Colin Allred's Shockingly Bad Bet

Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX)

It takes a lot in the year of 2026 for politics to surprise me...but today it did.  If you haven't been following, in the state of Texas, former Rep. Colin Allred (who is running a return bid for a seat in the US House) released a video on social media where he essentially called State Rep. James Talarico (who is running for the US Senate nomination against Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is aligned with Allred) a racist, and accused Talarico of calling him a "mediocre black man."  This was based off of a random TikTok account talking about a private conversation that the TikToker (Morgan Thompson) claimed to have with Talarico.  Talarico has since announced that he did not say this, and that the characterization of Allred was about his Senate campaign being mediocre, and not about him as a person.

First off-wow.  Second off, this is an insane to be happening just a few weeks before a Senate primary that has attracted national attention.  Coming off of a surprisingly robust Senate flip this weekend, the Texas Democratic Party felt like it was in a truly good position to make some gains later this year.  Talarico has been a fundraising powerhouse, out-raising Crockett, and increasingly looking like he will win the primary against her despite many people online (including me) initially assuming that she was a slam-dunk because of her devoted base.  This decision by Allred to take the word of a random TikToker, and elevate it to national news by accusing Talarico of being racist, with little founding, is really jaw-dropping, because it essentially throws a grenade into the primary, and makes it harder for either Democrat to win, and given that Allred is not dumb, I struggle to understand his actions here without thinking the worst: that he and Crockett organized this as part of a deal between the two to get her the nomination, one that pretty much everyone involved assumes she can't take to an actual win in November.

There's a couple of ways to dissect this, and I think let's start with what I believe, because part of this has to be opinion as I don't think everyone is speaking in good faith.  I do not believe that James Talarico characterized Colin Allred as a mediocre Black man.  I don't think Talarico, who is only 36 and therefore grew up his entire adult life realizing that the internet is forever, is that dumb.  I believe that the TikToker mischaracterized the conversation, and her open support of Jasmine Crockett implies she did this because she thought this would hurt Talarico's chances (which it might).  Whether or not Talarico actually believes this is between he and his conscience, but I don't think he's foolish enough to tell someone he barely knows and that he knows has a public forum like a TikTok account something that would end his career.  So let's start there: I don't think he did this, and I suspect on some level Colin Allred & Jasmine Crockett also don't believe it.

I do think, because he said he did, that Talarico characterized Allred's Senate campaign was mediocre.  But, let's be honest-it wasn't a particularly impressive campaign, though I don't know that I'd personally call it mediocre.  Allred lost to Ted Cruz by 8.5 points in 2024, while Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in Texas by 13.7 points, or a 5.2-point margin in Allred's favor compared to the top-of-the-ticket.  Candidates like Jon Tester, Ruben Gallego, & Sherrod Brown all did better than him.  Joe Biden & Beto O'Rourke both got better margins as Democrats when they ran in Texas.  Allred's campaign was clearly hurt by Kamala Harris doing so poorly, but had he run alongside Biden in 2020 with these kinds of numbers, even if he could've beaten Biden by 5.2-points (a big ask given Biden already did better than him to begin with, so more traditional coattails than those in reverse seems more likely)...he still would've lost.  Allred, let's be honest-was basically just an average Democrat, one who only looks good when you compare him to Kamala Harris (which is true of most Democrats running in 2024).  I personally wouldn't call his campaign mediocre, for the record...but it wasn't impressive, and it certainly wasn't the kind of campaign you should emulate if you want to flip a Senate seat in Texas.

But I think it's more important to focus on the "why" Allred is doing this.  It could be he's so thin-skinned he couldn't let a viral video like this go without needing to prove himself, but I would assume he has people in his camp that would have told him what a horrible idea this was even if is that self-conscious.  I suspect it's because he wants to try and destroy Talarico, making him apologize for a comment he didn't make (that Allred is mischaracterizing on purpose), in order to help Jasmine Crockett, but you have to wonder-to what end?  Crockett's not going to win, and this certainly didn't help her in the general election.  You have just made a poison-the-well comment that anyone that was on-the-fence about Democrats but liked Talarico is going to take as a sign that they aren't welcome with the Crockett campaign.  This would be campaign that would be challenging to get past in Maine or Minnesota, much less a state as ruby red as Texas.  Crockett knows she has a losing coalition headed into November, and what's worse is she arguably sees that Talarico could win.

And this is where things get a little bit unpleasant, because the logical answer here (for me) is Crockett & Allred are doing this to ensure no Democrat wins the Texas Senate race in November.  Looking at this practically, if Crockett wasn't running for this seat because she wanted to win it, but instead because she wanted to use the national exposure of a major Senate campaign, along with her media savvy (and a very valuable Senate email list that comes with such a race), there's one thing worse than her losing the primary: it's a Democrat proving that they can win the general election.  If Crockett & Talarico both lose, she can claim that she would've won had they nominated her, and if she is the nominee, Talarico becomes an asterisk regardless.  But if she loses the primary and he wins the general, she becomes, well, a loser.  And if her goal is a career in media, especially liberal media, going into that as a "loser" is not going to demand the kind of paydays she's after.  This is more speculation than I'd usually like to put into an article, but she has Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and the NRSC ecstatic right now...and she doesn't seem to want to stop that glee.  It's hard not to wonder if she cares more about Talarico losing than someone like Ken Paxton or John Cornyn losing.

But that's Crockett-it's harder to see what Colin Allred gets out of this.  Allred was initially running for the Senate, and is now in a tougher position than Crockett.  He already has a loss under his belt, he does not have the media following she does, and he had lost a lot of the sheen that he once had as a dragonslayer who defeated a GOP incumbent to win his House seat.  He's also only 42-years-old, and a second major loss would destroy his career.  I personally thought Allred might have a decent shot at his bid to get back into Congress in the 33rd district.  Rep. Julie Johnson ran to succeed Allred when he went against Cruz, but she's new in Congress, and this is a minority-majority district, most of which are historically represented by people of color (Johnson is a white woman).  But with this, he has made his own political future much more complicated.  It's possible that he is betting that Crockett will win his district, and he'll ride her coattails...but he would've done that anyway.  In all likelihood, this backfires on him, making him look petty (negative campaigning is very risky in Democratic primaries, particularly when people start out liking both candidates, which is the case for even the Talarico skeptical Democrats), and while Crockett might end up with a TV career...he ends up with nothing.  This is what's so baffling here-Allred chose to do this with little to gain personally, and intense amount to lose.  Why he chose to do it anyway is a question for which I don't have an answer.

Box Office Debate: Is Melania a Success?

