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.

Cry Wolf (1947)

Film: Cry Wolf (1947)

Stars: Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Brooks, Richard Basehart

Director: Peter Godfrey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the things you notice quite often with film noir is that it's not always clear if films that are "marketed" as film noir will perfectly fit into that genre.  Frequently you'll get what is essentially an adult drama or a gangster picture or even just a straight-up thriller that will be marketed as a film noir, with a bit of a buyer remorse on the other end (especially if you're writing a series about film noir).  Less often, you'll run into a movie like Cry Wolf, from 1947, a movie that is clearly a film noir.  We have an enigmatic, beautiful woman entering a man's office in the opening scene to talk about a mysterious death-pretty much everything involved in a film noir boils down to that sentence.  But what makes Cry Wolf so intriguing is that if it was done right, it wouldn't be a noir.  It would be a horror movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Sandra Marshall (Stanwyck), whose young husband has recently died, and left her the entirety of his estate.  She goes to retrieve her inheritance from her husband's uncle, Mark Caldwell (Flynn) who did not know about the marriage, and initially wants to contest it-a vast fortune, one that would likely go to he or his niece Julie (Brooks) is on the line, and he's not giving that up easily.  Sandra stays at the family estate in the meantime, and while she does, they become better acquainted, but she is still suspicious of what he's doing in his off-limits laboratory, particularly after Julie dies in a horrible accident (or "accident" in Sandra's mind).  The film's closing turns out that there is something nefarious happening in Mark's lab, but not what she thinks.  It's not Mark, but her late husband Tom (who is not actually late, but is played by Richard Basehart) who is up to no good, as he's mentally insane and has killed a man, which is why Mark has been keeping Julie & Sandra away from it.  Before Tom can kill Sandra, he falls to his death, and the movie ends with Sandra & Mark likely to end up together romantically, living off of Tom & Julie's money.

That last sentence is not as ruthless as it sounds in the movie, but it's as ruthless as it should've been in the movie.  The Hayes Code frequently meant that movies had to be morally upright, and it's clear in a film like Cry Wolf that this is getting in the way of the plot (I'm aware this is based on a novel-I have not read it so I don't know if the novel is different, but if you have, I would love some insights in the comments).  The reality is that the way the film is set up, it's far more interesting if one of the leads are actually the killer, rather than Basehart who shows up out of nowhere and the film really needs you to trust him initially, even though we know that he's clearly the bad guy given the time and setting and that the studio would want Stanwyck or Flynn to get together.  A movie where Flynn is a mad scientist and the ending shows Stanwyck being chased through the house by the man she's fallen in love with...or a movie where Stanwyck kills Flynn and gets the entire fortune & it's revealed she's been a heartless gold-digger killing this family for its fortune (ala Saltburn) the whole film...both of these are better conclusions.

Because honestly, there's a lot to like about Cry Wolf.  The mood and ambience are strong from the beginning, and it has such a great premise, you really want a ghost story or at least some set of deception.  Flynn and Stanwyck are really unlikely partners onscreen (this was the only film they ever made), and their chemistry is strong until they make sure you know that they're both on the up-and-up.  There are even hints of a werewolf subplot afoot (wouldn't that have been terrific?), which comes to nothing.  Cry Wolf is in its end, a moody, well-crafted (great score) movie that's more good ideas than good execution.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Saturdays with the Stars Season 4 Finale

Two of our stars this year, Lucille Ball & Ann Sothern

We ended the year on a Saturday (a first for our series), so I wasn't able to get this recap out in 2022 like we normally do, but I didn't want to finish our fourth season of Saturdays with the Stars without our annual recap.  While we are headed into a new season this coming Saturday focusing on western stars, I would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to talk through actors in television, and what I learned from our fourth season.

This year was really interesting for me for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it was really the first season where I didn't have "stars" at the center, and of course it was our first season with men.  As a result, there were actors this year where I was watching a movie where they barely showed up, character actors in Old Hollywood being harder to track their "most significant" roles.  As a result, our annual discussion below of "favorite performances" I ended up in some cases having less options.

