2015 marked the 80th presentation of the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. It would have been the 81st presentation of the awards that began in 1935 except that there was a newspaper strike that began on December 8, 1962 and did not end until March 31, 1963, a total of 114 days, preventing the 1962 awards.

A decision had been made at the end of December 1962 to postpone the awards until the end of the strike. Eventually they were cancelled altogether. Hollywood publicists were upset because an award from the NYFCC was the single best advertisement for an Oscar hopeful. Oscar nevertheless did fine without the New York accolades, giving their corresponding awards to Best Picture Lawrence of Arabia, Best Actor Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird, Best Actress Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker, Best Director David Lean for Lawrence of Arabia, Best Screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird to Horton Foote and Divorce Italian Style to Ennio De Concini, Alfredo Giannetti and Pietro Germi, and Best Foreign Language Film Sundays and Cybele. Those six awards were the only six the NYFCC gave in those days. Would the NYFCC’s 1962 awards have gone to the same recipients? That would have been impossible in one situation.

Gregory Peck could not and would not have won the NYFCC award for To Kill a Mockingbird because the film did not open in New York until February 1963. Peck’s fellow nominee Jack Lemmon was also ineligible because his film, Days of Wine and Roses, did not open in New York until January 1963. The NYFCC had a strict calendar year cut-off for films opening in New York City. Who, then, might have won?

Among the candidates for Best Actor would certainly have been the other three Oscar nominees, Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Burt Lancaster in Bird Man of Alcatraz, and Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style as well as Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Robert Preston in The Music Man, Dirk Bogarde in Victim, Montgomery Clift in Freud, Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Terence Stamp in Billy Budd, Oskar Werner in Jules and Jim, Keir Dullea in David and Lisa and two that were ineligible for Oscar consideration due to the delayed opening of their films in Los Angeles, Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Hardy Kruger in Sundays and Cybele. I can’t see anyone other than O’Toole, who was Peck’s chief rival for the Oscar, taking home this one.

On what they used to call the distaff side, Oscar winner Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker and nominee Katharine Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey Into Night gave the year’s most critically lauded performances and would seem to have had the best shots at winning. Fellow nominees Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth and Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, along with her non-nominated co-star Joan Crawford, may have also been in the running, but not Lee Remick, who like co-star Jack Lemmon, was ineligible for Days of Wine and Roses.

Other well liked performances that year included Dora Byran and Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey, Hayley Mills in Whistle Down the Wind, Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim, and Margaret Rutherford in Murder She Said. The NYFCC did not award supporting players in a separate category until 1969 so standout supporting actresses Shelley Winters in Lolita and Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate may have been considered as well. In the end I think the award would have gone to Bancroft for her Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, a role that to her everlasting chagrin would be eclipsed in the public’s eye by her Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate five years later.

Lawrence of Arabia would have been an overwhelming favorite to win Best Picture, but runners-up may have included Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Miracle Worker, David and Lisa, Billy Budd, Advise & Consent, A Taste of Honey, and Oscar nominees The Longest Day and The Music Man, but not the critically reviled Mutiny on the Bounty. Films unlikely to have gotten much traction then, but would certainly be in the mix if the vote were held today might include The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Manchurian Candidate.

David Lean would likely have been an easy winner for Best Director for Lawrence of Arabia, but others who may been considered include Arthur Penn for The Miracle Worker, Sidney Lumet for Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Francois Truffaut for Jules and Jim, Ingmar Bergman for Through a Glass Darkly, and Tony Richardson for A Taste of Honey.

Best Screenplay would likely have gone to Robert Bolt for Lawrence of Arabia with his strongest competition coming from the screenplays for the Swedish Through a Glass Darkly, the French Jules and Jim, the Italian Divorce Italian Style, and the French-Italian co-production Last Year at Marienbad .

The Oscar-wining Sundays and Cybèle, a big hit in New York, might have won the NYFFC award for Best Foreign Language Film, but it would have faced stiff competition from Through a Glass Darkly, Jules and Jim, Divorce Italian Style, and Last Year at Marienbad as well.

At this point, though, it’s all speculation. It’s too bad the NYFCC didn’t retroactively award films for 1962 at the end of 1963 when they announced their winners for that year’s awards.

All the films I mentioned from the remarkable film year that was 1962 are available on DVD, many of them on Blu-ray. A new Criterion edition of The Manchurian Candidate will be released in March 2016.

This week’s new releases include Walk in the Woods and Bone Tomahawk.