1948 Oscar Viewing Project

I put this on Twitter, but one of my goals going forward is to have at least one Oscar Viewing Project ballot or one Oscar My Ballot each month until I have finished the project.  Because I just finished being on vacation (I was in Florida, having a blast in DisneyWorld), we're going to actually get a couple of these this month, both from 2024 in a few weeks AND from 1948 today.  Yes, I have officially seen all of the nominated films of 1948, and thus we are going to discuss the movies of this year.  We generally start with a look at the box office from a given year, but I will note that pre-1980 box office numbers are hard to find accurately, as it wasn't as consistently reported in trade papers before then.  Additionally, certain types of films (like, say, Disney films) tend to have been re-released in theaters more frequently than others (hence how movies that were considered flops initially like Bambi would eventually end up in the black).  That said, this is what Wikipedia has for the top domestic grossers of 1948, so we'll use it as a jumping off point (with a grain of salt):

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Paleface

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Easter Parade

6. The Three Musketeers

7. The Snake Pit

8. The Emperor Waltz

9. Homecoming

10. Sitting Pretty

As you'll see below, Oscar didn't start taking a really big detour from what was popular with audiences until the 1990's, as 9/10 of these movies are ones I not only saw, but would've seen in connection with the OVP, the sole exception being Homecoming with Lana Turner & Clark Gable (which I'll see for the My Ballot that year).  Other top grossers that year that sometimes are listed on the Top 10 include Sorry, Wrong Number with Barbara Stanwyck, Yellow Sky (which I have seen despite no nominations because I love westerns) with Gregory Peck, and A Date with Judy starring a young Elizabeth Taylor.  As you can see, Oscar wanted to embrace what was popular, particularly in a year of upheaval for Hollywood, as the theatrical monopolies had ended, and 1948 was a weak year at the box office.  With that context, I want you to go back to a different time, to a time of Truman defeating Dewey, of the creation of both Israel and the frisbee.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (like I said above, hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention, anymore.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture discussed below), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. The Red Shoes

2. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

3. Hamlet

4. The Snake Pit

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: I actually did a podcast devoted to this specific topic (if you go to the Gilded Films podcast site, you can find both of their episodes on 1948, as I'm the guest on both of them) so feel free to listen if you want a voice reveal (and some great convo on this contest).  For me, it's not a difficult decision on the winner here.  The Red Shoes is just on another level.  There are really good movies here (honestly-there is no bad movie in this quintet, though I do frequently have to re-remind myself that I like Johnny Belinda as Oscar liked it way more than me), but the sheer modern scale of The Red Shoes here is unbeatable, besting worthy defenders like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Hamlet.

Director

1. John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

3. Anatole Litvak (The Snake Pit)

4. Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda)

5. Fred Zinnemann (The Search)

The Lowdown: With The Red Shoes out of the race, I've got a much closer contest, pitting John Huston & Laurence Olivier for the top spot against each other, much like in real life (weirdly, both were directing themselves, as both of their pictures in the collage are from them acting in their movies, though Olivier was the lead while Huston had a bit cameo).  I actually like Olivier's Hamlet more than most modern critics, as I think it's moody and just a little bit creepy (it's easy to see how the Coen Brothers were inspired by this when they did their telling of Macbeth), but Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of those movies it's impossible to deny Huston's impact, giving us a perfect decrescendo into hell with Humphrey Bogart.  Kudos also to Antaole Litvak who also had a lot of modern touches (rare for a social issues picture) in The Snake Pit.

Actor

1. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

2. Montgomery Clift (The Search)

3. Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

4. Lew Ayres (Johnny Belinda)

5. Dan Dailey (When My Baby Smiles at Me)

The Lowdown: Bogart's snub in 1948 was a big deal, some calling it the biggest of its kind since Bette Davis was looked over for Of Human Bondage in 1934.  It's insane, given how good he is (he'll be on my My Ballot for this year) that he was missed, but looking at just Oscar's choices, I'm going with the same selection as the Academy, giving Laurence Olivier (an actor I am very hit-or-miss with) a pretty easy victory.  Olivier might be too old for this part, but he leans in really well with the uncomfortable Oedipal overtones that Shakespeare provides his prince for his mother Gertrude, and while Clifton Webb is delicious & Monty Clift has a terrific star-is-born turn, this is a case of an actor's "time" also being for some of his best work.  I will also say that Dan Dailey getting Humphrey Bogart's nomination here is both perplexing (like...why?) and bordering on a war crime he's so bad.

Actress

1. Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)

2. Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number)

3. Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

4. Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama)

5. Ingrid Bergman (Joan of Arc)

The Lowdown: No one is as bad as Dan Dailey of the 20 nominations (an embarrassingly terrible performance), but Best Actress is not a great lineup compared to the guys despite having generally better actors.  Irene Dunne is playing I Remember Mama like she's channeling Loretta Young (not a compliment), and Ingrid Bergman once again proves that for one of the best actresses of her generation, Oscar nominated her for the wrong roles.  The win is between de Havilland, whose really raw performance adds to The Snake Pit's accuracy-to-life, and Barbara Stanwyck as a truly vicious femme fatale who totally nails the film's rough ending.  Stanwyck is the opposite of Bergman (she tended to get nominated for her best work, this being the least of her four nominated turns but still solid), but I'm going with de Havilland given she provides more accuracy.  Jane Wyman, the actual winner, uses physicality well in her role but doesn't add enough beyond being great casting given her giant saucer eyes are so crucial to filling in gaps in the underwritten plot.

