Oscars rewind: 5 reasons why Peggy Ashcroft won Best Supporting Actress for ‘A Passage to India’

At this year’s Academy Awards, Best Supporting Actress winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) emotionally took to the stage to deliver a truly heartfelt and achingly honest acceptance speech. It’s moments like that that make the Oscars what they’re meant to be. Pure magic.

We can only imagine a scenario in which Randolph not been present, and if someone else had to accept on her behalf. (I’m sure that her co-star and Best Actor nominee Paul Giamatti would have been thrilled to ‘holdover’ her statuette.)

It’s been quite some time since we’ve had a Best Supporting Actress no-show at the Oscars. In fact, we have to go back some four decades to review the last incident. It was at the 57th Academy Awards, saluting the finest achievements of 1984. The late Ryan O’Neal opened the envelope and announced that Peggy Ashcroft was the winner for David Lean’s epic “A Passage to India.” Ashcroft chose to skip the Oscars to attend the funeral of Michael Redgrave, so her friend Angela Lansbury gracefully accepted on her behalf. (Though Ashcroft fell ill with the flu and ultimately missed the funeral, as well.)

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It’s truly a travesty that Ashcroft wasn’t present to collect her award, as it would have been another divine (as in Da’Vine) Oscars moment. Let’s now take a look at five reasons why the actress managed the feat in the first place.

1. She delivered a rare masterclass performance.
They don’t come across very often, so it’s hard to overlook them when they do. As Mrs. Moore, a highly proper Englishwoman traveling in 1920s India with her daughter-in-law-to-be (played by Best Actress nominee Judy Davis), Ashcroft displayed the mannerisms, the facial expressions and the vocal inflections all fitting of the character from the novel by E.M. Forster. As the plot progressed, Ashcroft carefully projected Mrs. Moore’s complexities and conflicts without an ounce of exaggeration. And in doing so, she made Moore more and more fascinating. She essentially stole the show. It was her deeply skilled acting that allowed Ashcroft to steal the Oscar.

2. She had a co-leading role.
I recall at the time being unsure of Ashcroft’s intended category placement. She had a very large part, but the film was essentially a three-hander with her, Davis and the overlooked Victor Banerjee. The New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review named Ashcroft Best Leading Actress, while the Los Angeles Film Critics Association reviewed her to be the finest supporting female. The Golden Globes also put her in that class, and the academy then followed suit. Still, her significant screen presence undoubtedly aided Ashcroft in her bid for the Oscar.

3. She was seen as royalty by her peers.
Ashcroft had enjoyed a long and illustrious career on the London stage, appearing with the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She received the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a New Play for “Old World” in 1976. And she also made an impression (and bagged a Primetime Emmy nomination) on television’s “A Jewel in the Crown” not long before the release of “A Passage to India.” Given Ashcroft’s impeccable credentials, voters were eager to add a shiny Oscar to her crown.

4. It was a way to honor “A Passage to India” with a major award.
The film was met with widespread critical acclaim, with many calling it Lean’s finest work since 1962’s “Lawrence of Arabia.” That film went home with seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lean. “A Passage to India” contended for a total of 11 Academy Awards, yet it faced stiff competition from the eventual Best Picture “Amadeus” (not to mention “The Killing Fields”). So while it couldn’t kill in the top races, “Passage” could at least be recognized with a prize for Peggy.

5. There was no one in the lineup who had the slightest chance of beating her.
Glenn Close in “The Natural” was on her third nomination in a row, but her role was simply too subtle and slight for her to have been a natural choice. Lindsay Crouse made it in on a wave of support for “Places in the Heart.” She unfortunately wasn’t the place (see Sally Field) where the academy would endorse it. Christine Lahti was a sheer delight in “Swing Shift.” It’s just hard to swing a home run for a comedy at the Oscars. And then there was Geraldine Page in “The Pope of Greenwich Village.” She was transcendent as always in her two short scenes. Her seventh try for the trophy, she was ridiculously overdue. Still, she didn’t have a prayer for her teensy role in “The Pope.” That left Ashcroft virtually unchallenged, and “A Passage to India” guiding her on a safe passage to the Oscar.

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