It is not often that the two passions of this blog (politics & movies) overlap in a very real way, so I don't want to let this past weekend's premiere of the movie Melania pass without mention.  For the curious, on principal I have refused to see the movie, as I don't want to give the Trump family more of my money than I have to (I'm already inevitably doing that with these lawsuits the president is granting himself through the Department of Justice with our tax dollars).  But I am curious about the rather odd debate over the film itself, and its success.  While I always assumed that the Trump family would claim the movie was a big hit (as is their wont), the mainstream media (or what's left of it) hasn't been able to settle on a question of whether it exceeded expectations or counts as a box office hit, and as that is a pet hobby of mine, I thought we'd tackle it here.

First off, a couple of things to note.  Primarily, this is not the first time that an incumbent First Lady has dabbled in the mainstream world of entertainment.  While the First Lady has become a pop culture mainstay through her sheer existence (following the First Lady's fashion and details about her life are extremely common, and have been for well over a century), pop culture has been a big part of their planned lives as well.  Frances Cleveland was so popular advertisers used to put her face on everything from soap to tobacco to liver pills, and Jackie Kennedy's Tour of the White House won her an Emmy Award.  Nancy Reagan & Michelle Obama made guest appearances on television programs while they were in office, and Hillary Clinton won a Grammy Award.  In fact, by most measures Melania Trump has largely avoided (or been unable to break through) with her being the only First Lady since Bess Truman not to be photographed by Vogue magazine in some capacity (some, like Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, & Hillary Clinton, were on the cover something Melania only was before her husband entered politics), and she's also the only First Lady since Sesame Street began to not have publicly met a Muppet (one of my favorite bits of political trivia).  This documentary in many ways feels overdue, not in terms of me wanting it, but in terms of my surprise it hadn't happened yet.

But in terms of its success, I think we need to think of it by two definitions: did it beat expectations, and did it make a profit, because for a film like Melania, these are two very different answers.  Over the opening weekend the film made a worldwide total of $7.1 million.  By way of a documentary, that's really good.  Not counting things like concert films (where figures like Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and One Direction have had indisputable success at the box office), this is the biggest opening-weekend box office for a documentary since 2012, when DisneyNature's Chimpanzee came out (only because I'll never get this chance again to plug this on this blog, I have seen every single one of the DisneyNature films, and Chimpanzee is one of the better ones-my ranking is here).  That's impressive, I have to admit.  I don't know that I doubted it'd hit that number (more on that in a second), but it's on-its-surface a laudable achievement, particularly in an era where documentaries can't even get theatrical runs.  Also, given its universally bad reviews, it's hard not to be impressed that word-of-mouth didn't kill it.

It's also worth noting that this opens up a conversation about an untapped movie theater market: conservative filmgoers.  The biopic Reagan made $30 million last year (starring Dennis Quaid, it also hit those numbers while being crucified by critics), the Matt Walsh documentary Am I Racist? made $12 million (and turned a decent profit), and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza's Obama's America cleared $33 million (and made a large profit).  And then there's Sound of Freedom, a narrative film that had connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory that made a fortune at the box office, over $250 million, which honestly has allowed for production company Angel Studios to have created a cottage industry of MAGA-friendly dramas.  All of this is happening in markets like West Palm Beach, Dallas, and Miami that don't usually clock as some of the most profitable in the country for mainstream features (that favor places like Los Angeles, Boston, & New York).  If I was a studio executive, there would be lessons here I'd be taking in terms of finding a new crowd in an industry desperate to find levers to increase theater attendance.

But while you could argue straight-faced that it exceeded expectations, it is decidedly not a "hit" movie.  The film appears to have cost $40 million, and reportedly Ms. Trump herself will pocket $28 million of that in appearance fees from Amazon.  The rule of thumb for a movie is that it needs to make double the cost in order to make a profit (to account for marketing expenses), which would mean that for Amazon to see a return on its investment, the film would need to gross $80 million.  Not counting concert films and documentaries largely made to attract large format iMax audiences (i.e. the kinds of films that run in museums for decades), only four documentaries have made that much money: three animal-themed documentaries (March of the Penguins and two DisneyNature films-Oceans and Earth), and the political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 from Michael Moore, which stands apart as a sort of elusive, untouchable film in terms of box office in the way Gone with the Wind does (i.e. no one is ever beating that).  Melania will not come close to those movies in terms of their gross...

...and I suspect everyone involved knew that.  Brett Ratner appears to have signed on to direct the film solely because Trump then called Paramount to pressure them, despite Ratner's sexual assault charges, to greenlight Rush Hour 4, the follow-up to the massively successful film franchise (and probably the only way Ratner was ever going to get a movie of that type of budget, and with that kind of back-end potential, again).  Jeff Bezos funded the entire operation, including signing that $28 million check to Melania Trump...and then got a $581 million contract with the Air Force just a few days before the film's release.  It's hard not to see all of this as a pretty obvious money-laundering front for Trump to take private equity cash that both parties know will not end up making anyone a profit, and in turn giving out tax payer dollars without any personal harm (i.e. a multi-million dollar bribe) and giving the First Lady the sort of glamorous vanity project that mainstream media organizations like Vogue or broadcast television have pointedly refuse to provide.  Melania is, therefore, a film that, taken on its surface, is impressive in terms of its audience (and savvy movie executives might be able to see this and, with a slimmer budget, try and recreate the same formula to make a real profit-you could easily see, say, an Erika Kirk documentary about her life after Charlie Kirk's death doing similar numbers), but it's also not a successful film by any measure of it actually making money in the traditional sense...and is so obviously a con job that it's hard to take any conversation of it super seriously as the president openly trades in tax payer dollars to fill his (and his wife's) wallet.

My 1972 Oscar Ballot

All right-we are ready-set-cook for another My Ballot!  We did the 1972 Oscar Viewing Project a few weeks ago (I do not know why there is a warning there, but I promise there's nothing salacious if you are apprehensive about clicking the link), and though it's been a while since we last did one of these (and 1972 took WAY too long), I am proud that I am getting these out relatively quickly in succession.  For those unfamiliar, for the Oscar Viewing Project, I discuss the films chosen for Oscar in their feature-length, narrative-film categories, seeing every single nominee, but with the My Ballot it's my turn, picking my own nominees and winners.  If you are curious how I've done this in the past, this is our 31st such article, and links to all 30 past contests are at the bottom of this article.  I love writing these, and so I hope you enjoy!