Supporting Actor

1. Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda)

3. Cecil Kellaway (The Luck of the Irish)

4. Jose Ferrer (Joan of Arc)

5. Oscar Homolka (I Remember Mama)

The Lowdown: Both of the supporting turns I'm going with the actual Oscar winner, and while I'm usually cognizant that I have a bias toward the actual victors (because, unlike the 2000's & 2010's, the winners here have been the "winners" my whole life), unlike Olivier (where Clift or Webb would make acceptable victors), the supporting winners are heads-and-shoulders above the rest (again, both will make my My Ballot list).  Huston's turn as a weathered gold miner is so calculating, and filled with such meaningful backstory in the way he portrays it, I wish that he'd worked with his son on ten more pictures.  The only thing that comes close to it is Charles Bickford's concerned father in Johnny Belinda, but even there it's not close to what Huston is bringing to a better movie.

Supporting Actress

1. Claire Trevor (Key Largo)

2. Agnes Moorehead (Johnny Belinda)

3. Barbara bel Geddes (I Remember Mama)

4. Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama)

5. Jean Simmons (Hamlet)

The Lowdown: Finishing out the acting races is Claire Trevor.  Trevor is one of those actresses who rarely played leading roles despite leading lady beauty, but she was also better suited for character work, as she understood the assignment in westerns & noir.  In Key Largo, she gets one really critical scene where she belts out a torch song to her own humiliation (it's a hard scene to watch, but it makes the movie), but she's good throughout.  No one else is in the same hemisphere as her.  Even second place Agnes Moorhead (not as good as Bickford, despite being a more reliable actor otherwise) is only in second because I didn't have anywhere else to turn and I like her as a rule.  This is all Trevor.

Motion Picture Story

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. The Search

5. Louisiana Story

The Lowdown: A quick reminder that Motion Picture Story is technically about the concept of the movie, which is a writing gift, but it's not (for example) about the specific dialogue in the picture.  This helps a movie like The Naked City, which is really better as an idea than a picture itself (though I liked it), but I have to dock points for something like Louisiana Story, whose almost documentary-like naturalism gets in the way of the actual tale it's attempting (or is it...this is a weird movie, speak up if you've seen it in the comments).  My top prize goes to The Red Shoes, which is really gifted in the way it uses its romances almost as a red herring, over Red River (which, conversely, uses its ambition as a red herring to cover some of its romances).

Screenplay

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

2. The Snake Pit

3. The Search

4. A Foreign Affair

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: 1948 is the most recent year where the Screenplay categories were not split out between adapted & original screenplay, and so we have four adapted films against the original The Search.  I actually wish I could give this to The Snake Pit, because it's the sort of picture that Oscar generally loves and I generally don't (social issue pictures are not my jam), but it's done so well I could actually find some common ground between us...but in this case both Oscar & I are siding with the work of John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the truly great studio film screenplays of the era (no notes-even the Hays Code couldn't ruin this one).

Score

1. The Red Shoes

2. Hamlet

3. Johnny Belinda

4. The Snake Pit

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Movies are rarely gusty enough to do what The Red Shoes does with its score.  Look at a film like Tar, for example, which is about classical music and thus uses actual classical music throughout the picture to instruct that.  But The Red Shoes literally spends so much time talking about how it is written for a classic ballet, but instead of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev, it's literally original music.  The chutzpah...and that they land it, making it sound like a genuine classic...it's impossible to deny, though the moodiness of Hamlet or the windswept grandeur of Johnny Belinda both would've made fine wins (this is the best of the many Johnny Belinda nominations, and the one that I'll come closest to duplicating with my My Ballot even though I won't actually).

Scoring

1. Easter Parade

2. Romance on the High Seas

3. The Pirate

4. The Emperor Waltz

5. When My Baby Smiles at Me

The Lowdown: Similar to Motion Picture Story, I'm not entirely sure how to grade this, and it's more difficult as we'll actually have this for the My Ballot for 1948 (we will not do the same for Motion Picture Story).  But I'm going to look at this as the best overall musical in terms of the way it's staged, sung, & conducted in the picture itself (with perhaps a bonus point or two for truly original song scores).  With that in mind, you can't really beat Easter Parade, with Judy & Fred sounding lovely, particularly with him taking on "Steppin' Out With My Baby" and our first real Ann Miller MGM musical.  Romance on the High Seas benefits from a young Doris Day, and The Pirate has a beautiful choreography from Gene Kelly, but neither are as good as what Easter Parade is achieving.

Original Song

1. "It's Magic" (Romance on the High Seas)

2. "Buttons and Bows" (The Paleface)

3. "The Woody Woodpecker Song" (Wet Blanket Policy)

4. "For Every Man There's a Woman" (Casbah)

5. "This Moment is Magic" (That Lady in Ermine)

The Lowdown: Yes, for those who grew up watching his cartoons, the title song from Woody Woodpecker performed by the Kay Kyser Orchestra, was Oscar-nominated (the only time in the history of the Best Original Song category where a short film was nominated).  But while it's a cute little ditty, I have to go with "It's Magic" as it does a really incredible job of establishing Doris Day as a star in the picture.  "Buttons and Bows" is also a standard, but it has less to do with the success of the film (and let's be honest, is more of a standard than a classic, if that makes sense).

Sound

1. Moonrise

2. The Snake Pit

3. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: One of the big reasons that the Oscar Viewing Project will take me so long is that, just a few years earlier, the Sound categories were popping out a dozen or so nominees each year, and then by 1948 they randomly became only a three-wide affair.  The quality here is better, though, with only a trio of nominees, and gives us the single finest "hidden gem" nomination of this bunch: Moonrise.  Moonrise is a dynamite picture (if you've never seen it, please add it to your Letterboxd Watchlist as it's masterful), and it's also a cool nomination.  The film features one song moment (though it's not a musical one), that is executed perfectly, and it also works really well with the circus motif to create strong background noise to heighten tension.  Oscar gave the statue to the also solidly authentic work in The Snake Pit, but for me it's all about Moonrise.

