OVP: Actor (1931-32)

OVP: Best Actor (1931-32)

The Nominees Were...

Wallace Beery, The Champ

Alfred Lunt, The Guardsman

Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

My Thoughts: We are moving next into the Best Actor field, which in 1931-32 was a bit different than what we'd expect today for said field.  For starters, there were no supporting performances nominated in their own category.  This didn't always mean, though, that there were no supporting performances in general.  Oftentimes, we'd see performances (such as Franchot Tone in Mutiny on the Bounty) that would've been supporting in a normal year still get into lead.  In fact, Tone's nomination against his costars Clark Gable & Charles Laughton in much bigger roles, became one of the principle reasons that Oscar created the supporting categories.  But for this field, we've got three actors very much taking the lead...and in a first-and-only case for this category, more than one of them won the category.

We'll start with the guy that didn't win, Alfred Lunt.  Lunt was a major star on the boards, eventually having a Broadway theater named after he and his wife Lynn Fontanne.  They rarely worked together on screen, and after seeing The Guardsman, I kind of get why.  The two do not modulate well (at all) to the movies, playing to the back of the rafters, and it's too hammy.  Lunt plays dual roles, but only an idiot would ever be convinced they aren't the same person, to the point where you spend much of the movie wondering why the character's marriage works.  It's a total waste, and the only good thing about this nomination is that it provides a decent amount of trivia given how strange a married couple getting nominated for the same film is.

The other two films are better, and Fredric March is a good reminder as to how someone can be theatrical and still marvelous onscreen.  His work as both the kindly Dr. Jekyll and the notorious Mr. Hyde are fantastic.  I love the ways that he plays them so differently, when notes of each character play in the other, it feels like it's almost the character breaking through, and not just because it's the same actor playing the part.  Kudos have to go to the terrific makeup & visual effects teams responsible here, but it wouldn't work if you weren't properly terrified of March on the big screen.

Wallace Beery is our final nominee.  Beery's work in The Champ is widely celebrated now, perhaps more so than even fellow winner March, because it's such a textbook example of a father-and-son sports movie.  I will own that I think Jackie Cooper is actually better in this movie than Beery is (I think he lands some of the bigger moments at the end, and unlike Beery, he doesn't have a clear back story that we're skipping over & making the film feel thinner), but this is a fine, if two-dimensional look at the way our crushed dreams never truly leave us.

Other Precursor Contenders: I think if we are looking for the fourth place here, it's going to be one of two people.  The first would be Jackie Cooper, who had to have just missed for his child star turn in The Champ...I wonder if a year after he was nominated for Skippy if the Academy didn't think it was appropriate to nominate a child actor for back-to-back statues.  The other option would be Ronald Colman, whose staid work in Arrowsmith isn't nearly as good as Cooper's, but given his decent run at the Oscars (four nominations and one statue in total), he was probably on their radar.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Lionel and Ethel Barrymore both won Oscars at some point in their careers, but their brother John (the tragic Barrymore sibling) never got nominated, and it's a damned shame as he was one of the most consistent presences in early sound film.  Surely there was room for him for Grand Hotel?

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar's choice was Fredric March, but thanks to a strange anomaly in the Oscar bylaws which resulted in a tie if you were separated by three or less votes (this would be changed afterward), Wallace Beery was also honored for Best Actor having lost by only one vote to March, so both of them won the statue.

My Choice: First off, if I get only one year to give out a tie for Best Actor, it's going to go to something like 1962 or 1974, not this year, which I'll happily hand to March.  Beery follows, then Lunt...which is the first time I can say with absolute certainty that Oscar & I matched exactly.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  What do you think of Oscar's tie rule-do you wish they'd bring it back (and invite more ties)?  Am I alone in thinking that Alfred Lunt is not strong in The Guardsman?  And between Cooper & Colman, who do you think just missed this lineup?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 1931-32: Adapted Screenplay, Original Story, Art Direction, Cinematography, Previously in 1931-32

Past Best Actor Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Film: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Stars: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney, Earl Holliman

