United Artists
Woodfall Productions (UK)
“Tom Jones” is the first allBritish film to win the Best Picture Oscar since Olivier's “Hamlet,” in 1948.
Oscar Nominations: 10
Picture, produced by Tony Richardson
Director: Tony Richardson
Screenplay (Adapted) John Osborne
Actor: Albert Finney
Supporting Actor: Hugh Griffith
Supporting Actress: Diane Cilento
Supporting Actress: Edith Evans
Supporting Actress: Joyce Redman
Art Direction-Set Decoration (color): Ralph Brinton, Ted Marshall, and Jocelyn Herbert; Josie MacAvin
Music Score (Original): John Addison
Oscar Awards: 4
Picture
Director
Screenplay
Music Score
Oscar Context
“Tom Jones” is the only film in the Academy's annals to have nominated three Supporting Actresses. All three Brit thespians were deserving: Dame Edith Evans, as the intrepid aunt; Diane Cilento, as the wild gatekeeper's daughter; and best of all, Joyce Redman, as a lady of easy virtue who seduces the hero over a large meal in what became the film's best remembered sequence.
Artistically, “Tom Jones” was superior to all the other nominees in 1963: Kazan's personal drama, “America, America;” Mankiewicz's problematic “Cleopatra,” which almost sank Fox; Ford's tired and old-fashioned anthology, “How the West Was Won;” and “Lilies of the Field,” which won Sidney Poitier the Best Picture, thus depriving Finney of the honor.