Art Direction - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: For the record, we will not be separating between Black & White and Color for my My Ballot's (though we will have five nominees, so for this at least we'll have more than Oscar).  The win here is easy for me-Olivier's Hamlet is a really cool combination of stage play and realism (again, much like the Coen Brothers' lauded turn with Macbeth), and totally upstages anything that is done in Johnny Belinda.  Honestly, the real credit from staging in Johnny Belinda is believably making California look like Prince Edward Island (if there was an Oscar for location scouting...this is the one it should've won).

Art Direction - Color

1. The Red Shoes

2. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Both very worthy nominees (say what you will about the end product of Joan of Arc, it surely looks terrific), but much like Moira Shearer, I cannot deny The Red Shoes.  Even the title cards for the movie are crafted to match the set, as if they are somehow part of the movie itself, everything so careful, beautiful, and deliberate.

Cinematography - Black & White

1. A Foreign Affair

2. Johnny Belinda

3. The Naked City

4. Portrait of Jennie

5. I Remember Mama

The Lowdown: Back to the arbitrarily chosen nominee count, Oscar went with the naturalism of The Naked City, which is understandable.  Shot entirely on location in New York, the movie uses real life so well it's hard not to fall for the gimmick (this is one of the hardest My Ballot quintets I'll have ever had to assemble, for the record, as I don't know that any of these will end up on it, and normally the Top 3 would be gimme choices).  I'm instead going to pick the naturalism on display in A Foreign Affair to reward, where Marlene Dietrich is shot in actual war-torn Berlin as if she was back with von Sternberg (compliment).  At some point someone needs to explain to me how I Remember Mama got a nomination in this category when much better options existed (hell, if you just stick to movies Oscar was already watching, you have Moonrise or The Snake Pit right there!).

Cinematography - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Three Musketeers

3. Green Grass of Wyoming

4. The Loves of Carmen

The Lowdown: There's literally room for one more nomination, and in one of those situations where I have to assume there was a paperwork mistake (like Roddy McDowall accidentally going lead for Cleopatra), The Red Shoes was cut from this, which it definitely should've won.  With that out of the way, I have a moment to honor its competitor Joan of Arc, though honestly not by much-this is not just the best lineup of this list, it's also one of the best lineups I've seen Oscar assemble during the Classical Hollywood era...every single one of these I gave 4/5 stars in my personal rankings (which is hard to get as I grade on a curve).  Even The Loves of Carmen in last place has a wonderfully vibrant motif (and Rita Hayworth has rarely looked so lovely).

Costume - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. B.F.'s Daughter

The Lowdown: Despite costumes being in movies since the dawn of time, it took until 1948 for the Academy to bother rewarding the men & women who made them (this is the first year of the category).  For Black & White, I will go with Hamlet, which gives us not just lovely frocks for Jean Simmons to prance about in, but we also get some attention-to-detail loveliness in the menswear (guys like wearing pretty things too).  BF's Daughter gets nominated almost entirely for a stunning white-and-gold dress that Barbara Stanwyck wears about halfway through (hopefully this link works, but you can see it here) which is breathtaking...but nothing else in the movie compares so it can't really be on the same level as Hamlet.

Costume - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Emperor Waltz

The Lowdown: Similar to how we constantly talk about John Williams in Best Score and whether or not I'm giving him another Oscar (he was nominated so often), we'll be doing the same for Edith Head.  In our second profiled year of Head's 35 competitive nominations (we did 1957 here) Head won, but while I was intoxicated by Joan Fontaine's glorious green dress with matching hat in The Emperor Waltz, it was the only look that really stood out to me, and so I'm more inclined to the many armored outfits of Ingrid Bergman wore in Joan of Arc instead.

Film Editing

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Fun fact-The Red Shoes will not be sweeping the My Ballot awards in the way you're thinking right now because, well, there are a lot of really good movies in 1948 that Oscar chose to ignore that I'll get into.  But I cannot deny with this specific lineup that the Powell & Pressburger film shouldn't take the cake.  The way that the ballets are structured and shot, jumping the line between reality and fiction, are made in the editors' room, even against solid naturalism in The Naked City and the gigantic cattle drives of Red River.

Special Effects

1. Portrait of Jennie

2. Deep Waters

The Lowdown: The early years of the special effects categories are odd because while effects have always been a part of the movies, that doesn't mean that they were as common as they are now (where even crowd work in a rom-com is likely done at a computer).  Portrait of Jennie takes out Deep Waters both because Deep Waters doesn't really have a lot of effects to champion (just a gigantic storm sequence late in the picture), and because of the way it uses the film's cinematography as a tool with the color lensing in the water effects at the end of the movie to give us an ethereal beauty.

OVP: The Yearling (1946)

Film: The Yearling (1946)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman, Jr.