But I also kind of loved that, as it underlined the main thesis of this year: that television gave these performers an opportunity that movies simply couldn't.  Some of these actors had great potential, but the public (or the studio heads) couldn't see it for what it was, and TV brought that talent out in them.  Others, quite frankly, needed the banality of television compared to the "make an impact every time" culture of movies because their star personas weren't as curated.  We'll be getting back to star culture in 2023 (while they might occasionally take supporting parts depending on our film, all 12 of our stars this year are generally considered to be "leading players"), I won't forget that lesson as I continue to watch the twelve stars we watched this past year in other films in the decades to come.  Below, I have created a little list celebrating the best of this year's stars.  Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for part or all of this year's season-I'm excited to have you back for season five's "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood"!: 

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Lucille Ball-Dance. Girl. Dance.

February: Jack Benny-George Washington Slept Here

March: Eve Arden-Comrade X

April: Ann Sothern-Lady in a Cage

May: Robert Young-They Won't Believe Me

June: Spring Byington-BF's Daughter

July: Loretta Young-Midnight Mary

August: John Payne-Silver Lode

September: Ward Bond-The Wings of Eagles

October: Walter Brennan-Come and Get It

November: Donna Reed-The Last Time I Saw Paris

December: Barbara Stanwyck-Baby Face

5 Favorite Performers (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Eve Arden

Lucille Ball

Jack Benny

Ann Sothern

Barbara Stanwyck

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Lucille Ball, Dance. Girl. Dance.

Barbara Stanwyck, Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck, The Furies

Ann Sothern, Lady in a Cage

Loretta Young, Midnight Mary

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Baby Face

Dance. Girl. Dance.

Forty Guns

The Furies

George Washington Slept Here

Lady in a Cage

Rio Bravo

The Stranger

They Were Expendable

They Won't Believe Me

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Judith Anderson, The Furies

James Caan, Lady in a Cage

Charles Coburn, George Washington Slept Here

Olivia de Havilland, Lady in a Cage

Susan Hayward, They Won't Believe Me

Walter Huston, The Furies

Percy Kilbride, George Washington Slept Here

Edward G. Robinson, The Stranger

John Wayne, Rio Bravo

Orson Welles, The Stranger

Forty Guns (1957)

Film: Forty Guns (1957)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Gene Barry, John Ericson

Director: Samuel Fuller

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the late 1950's, Barbara Stanwyck was entering her fifties, and after nearly 30 years atop the Hollywood food chain, film roles were starting to dry up.  Like some of her fellow leading ladies (including Joan Crawford & Bette Davis), the "women's pictures" that had made them stars were out-of-fashion, and would largely evaporate in the decades to come, not really seeing a proper resurgence until the 1980's (then in the hands of actresses like Jessica Lange & Sissy Spacek).  While Crawford & Davis would wait to make the jump via guest spots, and never really went fully into the small screen (they instead would launch the "hagspolitation" trend that would briefly spring from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane's massive success), Barbara Stanwyck would start to go the route of "lesser" stars of her era by moving into television, first in an unsuccessful anthology series that was eponymously titled The Barbara Stanwyck Show, and then by the mid-1960's, as Victoria Barkley on The Big Valley, which saw much more success.  Before that happened, though, she made her last celebrated big-screen picture, Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Bonnell brothers, led by oldest brother Griff (Sullivan), a former gunslinger who now works for the Attorney General.  He's trying to arrest one of Jessica Drummond's (Stanwyck) hired guns.  Drummond is a cowgirl who owns a large swath of land, but skirts the law, though not as much as her younger brother Brockie (Erickson), who regularly trashes the nearby town knowing that his sister will cover for him, and in the opening sequences shoots the town's marshall, even though he's blind.  This sets up something of an incestuous love triangle between the three figures, as Griff quickly sets his sights on arresting Brockie...but also is very much in love with Jessica, who has to decide between the love of this honest man or defending her ne'er-do-well brother.  In the end, the brother makes it easy for him, after escaping from prison and using his sister as a human shield, providing Griff with the noblest way to kill him.  The ending shows Jessica likely forgiving Griff, and riding off into the sunset with him.

