WOODY AND HIS OSCARS: SNUBBING THE RACE : Allen Has Insisted That His Name Be Left Off Orion’s Academy Award Ads

Leave it to Woody Allen, the person who hates film competition so much he won’t allow the distributor of his movies to promote him for Academy Awards, to get the traditions all mixed up and bollix the game for everyone else.

One of the traditional schemes in the Oscar campaigning process is for studios and publicists to try to guide voters into thinking of a lead performance as a supporting performance, which--if successful--gives the nominee an advantage over the competition on the final ballot. Allen is reversing the trend.

In Orion Pictures’ heavy Oscar campaign in the trade papers for Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” most members of the ensemble cast are being suggested for consideration in the lead actor and actress categories. If the voters follow directions, and if any of the cast is nominated as best actor or best actress, chances of winning are almost nil.

Orion marketing executives acknowledge that Allen has final say over the content of the studio’s ads and that suggesting Michael Caine as best actor and Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest as best actress was Allen’s decision. Allen also insisted on his name being left off the Academy Award ads, as well as off the congratulatory ads Orion placed after Allen won writing and directing awards from the Los Angeles and New York film critics groups.

Allen was playing the clarinet at Michael’s Pub in New York the night he won Academy Awards for writing and directing “Annie Hall.” A year later, he told an interviewer the awards were meaningless to him and that he had no regard for the Oscar process.

“When you see who wins those things--or doesn’t win them--you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is,” Allen told an interviewer.

Allen apparently has no more regard for critics’ opinions. He has also declined to show up to accept his awards from either of the two critics groups.

Despite the previous snub, and his current non-participation in the frenzied Oscar campaign, Allen could get a second chance to blow the clarinet while Hollywood serenades him. He is certain to be nominated as both writer and director of “Hannah,” and the current wisdom has “Hannah” and Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” as the year’s two front-runners.

Whether the wrong-way Corrigan ad campaigns for “Hannah” will hurt the chances of a supporting actor nomination for Caine and one or two supporting actress nominations for the three women remains to be seen. Wiest, the likeliest nominee from “Hannah,” has swept the major critics’ awards as best supporting actress, usually a reliable indicator of a nomination to come.

Each year, the members of the actors branch of the academy receive a cautionary note with their nominations ballots. It reminds them that the supporting acting categories were added in 1937 to give actors other than stars a chance to win. There is one award each for actors and actresses in central roles, and one each for performances in “other than central roles.”

From 1937 until 1964, the studios determined which was which. They sent in credit sheets, with asterisks setting off those performances they considered leads. All others were eligible for supporting-acting nominations.

That led to some interesting egoquakes. Usually, the decision was based on billings. Stars, then and now, don’t like to think of their work as supporting someone else’s. It has the whiff of a second banana to it. And the insistence on being touted as leading actors and actresses no doubt cost some big stars a few nominations.

Rosalind Russell reportedly insisted that Columbia Pictures list her as a leading actress in the 1955 “Picnic,” even though her role as spinster schoolteacher had already won her a critics’ award as best supporting actress. Russell was not nominated.

Yvonne De Carlo, whose character was thrown over for God by Moses in “The Ten Commandments,” apparently forced the same request on Paramount for leading lady status in the Oscar race, and with the same result. No nomination.

In 1963, the academy decided to take the decision away from the studios and give it to the actors who were actually voting. Since then, where to place a performance on a ballot has been a matter of conscience, and judgment. It seems simple. Was so-and-so one of the leads, or one whose work supported the leads?

There are a lot of problems with the current method, starting with the fact that there are probably 10 times as many actors and actresses to consider in the supporting categories as there are in the leads. And unique among contests of this importance, the voters don’t see more than a fraction of all the movies released every year.

To help the voters winnow down the field to the serious performances they should ponder, or at least make an effort to see, studios and publicists run ad campaigns in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

Much is at stake. The prospect of a best supporting actor award may not put a twinkle in Dustin Hoffman’s eyes, but for most others--those whose careers could use a push or a hand--even a nomination works like a coupon that can be cashed in for bigger, higher-paying roles.

In reality, the new rule has probably led to more abuses than the old one. Through their expensive ad campaigns, the studios have, in effect, maintained some control over the categorizing, and this has led to some startling incongruities on the final Oscar ballots.

In 1966, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau co-starred in “The Fortune Cookie,” sharing above-the-title billing. But rather than tout them both as best actor, which would assure one of losing, United Artists promoted Lemmon as best actor and Matthau as best supporting actor. Lemmon was not nominated; Matthau was nominated and won as best supporting actor.

In 1975, Matthau and George Burns co-starred in “The Sunshine Boys.” Matthau was pushed for, and got, a nomination as best actor. Burns was pushed for, and got, a best supporting actor nomination. Burns went on to win the Oscar; Matthau lost to Jack Nicholson (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).

The worst offense of the past 20 years, however, was Paramount’s successful campaign to get Timothy Hutton nominated as best supporting actor for “Ordinary People” in 1980. Had the studio promoted him as best actor, he probably would have gotten a nomination, but the competition (it figured out to be Robert De Niro’s year, for “Raging Bull”) would have been much stiffer.

Hutton was nominated as best supporting actor, and won, perhaps taking an Oscar away from his “Ordinary People” co-star Judd Hirsch, whose work in that film could be used as a model for a perfect supporting performance.

Occasionally, the voters have surprised everyone by ignoring the publicity. In 1981, they shocked Paramount and everyone else by nominating Susan Sarandon as best actress for “Atlantic City” after Paramount (and many film critics) singled her out for consideration as best supporting actress.

Three years later, the voters ignored not only Columbia’s suggestion that Peggy Ashcroft be considered as best actress for “A Passage to India,” but the National Board of Review, which had already voted its best actress award to her. The actors nominated Ashcroft in the supporting category, and she won.

For 1986, there doesn’t seem to be much confusion, other than Woody Allen’s. None of the four cast members from “Hannah” being suggested as lead actor candidates is likely to be nominated in those categories. The only question is whether enough ballots are split to eliminate them from supporting categories too.

Three things we know for sure. The ballot box closes Friday. The nominations will be announced Feb. 11. And they won’t mean beans to Woody Allen.