Director: Clarence Brown

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gregory Peck, Actress-Jane Wyman, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Juvenile Oscar-Claude Jarman, Jr.)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our month devoted to Gregory Peck in 1946, about the time that Peck was finishing his first run of fame as a leading man.  Peck was a very quick study in Hollywood.  A back injury during a dance class prevented him from serving in World War II (the studio said it was a rowing accident, as it didn't want its handsome star to be skipping his military duty due to a lesson from Martha Graham), but unlike most stars we'll profile this year, he basically jumped straight into leading roles, and had quick success of it.  Though Days of Glory (his first movie) bombed, The Keys of of the Kingdom was a critical success, and won him his first Oscar nomination on only his second film (he'd lose to Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).  He'd follow that film with two commercial smash hits-The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson, which was the highest-grossing film of 1945, and the well-regarded Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman, which was a huge hit for United Artists, and made the gorgeous Peck into something of a sex symbol.  This leads to The Yearling, which is our movie today, the film that won Peck his second Oscar nomination and was another big hit for the artist, who had just turned thirty & in the course of two years become one of the most bankable stars in North America.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and is the story of the Baxter family: father Penny (Peck), mother Ora (Wyman), and son Jody (Jarman).  Jody is the only living child they have after the others all died young, and Ora struggles to show affection for Jody for fear that he'll also be taken from her.  They live in a cabin in rural Florida, and try to make by with just each other, though Jody longs for a pet since he doesn't have any siblings.  Eventually, after his father kills a doe, he adopts a young fawn whom he names Flag (due to its tail), and loves it to the point where it's a household pet.  But Ora struggles with it, and eventually it becomes too much of a nuisance, eating up their cash corn crop that they were going to plant to buy a well.  Penny orders Jody to kill the deer, but instead he tells it to leave.  Because it's domesticated, it finds its way back to the farm, and Ora accidentally shoots it, injuring it, and Jody is forced to kill it to put it out of its misery (according to Hollywood legend, a young Maureen Reagan refused to speak to her mom for two weeks after watching the film she was so mad at her shooting the deer).  Jody runs away from the farm, but is eventually found and reunited with his family, including his mother who can now show him love, as she realizes that God won't take her final child away from her, as he has reached the stage of being a "yearling" (a term for a year-old deer who can fend for himself).

If that movie reads as Old Yeller, well, it kind of is.  Though Rawlings' book predates Fred Gipson's novel by nearly twenty years, the story of a boy & his dog has aged better in the public consciousness, and it's hard not to see the direct corollaries between the two.  The difference between the movies is that while the 1957 film became a family classic (and a massive hit) for Disney, it did not command seven Oscar nominations.  There's very little evidence in the annals of the Best Picture that "family" films have any welcome there, and this is one of the few movies of its kind to make the cut.  Given that distinction, it's a pity it's not better.  As a whole, the movie works-it's not a bad movie (evidenced by my 3-star rating above), but it's also not special.  The movie looks terrific because the glowing cinematography (conducted by three men, one of the only times the Cinematography Oscar went to three people for one film) kind of blinds you it's so ravishing, but there's very little there (the titular fawn doesn't even show up until an hour into the movie), and I suspect Oscar got soft for it because MGM sank a fortune into the picture (it cost nearly $4 million, which at the time was an exorbitant amount for a movie), and while it earned it back, I have to imagine the studio pushed for nominations for their large investment.

After Cinematography, though, the film's remaining nominations feel a bit at a loss.  I've never been a fan of Jane Wyman, and while she's better here than she usually is (I think she finds a restraint and the natural makeup look allows more expression in her face), it feels like she's always telegraphing to the audience (we get it, you can't show your children love...you don't have to underline it with every sentence).  Jarman, who won a Juvenile Oscar for this film, is from the "overly-expressive" school of child acting that was the norm in 1940's movies.  The Art Direction was good, but hardly inventive, and the editing...the movie is too long, and occasionally feels like it isn't well-organized (particularly the scenes with Jody's "sweetheart" that come out of nowhere).  As for Peck?  Well, Peck has probably never looked better, his sexy, expressive face & lanky frame a perfect fit for a too-short cabin and dewy camerawork, but he doesn't add much here other than being a stoic figure & a playmate of sorts for Jody.  This isn't his best work, or his best Oscar nomination.

OVP: The Blue Veil (1951)

Film: The Blue Veil (1951)

Stars: Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Richard Karlson, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Totter, Natalie Wood, Vivian Vance, Dan O'Herlihy

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jane Wyman, Supporting Actress-Joan Blondell)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The Oscar Viewing Project, which drives maybe 70-80% of the reviews we do each week, is a project doomed-to-fail.  I've talked about this many times, but there are a number of lost films that were nominated for Oscars, and a few more that are next-to-impossible to see anywhere even if they aren't technically "lost."  But then there are other films that are just next-to-impossible to catch despite clearly having cache, and while I'm still brimming with films that I need to see that are readily available on streaming platforms (or even on my counter from DVD Netflix) to watch, I'm aware of these movies & make a point of seeing them as soon as they are made available to me.  By chance, a connection on Twitter turned me on to The Blue Veil recently, one of the most elusive films nominated for a major Academy Award out there.  Never released on commercial home video & never put on TCM for some reason, The Blue Veil has remained an enigma to me.  It was nominated for two major acting Oscars, and the cast list-just look at it!  Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Natalie Wood-these are big name stars, the kinds that usually (and especially in conjunction with Oscar) demand at least a DVD release of the movie, if not regular screening on TCM.  Thankfully, I caught the movie now, and while it wasn't good (we'll get into it), it's finally off of my "how am I ever going to see this?!?" list.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on LouLou (Wyman), a young war widow whose baby dies in infancy while she's still in the hospital after birth, and as a result she must take a job as a nursemaid to a widowed industrialist (played by Laughton).  She grows to love the job, but not Laughton's Frederick, so after he proposes to another woman (played by Vance-and how weird is it seeing Vivian Vance without Lucille Ball?) she's heartbroken to give up the child, but moves on to another job.  The film continues to explore these relationships that she has, at one point nearly getting married, but ultimately never finding love again or having her own children.  Toward the end of the film, she falls particularly hard for a young boy named Tony, whose parents abandon him & she raises him as her own for a number of years.  When they return, she attempts to kidnap the boy (seeing him as hers now), but ultimately must give back the child to the couple.  The final scenes hearken to a Mr. Holland's Opus type of situation, where LouLou, now broke & unable to have children to look after anymore, sees all of her former wards grown up, starts a relationship again with an adult Tony, and is asked to be the nanny to the children of one of her former kids, thus finally feeling like she has a real family.

