seek film roles but had not applied for this part for fear of another rejection. However, a friend, actress and dancer Gloria Grafton, urged casting directors involved in the extensive talent search to hire him. Director Elia Kazan said he chose Dunn for the role because drinking had impacted the actor's career, and because he saw "a trace of pain in Dunn's face that indicated he had 'failed the test of life' and [Kazan] wanted to bring that 'pain' to the screen". Dunn reportedly drew from his own experiences for his characterization. Critics widely hailed Dunn's performance as his "finest". The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph wrote: "Mr. Dunn's Johnny Nolan has the mark of greatness about it, and he has never done before, nor ever will again, anything of more sublime conviction". Bosley Crowther of The New York Times commended the strong screen chemistry achieved by Dunn and Peggy Ann Garner, who played his daughter Francie: Little Miss Garner, with her plain face and lank hair, is Francie Nolan to the life. And James Dunn plays her father, Johnny Nolan, with deep and sympathetic tenderness. In the radiant performance by these two actors of a dreamy adoration between father and child is achieved a pictorial demonstration of emotion that is sublimely eloquent. At the 18th Academy Awards ceremony, Dunn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Winning the Oscar, however, did not revive his film prospects, and acting jobs were slow in coming. He returned to the role of an alcoholic father in Killer McCoy (1947) opposite Mickey Rooney, to complimentary reviews. His last film performance for nearly a decade was in the short film A Wonderful Life (1951), produced for the Christian film industry. Dunn appeared in four films in the 1960s, including another role as an alcoholic in The Bramble Bush (1960). Return to the stage In 1947, largely on the basis of his performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Dunn was cast as Jamie Tyrone, a man who resorted to drink to forget his unhappy past, in Eugene O'Neill's semi-autobiographical play A Moon for the Misbegotten. Considered the "name" actor in the production, Dunn was given a run-of-the-play contract and $1,000 per week, compared to the $750 per week salary of fellow performer J. M. Kerrigan. During rehearsals, O'Neill was dissatisfied with Dunn's portrayal of Tyrone, a character based on O'Neill's brother, claiming that