Best Supporting Actor 1953: Eddie Albert in Roman Holiday

Eddie Albert received his first Oscar nomination for portraying Irving Radovich in Roman Holiday.

Roman Holiday is a film that I actually enjoy quite a bit. There is nothing that special about it but I liked it as a good romantic comedy.

Eddie Albert is Irving Radovich who is a photographer friend of Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). Joe has Irving take secret pictures of runaway Princess Ann calling herself Anya Smith (Audrey Hepburn) as they all go around Rome and do various things. Albert mostly just takes pictures. He goes around in the background taking pictures secretly and takes them in many different way and angles. Well he does a few other things such as being tripped by Joe when he almost spills the truth about the Princess but that is about it. I do not exactly have a huge problem with his performance since he actually does not do anything wrong, but than again the character does not ask him to really much of anything single in the entire film. All he did was either getting beaten up by someone or taking a picture of something. Really his performance is not the problem it is the fact that the Academy nominated someone for basically taking pictures and nothing else. I really hate to give him this rating since it is not like I hate what he does, I honestly would have rather just disqualified him for not having enough of a character to be nominated.

 

Looking at my old thoughts this really is an example of my once misguided approach where I would penalize a performance for the nomination rather than looking at the performance first. As while Albert shouldn't have been nominated for this this performance, he delivers exactly what is needed from him. In that he has a little bit of comedic energy, he's not there to steal the spotlight from Hepburn or Peck, just to add a little bit of an alternative presence in a few moments. His portrayal of Irving's reaction to see Joe's choice later in the film has enough nuance in there to show Irving's own consideration does provide some depth as a true friend to really both. Then looking over the photos with Joe, he conveys that shared joy between all of them in their little adventure. He has a quiet bit of charm here about what he does here, and while I will still say that this isn't a performance that needed to be nominated, it is a good performance albeit within a fairly limited role.