The movie is saccharine to the point of being insufferable.  It's not clear at any point why LouLou, at the beginning young & attractive, doesn't seem capable of finding a man, or really a declarative sentence.  Wyman is not an actress I've ever truly enjoyed in a film (seriously-I don't think Oscar has ever crushed so hard on a performer with so little charisma), and here she's particularly bad as LouLou, never understanding what is driving this mousy, boring, saintlike woman's dreams or desires.  Wyman is downright bad in some scenes, and while you might cry in her big speech trying to win back Tony (surely where she won her nomination), it's just because it's being manipulative, not because it's any good.  Thankfully Wyman lost the Oscar, but she won the Golden Globe so it's not inconceivable she might have taken the Best Actress trophy.  And she won that Golden Globe for this one-dimensional piece-of-work over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, potentially the greatest performance in film history.  Let that sink for a second.

The film won two nominations, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Blondell here.  Blondell is cited over a slew of brief parts (Moorehead & Laughton have similarly-sized roles) as a working single mother (she's an actress) who doesn't have time to raise her daughter (played by Wood).  Blondell is not actively bad like Wyman is-she has spark in her performance, and it's easy to see in a sea of vanilla why she stood out.  That said, there's nothing to this role other than sheer charisma...we don't see a lot of what's driving Blondell's character, or if she actually wants to be an important part of her daughter's life.  There's room for interesting commentary here-her Annie's views of what a mother should be are different than LouLou's, and in a different era this would've been worth asking whether our sympathies & support should reside with her rather than Saint Wyman.  Alas, The Blue Veil is not a complicated enough movie to consider such questions.  Considering its historical nature in the careers of some of its high-profile stars, though, it should definitely be more available for home screening than it currently is.

OVP: Hollywood Canteen (1944)

Film: Hollywood Canteen (1944)
Stars: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, Janis Paige...and enough star cameos to fill the Dorothy Chandler
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Song-"Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart," Scoring, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Weird coincidence time.  Yesterday we discussed Mr. Dodd Takes the Air, a largely forgotten musical picture that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Today, we look at another largely forgotten musical picture...that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Hollywood Canteen, though, isn't lacking for star power in the way Dodd does.  While Dodd's only recognizable face today is Wyman's, she'd be lucky to make the first page of the call sheet for Hollywood Canteen, a Hollywood propaganda (come on-I know that has pejorative connotations, but that's what this is) movie about the film community's contributions to the war effort, specifically Bette Davis & John Garfield's creation of the Hollywood Canteen.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, during the war, Davis & Garfield helped lead a war effort that would include people from every single studio coming together and giving out dances, food, and entertainment to men that were about to ship out overseas to fight in World War II.  The canteen was ahead of its time in some ways (it was desegregated) and while it was totally publicity for the Hollywood stars who went there (and admittedly had a darker side, as seen in the unsolved homicide of Georgette Beaurdorf), it was genuinely something that stars actually worked at.  All of the actors in this film were people who in real life were helping to keep the lights on at the actual restaurant, so if a GI came to the Canteen, they'd be able to see proper movie stars right up close, potentially serving them dinner.

In this film, we have two GI's returned from the South Pacific, Slim Green (Hutton) and Sergeant Nolan (Clark) who are looking for a good time and, in Slim's case, the girl of his dreams, Joan Leslie.  Of course, when they get there, Slim meets Leslie (played by the actress herself) and he wins first a kiss with her, and then a weekend date with the actress (in real life this would have been strictly forbidden-there were rules about the girls going home with the soldiers).  They fall in love, while Nolan continually strikes out until he falls for a tour guide (played by Janis Paige in one of her very first roles), with Slim shipping out, but Joan promising they'll meet again after the war.

The movie is shameless in the way it tries to glamorize the dangerous aspects of the war.  There's literally a scene where Nolan claims that he could walk without a cane all thanks to meeting Janis Paige's character at the Hollywood Canteen.  The film's plot is flimsy, a little creepy (it sure feels like Joan Leslie is being forced, while not into prostitution, at least into uncomfortable situations with a man who borders on stalking her), and more-than-once feels like it's simply Hollywood trying to justify itself during a time of great moral duress & uncertainty.

Here's the thing though, you're not going to care, because the film in the first half is about as much fun as a classic film fan can have (the second half is where it makes the mistake of trying to have a plot).  You see more stars than I could count, some of the highlights being Davis, Garfield, Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Jack Benny, Sydney Greenstreet, Ida Lupino, Alexis Smith, and Roy Rogers all showing up in clever cameos, with Crawford arguably getting the best one (you can see her scene here), and it is divine.  This isn't like Around the World in 80 Days where you have to guess-the stars are very much introduced in ridiculously expository ways, but it's magical.  Never mind that some of these actors probably hated each other and weren't this nice & naturally charming in real life...it's bliss every time a new personality comes on to show us the star power going on at Warner Brothers during this era.