Director: Mark Robson

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Film Editing, Best Special Effects*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned earlier this month in our introduction about Grace Kelly, the actress-turned-princess didn't make a lot of movies (a total of 11 narrative films in her career), and almost half of those movies were made in 1954, so it makes sense that we would get a second film in the span of Kelly's career from that year.  Last week we talked about Kelly's relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, which frequently bordered on (or, let's be real, crossed into) the abusive, and an indication of the problematic troubles the director would get into with many of his upcoming leading ladies during what is considered his peak creative period (ranging from the early 1950's to the early 1960's).  This week, we're going to talk about The Bridges of Toko-Ri, but we're also going to talk about the other major moment in Grace Kelly's 1954-the Oscar win that still strikes passion in the hearts of filmgoers everywhere considering whom she beat to get that trophy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Bridges at Toko-Ri is about Harry Brubaker (Holden), a reluctant naval officer in the middle of the Korean War.  Brubaker is not exactly a pacifist, but he also cannot relate to his fellow man, and feels like he's in a war that the American public doesn't entirely understand nor do they care about in the same way they did World War II.  He is mentored by Rear Admiral Tarrant (March), who sees a lot in Brubaker that reminds him of his late son, who was killed in World War II (and Tarrant has not been able to emotionally reckon with the death of his child).  Brubaker's wife Nancy (Kelly) shows up unexpectedly for Brubaker's leave, though their romantic rendezvous is interrupted when Brubaker's hotheaded friend Mike (Rooney) gets into a fight with a guy who has run off with Mike's "girl" (it's clear as the film goes on that she was using him for money & had no romantic inclinations to him).  While away, Tarrant tells Nancy about the horrors of war, and that her husband (whom she is angry about helping Mike rather than staying with her) might not come back.  In fact, this is the case as (I told you there was a spoiler alert here), both Holden's & Rooney's characters do die during a reconnaissance mission, making all of the prophecy about Brubaker's potential death come to pass.

Bridges at Toko-Ri could be a great movie.  The special effects are impressive (that Oscar win feels legitimate considering the combination of real-world and scale model effects during the battle sequence, which feel pretty seamless onscreen & probably why it was also cited for editing), and the story of the film is quite fascinating, and somewhat ahead-of-its-time.  World War II was the last war (to date) that was fought to any degree on American soil, and as a result all of the American wars since have been in another country's backyard, making patriotism more symbolic than something that is part of day-to-day fear.  That conversation, which runs heavily through the movie, is a conversation worth having, and it's particularly striking in 1954, when a war movie of this nature wouldn't usually be so introspective.

But the movie doesn't rely upon that narration, and the effects are secondary to the plot.  Holden doesn't give us much beyond the surface-level as Brubaker, and Kelly is bland as his wife, in a limited role considering her billing where she has little to say other than to try & be an audience surrogate (she is gone during long stretches of the movie-this is a supporting part).  March, the best actor in the cast, is also the best in show but he's not really central to the plot, and lord help me, Mickey Rooney is actively bad in this movie.  Rooney is one of my least favorite actors of the Classical Hollywood (he might honestly be the least amongst the major stars of the era), and he plays hotheaded, entitled Mike with the grace of a bulldog, totally clomping over the more delicate aspects of the story.

As I mentioned above, Kelly didn't win an Oscar for this, but she would win for The Country Girl, a movie I have seen before which is why we aren't featuring it this month for Saturdays with the Stars.  Kelly is okay in The Country Girl (I generally rag on this performance, but looking back on my notes about it at the time, I'm more middling than actively against it), but it's the sort of performance that makes sense for a win.  She'd made five films that year, was a beautiful young woman making her mark in Hollywood, and for the most part her competition was not the kind that would win: you had two recent winners in Jane Wyman & Audrey Hepburn, and Dorothy Dandridge was making history as the first Black actress to be nominated for Lead Actress, but 1954 Hollywood wasn't progressive enough to give her the trophy.  But the fifth nominee was Judy Garland in A Star is Born, generally considered to be one of the best performances in Hollywood history.  Garland is spectacular in the part, and was not only enjoying the kind of comeback only a true legend could pull off (years of drug & alcohol abuse had made the early parts of the 1950's a question mark if she could do a role like this again, or honestly if she'd even live to make it to 1954), but she had just given birth to her son Joey two days before the ceremony, which would have added a great bit of heartwarming drama to the ceremony.  Kelly's win was rough on Garland, who clearly expected the win, and perhaps knew on some level she'd never get another chance like this (despite a future nomination in 1961, she'd have been right-Judy Garland would never win a competitive Oscar).  Next week, we're going to talk about one of the last films that Grace Kelly would ever make, and how, less than two years after she was crowned the toast of Hollywood, she would leave it forever.

