The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, made groundbreaking history with one of its Academy Award wins. Considered one of the best heist movies of all time, The Sting sees Henry Gondorff (Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Redford) teaming up to con the crime boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). The 1973 film is among Robert Redford and Paul Newman’s best movies, with its heist being among one of the most iconic in cinematic history.
The Sting‘s critical and commercial success led to ten nominations and seven wins at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. It won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Scoring. Redford also received a Best Actor nomination, with Jack Lemmon going on to win the honor for Save the Tiger. However, only one of The Sting‘s Academy Award wins would change the future of movie awards.
Julia Phillips Was The First Woman To Be Nominated For & Win Best Picture At The Oscars
She Was One Of The Sting’s Three Producers
The Sting was produced by Julia Phillips, her husband, Michael Phillips, and Tony Bill. While Phillips shared the Academy Award win with her husband and with Bill, Phillips was the first woman to be nominated and the first to win in the Best Picture category. This was a groundbreaking development for the Academy Awards and the beginning of women being recognized in the Best Picture category, which is considered to be the most prestigious.
After Phillips, more movies with female producers were nominated for Best Picture in the ensuing years, including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Color Purple, which had the future President of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, as a producer. It was not until 1989 that the second movie with a female producer would win Best Picture. The Academy Award went to Morgan Freeman’s 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy, which had Lili Fini Zanuck as one of its producers.
Julia Phillips Became The First Two-Time Female Best Picture Nominee Three Years After The Sting
She Produced Taxi Driver
Three years after The Sting, Phillips produced the Martin Scorsese movie Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster. This made Phillips the first two-time female Best Picture nominee. She did not become the first two-time female Best Picture winner as Sylvester Stallone’s first Rocky movie won the honor instead. Phillips continued to produce more movies in the years that followed, including Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Taxi Driver was her second and final Academy Award nomination.
There is still a long way to go until women are fully recognized by the Academy Awards, but Phillips’ win with The Sting was a crucial step forward.
Phillips’ achievement paved the way for more women to succeed in Hollywood. The majority of Best Picture nominees now have one or more female producers involved. Progress has been much slower in the Best Director category, where a woman did not win until Kathryn Bigelow did in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Since then, only two other women, Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion, have won Best Director. There is still a long way to go until women are fully recognized by the Academy Awards, but Phillips’ win with The Sting was a crucial step forward.
