Best Supporting Actor 1936: Mischa Auer in My Man Godfrey

Mischa Auer received his only Oscar nomination for playing Carlo the protege in My Man Godfrey.

Here is a performance that really is more of an act than really real acting. Carlo is not much of a character frankly and is just more of a thing in the background than a person. He never has a scene about him nor is there anything really that explains his strangeness. He is just there for no reason really and really lacks any influence on the film itself. He really is just there for only one reason.

That one reason, I would imagine is to be funny, the thing is though that he never ever is funny in the film. He certainly tries I will give him that but he never ever succeeds. He does a whole lot of mugging that's for sure, mugging to get laughs is a pretty bad attempt to get laughs and he does not get them. He is mostly just obnoxious particularly with his gorilla act. It is not funny he is just annoying. This is a complete failure of a performance because he does not create a character, which would be fine if he was funny, but he is not. This is a performance I barely ever noticed and when I did it was him being very annoying with his overacting.