Every year, at this time, movie studios—large and small—begin the annual marketing blitz touting their awards-seeking prestige titles.
This practice began in 1960 when actor Chill Wills took out an ad in The Hollywood Reporter promoting his supporting performance in “The Alamo.” This succeeded inasmuch as it led to Wills receiving an Oscar nomination (he lost the award to Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus”), but was a colossal failure public-relations-wise.
