What if Singers Got Nominated for Best Original Song?

Whitney Houston with Bruce Springsteen at the Oscars

I recently was reading an article online (if I could find it, I'd reference it, but alas I cannot) about the new Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody.  In it, they talked about how Houston who won an Emmy & a Grammy, had gotten halfway to the entertainment honorific the "EGOT," coming short a Tony & an Oscar.  In the article, though, they erroneously stated that Houston had been nominated for an Oscar for her songs "I Have Nothing" and "Run to You" from The Bodyguard...which is not true.  Houston was in The Bodyguard, she did sing those songs, and they were cited for Academy Awards (eventually losing to Aladdin), but she wasn't nominated for them because she was not one of the composers or lyricists of the songs.  At the Oscars, the people who sing the Best Original Song nominees in their movies are not nominated-that only goes to the people who write the songs...

...but this got me thinking-what if they did get nominated?  The Best Original Song category started in 1934 at the Oscars, and though the number of nominees have changed through the years, it has been omnipresent ever since.  A quick google search bore out that it was somewhat easy to find the number of people who had sang the most Oscar-winning songs, but not when it came to the Oscar nominees.  And so over Christmas break, I decided that it was my duty to answer that question.  Today we're going to discuss who would be the biggest victors if Oscar gave nominations to the people who sang songs in movies.

Starting this off, it was a lot harder to ascertain who actually sang the songs in some movies than you would expect.  For starters, a lot of songs in movies are sung by choruses or large groups of non-famous people.  Think of a song like "Days of Wine and Roses" where the initial song in the movie is clearly sung by a chorus of singers.  This happens by my count 22 times, including for three winning songs, so I didn't count those for my nomination total.

Secondly, a lot of the most popular versions of Oscar-winning songs weren't sung by those artists in the original movie.  "Days of Wine and Roses," for example, you'd normally associate with Andy Williams, but he didn't sing it in the original movie.  Debby Boone's version of "You Light Up My Life" isn't in the movie of the same name despite being a Number 1 hit for most of 1977, and Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" is not only not sung by him in Captain Carey USA, it's not even sung in English.  So there was a lot of bubble bursting, particularly for films I hadn't seen, in researching this article.

It also has to be noted that dubbing is frequently used, especially in older films.  If you watched the movies alone, you'd assume that people like Jeanne Crain, Deborah Kerr, & Rita Hayworth would get nominated for Oscars this way, but you'd be wrong-they're all dubbing.  Sally Sweetland, who was a prolific voice dubber for women like Joan Leslie & Martha Vickers in the 1940's, would've gotten three nominations despite never appearing in her movies.

And lastly, I have to admit in some cases it's difficult to know where to draw the line on "who is a principal vocalist or not."  If the Academy allowed this, there'd be rules about it, but I tried my best judgment.  If a song only had one singer, obviously they got it, but in duets or group songs, I went with the primary artists.  This resulted in 376 musicians or musical acts (occasionally I just gave the nomination to a group), singing Oscar nominated songs.  We're going to break down below who benefits the most from this rule change.

14 nominations: The one, undisputed king of nominations this way would be Bing Crosby, who has sung 14 Oscar-nominated songs onscreen, and would've gotten four Oscar statues this way alone to go with his Best Actor citation in 1944.  Everything from legendary songs like "White Christmas" in Holiday Inn and "Swinging on a Star" from Going My Way to songs you'd be forgiven for not knowing ("Zing a Little Zong" being the deepest cut) number among Crosby's nominations.  Crosby's the only person who gets to double digits this way.

9 nominations: Coming in behind Crosby is Fred Astaire, who never won a competitive Oscar, but would've gotten nine nominations and a trophy for "The Way You Look Tonight" from Swing Time.  Astaire's nominations largely come from his work with Ginger Rogers in the 1930's, and only one of his songs comes post 1943 ("Something's Gotta Give" from 1955's Daddy Long Legs).  For comparison's sake, Ginger Rogers only gets two nominations this way, though she'd double her win count for being a vocalist on "The Continental" in The Gay Divorcee (I watched the scene specifically to see if Astaire sang in it, and he doesn't).

