both given
the award for best male performance of
the year."
Or at least he gave the appearance
of graciousness. Beery was, by all accounts, one of the most despicable people to
ever set foot on a motion picture stage. In this era when the award-winners were
not the top secret information prior to the ceremony that they are now, it is rumored
that after Beery learned that March had won the Oscar, he threw such a tantrum about
it to MGM head Louis B. Mayer that Mayer used his influence to get the Academy to
award Beery a second statuette. He appeared in a few more notable films following his
Oscar win, like Treasure Island and Viva Villa, but the quality of his performances
rapidly declined in the late `30s and 40s and he never again came close to doing
anything that merited Oscar recognition. March, by contrast, had a distinguished
career on film, stage and television until the end of
his life and won a second
Oscar in 1946 for his memorable performance in The Best Years of Our Lives.
Other Oscar tie-winners are:
1949 Best Documentary Short Subject:
A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little
1968 Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter and Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl
1986 Best Documentary Feature: Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down and Out in America
1995 Best Live Action Short: Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Trevor
2012 Best Sound Editing: Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty
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