Driving Miss Daisy

So I finally made it to the last Best Picture winner of the 80’s.  This is also the first Oscars that Billy Crystal hosted and I can still see him singing a song about all the Best Pictures. The big winner that night was Driving Miss Daisy a great feel good movie.
 
The movie is about a wealthy elderly Southern women Miss Daisy(Jessica Tandy) whose son hires a black man  Hoke(Morgan Freeman) as her Chauffeur.  At first she is in denial that she even needs a driver and claims she can drive herself.  When she finally starts letting him drive they start becoming friends.  Her friendship with Hoke opens her eyes to the injustices and prejudices of the South and she becomes a supporter of Martin Luther King.  In the end they become very close friends till the very end. 
 
The growth of their friendship and the incredible acting is what makes this movie so good.  Both Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman are great and you really feel as if they are best friends.  The movie won 4 awards including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Makeup.  Of the 9 nominations it received it was not nominated for Best Director and became only the 3rd movie to win Best Picture without being nominated for Best Director (Wings in 1927 and Grand Hotel in 1932 are the other two).  I was surprised it didn't get nominated for best score as I thought the music was prefect.  Jessica Tandy was 80 years old when she won and became the oldest actress to win.
 
Other winners that year included Oliver Stone’s second Best Director win for Born on the Fourth of July. And beating Morgan Freeman for Best Actor was the incredible performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.  Denzel Washington won his first Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for Glory.  The Little Mermaid won Best Score and Best Song for “Under the Sea’.  And Dead Poets Society won Best Original Screenplay. 
 
Other notable nominations. Tom Cruise received his first nomination for Born on the Fourth of July.  John Williams was nominated against himself in the Best Score category again for the Scores of Born on the Fourth of July and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. 
 
As far as I am concerned the movie that should have been nominated for Best Picture but wasn’t is Glory.  An amazing war film with great acting that deserved more  nominations.  It would have been great to see Morgan Freeman get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Glory in addition to his Best Actor nomination for Driving Miss Daisy two very different roles both played perfectly.