1972 is the first of the 1970's we've done (for a blog that focuses a lot on pre-1975 cinema, we've only done a couple such years so far as we largely focused on finishing off the 21st Century), maybe my favorite decade of movies (give or take the 1940's).  But I struggled a bit in terms of the year over how to differentiate from Oscar, because the Academy largely got this year right-this WAS the year of Cabaret & The Godfather.  If anything, I'm more indulgent of these two films than Oscar was.  But I do feel like I found some touches that Oscar wasn't quite ready for (like some more inventive SciFi films or the early comedies of Woody Allen, who wouldn't really become an Oscar mainstay for another 5 years), and some of my own personal flair (you will notice plenty of westerns here, though neo-noir wasn't nearly as good in 1972 so I don't have as much of that to distinguish myself).  Hopefully you enjoy-we'll be going to 1964 for our next set (my hope is to get back into a once-a-month cadence so OVP in February and My Ballot in March), but for now-take a look!

Notes about categories: As always, I have Visual Effects (in 1972 only an honorary statue) and Makeup (not a category until 1981), even though Oscar doesn't because they both have been around since the dawn of movies, and I also have the category of Dance Direction, at this point long-retired by Oscar (this will be the last chronological year I'll do it, keeping it a 1934-72 category as choreography rarely showed up in a major way after this).  I also only have three films eligible for Dance Direction & Scoring (as always), but the rest (save Best Picture) are five-wide.

Notes about eligibility: Two notes here.  First, The Emigrants is one of the only films to be nominated for multiple Oscar ceremonies, being cited for the 1971 Oscars for Foreign Language Film and for four additional awards the following Oscars.  My rule is always to go with Oscar eligibility if the film is nominated (for an apples-to-apples approach), and given The Emigrants was cited in more categories in 1972, that's where I'm going with, but we will obviously talk about it when we get to the 1971 OVP for Best Foreign Language Film (even though it will not be eligible for any My Ballot's that year).  Additionally, in the case of some films that are commonly-associated with multiple years (one of them being Duck, You Sucker, which you'll see shows up relatively often and is a 1971 or 1972 film depending on how you think of it), I made a judgment call and included it here.  There are other films I'm saving for later, so if you have questions as to why I didn't include a movie, I promise to address it in the comments (it could be I didn't see it, it could be I didn't like it, or it could be it's eligible a different year...only way to find out is to ask!).  Otherwise-enjoy (and share your picks as well!).

Picture

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Cabaret

Duck, You Sucker

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

The Emigrants

The Godfather

The New Land

Play It Again, Sam

What's Up, Doc?

The Working Class Goes to Heaven

Gold: I am hopeful we will one day have all of these years done for the My Ballots (if I live that long, it's one of my bucket list goals), but I cannot tell you how excited I am to officially call The Godfather not just the greatest film of the 1970's, but possibly the most perfect film ever made.  From start to finish, a true landmark.

Silver: In most years, Cabaret would be a film that would be hard to beat.  Only against the behemoth that is The Godfather could it possibly get silver.  The movie's incredible musical numbers, paired with a legendary pair of performances from Joel & Liza, and the dawning fascism that happens amidst the backdrop of decaying glitter...bienvenue indeed.

Bronze: With this competition, the battle is for bronze, and in a tight race between Leone's least-celebrated (but still wonderful) western and the Bringing Up Baby shenanigans of Streisand & O'Neal, I can't help but stick with What's Up, Doc?, one of the funniest things I've ever laid eyes upon.

Director

Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather

Bob Fosse, Cabaret

Sergio Leone, Duck, You Sucker

Jan Troell, The Emigrants

Jan Troell, The New Land

Gold: Francis Ford Coppola would have what would be considered the peak of his career two years later, with The Conversation & The Godfather, Part II both coming out and winning him dual Best Picture nominations.  But the greatest moment of his career is surely The Godfather, a movie that would define quality movie-making in every aesthetic for the remainder of the cinema.

Silver: Bob Fosse's vision for Cabaret is truly special (and like The Godfather, would profoundly influence future musicals).  The way that we see the rise of fascism amidst the glittering twinkle of entertainment is a lesson that not just needs to be taught, it needs to be screamed in a modern era where this happens every single day on Fox News.

Bronze: Sergio Leone might be the most consistently excellent director this side of Stanley Kubrick.  It's hard to imagine that Duck, You Sucker is considered one of his "lesser" masterpieces given how wonderfully inventive the film is, using two unlikely heroes and a massive wall of explosions & comedy to make one of the best westerns of the 1970's.

Actor

Marlon Brando, The Godfather

Ryan O'Neal, What's Up, Doc?

Al Pacino, The Godfather

Rod Steiger, Duck, You Sucker

Max von Sydow, The New Land

Gold: I am not one of those people that tries to cheat my way into Brando being supporting, and certainly am not going to adopt Oscar's position that Pacino is supporting-this is a two-man, father-and-son lead film, and one where I will have to choose one over the other to stay true to this project.  And of the two, it is Brando's towering, defining achievement that feels just a little more immobile and cinematic for the gold medal.

Silver: Pacino's work, though, is more cerebral, and more of the New Hollywood than Brando's method performance.  The way that his Michael becomes his father's heir, simultaneously resisting it and succumbing to its luxurious decadence, is one of the great screen turns.  If you ranked all of the lead actors of the 1970's, this would probably still be the Top 2.

Bronze: Rod Steiger is not name-checked as one of the great actors of his era now, but was in his actual era, and you see why the reviewers in the moment got it right with something like Duck, You Sucker, having effortless chemistry with James Coburn & genuinely solid comic bits amongst the action.

Actress

Liza Minnelli, Cabaret

Barbra Streisand, What's Up, Doc?

Cicely Tyson, Sounder

Liv Ullmann, The New Land

Joanne Woodward, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Gold: Liza Minnelli, in many ways, is terrible casting for Sally Bowles.  Sally Bowles is not supposed to be a great talent-she's forever supposed to be stuck at the Kit Kat Klub, never leaving it because she's too mediocre and just dreams big.  It's a testament to her ability to make us believe that we don't care that she's being played by one of the singular talents of her generation, a consummate song-and-dance queen born who only (let's be honest) got one real film truly worthy of her.

Silver: Speaking of generational talents, Barbra Streisand is maybe at her most natural and alluring (damn is she sexy in this film) playing opposite Ryan O'Neal in What's Up, Doc?.  I can't quite get past how good her timing is here-she lands every punchline, making sure you know why she's driving O'Neal crazy...and he can't get enough.

Bronze: Joanne Woodward has a reputation amongst actors as one of the most underrated performers of her era, her romance with Paul Newman sometimes getting in the way of real recognition.  That happens in Effect of Gamma Rays, a movie about the ways we desperately try to avoid the mistakes of our parents (and yet fall for them just the same).  That Woodward did this with her real-life daughter playing her fictional one just adds another level of meta to a forgotten classic.

