Best Actor 1929: Results

4. Chester Morris in Alibi- Chester Morris gives a rather standard gangster performance, he is not charismatic enough to be as manipulative as the character is, and his big final scene I do not know what to make out of it.

3. Paul Muni in the Valiant- In the Valiant Paul Muni is consistently fine, and quite good in his final moments, he never is great, but he never is bad either.  Also interestingly enough he never has his overacting moments as he does in his later performances.

2. Warner Baxter in In Old Arizona- Warner Baxter performance suffers only a little bit from its age. He really does make a very memorable character out of the singing bandit called the Cisco Kid. He is very good throughout and particularly strong when showing the darker side of the character. 

1. George Bancroft in Thunderbolt - Bancroft delivers a well attuned performance that manages to delivery the brutish but also charismatic qualities of his strangely likable gangster.

Best Actor 1929: Chester Morris in Alibi

Chester Morris received his only Oscar nomination for portraying Chick Williams in Alibi.

Alibi is a rather poor crime film about a criminal who manipulates others to get alibis to cover his crimes.

Chester Morris plays this criminal named chick. His performance is a pretty standard tough gangster performance. He has the right way of looking and all that but in terms of screen presence he is no Edward G. Robinson. He mostly just keeps with the tough gangster way for most of the film, which is a bit of a problem.

 Chick is suppose to be a very manipulative person, and very charismatic person since he is always trying to convince others to do his bidding. He simply is not charismatic enough for his manipulations to be made believable. He just keeps his tough guy way of acting which is still not the greatest. He does not show how he could make a police man's daughter to marry him, or convince a law abiding man to make an alibi for him.

He has one big scene though where he must show a different side of Chick. In this scene he no longer is able to act tough when threatened with death. I do not know what to make of this scene actually. It is the type of acting and scene that was made fun of a million times after this film. I'm not sure if he is actually bad or not, but it brought memories back to me of the parodies too well. I simply, am not sure, but still even if he is not bad his performance is simply not anything special, basically standard throughout. I did not dislike it but there is nothing at all special, and from the same film Harry Stubbs as the police man who must take Chick down is much better.

Best Actor 1929

1929's nominees include Lewis Milestone The Patriot which is basically lost, and George Bancroft in Thunderbolt which I checked for everywhere and only found on eBay, but I am hardly going to payout the cost to by the actual reels of the film which is all I could find. I will get back to any of these if they ever become easier to find, but for the moment I will reduce the nominees to:

Warner Baxter in Old Arizona

Chester Morris in Alibi

Paul Muni in The Valiant

Who do you pick? Who do you predict?