Nothing Sacred (1937)

Film: Nothing Sacred (1937)

Stars: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly

Director: William A. Wellman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Carole Lombard-click here to learn more about Ms. Lombard (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

One of the rules of "Saturdays with the Stars" is that I never rewatch a movie for the series (I'm experiencing the star new along with you).  This oftentimes means that some of the bigger films in an actor's career (especially as we continue with this series) get left behind, and that's the case jumping from Twentieth Century to today's movie Nothing Sacred for Carole Lombard.  In 1936, Carole Lombard starred in My Man Godfrey, a movie that would earn her her only Oscar nomination & is generally considered to be her best film (it is one of my favorite screen comedies, and if you haven't seen it I order you to rectify that immediately).  Coming off of that, Lombard was a golden girl in Hollywood-a critical darling, and a name that basically was printing money.  Nothing Sacred was something of a disruption of that pattern.  Critically-acclaimed (both then and now) it was somehow a flop at the box office, and its enduring reputation has been largely due to its status as a genuinely good movie (albeit no Godfrey) and its place as the only Technicolor picture of Lombard's career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Wally Cook (March), a reporter who is coming off of a story where he was hoodwinked into covering a con job as legitimate (which involves Hattie McDaniel in a one-line part, two years before she'd win the Oscar).  He sees a feel-good story as a potential redemption by covering Hazel Flagg (Lombard), who is dying of radium poisoning, and decides to give her a send-off that involves a ticket-tape parade & toasts all over New York City.  The only problem is that Hazel isn't dying, but let's him believe it so she can get out of her small-town life in Vermont.  When she falls in love with him, she realizes she needs to either disappear or die in order to not humiliate Wally, but in the end she marries him, assuming a different name, and letting the "celebrity" Hazel Flagg slip into the night.

Nothing Sacred is the exact sort of movie from the 1930's that I always enjoy, frequently love, but isn't really something that exists today.  Screwball comedies are truly something audiences have grown out of, but it's also genuinely a movie without a lot of laughs.  Nothing Sacred is clever, but it's more of a "hmm, that's witty" sort of observation rather than something that will have you bowling over with laughter.  It doesn't help that the Technicolor is unnecessary (it's fun to see Lombard in her only color film, as she looks glorious, but it does nothing to add to the movie), and the plot is ridiculous (why is the entire city of New York randomly in love with this blonde girl who is dying?).

That said, Lombard continues to sparkle.  She is a truly gifted comedian, and someone who knows how to have chemistry with virtually everyone, even a miscast Fredric March (I adore March in most things, but there's something off here-he seems to be underselling the part, and doesn't really relate to the role as a journalist...there's not enough meat on this role).  Her speech about the logic of her committing suicide is a riot (it's funny in the context even if that sentence is obviously no laughing matter in reality) & her crying jags are spot-on...at this point I'm starting to believe there's nothing she can't do, though next week we're going to see her stretch her skills in a movie that put Lombard beyond what audiences expected from her.

OVP: Executive Suite (1954)

Film: Executive Suite (1954)
Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Nina Foch, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

There is no genre harder to gage in how it will age than straight-dramas.  For any classic film fan, there's really few joys greater than investigating a classic movie for the first time, but I have to say that dramas always have their own risks.  Westerns, whether comedy or drama, you know what you're getting into; same with action-adventures, love stories, horrors, noir, but straight dramas run multiple different pitfalls.  The issues that are being discussed (because almost every drama has an issue at its core) may no longer be applicable, or applicable in the same way.  What might have seemed important at the time could, in fact, be unimportant now, and societal norms may shift to make the film much more dated than you'd hope.  As a result, I headed into Executive Suite (as part of Operation Clean My DVR), not knowing what I was in store for, and actually ended up pleasantly surprised.  The film, with an inexplicably gigantic cast of stars, works despite on-paper seeming like something that might not.

(Spoilers Ahead) Executive Suite uses the ticking clock aspect of storytelling well-while the film isn't quite in real time, it's only the course of about a 24-hour period, where an unseen man, a wealthy and controlling titan of industry, has died, leaving a gaping hole over who will be his successor at a successful furniture manufacturing company.  In the 24-hour period, we see multiple different men jostling with each other and other members of the board trying to figure out who will end up being the CEO, though the chief protagonists in that regard are Don (Holden), the young upstart with a lot of big ideals for the company, and Shaw (March), a practical man who lives mostly by the adoration of the shareholders.

I'll give you one guess over who wins (let's not forget this was made in 1954), but the film actually rises above its predictable nature in that regard.  We're well aware that Holden is the one in command here, and will eventually become the successor, but the film is still pretty riveting nonetheless.  It helps that Robert Wise hired a slate full of movie stars to fill up his picture; it was reported years later that they made this film, similar to the Grand Hotel-style all-star casts of the early 1930's, to compete with television, and while not all of the acting is on the same level, everyone is very watchable and knows how to command a scene when they're expected to do so.  I particularly liked Shelley Winters as a secretary having an affair with her boss, and Fredric March is commendable at making his mustache-twisting villain into a real human being (March is such a fine actor-the fact that he largely made pictures like these without any sort of genre hooks is the only explanation why he isn't still just as famous with casual moviegoers).  Nina Foch won the film's sole acting citation, and she's good, but it's the sort of good you only notice when someone else points it out to you-her character is mysterious, and rises above what could have been completely stock work (think of that scene where she's opposite of March and telling him off as carefully as she can, knowing he's likely to be her next boss), but I'll admit that I wouldn't have paid her much heed had I not been looking for the OVP.