Supporting Actor

Eddie Axberg, The New Land

James Caan, The Godfather

Robert Duvall, The Godfather

Joel Grey, Cabaret

Abe Vigoda, The Godfather

Gold: In a similar way to how Liza Minnelli would honestly never have a movie role that measured up to her in Cabaret, Joel Grey, a storied stage actor, would never have a movie role that could compare to the Emcee, one of the most delicious and nasty creations in the history of the movies.  His villainous demonic imp doesn't need a backstory or anything about him to understand that he is the evil lurking the in the fabric of this picture.

Silver: With Pacino out of this field & in lead where he belongs, we are given the chance to properly recognize James Caan in his own right.  If Vito is wisdom and Michael deliberation, then Sonny is a fiery impetuousness.  Sexy (and endowed) with a temper that will be his doom, he still brings an eldest sibling energy that feels ingrained in the picture.

Bronze: For much of his latter career, Abe Vigoda would become a punchline, the source of a joke website wondering if he was still alive or not.  Lost in that pop culture cache is that he gave an outstanding performance as the intelligent Tessio in The Godfather.  The isolation in his final scene with Al Pacino is maybe even more indicative of Michael's dying innocence than what would come next.

Supporting Actress

Marisa Berenson, Cabaret

Madeline Kahn, What's Up, Doc?

Diane Keaton, The Godfather

Talia Shire, The Godfather

Shelley Winters, The Poseidon Adventure

Gold: In a weekend where we lost Catherine O'Hara at what feels like a far too young age, we need to remember another zany, singular comedic actress that went well before she had been appreciated enough, and that would be Madeline Kahn.  Showing up and stealing every scene she is in in What's Up, Doc? as Ryan O'Neal's buttoned-up love interest with such confidence...how is this her feature film debut?

Silver: Speaking of comedic actors that we lost far too soon, Diane Keaton shows in The Godfather something that I've always known: she's just as good at drama as she is comedy.  The way her Kay is brought in, "knowing" Michael better than anyone, and leaving with a closed door as she understand she has no concept of the man that she has wed, forever trapped in the grasp of her mistake-she is the heart of The Godfather that needs to be taken out in order to show Michael's destiny being fulfilled.

Bronze: Thankfully Marisa Berenson is still with us, and even more thankfully, she was able to bring her high-fashion beauty to Cabaret, a movie that shows within its confines a really tragic love story (in much part alien to Sally & Brian's romance), about Berenson's frequently silly, but all-too-real figure who is rich...and thanks to her being Jewish, about to suffer the film's most terrible fate in the wake of the rising Nazi tide.

Adapted Screenplay

Cabaret

The Emigrants

The Godfather

The New Land

Play It Again, Sam

Gold: Nearly a carbon copy of the Best Director lineup (I usually try to spread the wealth a bit more than this, having all five of these be Best Picture nominees), I will also pick the same gold medalist.  I have actually read the original Godfather novel, and so I know there's huge swaths of it (particularly involving Sonny's mistress) that are fascinating but unnecessary for a tighter plot.  But even as good as that book is, it pales in comparison to the impossibly quotable, no extra scene involved approach the film takes.

Silver: Musicals usually get the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to screenplay awards, and I'm hardly innocent of such things.  Which is why I think it's important to point out when one lands beautifully-Cabaret expands the world beyond the stage version (particularly in the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene) to scary effect, giving us a true story next to the beautiful music.

Bronze: One of the very few times that Jan Troell's epic pairing is going to get mentioned here (despite a mountain of nominations), The New Land takes the original Emigrants (much more claustrophobic than the original picture) and turns it into an expansive look at the way that life can speed by as decades roll by in instants.

Original Screenplay

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

The Candidate

Duck, You Sucker

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask

What's Up, Doc?

Gold: One of the funniest movies I've ever seen, What's, Up Doc? is a masterpiece, and somehow an original (even if it borrows pretty liberally from Bringing Up Baby...I had to make a judgment call on that one).  The Buck Henry screenplay has just constant one-liners, giving Barbra Streisand the best showcase of her acting talents with little music in sight.

Silver: Action films or westerns, like musicals above, don't usually get their due in a category like this, but Duck, You Sucker is so clever and so fun that I can't deny it.  You can feel the build of the film, the way that it keeps repeating certain motifs while still moving forward-it doesn't have the grandeur of his Dollars trilogy or Once Upon a Time in the West, but it makes up for it by having a genuinely strong friendship story at its center.

Bronze: The Academy would fall in love with Woody Allen a few years later, and the world would fall out of love with him in the decades that followed, but it's hard to watch his movies at their best and not appreciate the unique stamp he would give that no other filmmaker could ever duplicate.  Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask should probably be the title of Allen's Wikipedia Personal Life page for fans of his work, but it's a very funny film, particularly the bits involving John Carradine.

Sound Mixing

Cabaret

Duck, You Sucker

Frenzy

The Godfather

What's Up, Doc?

Gold: Come to the Cabaret...and take a listen.  Musicals are the bread-and-butter for Oscar in the sound categories, but I am not so easily bought.  You need to find ways to show off your music, giving us personality like an over-used cymbal to get above the chatter of a nightclub crowd or the way that each musical number in this feels tailor-made to the story it's trying to tell.

Silver: I mean, think of just the scene where Michael's first kill happens.  In The Godfather, details always matter, and you can hear the way that that Nino Rota score is creeping in alongside gun shots and clinking metal and breaking glass.  It's like one of Chopin's piano concertos...every note is in place.

Bronze: The detailing in What's Up, Doc? is what has made it stand the test of time.  The work that they do during those Looney Tunes-style action sequences (especially the famous chase sequence) work so well because we're hearing the bikes & cars whirling by.

Sound Editing

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

The Poseidon Adventure

Silent Running

Solaris

Gold: Silent Running is an odd movie, partially because it's not a particularly good one...but it looks like a good one, and it sure as hell sounds like a good one.  Before prestige SciFi films were really a thing, Silent Running gives us a movie with space station backgrounds, explosions, and robots to give us a very necessary realism in this environmental tale.

Silver: The Poseidon Adventure, on the other hand, does not do subtle, and god bless for it.  The gushing water, the way that we hear the constant presence of a sinking ship, and the fiery furnace of the final scenes all combine to be an audible treat, one that the audience will be gripping their armrests for throughout.

Bronze: And speaking of explosions, I'm not going to nominate a movie that is alternately called A Fistful of Dynamite for Best Picture and totally ignore it in the sound medals.  The best parts of this are the way that they combine action and comedy, and well, not to give away the ending, but sound plays a huge part in that equation.