7 nominations: Four singers tie for third, with seven songs a piece, and we have a couple of firsts with this quartet.  Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, & Randy Newman all sang seven songs, and it's worth noting that while all of these people are Oscar winners (Garland is the only one who never won a competitive trophy in her career), two of them are noted songwriters.  Both Streisand & Newman have not only been nominated for Best Original Song, but they've also won it (Streisand for 1976's "Evergreen," Newman for 2001's "If I Didn't Have You" and 2010's "We Belong Together").  Both are also still living & work regularly, so if anyone's going to come close to at least tying Astaire, these are your candidates.

6 nominations: Only one singer gets sixth place, and that's Doris Day, who would've gotten two trophies for singing 1953's "Secret Love" (in Calamity Jane) and 1956's "Que Sera Sera" (in The Man Who Knew Too Much).  Day is a first on our list for a very big reason.  While she was nominated for an Oscar in real life (as Best Actress in 1959 for Pillow Talk), she never won an Oscar, not even an honorary trophy, which would make her the first person on this list to not have a statue of some sort from the Academy.  However, you have to go one step down to have the title of "Oscar nominee" bestowed on someone for the first time through this method.

5 nominations: Three singers would get five nominations this way, and while Julie Andrews won Best Actress in 1964, neither Johnny Mathis nor Betty Grable ever were nominated for an Oscar in their lifetimes (Mathis, at age 87, is still alive and still performs, though his last Oscar-nominated song was 1978's "Same Time, Next Year").  Before writing this article, it never would've occurred to me that Mathis should get an Honorary Oscar, but given this distinction...maybe he deserves to at least be in the conversation?

4 nominations: That gets us through the Top 10, though I'll call out some notables for the 3-4 nomination mentions.  Four people have sung four Oscar-nominated songs: Sting, Phil Collins, Jennifer Warnes, & Deanna Durbin.  Sting & Collins are both Oscar-nominated songwriters (Collins has an Oscar), while the other two never won competitive statues (Durbin won a Juvenile Oscar).  Warnes would've cleaned up under these rules-of her three Oscar-nominated songs, only one (1981's "One More Hour") didn't win.

3 nominations: Once you get below 4 nominations, the number of singers get increasingly large, here 15 singers have sung three Oscar-blessed songs.  Three nominations is where Whitney Houston would land (she also sang 1998's "When You Believe," which would've gotten her the Oscar for her hypothetical EGOT if these rules existed).  Alice Faye & Bob Hope are here, both actors who never got Oscar nominations in real life, and we have active singers who could definitely add to their counts in this lineup (Celine Dion, Dolly Parton, & AR Rahman all still work regularly).  For those keeping track at home, this year we'll almost certainly add Lady Gaga to this list, though she's gotten a nomination for each of her songs and would again even if she weren't singing for "Hold My Hand" from Top Gun: Maverick.

OVP: Pepe (1960)

Film: Pepe (1960)
Stars: Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones (and a mountain of celebrity cameos we'll mention below)
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Scoring, Sound, Original Song-"Faraway Part of Town")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

A few months ago (which somehow feels like only a week ago and at the same time years ago...Covid is messing with my internal clock, y'all), we reviewed Around the World in 80 Days, a box office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar.  It featured the American debut of a Mexican comedian named Cantinflas, who won a Golden Globe for it and became a sensation, and inevitably was someone that would get another big movie.  However, as Hollywood struggles to cast actors-of-color, especially in the 1950's, Cantinflas would have to wait four years before getting his next break in another glossy, epic film where he did his shenanigans against the backdrop of a star-studded bonanza.  That film was Pepe, our Best Editing (amongst other things) installment today.

