It's well known that
both Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro won the Academy Award for portraying Vito
Corleone—the only instance of two actors winning an Oscar for the same role.
But what about Oreste
Baldini, who played the nine-year-old Vito at the beginning of The
Godfather II? I wonder if he’s bitter that he didn’t win
an Oscar for his portrayal of Vito. Sure, Baldini was on-screen for only a few
scenes...yet he showed fine range, shifting effortlessly from weak, dumb-witted
native to weak, dumb-witted immigrant. And if that weren’t enough to convince
Academy voters, Baldini was the only “Vito” to sing (while quarantined on Ellis
Island)—something neither Brando nor De Niro dared do…or likely even possessed
the acting chops to do.
My guess is that the
now-51-year-old Baldini seethes in anger and jealousy every minute of his life
since the evening Art Carney and De Niro walked off with the Best Actor and
Best Supporting Actor honors, respectively, in April 1975. And although Baldini
has enjoyed a busy career dubbing Hollywood dialogue into his native tongue for Italian
cinema, television, animation, and even video games, it wouldn’t surprise me in
the least if bilious ire occasionally flares into his on-screen translations.
Had I been an
Italian citizen taking in a film at the Nuovo Olimpia on the Via in Lucina in
downtown Rome on a bygone Saturday evening, I would hardly be shocked if,
right in the middle of Ed Wood, Johnny Depp ranted Art Carney può andare al diavalo, che non-talento hack!
Or even a purple-rhino'ed Edward Norton inexplicably yelling De Niro ha rubato la mia Oscar, che bastardi! Baldini ha la voce di un angelo! in the midst of singing ditties of support to methadone addicts in Death to Smoochy.
I might even have
felt such sympathy for the slighted Baldini that I wouldn’t have demanded my
money back from the theater manager…
(Image from The Godfather II copyright Paramount Pictures.)
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