Score

The Cowboys

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

Jeremiah Johnson

Sleuth

Gold: Okay, so this is where I confess that I don't always play by Oscar's rules.  The Academy famously declared that The Godfather was far too similar to a previous score Nino Rota had done (1958's Fortunella) to be nominated but I think that's a bit nit-picky (particularly given this is the same Academy that would eventually nominate the score to Wicked), and I'm not going to miss giving "The Godfather Waltz," one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written for the cinema, a gold medal.

Silver: That being said, Oscar chose really well (better than any of their other nominees) when it chose its replacement in Sleuth, as John Addison's jumpy, cheerfully mysterious score is an absolute pleasure to listen to, and is maybe the sort of score I wouldn't have come across had it not been for Oscar thinking outside the box.

Bronze: Put Ennio Morricone with Sergio Leone, and you've got magic.  The two would make some of the best pairings in the history of the movie western, and that's true with Duck, You Sucker, a more playful score than we usually get from these two, but Morricone's signature dramatic flourishes are still there in the film's expansive runtime.

Scoring

Cabaret

Jeremiah Johnson

Super Fly

Gold: I mean, if Cabaret is for most intents-and-purposes the last truly great traditional musical until the early 2000's (which, let's be honest, it pretty much is until Moulin Rouge! and Chicago come to town), you can't deny it a gold medal here.  The best parts of this are the way that it takes songs like "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and "If You Could See Her" and uses the audience itself as a way to react to the lyrics (something usually not possible outside of a stage show).

Silver: Film scoring in the 1970's & 1980's had to take on a different look with less-and-less musicals to use as inspiration, and so as I approach these decades in these My Ballots, you're going to come across movies like Super Fly, which used a largely original song score to give us a sense of the film itself, with us feeling like we have actually stumbled into 1970's Harlem, and can hear music playing from open windows.

Bronze: A backhanded compliment, admittedly, but the score to Jeremiah Johnson and the dulcet sounds of Tim McIntire's voice throughout imply a much better movie than what we actually get.  Jeremiah Johnson is one of those films I have to continually remind myself I didn't like...mostly because the tech elements, and particularly the music, is so fine.

Original Song

"The Ballad of Jeremiah Johnson," Jeremiah Johnson

"The Harder They Come," The Harder They Come

"Mein Herr," Cabaret

"Money, Money," Cabaret

"Superfly," Super Fly

Gold: It is insane to me that Oscar made a list of the best songs of 1972, and skipped all five of these songs (and I even like the song they picked!).  The battles I had with myself to have to skip a song as good as "Across 110th Street" on this list...and they pick "Strange are the Ways of Love"...I just can't.  In terms of the win, it's going to be one of the two original numbers from Cabaret, in this case "Mein Herr," a great character introductory piece, and one of the best "new" songs in a musical Hollywood ever put together.

Silver: The jazzy R&B tune of "Superfly" is insanely infectious (again, a year after Isaac Hayes "Theme to Shaft" won an Oscar, there should've been room for another classic blaxploitation crime drama), and lyrically really cool, with Curtis Mayfield cooing out lines like "the man of the hour has an air of great power, the dudes have envied him for so long."

Bronze: The staging on "Money, Money" is what breaks the tie against the other two songs (in my opinion this is my biggest upgrade on Oscar-all of these feel very worthy of medals)-the way that we get to see Joel & Liza play off each other, highlighting the similarities in their performances which we need to make the ending land is why it feels the worthiest.

Dance Direction

1776

Cabaret

Man of La Mancha

Gold: As I said above, we will retire the category of Dance Direction after 1972, only having it from the mid-1930's through the early-1970's, and part of the reason I ended it here was because they just stopped making movies as sensational as Cabaret after a while.  The way that we have the Kit Kat Klub dancers, combining an exotic layer to their "unchoreographed" routines, adds so much.  Also love Joel & Liza's spectacular toe-tapping in "Money, Money."

Silver: Man of La Mancha is honestly more of a traditional musical than Cabaret, with bigger production numbers and fun dance routines.  The standout for me is "I, Don Quixote," where Peter O'Toole & James Coco (hardly what you'd think of as natural hoofers) both do a choreographed gallup with a horse.

Bronze: Finishing this off is 1776, something of a cheat here (let's be honest-this is hardly a "dancer's" musical), but there are simple romantic moments like "He Plays the Violin" where we get a beautiful waltz (and yes, I considered putting The Godfather in just for the waltz alone, but thought that was indulgent) along some later in the film dances at Constitution Hall that fill up the movie with patriotism.

Art Direction

Cabaret

The Godfather

The Poseidon Adventure

Silent Running

What's Up, Doc?

Gold: It's not often in this article you see a film other than The Godfather or Cabaret come out on top, but credit where it's due-the remarkable staging in The Poseidon Adventure is hard to deny.  The meticulous details like the way that it feels like we've stumbled into the Queen Mary (in some cases, we actually have), particularly as the ship turns upside down gives us such a specific aesthetic to play with as the film continues.

Silver: That said, I'm not going to ignore The Godfather.  The detailing in some of the scenes here are really special.  Look at the over-the-top luxury of the Corleones' house, with him trying to display the wealth he came to America to capture, or the recreations of New York restaurants and streets that feel like you've stumbled exactly into another time & place.

Bronze: And I'm not going to ignore Cabaret either.  Here it's less about decadence or luxury, and more about quantity-the way that we see every little knickknack out at Sally's apartment, or the claustrophobic feeling of the Kit Kat Klub, where the audience is almost spilling onto the stage it's so crowded with tables and chairs

Cinematography

Cabaret

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

Jeremiah Johnson

The New Land

Gold: The golden hues of The Godfather are what makes it so timeless (and Coppola borrowed from himself when he brought them to the sequels).  It feels like we're looking at an oil painting throughout, the framing and coloring washed with age as we are transported back to a different era, perhaps one that only exists in memory.

Silver: The glitzy glamour of Cabaret with us covered in clouds and night life lights keeps you drowned in stardust, always wanting to kick back, relax, and forget your troubles...and the fact that the cinematography team only had two scenes ("Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and the wedding sequence) feel like it's truly seeing something approaching realism shows how intentional this approach becomes.

Bronze: So here's where Oscar & I are kindred spirits, because we are both such a fool for a beautifully shot, in-nature film like Jeremiah Johnson, which in every sequence looks and acts like we're actually going into the frontier and carving up the west alongside Robert Redford.

Costume

Cabaret

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

Jeremiah Johnson

What's Up, Doc?