(Spoilers Ahead) For a movie that clocks in at three hours, the film doesn't have a lot of plot.  Essentially we have Pepe (Cantinflas), a horse trainer who thinks of his horse Don Juan as his son, and calls him that despite the confusion of everyone.  He cannot buy the horse in the opening scene, as it is instead purchased by Ted Holt (Dailey), a struggling movie director.  Pepe comes to take care of the horse, and after a successful night in Vegas, begins to bankroll Holt's next movie, under the condition that he cast Suzie Murphy (Jones), a dancer that Pepe is in love with, and soon, so is Ted.  As this is a movie from 1960, white, blonde Shirley Jones is going to end up with Ted as her winning love interest rather than Pepe, whom she thinks of as a friend, but Pepe still is able to win back Don Juan, and have him sire a number of foals, happily back in Mexico.

Pepe was a flop-a big one.  It's considered one of the largest money losers of the 1960's, and has never even been released on DVD (I caught it on TCM).  There's a reason for that-Pepe borders on awful.  Cantinflas' humor doesn't work without a proper straight man, and Dan Dailey is no David Niven (Dailey is, for my money, one of the worst actors to be nominated for an Oscar at some point in their career).  Cantinflas plays him as a racist cartoon-he's dismissed as "not really a man" by Shirley Jones at one point, and she sings about him like he's a puppet.  I don't begrudge Cantinflas too much here, even if he doesn't add to the character since his being a Mexican man who got to lead a movie was a big deal in 1960, but then-and-now this plays poorly, and is hard to get behind.

The saving grace of the movie is the star cameos, which I always love.  The film is DRIPPING with not just cameos, but in many cases the cameos are extended, and almost always involve actors playing themselves.  Edward G. Robinson is basically the fourth biggest part in the movie as himself, and we get a lot of appearances from everyone from Greer Garson to Jimmy Durante to the entire Rat Pack (one of only three movies to feature Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, & Joey Bishop).  These aren't always successful (Bing Crosby's is ludicrous, Cesar Romero's unfunny), while others are great, though none compare to Jack Lemmon, playing himself as if he's filming Some Like It Hot, so we get to see (in color!) him in his Daphne drag from the movie (Tony Curtis appears later in the film, and not as his character).

The movie's seven Oscar nominations are all a waste, to be honest.  The costume work (Edith Head) is maybe the best element, but they're mostly fun when they're on Kim Novak or Janet Leigh than on any of the actual characters, while the sets feel like vacant movie lots, even the ones that take place outdoors.  The movie features a number of songs, but they're all staged too long & while it's great to hear legends sing, this doesn't rise above what you'd hear on a record.  This is true even of the nominated song, sang by Judy Garland (who for some reason doesn't even cameo despite singing the nominated song), which doesn't fit the mood of the movie at all (it sings like a torch ballad).  The cinematography is flat, the sound work routine, and the editing...the movie is three hours long & will go on huge stretches of boredom, while glossing over Ted's mistreatment of Pepe.  All-in-all, while I wish this movie was more readily available (even as a flop, it's still nominated for seven Oscars and stars the most important Mexican comedian in Hollywood of the Golden Age), I'm glad to have it in the rearview mirror with the OVP.

OVP: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

Film: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Stars: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers, Joan Carroll
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 8 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Sound*, Actor-Bing Crosby, Actress-Ingrid Bergman, Film Editing, Score, Song-"Aren't You Glad You're You")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're continuing on our Best Actress races today with The Bells of St. Mary's, one of the rare movies to get major acting nominations (and a Best Picture nomination) as a sequel (I might do an article on this someday, but it's actually hard to define what is and isn't a sequel when it comes to Best Picture nominees...though Bells of St. Mary's qualifies under any metric).  The movie is a followup to Going My Way, which we watched a few months back, and features a third consecutive nomination for one of its stars, Ingrid Bergman.  Bergman was one of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time, and with Casablanca and Gaslight behind her, one of the most bankable.  Bells of St. Mary's might not have been the creative peak of her career, but it was inarguably the financial peak of her career.  The film was the #1 movie of 1945, and adjusted for inflation is still on the Top 100 most successful movies ever.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film largely leaves behind most of the characters we know from Going My Way, save for Father O'Malley (Crosby), who has been assigned to a teaching parish in a dilapidated old school building that is under threat of being condemned.  The church is run by Sister Mary Benedict (Bergman), who desperately wants a businessman, Horace Bogardus (Travers), in the neighboring brand-new building, to donate the space, potentially making it so that the school can stay, but he has his designs on buying the school from the church to put up a parking lot.  While other things happen, specifically with a young woman who struggles in her school and family life (played by Joan Carroll), this is the heart of the story.  In the end, the church does get the building (it's old Hollywood, come on), but Sister Mary Benedict doesn't get to see it as she's transferred to a dry climate to help with her tuberculosis, and she & Father O'Malley become friends rather than friendly adversaries.