The movie was not "important" at the time the way it is now.  Samuel Fuller is a director that commands a lot of respect today amongst cinephiles, but at the time wasn't considered in the same league as someone like a John Ford or a George Stevens.  As a result, this was made on a shoestring budget...but you'd never know it.  The cinematography, in particular, is glorious & inventive.  There are a number of long shots & tracking shots (including one that lasts for a full three minutes), and it is shot creatively...it's easy to tell that people like Francois Truffaut saw this movie & were impressed.  The movie has two great songs, including the western classic "High Ridin' Woman" that feature as wonderful (if totally unnecessary) interludes.  This isn't a Poverty Row western, obviously (as is evidenced by the Fox label and Stanwyck's name), but it has the aura of a Poverty Row western in the best sense, where every cent is on the screen.  This includes Stanwyck's performance, proud & delicious as Jessica, and doing stunts that actresses half her age would've shunned (including being dragged by a horse at the age of nearly 50).

Stanwyck's television career would end up being a big part of her life, and a successful one.  The Big Valley wasn't exactly a ratings smash (it was toward the tail-end of the TV western craze, and it showed by never making the year-end Top 30), but made Stanwyck one of the biggest names on the small screen during its four year run, and won her an Emmy.  She'd go on to win another Emmy after a long sabbatical from film in 1983 for what would be her final major role as Mary Carson in The Thorn Birds, which would be the second-highest rated miniseries of all-time after Roots.  Stanwyck died in 1990 at the age of 82.

OVP: The Furies (1950)

Film: The Furies (1950)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Barbara Stanwyck turned forty right before filming her final Oscar-cited turn in Sorry, Wrong Number, and after that, while she appeared in a number of films, she was never nominated for an Academy Award again.  Unlike actresses like Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, & Joan Crawford, the early 1950's was not filled with one last iconic role to go out on (in Davis & Crawford's case, of course, they'd extend their iconography into the 1960's by taking on each other, but that's a story for a different day).  She instead found herself working in genres atypical for women, particularly westerns, and in genres that generally didn't get women Oscar nominations for westerns (is Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller the only one?).  This is fascinating to me because Stanwyck's career is generally considered to have waned during the 1950's, and box office receipts bear that out.  However, several of her films have since been rescued by critics (and Criterion), one of which is today's film The Furies, an Anthony Mann picture (Mann would direct most of Jimmy Stewart's best westerns, as well as the biblical epic El Cid) which is noted as one of Stanwyck's roles today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about TC Jeffords (Huston), a nasty cattle baron who delights in cutting down the people around him, including the Herrera Family who are squatting on his property.  The one person he seems to generally love is his daughter Vance (Stanwyck), perhaps because she's inherited his cruelty & love of material pleasures.  Vance, though, doesn't hate the Herrera's, and has a romantic flirtation with their son Juan (Roland).  She also is flirting with Rip Darrow (Corey), a more conventional choice for her, but one who doesn't want a woman as headstrong as Vance, whom he dismisses when her father buys him off.  However, when her father marries a gold-digger named Flo Burnett (Anderson) their relationship becomes forlorn because she thinks she'll lose the ranch (the titular Furies), and attacks Flo, who is permanently disfigured as a result.  This sets off a chain of events with TC murdering Juan in front of his mother, and Vance buying up TC's debts from across the land, knowing that she'll win back the ranch in the process.  She gets her revenge, followed by a reconciliation with both Rip & her father, but it's upended when her father is murdered by Juan's mother.  The movie ends with Rip & Vance, now betrothed, burying TC's body on the ranch.

The movie is really good other than the ending.  There's an electricity about it that I loved, with Stanwyck's Vance intended to basically be a femme fatale in the center of a western.  The film was nominated for Best Cinematography, which was a strong choice (those western vistas look great, and there's a lot of work to make what is clearly a sound stage look authentically grand within the house).  The score & editing would've been decent inclusions as well, both sharp work.  However, the ending doesn't function for me.  Huston's character is so cruel you know he has to die, but I don't really think he's earned the hero's ending he receives, and I do wonder if the book this is based on is a bit less generous with all involved (I've never read it, though the Criterion edition does come with a copy of it so maybe I'll get there someday).  It defangs Vance, whom you want to get back at Rip more than get with him, and it feels a bit like that weird comic interlude in The Searchers in the center of what is otherwise a very serious movie.  I could've used more of the sour that made it so intoxicating in the first half.