The film's other three nominations are about on the same page-they're all good, though one wonders if they were listed simply because the movie is actually quite good and these were easy categories.  Art Direction is solid-I loved the C-Suite hallway stairs (it's such a nice, elegant touch, the sort that would happen dozens of stories above the earth), though the rest of the film (especially the homes and the other offices), don't have this level of inventive detail.  The costumes are all very appropriately tailored to this level of importance (one wonders if the Mad Men costume designers looked at a film like this for inspiration), and again there's the great touch of Nina Foch's pencil necklace, but overall I was less impressed with other parts, such as the men's suits which felt completely interchangeable.  And finally, the cinematography has a gimmick (never properly seeing the face of the dead CEO, and a first-person camera early on in the picture), which was catnip at the time to that particular AMPAS branch, but again (aside from those great C-Suite hallway shots), there's not a lot to recommend this nomination.

Stil, even if it didn't quite deserve all of its Oscar accolades, I can't help but be fascinated by this movie.  It's wildly watchable, particularly Winters and March, and the sort of film that's less about the acting or visual elements and more about the sum of its parts.  Think of something like Argo where nothing specifically is singled out as "the best" but it's damn fine entertainment.  At least those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Have any of you seen Executive Suite, and if so, what are your thoughts?  If not, share some favorite straight dramas that have stood the test of time in the comments!

OVP: I Married a Witch (1942)

Film: I Married a Witch (1942)
Stars: Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Cecil Kellaway, Susan Hayward
Director: Rene Clair
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

With the Oscar Viewing Project, I do find that I am slowly but steadily losing my "viewing virginity" with a number of classic film stars that I had apparently never gotten around to watching, and that includes Veronica Lake.  Lake was a movie star for Paramount in the 1940's and while her most famous role remains Sullivan's Travels (still need to see that) she's probably better known today for being Kim Basinger's doppelganger in LA Confidential and for being one of the movie stars that ended up inspiring Jessica Rabbit. Like several other actors of her era (Betty Hutton, for example) Lake ended up having a weirdly compelling real life story, becoming one of Marlon Brando's many lovers and like Hutton eventually became a waitress when she had burned through all of her money.  She eventually ended up dying at age 50 of hepatitis.  This is an (albeit sad) interesting story.  Unfortunately for me, I Married a Witch is not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Jennifer (Lake) and her father Daniel (Kellaway) who are burned alive during the Salem Witch Trials, but not before putting an evil curse on the Wooley men who accused the two, dooming the men to always end up marrying shrewish, cruel women.  We come back to the present (well, 1942) and the current Wallace Wooley (March) is about to get married and is on-track to become the next governor of Massachusetts.  His fiance Estelle (a young Susan Hayward) is constantly berating him and clearly only marrying him because her father is making her.

After lighting strikes the tree that Jennifer and Daniel have been hiding in, Jennifer plots to take revenge on the present Wooley by making him fall-in-love with her, ruining his life by showing him something that he can't have.  Unfortunately, she accidentally drinks the love potion and ends up falling in love with him.  The rest of the movie is a series of mishaps, with Wallace slowly falling for Jennifer but her father Daniel is constantly trying to keep them apart in a variety of ways (including a morbid suicide scene where he wants to send Wallace to the electric chair, and another scene where Jennifer fakes her own death).

The film courts macabre humor with more abandon than you would expect. I don't know if it's because I've been more sensitized to such things through the years, but you'd never be able to make a picture like this where a main character is so cavalier about ruining someone's life through sexual blackmail and murder (at least not and call it a comedy afterwards).  The film's side characters are all a bit stock for me.  I get that Hayward, for example, is playing a cartoon, but did she have to be such a harpy (the film's words, not mine)?  It gives little indication why Wallace, who is an affable enough chap, would have sold out so ferociously as to marry her just for a higher office he throws away rather cavalierly later in the picture.