The film is very, very sweet & pleasant.  This kind of works in the sense that it's a holiday picture (there's a sequence where the children put together a ragtag Christmas pageant), and no one wants something too complicated during the holidays.  But it also has almost no proper plot because it's so averse to struggle or conflict.  Everyone, even Travers' businessman, is really kind & loving, and there's no sense of struggle in what will happen in the end.  Even Sister Mary Benedict's illness, which couldn't be blamed on anyone, seems certain to be cured in the end, and so there's no resolve.  The movie is thus egregiously boring even if it's difficult to dislike.

The film's seven Oscar nominations are all, therefore, a disappointment.  The editing is lousy as the story oftentimes feels strung together by vignettes rather than any central plot, and the Sound (which won the Oscar!) has nothing remarkable about it other than a few musical numbers from Crosby, including the forgettable "Aren't You Glad You're Here?"  Crosby doesn't complicate his work as Father O'Malley, and neither does Bergman as Sister Mary Benedict.  This feels like less of a sin from Crosby (a limited actor) but Bergman was scoring home runs during the 1940's (she'd be making Notorious, for crying out loud, just months after this film was released), so this feels like a wasted citation for the actress.  Overall, the movie doesn't impress-it's not spiteful or wrong, and it has its heart in the right place, but it's difficult to understand how this became a classic when it's hard to remember previous scenes even while you're watching the film.

OVP: Let's Make Love! (1960)

Film: Let's Make Love! (1960)
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan (as well as some fun cameos I'll reference in the review)
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For our final two weeks with Marilyn Monroe, we're going to focus on the very tail end of the actress's career.  Last week we talked about one of the biggest triumphs of Monroe's career, Bus Stop, which brought her critical hosannas (serious ones) for the first time in her career, and was a huge box office hit for Fox.  This was followed with two legendarily difficult shoots for Marilyn, the first being the now-maligned The Prince and the Showgirl (with Laurence Olivier) and then the smash-hit classic Some Like It Hot, where she feuded relentlessly with costar Tony Curtis & director Billy Wilder.  Despite Some Like It Hot's success (it won Monroe her only competitive Golden Globe), she took another year off before making her next movie, today's film Let's Make Love!.  The film was a big deal not only for Monroe, but her costar Yves Montand, who was making his English-language debut after a decade of starring roles in European cinema, and becoming the toast of the New York theater scene with his one-man show.

(Spoilers Ahead) In a weirdly similar opening to The Seven Year Itch, we go through the family tree of Jean-Marc Clement (Montand), a billionaire whose ancestors all had a knack for making money and were frequently distracted by "balloons" (the script's entendre, not mine).  He is considered a spoiled playboy, and a local theater production about famous figures of the early 1960's is skewering him.  He goes down to show he's "in on the joke" as a bit of publicity, but there is mistaken for an actor pretending to be Jean-Marc Clement, and goes along with the casting when he falls for Amanda (Monroe), a beautiful actress who leads the production.  Jean-Marc gets to see a woman actually fall for him, and not his money, as she just assumes he's an out-of-work actor.  However, Amanda is dating the show's leading man, Tony (Vaughan), so Jean-Marc, along with his assistants (including Tony Randall playing the same role Tony Randall always played in these types of films-the best friend), recruit the help of legendary entertainers in hopes of making the no-talent Jean-Marc a rival for Amanda's affections.