Stanwyck, Huston, & Anderson are all terrific in this.  Stanwyck, in her viper-blonde mode (I read a review on Letterboxd where they said "never trust Barbara Stanwyck as a blonde" and it's sound advice) is delicious, totally eating up this character, and while 1950 is one of the best lineups Oscar ever assembled (not just the five nominees, but also you've got Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place and Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun), I still will be considering her for that quintet when we get around to the 1950 OVP.  Huston is nasty two years after his Oscar win, and plays TC without a bit of remorse, quickly disowning his daughter & discarding her feelings the second they counter her own.  Anderson is also good.  She holds her own against Stanwyck in their climactic fight, but perhaps even better she has a scene late in the movie where TC asks her for money to save the Furies, and she refuses, talking about how she no longer has her beauty & she knows he doesn't love her and will eventually abandon her.  The only thing that she has to help stave off of the loneliness is her money, and it's a shockingly poignant summation of a character that would've been easy to dismiss as just a gold-digger trying to take out Vance earlier in the movie.  I loved all three, and wish that the film had not been the financial failure it ended up being for Paramount.

OVP: Ball of Fire (1941)

Film: Ball of Fire (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Dana Andrews, Oskar Homolka, SZ Sakall, Henry Travers, Dan Duryea

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck, Score, Sound, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are running behind again this month (I'll try to be more timely in 2023, as we'll be kicking off our fifth season in the next week), but I'm going to attempt to do two Stanwyck movies today and get ahead of her films in the coming days so we have a full five movies in December (she's too big of a star to skip one of our Saturday's).  We're going to start with a conversation about 1941, inarguably the best year of Barbara Stanwyck's career.  We last left Stanwyck with Baby Face, which was a hit during the Pre-Code era for its saucy content, but by the early 1940's Stanwyck didn't need gimmicks to get people into their movie seats-she was a headliner in every aspect.  She got her first Oscar nomination for the 1937 weepie Stella Dallas, and despite not having a studio contract during this era, was in such demand (and so well-respected) that she was cranking out major hits, including three iconic ones in 1941: The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, and Ball of Fire, for which she won her second Oscar nomination and which is our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie has a rather preposterous setup for a romantic comedy, even by rom-com standards.  Gary Cooper plays Bertram Potts, a grammarian who along with a number of other dotty professors (seven, to be exact, mirroring the seven dwarves), are writing an encyclopedia.  Through a chance encounter, they come across Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanwyck), a nightclub performer who is involved with a gangster named Joe Lilac (Andrews).  As Lilac is wanted by the police, she goes into hiding for a few days to stay out of sight, during which time she stays with Potts, who is studying her vernacular to try to include modern slang in the encyclopedia.  They start to fall for each other, but Sugarpuss has a problem-Lilac wants to marry her, not out of love but so she can't testify against him, and he eventually kidnaps all of the professors to blackmail her into it.  Thankfully, through ingenuity, they free themselves, save the day, and Bertram & Sugarpuss end up together.

The movie is cute, as cute as you'd assume given those involved and the silliness of the plot.  Though they're all interchangeable, the old men who are, even in their advanced age, shellshocked by the appearance of a beautiful woman and encouraging of the relationship Bertram can have with her, steal a lot of scenes.  The movie, though, never rises to the level of a classic-this is a good movie, not a great one, not as sharp as it should be or quite as funny as it ought to be (it's not The Philadelphia Story).  I think, like so many films like this of the era, the nominations for Sound & Score are fine.  There's nothing special there, but it got in because everyone else did (they would have over 20 nominees in some categories, including in Best Score for Ball of Fire's year, so a lot of middling amongst the genius).  The Story nomination makes more sense, especially over screenplay, as the idea behind it is far cuter than the execution.

With Stanwyck & her "year of classics," while I will admit that The Lady Eve is the best of these three (both in terms of the actual movie and in terms of what Stanwyck was doing onscreen), Ball of Fire is some great stuff from Stanwyck.  She plays well off of an against-type Cooper, and has such sass & pizzazz that this would've made a fine win for her.  I partially wonder if Stanwyck missed with Oscar overall because she didn't have a studio rooting for her to get a trophy in the way that Ginger Rogers or Jennifer Jones would've in the same era, but in 1941, I honestly think the only people who were going to take trophies were the De Havilland's.  Oscar made a huge stink about Olivia & Joan competing against each other, and it delivered in both of their star legends for the decades to come as the sisters...did not handle it well when the younger Joan beat her big sister for the statue.