Gold: I talked about this with Art Direction, but part of the tale of The Godfather is that they are trying to create an aura, a "new money" sheen with old-world respectability (it's in fact the plot of all three movies).  That comes across in the decadence of the tailoring (perfectly-draped suits, showing off how sexy a 1972-era James Caan & Al Pacino are), and it makes people who don't fit in (like Diane Keaton's Kay with her more established, less-to-prove red dress) feel all the more out-of-place.

Silver: Everything that Liza wears as Sally is fascinating, because it is always toeing the line between chic and ridiculous.  Sometimes, when she's singing (in that black bowler hat and plunging neckline black dress), everything works fabulously.  But more often it's too much, emulating a glamour that she can't master.  Costume design should be about pretty costumes, yes, but they should also be about building a character and Charlotte Flemming's work in Cabaret achieves that.

Bronze: It only brings me a touch of pleasure that I (completely unintentionally) gave Peter Bogdonavich a sole nomination in this article, while his under-sung ex-wife Polly Platt gets two.  But Platt's work in What's Up, Doc? deserves two nominations-look at the gorgeous way that she clothes Barbra Streisand in every scene, that fabulous plaid newsboy cap and a string of effortlessly glamorous shirts, coats, & one big dress.  This is a character who is already cool-she doesn't spend time being fashionable, she just is.

Film Editing

Cabaret

Deliverance

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

The Poseidon Adventure

Gold: The category that is most synonymous with Best Picture, and given that I have given The Godfather a grand total of 18 nominations (well, I haven't but I will when you get to the next paragraph), more than any other movie we've done in 31 profiles for the My Ballot...of course it's winning this award.  But it deserves it-the Michael kill scene, Sonny getting shot at from the toll booth, the scene where James Caan kicks his brother-in-law...every moment in this movie feels like it's cut with sophistication and intention.

Silver: And yes, I'm going with the cliche once more of Cabaret getting the silver to The Godfather's gold.  The ingenious framing device of using the audience against the musical numbers is really something-I loved the way that they cut together the splashes of this throughout each of the Kit Kat Klub musical numbers, and the way that what is happening in the film is so effectively juxtaposed to the songs at-hand.

Bronze: But in proof that I can truly see beyond just my favorites for this category, we're going to do something rare and pick a film that was nominated in no other categories for the bronze.  Deliverance is a movie about anticipation, throughout the film it feels like we're seeing ahead, always thinking ahead, and it makes the one scene (you know the scene) that is truly in-the-moment and not trying to get to what will happen next all the more terrifying.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Cabaret

Duck, You Sucker

The Godfather

Jeremiah Johnson

Roma

Gold: I mean, it inspired a generation of Halloween costumes for a reason.  The gaudy heavy eye shadow, plastered mascara, and coiffed wigs of Cabaret are something else.  The best part of this is the way that you rarely see most of the characters (save for Sally) outside of this makeup, with it feeling almost tattooed onto Joel Grey's Emcee.

Silver: If you ever doubt how effective the makeup work in The Godfather (done by one of the, well, godfathers of that genre Dick Smith) is in this picture, watch this movie back-to-back with Last Tango in Paris (which I did in college), and you'll notice how shockingly young Brando still looks in the latter film, and suddenly realize how advanced the old age makeup was in what he did as Vito Corleone.

Bronze: The unrecognizable furry mountain man look of Rod Steiger (not to be confused with the unrecognizable furry mountain man look of Robert Redford) is paired with the faded boy band haircut of James Coburn in Duck, You Sucker, just getting this one ahead of Jeremiah Johnson for the bronze.

Visual Effects

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Duck, You Sucker

The Poseidon Adventure

Silent Running

Solaris

Gold: The only category field of the entire article that nominated neither The Godfather nor Cabaret (and yes, I did consider The Godfather)!  When it comes to special effects, I tend to like beautiful more than large special effects, and coming just a few years off of the Grand Teton of pre-1975 Visual Effects movies (2001: A Space Odyssey), Douglas Trumbull's sophisticated (and shockingly low in budget) Silent Running creates modern-looking, realistic space effects that are just impossible to ignore.

Silver: That being said, I do have a sense of fun, and surely you can't go wrong with the big-wave pleasures of The Poseidon Adventure.  The practical effects on display during the giant wave sequences, as well as the impressive stunt work needed for some of the water flooding moments are just extraordinary-you see why this film set off a trend.

Bronze: We're going to end this article with a movie that, by-and-large, most people consider one of the greatest of 1972 that I liked, but don't know if I understood properly.  But what I did understand of Solaris was its beauty, clearly inspiring the hyper-realism that would take place in movies like Gravity, Passengers, & Interstellar even decades later.

Other My Oscar Ballots: 1931, 1948, 1957, 1981, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

Saturdays with the Stars Errol Flynn

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Douglas Fairbanks Sr, one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1920's who made his career playing swashbuckling pirates and carefree good guys.  This month, we're going to talk about the man who would be, in many ways, the Sound Era's answer to Douglas Fairbanks, a man so absurdly handsome that he was destined to be the guy who got the girl, fighting his way through soundstages as a buccaneer and a rake.  He would also be, by most measures, one of the most scandalous figures in the history of Classical Hollywood, to the point where his personal life is still debated to this day.  This month's star is Errol Flynn.

Flynn was born in Tasmania in 1909, the son of a biology professor, and while he would spend his childhood in Australia, his ancestry hailed from the British Isles, and he would eventually end up in London when he went to boarding school.  Flynn would in many ways live the life he would eventually emulate onscreen in his early adulthood, being fired for being a thief and going fortune-hunting in Papua New Guinea, prospecting for gold.  A chance opportunity to appear in an Australian telling of the Mutiny on the Bounty (where Flynn would play Fletcher Christian) led him to go to London, and then Hollywood, to try his hand at acting.

Relatively soon into his time in acting, Flynn would star in Captain Blood, which would set a trio of precedents that would be hallmarks in his career.  First, he'd star with Olivia de Havilland, his leading lady in eight movies (the film would make them both household names).  Second, he would have huge success-for a time Flynn was one of the most reliable box office draws for Warner Brothers.  And third, he would be typecast in a way that never afforded him the eventual critical awards that would befall de Havilland (she has two Oscars, he was never even nominated).  Flynn's career is hallmarked by a number of attempts to get outside of his role as a roguish hero, one who clearly has a good heart even if he occasionally strays from the right side of the law, but it's not what the public wanted.  He would spend decades trying to get outside of that role, but he'd never achieve it-audiences wanted to root for Errol Flynn...

