The 1975 co-star Burt Reynolds was adamant had been “cheated out of an Academy Award”
Apart from the sole, obvious exception, Burt Reynolds wasn’t an actor who was ever in danger of troubling the Academy Awards, having made his bed decades earlier and decided to lie in it.
His performance as Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights was absolutely worthy of a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination, even though he ended up hating both the movie and its director, and he probably would have won if it wasn’t for that pesky Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.
Apart from that, the star couldn’t get a sniff of the industry’s most prestigious honours. That’s mostly because he spent his peak years prioritising box office-friendly action comedies, and when that well ran dry in the early 1980s, his career didn’t come close to reaching those same heights ever again, Boogie Nights apart.
However, that didn’t mean that Reynolds couldn’t ride to the defence of colleagues and co-stars he believed had been overlooked, snubbed, or even robbed by the Oscars, as he did in 1975 when he accused director Stanley Donen of cutting Liza Minnelli’s chances off at the knees when he shot a new ending for their dramedy, Lucky Lady.
The film, which also starred Gene Hackman, who fucking hated every second of being in Minnelli’s orbit, was supposed to conclude with his and Reynolds’ characters being killed as a result of their illicit bootlegging operation, with Minnelli reflecting on their love triangle in a coda set ten years later.
During post-production, Donen became increasingly unconvinced by the finale, so he tacked on a fresh, happier final scene, but because Minnelli was unavailable for reshoots, only Hackman and Reynolds were involved. That wasn’t good enough, either, so in the end, the director opted instead to cut ten minutes from the final act, with Donen subsequently admitting that “we had three endings, and none of them worked.”
Reynolds, never known to be a shrinking violet, couldn’t have made himself any clearer when he said, “Liza has been cheated out of an Academy Award by the new ending to this movie.” Not even a nomination, mind; he was adamant that if Lucky Lady had been released in cinemas with its original conclusion intact, she’d have been guaranteed the ‘Best Actress’ statue.
In the end, how many Oscar nominations did the film receive? None. Minnelli did at least already have a ‘Best Actress’ gong under her belt for Cabaret to soften the blow, but anyone who’s seen Lucky Lady in its studio-approved form might have a hard time believing that she’d have emerged victorious ahead of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Louise Fletcher, who took the prize at the 48th Academy Awards.
Reynolds admirably fought her corner, but considering the picture was largely panned by critics and didn’t make much of a splash among the cinemagoing public, it’s a stretch to suggest that removing ten minutes from the running time cost her a golden baldie.
