I just watched that 1st clip up top of Hoffman winning for K Vs K and I noticed when mentioning the fellow nominees, he mentioned Robert Duvall who wasn't nominated, and omitted Roy Scheider. I wonder if that was a mistake? Also, it appeared that Hoffman and Lemmon were the only 2 out of the 5 nominees in attendance; that seems a bit unusual. I think I started watching the Oscars a couple years after that, and ever since I can remember, they played a clip of the film the actor was nominated for, rather than spotlighting previous work. Was that the norm years ago? Or is it just something they do sometimes? Also, Johnny Carson was great.
Yeah, he did seemingly substitute Duvall for Scheider in his
Kramer vs. Kramer Oscar speech. I am sure it was unintentional, and not a snub of Scheider. Duvall was nominated that year as Best Supporting Actor, for
Apocalypse Now, and would get his first Best Actor nomination the following year for
The Great Santini before winning a few years later for
Tender Mercies. He could have just caught Duvall in his vision from the stage, perhaps? And certainly Duvall would have been in his mind as an actor he respects. Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Dustin Hoffman were all good friends and sometimes New York City roommates as struggling actors in the early and mid 1960s. I suspect in his heartfelt speech, Bobby Duvall's name just slipped out. Or, he could have simply been referring to his friend not getting Best Supporting Actor, earlier in the ceremony? Melvyn Douglas won for
Being There, over Duvall and Dustin's young
Kramer co-star Justin Henry, which he had already acknowledged. His quote when he got to Duvall was not, "I refuse to believe I am a better actor than..." that he used with his fellow nominees in the category, but "I refuse to believe that Robert Duvall lost."
And while it is unusual now for three of the five nominees to be no-shows, it's not totally unheard of, either, back in the day. Some actors just plain don't go to those types of awards shows, even the Oscars. Peter Sellers at that point in his career was definitely one of them. Pacino was, as well.
...And Justice for All was Pacino's fifth nomination already, and of his previous four, he was only at the ceremony for one of them, when he was up for
Serpico but lost to Jack Lemmon for
Save the Tiger. At the 1975 ceremony (nominated for
The Godfather Part II), he was again a no-show along with two other nominees, Albert Finney (
Murder on the Orient Express) and Dustin Hoffman himself (
Lenny), the year Art Carney won for
Harry & Tonto.
Hoffman had been nominated three times, before his
Kramer vs. Kramer win. He did attend the ceremony when he was nominated for
The Graduate (Rod Steiger won, for
In the Heat of the Night), but did not attend when he was nominated along with Jon Voight for
Midnight Cowboy (John Wayne's win for
True Grit), nor for
Lenny.
But the '70s was an era of actors not showing up even when they
won the award. The decade began with George C. Scott and Marlon Brando winning Best Actor for 1970 and 1972, respectively, but not attending. Brando's no-show, sending Sacheen Littlefeather in his stead to refuse the award, is the famous/infamous one, but two years before Scott refused to attend because he didn't believe in the concept of pitting actors against each other, as Hoffman elegantly addressed in his
Kramer win.
Patton's producer accepted the Best Actor Oscar for Scott. Peter Finch didn't attend when he won Best Actor for
Network, but he had the ultimate excuse: he was dead.
Also, Hoffman was pretty well a foregone conclusion at that point, having won most of the other major awards of the season, which may have contributed to the others being less likely to show up just to lose, anyway?
But by the 21st Century, yes, it is very unusual for a nominee not to appear at the ceremony.
As for showing clips of the nominated performances before the award is announced, that is probably the norm, but nothing about the Oscar telecast is set in stone. Even when the same producers and directors are involved in the TV show multiple years in a row, they always tinker with it, ceremony to ceremony, including how clips are or aren't used. Also, when you see clips like this on Youtube, sometimes the film clips have been edited out, I believe for copyright reasons. But that doesn't appear to be what happened at the 1980 ceremony when Hoffman won his first Oscar.
And Johnny Carson was, indeed, great.
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