My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Showing posts with label 1940. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1940. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2023
1940 Alternate Oscars
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
1940 Alternate Oscars
The Three Stooges?! What the what?!
And yet the fact is, the Stooges are the best known comedy team in the history of film, still popular (or passionately unpopular) after all these years and I think they are long overdue for some critical recognition.
1940 represents the team at their peak, with arguably the two finest shorts of their career, You Nazty Spy!—a pointed satire of Hitler that beat Chaplin's The Great Dictator into theaters by ten months—and A Plumbing We Will Go, with Curly's attempts to fix a leaky shower serving as the funniest demonstration of the worthlessness of good intentions ever committed to film.
Anyway, my choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. As always, your choices are your own.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Friday, January 16, 2015
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Remember The Night: A Mini Review (Spoilers)
Released four years before Double Indemnity, it was critically-acclaimed but a commercial flop, and turns out to be Camille without the cough. Funny and well-acted, but reactionary in its outlook, the ambiguous ending suggests that a tarnished woman can never be redeemed, and good people best not mix with them. Makes you wonder what Jesus thought he was up to, drinking wine with hookers and tax collectors.
3.5 stars out of 5.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Almost Wasn't Wednesday #2: The Philadelphia Story With Clark Gable And Spencer Tracy
If you're reading this blog, I assume you know the sophisticated comedy classic, The Philadelphia Story. Designed as a comeback vehicle for Katharine Hepburn, the movie won two Oscars (Jimmy Stewart as best actor, and best screenplay) and features what many consider the best performance of Cary Grant's illustrious career.
But if Hepburn had had her way, the movie would have starred not Grant and Stewart but Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. That's right—Hepburn, who owned the film rights, wanted Gable and Tracy, and if they hadn't been tied up with other projects, that's who the studio would have cast.
And in the context of the times, you can see where she was coming from. Gable was the most popular actor in Hollywood, fresh off the smashing success of Gone With The Wind. And he'd made a career of taking the mickey out of upper class actresses—his Oscar-winning turn across from Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, in the aforementioned Gone With The Wind with Vivien Leigh, and many others.
As for Tracy, he'd won two Oscars, and Hepburn's instincts that she and he would be good together was right on the money—they eventually made nine movies together, including such comedy classics as Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike.
Not to mention Grant and Stewart weren't necessarily sure things in early 1940. We look back on Hepburn's three previous films with Grant as being treasures, particularly Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, but the fact is, all their previous pairings had been flops at the box office—indeed, the colossal failure of the former is why Hepburn needed a comeback vehicle in the first place.
And while Stewart had earned an Oscar-nomination the previous year with Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, nobody was ready yet to put him on the Mt. Rushmore of acting.
But sometimes, not getting what you want is the best thing that can happen to you. While I'm certain The Philadelphia Story would have been a hit with Gable and Tracy, it would have lacked Grant's champagne fizz and Stewart's fevered act-three naivete. You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, and you don't mess with a movie that film guru Leslie Halliwell called "Hollywood's most wise and sparkling comedy."
Bonus Trivia: On Broadway, Joseph Cotten and Van Heflin played the Grant and Stewart roles, respectively.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1940)
The Three Stooges?! What the what?!
And yet the fact is, the Stooges are the best known comedy team in the history of film, still popular (or passionately unpopular) after all these years and I think they are long overdue for some critical recognition.
As for Joan Fontaine, the first (I think) living recipient of a Katie-Bar-The-Door Award and my pick for the year's best actress in a drama, she might be the most one-note actress ever to create an indelible screen image. She played submissive, cringing doormats better than anybody—in not only Rebecca, but also Suspicion, Letter From An Unknown Woman, and in a supporting role in The Women—but she couldn't do much else, and I often wonder whether her primary talent was for getting cast in parts perfectly suited to her limited gifts. If so, she's still ahead of me, and I imagine she'll be around feuding with her sister long after I'm gone.
Just because you're related to somebody doesn't mean you have to like them, I guess.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Grapes Of Wrath (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck)
nominees: Foreign Correspondent (prod. Walter Wanger); The Letter (prod. William Wyler); Rebecca (prod. David O. Selznick); The Thief Of Bagdad (prod. Alexander Korda)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Philadelphia Story (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
nominees: The Great Dictator (prod. Charles Chaplin); His Girl Friday (prod. Howard Hawks); Pinocchio (prod. Walt Disney); The Shop Around The Corner (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ahí está el detalle (You're Missing The Point) (prod. Jesús Grovas)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Henry Fonda (The Grapes Of Wrath)
nominees: Gary Cooper (The Westerner); Errol Flynn (The Sea Hawk); Raymond Massey (Abe Lincoln In Illinois); Laurence Olivier (Rebecca); Conrad Veidt (The Thief Of Bagdad)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Three Stooges (You Nazty Spy!; A Plumbing We Will Go; Nutty But Nice; How High Is Up?; From Nurse To Worse; No Census, No Feeling; Cookoo Cavaliers; and Boobs In Arms)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Brian Donlevy (The Great McGinty); W.C. Fields (The Bank Dick); Cary Grant (His Girl Friday and My Favorite Wife); William Powell (I Love You Again); James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story and The Shop Around The Corner)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Joan Fontaine (Rebecca)
nominees: Bette Davis (All This, And Heaven Too and The Letter); Vivien Leigh (Waterloo Bridge)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday)
nominees: Irene Dunne (My Favorite Wife); Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story); Ann Sheridan (Torrid Zone); Margaret Sullavan (The Shop Around The Corner)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)
nominees: Michael Curtiz (The Sea Hawk); Alfred Hitchcock (Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent); William Wyler (The Westerner and The Letter)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday); Ernst Lubitsch (The Shop Around The Corner); Preston Sturges (The Great McGinty and Christmas in July)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Cary Grant (The Philadelphia Story)
nominees: Ralph Bellamy (His Girl Friday); Walter Brennan (The Westerner); Jack Oakie (The Great Dictator); George Sanders (Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent); John Carradine (The Grapes of Wrath)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Judith Anderson (Rebecca)
nominees: Jane Dorwell (The Grapes Of Wrath); Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story); Gail Patrick (My Favorite Wife); Virginia Weidler (The Philadelphia Story)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Nunnally Johnson, from the novel by John Steinbeck (The Grapes Of Wrath)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Donald Ogden Stewart, from the play by Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story); Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison (screenplay), Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan (adaptation), from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca); Samuel Raphelson, from a play by Miklós László (The Shop Around The Corner)
SPECIAL AWARDS
George Barnes (Rebecca) (Cinematography); Lodge Cunningham (His Girl Friday) (Sound); "When You Wish Upon A Star" (Pinocchio) music by Leigh Harline; lyrics by Ned Washington (Song)
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