The film won three nominations, all of which are fine, if not groundbreaking.  The best of the three is Scoring, as a host of musicians and notable bands make cameos & bring us great numbers, including Rogers, the Andrews Sisters, Joan McCrackon, and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra.  It's not all original, but it's a blast.  The nominated song (sung in the film first by Leslie, and later by Kitty Carlisle), is kind of maudlin, and a bit too schmaltzy for my tastes, but all of the film with that music and the frequent crowd scenes handle the sound well.  All-in-all, this isn't a great movie, but man is it one I'd highly recommend for anyone who loves old cinema, as it's the closest you'll probably ever get to walking onto a backlot.

OVP: Mr. Dodd Takes the Air (1937)

Film: Mr. Dodd Takes the Air (1937)
Stars: Kenny Baker, Frank McHugh, Alice Brady, Gertrude Michael, Jane Wyman
Director: Alfred E. Green
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Remember Me")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the things that happens when you are going into the DEEP cuts of the Oscar Viewing Project, you discover that Oscar will repeat himself with some truly odd trivia.  Perhaps one of the best recent ones I discovered is that "Remember Me" is not just the name of the Oscar-winning song from Coco, but also the name of a different Oscar-nominated song from eighty years prior, Mr. Dodd Takes the Air.  This is a movie that, until it popped up on TCM recently, I'd never heard of, much less realized was Oscar-nominated.  Unfortunately, the movie bears little resemblance to its weird factoid sibling Coco, but is instead a pretty generic romance from the mid-30's with extremely middling stars.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Claude Dodd (Baker), a rural electrician who has a beautiful baritone voice.  He is discovered by a national mattress chain, and is hired to be their spokesperson, but after a surgery, it turns out he has a haunting tenor voice, and is instead snapped up by a toothpaste company for an absurd $1000-a-week.  With that kind of money he's pursued by a gold-digger (Michael) and an opera diva (Brady), but only has eyes for a sweet young girl who worked for the mattress company, Marjorie (Wyman).  Marjorie also realizes that Claude has an invention that will easily fix people's radios, and tries to convince him that he should patent it, but he just wants the simple life.  The film ends with him retreating back to his regular life, Marjorie getting the patent (so they'll be rich), and the two kissing under a tree, all's well that ends well.

The film is really simple, and doesn't have a lot to distinguish it.  This was before Wyman was a star, and if you'll recall from past articles, I'm not a big fan of the actress even when she's winning acclaim.  Here she's simply a plucky girl, scrunching her face and wizened to people like Michael's gold-digger, but still properly sweet-as-pie when it comes to Claude.  Baker is almost unknown today (certainly compared to someone like Wyman), but was at one point a relatively big deal, most known for being one of the cast of characters on Jack Benny's radio show.  Here, he plays Claude as ridiculously simplistic, to the point where he needs to act like a diva, he doesn't even know how.  Wyman at least could hit her marks and know what emotion her character is supposed to feel in any given scene.

The film's music is its saving grace, though I'll admit that I'm a bit stumped why "Remember Me" is the nominated tune from it.  It's a fine-enough song, and Baker does have a heavenly voice, but it's not as central to the plot as something like "Here Comes the Sandman," which Baker sings beautifully, and in three separate scenes.  "Remember Me" isn't as good of a song, and it's definitely not as memorable in the movie even though it was covered by more artists afterward.  But the music is good-it's a pity that Baker isn't known at all today for his voice, as this would be a worthwhile soundtrack, and excuse you from seeing such a routine film.

OVP: Johnny Belinda (1948)

Film: Johnny Belinda (1948)
Stars: Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorehead, Stephen McNally, Jan Sterling
Director: Jean Negulesco
Oscar History: 12 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Lew Ayres, Actress-Jane Wyman*, Supporting Actor-Charles Bickford, Supporting Actress-Agnes Moorehead, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Original Score, Film Editing, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It has sat for years (alongside Becket) as the most Oscar-nominated film I'd never seen, and this morning, while deciding what to do with my life (a conversation I have daily with myself these days-I've been a bit adrift for months now), I decided that perhaps tackling a film perched on my DVR that for some reason I'd never gotten around to was a wonderful suggestion, so after years of wondering what exactly the title even meant, I figure it was time to investigate Johnny Belinda and the dozen Oscar nominations that come with it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is perched in that period of the 1940's when Oscar seemed to only like issue films, and as a history lesson to modern AMPAS (which also occasionally gravitates into that direction), issue films are my least favorite types of movies because they rarely age well.  The best kinds of issue films are ones that are either extremely honest (Do the Right Thing) or don't have the issue at the centerpiece of the movie and rely on something more traditional to sell the picture (Brokeback Mountain).  Johnny Belinda at least starts off in the latter's direction, since the film wants to desperately push a love story.  The movie is about a woman named Belinda (Wyman), who is a deaf-mute frequently referred to by the villagers and even her own father (Bickford) and Aunt Aggie (Moorehead) as "Dummy."  A kindly doctor in the village named Robert (Ayres) befriends her and begins to teach her sign language, which she picks up ridiculously quickly.  The film follows as she is assaulted by a local drunk, whose girlfriend and eventual wife Stella (Sterling) is smitten with Dr. Robert.  The film goes on with Belinda getting pregnant, her father is killed by her rapist, and eventually the town tries to take away her baby in hopes of giving it a "respectable" home.  A trial after Belinda kills her rapist (who is trying to steal her child) ends quickly with everyone realizing the truth.

