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For my second Oscar-related «Film Friday» I'm bringing you one of the five Best Picture nominees at the 28th Academy Awards ceremony in March 1956. This also serves to honour Jack Lemmon's 92th birthday, which was on Wednesday. Directed by John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy, Mister Roberts (1955) is set aboard the USS Reluctant , where executive officer Lieutenant Junior Grade Douglas A. «Doug» Roberts (Henry Fonda) tries to shield the dispirited crew from the harsh and unpopular captain, Lieutenant Commander Morton (James Cagney). World War II is winding down and Roberts fears he will miss his chance to get into the fighting. He repeatedly asks to be assigned to another ship, but Morton, anxious to use Roberts to expedite his own promotion, refuses to sign any of his transfer requests. Roberts shares his quarters with Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver (Jack Lemmon), the laundry and morale officer. Pulver spends most of his time idling in his bunk and avoids the captain at all costs, so mu...

Original release poster for Red Dust Wilson Collison's 1928 play Red Dust had been gathering quite a bit of dust of its own on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shelves since 1930 as a fifteen-page treatment of a «very purple melodrama about a poor little slaving whore.» At various times, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer had been considered for the lead until screenwriter John Lee Mahin and producer Paul Bern settled on turning it into a comedy starring Jean Harlow and John Gilbert, with Jacques Feyder occupying the director's chair. Since Harlow's first film as an MGM contract player, Red-Headed Woman (1932), had proved to be just controversial enough to ensure its firm success, the studio figured that pairing her with Gilbert would help the former matinée idol's ailing image.   While Mahin was working on the script in late July 1932, he reportedly saw Clark Gable in William A. Wellman's Night Nurse (1931) or George W. Hill's Hell Divers (1932), dependi...