Jon Voight had been first nominated for the Best Actor Oscar (alongside peer Dustin Hoffman) for Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, which won the 1969 Best Picture Oscar.
In 1978, the Academy nominated two vastly different Vietnam War films for Best Picture: Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter and Hal Ashby’s Coming Home, each garnering a large number of nominations.
Coming Home: Oscar Nominations–8
Picture, produced by Jerome Hellman
Director: Hal Ashby
Actor: Jon Voight
Actress: Jane Fonda
Supporting Actor: Bruce Dern
Supporting Actress: Penelope Milford
Screenplay (Original): Nancy Dowd, story; Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones,
Film Editing: Don Zimmerman
Oscar Awards: 3
Screenplay
Actor
Actress
Oscar Context
The Academy voters split the major awards between the two movies. “The Deer Hunter” won five: Best Picture, Director (Cimino), Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), sound, and editing. “Coming Home” received the two lead acting awards (Fonda and Voight), and original screenplay.
The other Best Picture nominees were the comedy Warren Beatty’s “Heaven Can Wait,” the thriller Oliver Stone’s “Midnight Express,” and Paul Mazursky’s femme-centered melodrama “An Unmarried Woman.”
Ironically, right-winger and pro-Vietnam John Wayne was chosen as the Best Picture presenter, though one could only speculate how he felt about handing the statuette to “The Deer Hunter,” since this time, the Duke kept his mouth shut!