You can imagine how that turns out (happy ending!), but arguably the best part of Let's Make Love! is the scenes with the legendary performers.  Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, and Gene Kelly all play themselves, recruited to make the hapless Jean-Marc seem like a funny song-and-dance-man, with amusing results (Berle basically steals the movie during his segment).  And I will admit I actually liked the score for the film, even though it's not as memorable as it might have been.  The Oscar nomination may have been something of a gimme given the film's high profile (we were entering a period where musicals struggled to gain traction with audiences), but Vaughan can sing, and he-and-Monroe have a gay sort of chemistry that is fun-to-watch.

This is not true for Monroe & Montand.  While Montand generally was a popular figure in the era, his comedy bits don't age well and he's stiff in a lead role that would have been a better fit for someone like Cary Grant or Rock Hudson.  Montand isn't helped by a script that has no punch.  The joke bits aren't that funny (Berle & his segment are the only ones that really work), and while Monroe is enjoyable in her part (George Cukor would never totally fail his leading actress), the script is just sort of there for us to ogle her.  One of the striking things between the sex symbols of the 1930's/40's and the 1950's is that while Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth were given different types of roles to excel in, Monroe always played some version of this Amanda.  When it was in Some Like It Hot, with great writing and costars like Jack Lemmon, it's glorious.  Let's Make Love!, though, is pretty disposable and wouldn't be thought of at all today except it was Marilyn's penultimate film.

The movie had no good memories for any involved.  Monroe hated the part, considering it her worst role, and not soon after watched her marriage to Arthur Miller dissolved (she had had a very public affair on-set with Montand, who was married to Monroe's friend Simone Signoret at the time).  The film was moderately successful, but considered a disappointment given Monroe's star power and how gossip columns had been swirling about her relationship with Montand.  After three rough productions, Monroe was still famous and bankable enough to demand headlines, but producers were worried about hiring her for anything.  She lost out at the time on the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a part that was written specifically for her by Truman Capote, and which would win Audrey Hepburn an honor Monroe never received: an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Instead, Monroe would make a different film, one that would sadly be her last, and one that we'll discuss next week.

OVP: Going My Way (1944)

Film: Going My Way (1944)
Stars: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, Jean Heather, Rise Stevens
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 10 nominations/7 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Barry Fitzgerald, Actor-Bing Crosby*, Supporting Actor-Barry Fitzgerald*, Original Motion Picture Story*, Adapted Screenplay*, Cinematography, Original Song-"Swinging on a Star," Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The Oscar Best Pictures during America's involvement in World War II are different than almost any other era.  Vietnam had films as diverse as Midnight Cowboy and Oliver! winning back-to-back, while during the early days of the War on Terror, we saw the Academy go from fanciful fare (Chicago, Return of the King) down to darker pictures such as No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker.  But the four films that won Best Picture during World War II are decidedly similar.  How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, and Going My Way are all films with clear good guys (even if the good guys are sometimes pretending to be bad guys), obvious bad guys, and good triumphs even if that means sacrifice (especially if that means sacrifice).  This is not a slight on any of these pictures (Casablanca, many days of the week, is my all-time favorite movie and a classic by any measure, and I also loved Mrs. Miniver though it's been years since I've seen it), but an acknowledgement that the Academy didn't want to give Oscars to movies that showed social decay or acknowledged the struggles of everyday Americans.  This is not because the Academy didn't have options to do so-movies like Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Kings Row, Double Indemnity, and Gaslight competed against these movies, were hailed at the time, and feature far seedier aspects of everyday life; one could plausibly argue that a few of these films are far more revered than every actual Best Picture winner save for Casablanca.  The Academy quickly changed from this lens after the war, with the next three Best Picture winners tackling alcoholism, PTSD, and anti-semitism, but as the war was still going on in early 1945, Going My Way becomes the fourth and final of the "Rah, Rah, Rah!" pictures of this era.