The film has to be considered somewhat groundbreaking if only because it's the first major motion picture to deal with the subject of rape.  The film doesn't shy away from the subject (it's very clear that it doesn't condone the action and doesn't pretend that the baby was of an immaculate conception), though the word is never actually uttered.  The film grapples with the concept of shaming Belinda (everyone in town just assumes she is loose, and blames the doctor for sleeping with her and getting her impregnated), but like all issue films the entire situation surrounding the subject ages badly, with most of the cast drawn in relatively two-dimensional lines and the treatment of Belinda as bright, but also at the same time simple, would eventually be countered in films like The Miracle Worker 14 years later.  Still, the film is heavier than you'd expect, and while the villains are all very broadly drawn, the heroes get some levels of grey, particularly Belinda's father, who is both spiteful to her for causing him so much hardship and also enamored with her, particularly as she continues to learn how to communicate with her.

The movie's twelve Oscar nominations aren't shocking, though I'd argue none of them are exactly outstanding.  The cinematography is lovely, trying to paint a Nova Scotia vastness even if it was entirely filmed in California, and the editing is strong, particularly in a fight scene (though you can clearly see that it's a dummy and not Charles Bickford falling down that cliff).  The acting is not great, to be honest.  I think Bickford, broadly drawn but felt quite sturdy in the role, is probably my favorite.  He's an actor that I always forget what he looks like (he never really had that distinctive role or movie that made him stand out in a major way other than he got relatively high-billing in most of his pictures), but he makes an impression and is missed once he's gone in the movie.  Moorehead is always wonderful to behold, but this is a role that she could do in her sleep; honestly, she overplays too much of her hand and it's a small miracle that Orson Welles managed such brilliant work from her in her two most iconic dramatic roles, since she always relies heavily on her strength-of-persona and rarely on any sort of internal mechanics happening for her onscreen character.

As for the two main actors, I am usually pretty "ehh" about both of them in general, and that didn't change with this picture.  The movie is not bad, by any stretch of the imagination (I liked the structure, it was well-timed, and it never drags), but the two leads could not be more bland if you try.  It's like watching a slice of Wonder Bread fall in love with another slice of Wonder Bread.  There's something to be said for the physicality of learning how to sign and be deaf, but a one-trick is not going to help Wyman make her character anything more than what the script acts, and frequently she goes for less-she makes her Belinda something to pity rather than someone worth fighting for, and Lew Ayres' as her smitten but personality-free paramour is hardly any more interesting.  The love story feels hopelessly underwritten, and part of me wanted a Heathcliff/Catherine style moment for the two of them just to live up to that soaring Max Steiner score (there's a cliff right there, after all), just to get swept into some sort of movie star glamour.  As it is, it's a finely told story that may feel a bit dated but isn't in the same league as something like Gentleman's Agreement in that regard, and surely would have made a much stronger play.

Those are my thoughts on this classic film-as it's long been celebrated, I'm hoping you have some thoughts-won't you share?  How many of the twelve nominations did the film actually deserve (I'm guessing about 4-5, though I'm not super well-versed in 1948 quite yet), and should it have received more wins?  What are your thoughts on Wyman and Ayres in general, and do you think I'll ever find a film that causes me to feel the love?  Click below to start a dialogue!

Stage Fright (1950)

Film: Stage Fright (1950)
Stars: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Watching an Alfred Hitchcock classic for the first time is a bit of a thrill.  So many of my favorite movies of Hollywood's Golden Age were made by the great director, the man who brought us The Birds and Psycho and Vertigo, that seeing one of his movies that I don't have completely memorized is a bit of a bizarre circumstance, as you almost feel like you should be quoting alongside it.  That was the case with Stage Fright, which with its big-name stars Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich, seems like the sort of movie that I should be going at verbatim.  Still, I had never seen Stage Fright until last night in my quest to find more room on my DVR (this 31 Days of Oscar is really helping me cross a lot of pictures off my list, and get eliminated things that have been lounging about my Genie for months), and so I decided that it was a cold Wednesday night and perhaps I should give it a go.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film may not be what one instantly thinks of when you list Hitchcock's greatest movies, but it is definitely one that feels like it should be listed amongst his finest.  After all, we have a legend like Marlene Dietrich, playing a cabaret-style actress Charlotte Inwood, in the lead.  Dietrich, known for her onscreen enigma and glamour, is the perfect star for a Hitchcock picture, and indeed she lives up to the hype.  Her Charlotte, a woman we assume throughout most of the movie has killed her husband, is a great Hitchcockian creation.  She frequently is flirting and romancing pretty much everyone onscreen, and there's a sexuality to her that is undeniable.  Dietrich, over forty when this picture arrived, still has that intense glamour that radiates in every scene and in many ways reminded me of Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars so many years later (who was clearly borrowing from her), what with her bored attitude to the stage and those who worshiped her behind it.

If only the rest of the film had been able to equal Dietrich's allure and magnetism, but alas the film's remainder is in the hands of the lesser Jane Wyman.  Wyman is a celebrated actress, admittedly, with a number of fans in different corners of the cinema but I will admit right now I have yet to find the role that really sells me on the Oscar winner.  Her Eve is not going to be that performance for me, it turns out, even though I had high hopes that Hitchcock would have found some way to make her work.  Playing a frumpy busybody trying to clear her friend/crush Jonathan Cooper (Todd), her motivations and accents are all over the place.  She's playing the daughter of Alastair Sim and Sybil Thorndike, quite possibly the two most British human beings ever to grace a movie screen, and yet she can't bother to have an accent to match her parents and almost the entire surrounding cast.  Plus, she constantly is falling in and out of love and can't sell her character's naivete/newfound moxie and it feels like she's re-approaching the character in every different scene.  Dietrich, who disliked Wyman immensely, made a comment about how Wyman "looks too much like the victim to play the heroine," which may have been catty but it's spot-on-Wyman makes Eve seem like someone just waiting for her detective boyfriend to figure out what to do next, rather than taking on the task herself.

