Katharine Hepburn was nominated for *Long Day’s Journey into Night*, Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece, in which she played Mary Tyrone, the morphine-addicted matriarch of the doomed Tyrone family. The performance was widely regarded at the time, and has been regarded since, as one of the most completely realized pieces of acting in her career—a career that had already produced two Oscars and was eventually to produce two more. Hepburn was not particularly interested in the Academy Awards as a cultural institution; she did not campaign, did not attend ceremonies, and was known to regard the competitive framework of awards seasons with something between indifference and contempt. She had won for *Morning Glory* in 1933 and *Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner* in 1967, and her eventual total of four Best Actress Oscars remains unmatched. Her work in *Long Day’s Journey* was, by virtually any critical measure, as strong as anything in the category that year.
Lee Remick was nominated for *Days of Wine and Roses*, Blake Edwards’s film about two alcoholics whose relationship accelerates each other’s destruction. Remick played Kirsten Arnesen, and her performance—restrained, specific, without the theatrical heightening that the subject might have invited—received exceptional notices. The film’s unflinching treatment of addiction was unusual for its era, and Remick and Jack Lemmon, as the male lead, were both recognized with nominations. Critics who saw the film at the time noted her ability to show the progressive stages of addiction without either glamorizing or moralizing—a difficult technical and emotional achievement.