That lack of reason may be the film's biggest problem.  The movie occasionally has Wallace falling in love with Jennifer through magic, but that's only fleeting.  The film relies heavily on Wallace actually falling in love with her, and there's really no reason he would outside of looks, which makes him a pretty horrible protagonist.  This is because Jennifer is a truly vapid and awful human being.  The film wants her desperately to be Susan Vance from Bringing Up Baby, or perhaps even an early incarnation Samantha Stephens, but Susan and Sam were both insanely likable.  Yes, they had their flaws, but you still wanted to love them.  Jennifer is constantly trying to ruin Wallace's life for her own selfish gains, and the school girl/naive aspect of her persona border on the creepy.  Lake is indeed beautiful in the role, but she adds nothing to it and if this is what she brings to a film, I can see why she never graduated into iconic status like Rita Hayworth or Lauren Bacall did as her peers.

The film received one nomination, one of those countless nominations for Best Score that emerged during this period.  I have to say that while it's cute, and would indeed eventually inspire Bewitched, there's nothing particularly excellent about it-it's just a playful little score.

Those are my thoughts-anyone want to disagree with me?  Has anyone out there seen I Married a Witch, and if so what did you think?  For those that haven't, is there a Veronica Lake performance I should look for to wash the stench off of this one?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: The Dark Angel (1935)

Film: The Dark Angel (1935)
Stars: Fredric March, Merle Oberon, Herbert Marshall
Director: Sidney Franklin
Oscar History: 3 nominations, 1 win (Actress-Merle Oberon, Art Direction*, Sound-Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

After a few days off from movie-viewing, I have returned to what will hopefully be a long weekend of Oscar-watching (my TiVo is fuller than Chris Christie at the moment, and I make that joke not because he's overweight, but because of the inordinately high amount of hot air he seems to be constantly spouting).  So I decided to get back into the groove with one of those early 1930's films that the Academy seemed to so love at the beginning of its inception-a long, tender, occasionally overwrought melodrama called The Dark Angel.

Written by Lillian Hellman, which should be indicative of exactly what direction we're about to take, the film is the story of a woman (Oberon) drawn to two men, one strong and silent (Marshall), the other literary and debonair (March).  In later years, when movies were made more formulaic, the strong and silent Marshall would have gotten the girl, but it doesn't take much of a spoiler to tell you that 2-time Oscar winner and movie star par excellence Fredric March is going to end up with Oberon, which is apparent from the beginning scenes, with Oberon as a little girl tormenting him into marrying her.

The film drags quite a bit at the beginning, before World War I comes, and without the charm of March to carry it through its slower, "do you love me?" sorts of scenes, it would likely fall on its face.  However, March shows both his serious and playful sides throughout the film, and this gets you to the best parts of the film, the tough war scenes.  It's always puzzled me that filmmakers in the latter half of the century have found most of their wartime inspiration in World War II, when World War I with its iconic trenches and its start-of-war naivete is more suited to the silver screen.  Luckily, Richard Day, who won a stunning seven Oscars for Art Direction, knows a thing or two about design and makes a deeply intimate trench that adds a claustrophobic element to the film's middle.  It is in this part, that Marshall, angry because he believed that March had had an affair after announcing his engagement to Oberon's Kitty Vane (what a moniker!) sends March off to a seemingly impossible mission, and March's character is assumed dead, though is really just blind and taken to enemy camps.

I don't need to tell you the rest, because you already know it (story short: March's character is ashamed of his disability, doesn't return home, Oberon mourns but then becomes engaged to Marshall, the day before the wedding they discover that March is really still alive, and Oberon comes running back into his arms).  I toyed with a 2-star rating, but couldn't quite bring myself there-the art direction is terrific, though not quite up to the Art Deco that Top Hat also brought that year, and the Sound work, especially in the stilled night silences, is also top rate, and I personally loved some of the cinematography.  March didn't receive an Oscar nomination, and considering who did that year (basically all of the Bounty sailors), it's easy to see why, but he's a weirdly underrated actor, and it seems odd that his star has gotten so horribly lost considering his career longevity and his place at the head of one of the great American classics, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Oberon did, however, get nominated, her first and only nomination, and while she's terribly beautiful, she doesn't add the layers that say, Vivien Leigh would do in Sidney Franklin's later melodrama (and a personal favorite), Waterloo Bridge.  Oberon would be considerably better, though not nominated, four years later for her most iconic of roles, Catherine Earnshaw, in Wuthering Heights.

What about you-do you find the works of Lillian Hellman captivating or plodding (or perhaps a little bit of both)?  Do you think that Oberon deserved the Oscar over Bette Davis this year (or are you in the camp of say Katherine Hepburn in Alice Adams?) And what of Fredric March-why is it that he never became the iconic Hollywood star that his peers, the likes of Gable and Bogart did?