...which is why his movies are very much a situation where celluloid does not equal life.  Because off-screen, Errol Flynn has had everything from pretty much confirmed scandals (drug abuse and relationships with underage girls which would result in his career being sidetracked, though not forever) to the bizarre (everything from allegations of bisexuality & fascism to a unique friendship with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology).  We've got a lot to cover, but we're going to attempt to get to all of it as we take a look at one of several polarizing actors we'll talk about this season.

The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

Film: The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Merle Oberon, Gina Malo, Benita Hume

Director: Alexander Korda

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: click here to learn more about Mr. Fairbanks (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. is a major star of his era that was not a timeless star.  As we talked about last week, Douglas Fairbanks wasn't really an actor that couldn't make it work in the Sound Era (there was nothing wrong with his voice, and as we'll talk about today, he still has a presence with sound movies that felt at-home with the screwball pictures that succeeded here), but he didn't pair well with the 1930's.  This was partially because he was older than actors like Gary Cooper & Clark Gable, both of whom were big names at the time who were a couple of decades the junior of Fairbanks, so there was very much a ticking clock on how long he could be the suave leading man.  And it was also in part because his movies went out of fashion.  For Depression Era audiences, they wanted escapism, but they wanted it with a modern flare, things like Dinner at Eight or Grand Hotel, movies that were how they wished they could live their lives, glamorously spending money vicariously through Joan Crawford or Jean Harlow.  They didn't want period dramas, which had been Fairbanks' bread-and-butter.  And so today we get to not just discuss our final film of the month, but also the last movie of Fairbanks' career as a leading man: the surprisingly witty & introspective The Private Life of Don Juan.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film tackles Don Juan's (Fairbanks) life after he's already become a Lothario-like legend.  Here, he is so famous that men actually impersonate him, and get away with it because they are what Don Juan was 10 years ago-sexier, younger, more virile.  This causes a huge problem for the actual Don Juan, who at one point in the film shows his seduction techniques on Antonita (Oberon) a beautiful young dancer, but at the same time an imposter is seducing a woman across town with a jealous husband...who kills him.  She assumes this is the real Don Juan (because that's what she told him, and that's the fantasy both she & her husband enjoy), and there is a giant funeral for Don Juan, including women mourning him who have not even met him before (they just have fantasized about it).  The actual Don Juan takes this as an opportunity to move on from his life (and the problems his life has caused), but soon learns that the myth he has cultivated is essential to picking up women.  They now see him for what he is: a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a paunch, and not the fantasy that they have come to expect from legends and fictional stories about him.  Even when he comes back, women don't recognize him, not even Antonita.  He eventually falls for the woman who has been pretending to be his widow, who is happy with the (aged) version of him as long as she gets him all to herself.

I'll be honest-I did not expect this movie to be as funny as it is, nor did I expect it to be as genuinely thought-provoking.  The script is a riot, and you see pretty quickly why Fairbanks' original fame as an actor was in comedy, not in action-adventure.  He is a gas as he fights with his manservant over eating too much, and there's a terrific bit where his doctor tries to trick him into admitting his age that feels almost like a Laurel & Hardy gag.  This is also surprising because it is downright impossible to find movies in Classical Hollywood where leading actors admit that they are getting older and less desirable.  Think of, say, Joan Crawford even in the 1960's attempting to play glamour girl roles in movies like Berserk!, or John Wayne inexplicably trying to get audiences to believe he can drive a young Angie Dickinson into fits of passion.  Yes, Fairbanks seduces Merle Oberon in this (an actress more beautiful than him, even when he was in his prime, and also 30 years younger than him), but the movie goes to great pains to make sure you know she's sleeping with Don Juan the Myth...not the man in front of her, even to the point of embarrassing him later in the movie when she can't recognize him.  Essentially, she was doing the modern equivalent of picturing your hot gym trainer while you were getting laid instead of the person actually on top of you (don't give me that look...we've all done it).

The film was good, and it's a sad final chapter for Fairbanks, particularly given that his career after this isn't all that interesting.  Fairbanks would divorce Mary Pickford in 1936, ending Hollywood's first storybook marriage, and though he was unique amongst stars of his era in that he was sober (something his ex-wife sadly could not boast), he was a habitual chain smoker, which caused severe heart problems for him.  He would work at he & Pickford's cofounded United Artists, but by the late 1930's he was unable to do most of the things that had once made him a star (i.e. giant action movies), so a comeback wasn't in the cards even if he wanted to have one.  In 1939, Fairbanks would die of a heart attack, at the age of only 56.  He was buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where almost 70 years later his namesake son would be buried next to him.  Mary Pickford, who outlived her ex-husband by nearly 40 years, would eventually become a savvy businesswoman, and would be given accolades like two Academy Awards and a spot on the AFI's list of greatest stars (while Fairbanks would forever remain in her shadow, their marriage the most-known thing about his time as one of Tinseltown's biggest names).

Next month, we're going to talk about a star who would become the successor of Fairbanks in the Sound Era, taking on the swashbuckling roles in a way no other actor would in Classical Hollywood (to the point where the word "swashbuckling" basically conjures up images of him).  He would also have perhaps the most controversial off-screen life of any actor of Hollywood's Golden Age, in many ways dwarfing his onscreen persona, which we will inevitably also discuss.

Democrats Need to Relax about the 2030 Census

When it comes to electoral politics, I have read, forever, about how one party will get an inherent advantage that will consistently last in the electoral college.  From the Reagan coalition to the Clinton coalition to the Obama coalition, from the Blue Wall to the collectively blue-then-red American South, the single laziest (and most perpetual) take in American politics is that one party is going to gain an insurmountable advantage in the electoral college.

The latest of these takes has been based on a 2025 Census Bureau population estimate that showed (if exactly accurate, which it won't be) that Harris states would lose 11 electoral votes compared to Donald Trump's.  The biggest thing that was part of this is that this would mean the famed "blue wall" where if you won all of Hillary Clinton's states plus WI/MI/PA (aka the Blue Wall) would no longer be enough to stave off Trump, as it would move that coalition from 270 electoral college votes down to 257 electoral votes.

I will own that this isn't a great look for Democrats.  For starters, not a single Harris state appears on-track to gain a seat next cycle, which was not the case in 2020 (when Colorado & Oregon both gained seats).  It is no Democrat (including my) definition of a good thing that reliably blue states like New York, California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Illinois, & Oregon appear on-track to lose electoral college power in 2032.  But it's also a case where the panic feels completely unwarranted, and I think looking at 2004 would be a good reason why.

In 2004, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the electoral college 286-252 (really it's 251 because of a faithless elector but for the sake of this article, we'll go with 252 because that's how many Kerry won electorally).  At the time, seven states (Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, & Nevada) were decided by less than 3-points, a relatively close election, and one that, in many ways, felt like Trump/Harris (i.e. Kerry lost a race many assumed he'd be able to pull off).  Democrats felt despair, until four years later Bush (as popular as a hangnail) wiped out John McCain's chances at ever being president and we ushered in the Obama coalition.

