Rod Steiger won an Oscar for playing Chief Gillipsie in In The Heat of the Night but his co-star, Sidney Poitier, wasn’t even nominated.  Despite the fact that Poitier delivered the line that everyone remembers — “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” — the Academy saw fit not nominate him alongside his co-star.

Timothy Hutton won an Oscar for his wonderful performance in Ordinary People but Donald Sutherland, cast against type as his conservative father and giving a heartfelt and heart-breaking performance, was not nominated.

In 1949, Walter Huston won a deserved Oscar for his performance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre but, somehow, Humphrey Bogart was left out of the nominations.

Martin Landau was honored for playing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood but Johnny Depp, playing the film’s title character, was ignored.

It’s something that has been happening since the announcement of the very first Academy Award nominations.  Someone will win an Oscar and usually, they very much deserve it.  Often, they’re a very popular winner because they’ve either overcome adversity or they’ve been nominated several times in the past without winning.  But, in all the excitement over their victory, their equally worthy co-stars are overlooked.

John DiLeo’s Not Even Nominated takes a look at forty overlooked co-stars of Oscar-winning performers.  Along with those that I mentioned at the start of this review, DiLeo also writes about performances from everyone from Charles Farrell in Seven Heaven to Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story to Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love and Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained.  Some of DiLeo’s picks are familiar to film lovers.  The fact that Poitier wasn’t even nominated in 1968 despite starring in three popular and acclaimed films is something that has been discussed in many books and cultural histories.  But DiLeo also gives some time to some equally strong performances that aren’t always cited, like Ryan O’Neal’s performance in Paper Moon and Dirk Bogarde’s turn in Darling and Stephen Boyd’s brilliant (and rather brave) work in Ben-Hur.

It makes for interesting reading.  (It helps the DiLeo has an opinionated but enjoyable writing style.)  For Oscar obsessives like you and me, it’s a must-have.