OVP: Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Film: Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey

Director: Anatole Litvak

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Barbara Stanwyck is arguably the greatest actress of Classical Hollywood to never win a competitive Academy Award.  Stanwyck would win an Honorary Oscar in 1982, giving a memorable speech paying tribute to William Holden (if you want to ever feel really angry about why we should have the Governor's Awards on with the primetime broadcast, go watch her speech and try not to cry).  But the actress never won a competitive award, despite repeated attempts.  Arguably the closest she got was 1944's Double Indemnity, where she would've won under normal circumstances but Ingrid Bergman's turn in Gaslight a year after she lost a close race to Jennifer Jones was too hard to best.  Today we're going to take a look at the last of Stanwyck's four Oscar nominations, arguably for the film least-remembered of those for which she was cited, the late 40's noir Sorry, Wrong Number.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film principally takes place through flashback (at one point there's literally a flashback within flashback!), and is about Leona Stevenson (Stanwyck), a spoiled, bitter socialite who is prone to bouts of sickness, especially whenever her husband Henry (Lancaster) is trying to do something she doesn't want him to do.  We find out through the flashbacks that Leona married Henry against her father's wishes, and in trying to prove himself more than a trophy boy, Henry has gotten involved in an illegal drug trafficking business, and the only way to pay down his debt is essentially to trade on his wife's life insurance policy.  A hit is put out on Leona, but before it's executed, the man Henry owes the money to is arrested, seemingly ending the debt.  However, Henry cannot get to Leona in time...the final moments of the movie are of her, her hypochondria so crippling she can't call out for help, being murdered while Henry desperately tries to stop the murder on the phone.  The film's last line is the killer proclaiming "sorry, wrong number" as Henry realizes he's too late, and his wife is dead.

The ending is really what makes Sorry, Wrong Number.  The rest of the movie is too much-the flashbacks are overwhelming, the Hays Code makes the storyline about Henry's involvement with drug traffickers confusing (which I'm honestly surprised got included at all given the sensitivities at the time), and Stanwyck is bedridden for much of the performance, acting against herself to mixed returns.  But the ending works really well.  You don't expect it-even though both Lancaster & Stanwyck are terrible people, they're also two of the biggest stars of the era-it's rare that you witness a movie where one of them dies onscreen.  The finale honestly gets me the thumbs up-it wasn't headed that direction otherwise, so I'l go with 3-stars.

In terms of if Stanwyck deserved to win the Oscar, I'll let you know in a performance or two.  This is the least of Stanwyck's Oscar-nominated roles, both in terms of films & performance, but she is good in it.  It's lacking some of the killer verve you expect from Stanwyck, who generally played an actress totally in control of her surroundings.  That said, 1948 is both a brilliant year for movies (possibly my favorite year of the 1940's, give or take 1944) and one where Oscar largely botched its lineup.  I still haven't seen Irene Dunne or Olivia de Havilland from that lineup (the latter generally considered by my friends-in-the-know to be the best of these five performances), but against Wyman & Bergman...yeah, Stanwyck's currently in the lead.

Baby Face (1933)

Film: Baby Face (1933)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, John Wayne

Director: Alfred E. Green

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

While Barbara Stanwyck got her start on the stage, first in the Ziegfeld Follies and then on Broadway, she transitioned to film pretty quickly and quite successfully.  She starred early in her film career in Frank Capra's Ladies of Leisure (which sparked a friendship between the two that would pay dividends for both in future films), and was quickly headlining B-pictures for various studios soon after.  We'll talk about this a bit this month, but unlike pretty much every other major player of her era, Barbara Stanwyck was never a contract star.  She managed to become one of the biggest names in Hollywood for two decades without the help of a major studio.  Part of how she pulled that off was today's movie.  Baby Face was a hit, though not a gargantuan one.  But it gained a level of notoriety and fame that quickly elevated Stanwyck to a position that allowed her to not only headline big movies, but four years later, join the upper-crust of Hollywood actresses as an Oscar nominee for Stella Dallas.  Baby Face stands apart as one of the most salacious and well-known Pre-Code films, and after seeing it for the first time, I tend to agree-it's pretty staggering this movie got made in 1933.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a young woman named Lily Powers (Stanwyck) who works at her father's speakeasy as a prostitute, and has since he started pimping her out at the age of 14.  One night, after her father (whom it is strongly suggested sexually abused her when she was a teenager) dies from a whiskey still explosion, Lily decides to move to New York, and under the advisement of an old man she befriended at the speakeasy she "uses her sexuality" to get ahead.  This includes a string of men at her job, frequently sleeping with them to advance her career at work, even if they're married (this includes John Wayne in a very small, very early-in-his-career role).  As she works her way up, she becomes rich and amasses a large fortune, but also can no longer distinguish love from sex.  This is seen as many of these men end up destitute because of their association with Lily, their marriages & careers ruined, but her richer.  This becomes an issue when Courtland Trenholm (Brent), her playboy beau at the end of the movie, asks her to give back all of the bonds & jewelry that he gave her so that he can have a legal defense.  She initially refuses, unable to give up her life's work for a man, but eventually relents, realizing that she actually loves this one, and has found a happiness she couldn't imagine back in the speakeasy.

