“My Cousin Vinny,” the 1992 comedy courtroom film, is great for a lot of reasons, Marisa Tomei chief among them. Tomei’s character, Vinny Gambini’s (Joe Pesci) foul-mouthed but very supportive fiancée Mona Lisa Vito, comes in clutch in the film’s final act, providing the expert testimony required to exonerate the wrongfully-arrested defendants. Even critics who didn’t love the film, like Roger Ebert, were happy to praise Tomei’s performance. “Tomei’s surprise appearance as an expert witness is a high point, and left me feeling I would like to see this couple again,” Ebert wrote in his review, “Maybe in a screenplay that was more focused.”
Despite this, when Tomei won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in the film, she had her fair share of haters. Because she was the least established actor nominated that year, and because Vanessa Redgrave was considered the favorite for her performance in “Howard’s End,” rumors quickly spread that Tomei’s win was a mistake. As Snopes put it, “Vicious gossip circulated suggesting that presenter Jack Palance had misread the envelope and mistakenly given the Oscar to Marisa.” Too embarrassed to correct the mistake, the Academy apparently decided to just go along with it.
Needless to say, this conspiracy theory and its many variations have all been debunked. Not only is it clear on rewatch that Palance was not too drunk to read the winner correctly (as some theories went), but we know from later Oscar controversies that going along with a mistake like this is not something the Academy does. In 2017, the presenters for the Best Picture Oscar accidentally announced “La La Land” as the winner, even though the actual winner was “Moonlight.” This mishap was deeply embarrassing, but the Academy was still quick and straightforward about clearing it up anyway. The idea that it would let a false winner take one of its unearned prizes now seems thoroughly disproven.
Despite a total lack of evidence, the Marisa Tomei Oscar conspiracy theory persisted
The rumor that Tomei was falsely awarded the Oscar started spreading the moment Palance said her name, and by that same week the Academy felt the need to debunk the rumor, using the argument that the eventual “La La Land” mishap would ultimately prove true. As AP reported at the time:
“Arthur Hiller, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said Sunday that if Palance or any other presenter announced the wrong name, accountants from Price, Waterhouse would intercede. ‘They would immediately rush out and say, ‘That’s not so,” Hiller said.”
Nevertheless, the rumor stuck around, not necessarily because everyone believed it but because they wanted it to be true. You can see this reflected in a lot of articles throughout the ’90s, like this 1995 one from the Flint Journal (which describes Tomei’s win as a “gaffe” and one of “the worst Oscars moment[s]”). The author doesn’t even feel the need to elaborate much on why he thinks this, which only underlines just how widespread and safe the opinion was at the time. When Tomei hosted “Saturday Night Live” in ’94, the main joke in her monologue even addressed the rumor.
Reading through the ’90s-era coverage of Tomei’s win, it’s hard not to feel like entertainment critics and journalists of the time were falling into a similar trap as the characters of “My Cousin Vinny,” who didn’t take Mona seriously due to her accent and appearance only to be caught off-guard by her competence in the end. Tomei doesn’t act much like Mona in real life of course, but it’s still true that her role here — a largely comedic one in a lighthearted film — is not something the Oscars typically view seriously. It’s often taken for granted that a comedic role can’t be that impressive; that might be why her win received such derision despite her powerhouse performance, and despite how “My Cousin Vinny” easily outlasted all its Oscar competitors in the public consciousness.
“I was crushed,” Tomei said about the backlash in an interview later that year. “I thought the fact that I was a surprise win was a good thing, an exciting thing. I felt [I had] a lot to prove, because there’s people out there that think I don’t deserve it.” She also spoke about the controversy in another interview, stating, “It was a hard thing for me. But good, because I came to peace with it. I figure it’s their problem.”