Best Supporting Actor 1940: Jack Oakie in The Great Dictator

Jack Oakie received his only Oscar nomination for portraying Benzini Napaloni the Dictator of Bacteria.

Jack Oakie quite clearly is doing a parody of Benito Mussolini with Benzini Napaloni. It is a fine humorous enough parody, but that is the entirety of his performance. He does a funny parody accent although its rather inconsistent but hey this is not meant to be taken seriously, and he does the same for the mannerisms Mussolini. A nice funny enough performance but again not an amazing one, and also many of his scenes much of the humor comes from visual gags, and than humor from his performance.Overall Oakie performance is nice enough and does serve its purpose but lets just say although his comedic timing and his parody are fine his performance is never really a "gut buster".