42 Years Ago, ‘Gandhi’ Beat Out ‘E.T.’ and ‘Tootsie’ at the Oscars — Today, It’s Still a Great Movie

42 Years Ago, ‘Gandhi’ Beat Out ‘E.T.’ and ‘Tootsie’ at the Oscars — Today, It’s Still a Great Movie

When Richard Attenborough first read Louis Fischer’s biography of Indian activist and attorney Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1960s, he was around 20 years into an acting career that included work with David Lean (“In Which We Serve”), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (“A Matter of Life and Death”), and John Sturges (“The Great Escape”). Attenborough hadn’t directed anything himself at that point, but discovering Gandhi’s story gave him the de…