The movie's frank sexuality would likely get it a PG-13 rating today, which is saying something for a nearly 90-year-old movie.  Baby Face is frequently credited as one of the movies that got Will Hays to start actually enforcing his Code, rather than just paying it lip service, and you see that as it's heavily implied throughout the film that not only is Stanwyck's Lily engaging in sexual favors for money, but she's clearly good at it.  Men become entranced by her, and I'm not kidding by how forthright they are in the film's first ten minutes about her upsetting relationship with her father, and afterward, the way that she seduces a train owner on a boxcar with her maid essentially listening.  It's scandalous stuff, and you wouldn't see movies like this again until the 1960's.

The movie's sole reason for existence is Stanwyck.  The rest of the cast can't compete (not even a very handsome young John Wayne), and honestly they become interchangeable by the film's end.  But Stanwyck is glorious, and it's easy to see why this is heralded as her great star turn.  She has to sell the arch of a woman who is eventually redeemed & finds love...but man does she make sure that getting there is tough.  Stanwyck gives her a rough but still real exterior, clearly impacted by what she's doing to men, but also totally aware that no one is looking out for her, so she needs to ensure that she comes first in this equation.  It's spectacular, and a sign that one of the most singular Hollywood stars of her era had it from the beginning.

Saturdays with the Stars: Barbara Stanwyck

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about Oscar-winner Donna Reed, whose association with her eponymous sitcom brought stardom, as well as decades of scorn.  This month, as we enter our final conversation about television stars, I'm going to turn the tables on you.  Throughout the year, we have profiled stars who saw massive success in television, but largely underwhelmed expectations (at least in terms of achievement) in their cinematic careers.  For December, we'll focus on an actor who saw great prosperity in television...after being one of the biggest names in movies in the previous thirty years.  This month's star is Barbara Stanwyck.

Stanwyck's childhood reads like, well, a Barbara Stanwyck movie.  Born in Brooklyn the youngest of five children, her mother died from a miscarriage when she was only four, and her father soon abandoned his family.  She grew up idolizing her older sister, who was a showgirl, and while she tried her hand at more traditional work as a typist, she eventually joined the Ziegfeld follies, and graduated to becoming a leading woman on Broadway soon after.  This allowed her to go to Hollywood, and though she struggled in her early years to find her footing, she eventually appeared in the controversial pre-Code classic Baby Face and cemented her stardom in 1937 with Stella Dallas, where she plays a mother sacrificing her teenage daughter.  She won her first of four Oscar nominations for the role, and never looked back.

Stanwyck would spend the next few decades forging a really unusual path as a star, which we're going to discuss at length this month.  Though she never won an Oscar (arguably the most important Classical Hollywood actress that the Academy ignored), she starred in classics of the era like The Lady Eve and Double Indemnity, and managed to find continual success despite not having a studio contract (really the only star of her caliber to pull off this achievement).  Stanwyck was a big enough name that by the time she signed on to do The Barbara Stanwyck Show, even if her film prospects had started to wane, it showed a changing of the tide-television was here to stay, and even the most glamorous of movie stars were willing to slum it for a chance at a big payday.  Stanwyck's self-titled series won her an Emmy though it wasn't a hit with audience, but the coming decades would be kinder, as she'd have massive success in both The Big Valley and The Thorn Birds.  This month, we're going to talk about this trailblazing star, her long film stardom, and what it meant at the end of her career when she decided to try a new path into television.