Still, no single actor can weigh down a Hitchcock picture completely, and while this film doesn't have the excellent and iconic scenes of say, Cary Grant running from a plane or Janet Leigh taking a stressful shower, there's still so much to celebrate visually, particularly the brilliant lighting on Dietrich or the way that Alastair Sim fiendishly cuts his own hand to try and incriminate Dietrich.  I loved the dotty old woman played by Thorndike (it's rare that Hitchcock has humor this opaque, but it works), and Richard Todd's Jonathan seems to borrow just a hint from the Hitchcock's "queer" character file, enough so that I wondered if there might have been some holdover from Rope.  The mystery itself may be easy to solve for modern audiences, but I imagine that audiences at the time were baffled about the flashback, where we had a misleading narrator in Jonathan (it was unprecedented at the time for a flashback to feature a lie).  Overall I had an excellent time, even if Wyman deterred the film from becoming a classic.

Those are my thoughts on this movie-how about yours?  Who has seen the Hitchcock thriller Stage Fright?  What are some missing holes you have in Hitch's filmography?  Is Ordinary Smith or Chubby Bannister the better moniker?  And what is the role that will finally convince me to love Jane Wyman?

OVP: Princess O'Rourke (1943)

Film: Princess O'Rourke (1943)
Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Jack Carson, Jane Wyman
Director: Norman Krasna
Oscar History: 1 nom/1 win (Best Original Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Do you ever see really old movies and realize what masterpiece they clearly inspired?  Not just in terms of sequels and all of that, but in the sense that the film clearly inspired a much better movie down the road?  That was my feeling throughout the entirety of Princess O'Rourke, a comedy short on charms and laughs but thick on a really cute idea which would be used more elegantly and grandly in Roman Holiday a decade later.  But this is the film that I've been dealt next to review (with its Oscar-in-hand), and so I'll give it my best.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is one of those movies that you feel instantly like you've already seen and that you know will leave you pretty quickly after you're done with it, but it's not what you'd call a bad movie by any means.  The film follows Princess Maria (de Havilland) a princess exiled from her country during World War II who is living in a posh Manhattan hotel until the war is over, and during a case of being on sleeping pills while flying under an assumed identity (it makes sense in the movie) meets and falls for a commoner, an American pilot named Eddie O'Rourke (Cummings).  She likes the idea of being a normal person for a while, and eventually falls for Eddie, but cannot marry him because she's a princess.  The film takes a ridiculous turn in the final act, rather than the bittersweet direction Roman Holiday took, and actually has them get married by a Supreme Court judge with the aid of President Roosevelt's dog Fala (this makes less sense in the movie).

The movie is pretty dull and lifeless, though it does have the aid of Robert Cummings gamely playing the leading man.  Cummings, who is best known for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboetur and Dial M for Murder, is wildly likable and pretty cute as Eddie, a man who has trouble understanding his new wife's many duties (and while this occasionally veers into sexism, it takes a LOT longer than you'd expect).  I also enjoyed the banter he achieved with Jane Wyman and Jack Carson who play his best friends.

De Havilland, on the other hand, is like cinematic Valium.  I love de Havilland in general, but this is easily the driest work I've ever seen from her, but there is a reason for that.  Princess O'Rourke is the famed film that created the de Havilland Law, which stipulated that an actor could only be under contract to a studio for seven years.  At the time, the very hard-working de Havilland was one of Warner Brothers biggest stars but she felt they were taking advantage of her in this way by giving her trifling scripts (seeing the movie, she had a point).  Therefore, she sued to get out of her contract and won.  This may sound antiquated today when actors rarely have devotion to a studio, but this is still a rule used today (Chris Evans, for example, could only be under contract to play Captain America for seven years before Disney would have to renegotiate).

Overall, though, this is a pretty unsatisfying nomination and win for the Oscars, and perhaps it was just a recognition for Norman Krasna, who had been nominated three times previously without a victory and also directed the film.  His competition, though, included Lillian Hellman and Noel Coward, neither of which ever won an Oscar (as well as Dudley Nichols, who famously was the first person to refuse his Oscar), so this doesn't seem particularly compelling reasoning in hindsight.  All-in-all I have trouble believing this is where the OVP will land even if I haven't seen any of the other nominees.

Those are my thoughts on Princess O'Rourke-how about yours?  Have you seen the movie?  If so, what'd you think?  And if not, weigh in on Olivia de Havilland and Robert Cummings and some of your favorite performances of theirs.

Jane Wyman, 1914-2007

Apparently death comes in threes, or so the adage goes, as one of those last remaining greats of Hollywood's Golden Age has passed away. Jane Wyman, who passed away today at the age of 93, was possibly best known for two non-movie related items, first being her marriage to future President Ronald Reagan and the second would be her stint on Falcon Crest. However, her film career was easily enough to distinguish her on her own. My first filmic date with Ms. Wyman was in Pollyanna, as Aunt Polly, and then as the girlfriend role in The Lost Weekend. Wyman would receive four Academy Award nominations, for The Yearling, Johnny Belinda, The Blue Veil, and Magnificent Obsession. If you want to get involved with her filmography, those four would be a great way to start. And of course, she is also extremely well-known for her wry and clever Oscar speech, where, after winning for playing a deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda, "I won this award for keeping my mouth shut, so I think I'll do it again now." If only today's actresses could be so clever. So, RIP to Angela Channing, Aunt Polly, Orry Baxter, and Belinda McDonald-you will be missed.

Oh, and in a plea to all of my favorite celebrities, keep eating your vegetables. This has been an awful summer for my favorite entertainers passing away.