This is worth pointing out because basing a lot of your suppositions about what a "safe" seat would be based on 2004 numbers would look pretty silly when you'd compare it to what would happen in 2012.  That year Obama won 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney's measly 206.  That year only three states (Florida, North Carolina, & Ohio) were decided by less than 3-points.  

But in the process, several states that had gone for Bush in 2004 had basically become blue states.  New Mexico, which had been one of Bush's most marginal victories, wasn't even a swing state in 2012 it was so blue.  Virginia & Colorado, which hadn't been one of the seven closest states in 2004, were now easy portions of the Obama coalition, as were marginal blue states for Kerry (like Oregon & New Jersey).  People get married to the idea that states can't change perspectives, and they can't really change their tune, and that's in part grounded in the fact swing states the last three presidential cycles staying a relatively similar list...but that is in large part because Donald Trump was the Republican nominee all three cycles.  That won't be the case in 2028 and certainly won't be the case in 2032.

There's ample evidence that new swing states or other states might make up a future Democrat's coalition, and as a result would make the worry about the electoral college premature (at best).  The nation swung three-points to the right in 2024 compared to 2020, so any state whose margin was less than a three-point swing against the Republicans would indicate a state that got "bluer" relative to the nation.  This includes swing states like Georgia, North Carolina, & Wisconsin, as well as hard-red states like Kansas & Utah (and nearly Alaska).  It also includes some historically purple states like Minnesota.  It's worth noting that if a state like, say, North Carolina or Georgia were to become the next Virginia or Colorado, we'd be in a very similar situation to what we are now-relying on that blue wall, because NC/GA would have made up the difference from the census.

This is all to say-Democrats need to get ahold of themselves before they once again fall for the oldest trick in the book: assuming that electoral college coalitions don't shift.  In the post-Trump era that we're soon going to enter, there are states we assume are safely blue and safely red now that will become in-play, and maybe switch sides entirely.  No Democrat should be celebrating the census change...but anyone panicking is doing so for no real reason.

The Iron Mask (1929)

Film: The Iron Mask (1929)

Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Belle Bennett, Marguerite de la Motte, Dorothy Revier, Vera Lewis

Director: Allan Dwan

Oscar History: Most of the categories that would've been an option (Costume, Makeup, Visual Effects) were decades away, though one wonders why it wasn't an option for Art Direction given the rather impressive sets.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: click here to learn more about Mr. Fairbanks (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

A lot of the conversations about Douglas Fairbanks to modern audiences focus on one of two things.  First, there is his "storybook" marriage to Mary Pickford, one that started with a scandalous affair (while Fairbanks was still married) and would end with a shocking divorce (at least to the public) that we'll get into next week during our final Fairbanks movie.  But the second we'll talk about today, and that is Fairbanks' uncomfortable position as one of the quintessential actors whose career was destroyed by the coming Sound Era.  There are other actors (including Pickford) who didn't have as much success in the Sound Era, but they aren't shown as an example of the stars who couldn't make it at all in the new era of Sound.  And while actors like John Gilbert & Norma Talmadge certainly saw their careers disappear with the Sound Era due to their voices, it's Fairbanks that has lasted the longest in the public's memory as not being "suitable" for the Sound Era, perhaps in recent years due to The Artist, the 2011 Best Picture winner that is based in part on Fairbanks' life, enough so that star Jean Dujardin referenced Fairbanks in his Golden Globes speech that year.

(Spoilers Ahead) So in many ways The Iron Mask, a sequel to a previous film of Fairbanks (1921's The Three Musketeers), is a swan song for our January star.  The film is much in-line with what we've come to expect from the actor.  Despite being in his mid-forties at the time, The Iron Mask has a number of impressive stunts and fighting sequences, and is honestly a really lavish and gorgeous production (I'm not doing my typical plot recap because this story has been told countless times on big-screens and in TV parodies like The Simpsons, and it doesn't break a lot of new ground, though it is notable as the only major film of Fairbanks' Silent Era career where he dies in the end).  I referenced above that this movie didn't get an Art Direction nomination, but one thinks it should have-it looks really good, and very rarely appears to be a sound stage in the way that a lot of films of this era (even some which Fairbanks did).

But this is where I will own that I did not see the film that Academy voters in 1929 would've seen, so I want to caveat that a bit (and why I'm giving this 3/5 stars here instead of rounding down like I normally would given I gave it 2.5 stars on Letterboxd).  The first fully sound film featuring Fairbanks was The Taming of the Shrew, a movie we profiled when we talked about Mary Pickford in Season 6, which is bad (and Fairbanks is bad in it), but this is not the first sound film he did-The Iron Mask included an opening narration from Fairbanks at the time of release.  What it did not include, but was added in the 1950's, was a narration of the plot by his son Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., which was used in replacement of title cards, likely to help it for television audiences (at the time, it was quite common to have movies running at off-times during the day, or eventually late in the evening).  It is possible to see both versions of the movie...but the one I saw on Amazon was the one reedited with Fairbanks Jr.  This gives off the effect of a Disney nature film (where you are being spoon-fed the plot even if you're seeing it with your own eyes), and takes away a lot of the beautiful work that the late-Silent Era acting is doing here.

Fairbanks is fun in The Iron Mask, and over 85 years after the fact, I don't get the same sense of how passé this was likely becoming after a decade of box office dominance with similarly-themed movies.  But this is considered by many to be his last big hurrah, and it's worth noting that it wasn't Fairbanks' voice that really cost him in the new era.  Fairbanks voice wasn't bad (this isn't like, say, Clara Bow or Emil Jannings where their strong accents made them impossible to see in the same types of moves in the United States), and probably would've worked...but like many action stars we'll profile this year, he was physically at an age where he couldn't continue to outdo his stunts, and this type of movie (which wouldn't be particularly popular in the early 1930's from even younger stars like Tyrone Power or John Wayne) wouldn't be in fashion again until the 1940's, by which time Fairbanks would be dead (again, which we'll get to next week).  Therefore, the idea of Fairbanks as a victim of the Silent Era isn't really a fair assessment-it wasn't his voice, but his age (and changing tastes), that was more the culprit in why he couldn't stay a movie star in the 1930's while others of his era (like Greta Garbo & Joan Crawford) would become even bigger names with the introduction of Sound (and in part, would become lasting legends in a way that Fairbanks never could).  We'll talk about the final chapter of Fairbanks life, and what he did when movies dried up, next week.