(Spoilers Ahead) Unlike Mrs. Miniver and Casablanca, this movie has almost nothing to do with the actual war (there's a small side character who does join up with the army, but that's about it).  Instead, it's about Father O'Malley (Crosby), a young priest with "new ideas" who has been hired to replace Father Fitzgibbon (Fitzgerald), a stuck-in-his-ways clergyman who has struggled to maintain the mortgage on the church, and is being harassed by collectors.  To save Fitzgibbon his dignity, O'Malley pretends to be the elder priest's "assistant" even though he is in fact being hired to replace him.  The two encounter a series of misunderstandings (that Crosby's O'Malley always seems to have a firmer grasp upon), whether that be local residents who can't pay their rent or a young woman who is running away from home to become a singer or the petty vandalism spree that is being instigated by neighborhood boys.  O'Malley's wholesome but new way of thinking opens up Fitzgibbon's heart and mind, and the two become friends.  The film ends with O'Malley moving on to another church, and Father Fitzgibbon, enlightened, staying at his old church.

What sets this film apart from the other three movies that won Best Picture is it's really low stakes.  Miniver and Casablanca are about the war effort, and Valley doesn't shy away from the harshness of life in a mining community, but Going My Way seems to not know how to handle conflict.  Every argument between O'Malley & Fitzgibbon is surface-level (O'Malley never loses his temper), and uncomplicated.  This was a huge hit in 1944, and it's very easy to see why.  A country ravaged by war, seeing hope in not only a young priest (Crosby is in his early 40's but looks a decade younger here) bringing positive change to an economically-challenged community, but also in the church as a place to bring their doubts and fears while their sons were risking their lives...it makes sense this was popular.  Throw in Crosby singing a ballad every 15 minutes or so, and you've got yourself a pleasant two hours.  It's just not a particularly good or even succinct movie.

The film won ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Director.  The editing and cinematography aren't that noteworthy.  The film is more vignettes than anything else, making the editing easier than you'd think (and less necessary), and the cinematography is not inventive at all, even in a scene with a fire.  Screenplay & story don't have many one-liners, great turns-of-phrase, and the story itself is repetitive & mostly meant to be pleasant.  The Original Song is one that you know by heart, but one of several used in the film with only mild effect (and feels kind of ridiculous-after all, how many priests can sing like Bing Crosby?).

And then there's the acting.  Crosby won an Oscar for this, and honestly-I'm at a loss who I'm going to pick for the OVP when we get to this field because man is this a thin lineup (no performance has even gotten 3-stars from me, and I'm only missing Alexander Knox in the notoriously overlong Wilson).  He's effective, sure, but this isn't so much acting as being congenial.  Fitzgerald became the first and so far only person to ever be nominated for two different acting prizes for the same role (they changed the rule after that-who do we think would have gotten this distinction in the future, as the only reason they changed it was because they didn't realize it could be a problem...maybe Anne Baxter in All About Eve?).  Fitzgerald is also nice enough, but this isn't great acting, and considering that Supporting Actor had great work from Clifton Webb & Hume Cronyn, makes it a bit more upsetting that he won.  All-in-all, as I cross another Best Picture winner off of a thinning list of ones I haven't seen, I'm struck by how I totally get why a movie like Going My Way would win Best Picture...even if it seems ludicrous that someone would prefer this to Double Indemnity or Laura in hindsight.

The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad (1949)

Film: The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad (1949)

Stars: Basil Rathbone, Bing Crosby

Director: Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, & James Algar

Oscar History: None, but it oddly won the Golden Globe for Best Cinematography-isn't that weird?

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

In continuing during quarantine to stream more films than I have in the past, with a particular focus on Disney films, we come now to another Disney movie that I've never seen before, and in this case, we're getting a blast from the past.  Throughout the 1940's, Disney Studios made six pictures that are normally called their "package films"-movies that are less one long story, and instead a series of short films tied together, in some ways emulating Fantasia, but rarely given the same level of acclaim.  I suspect if you are someone who is a Disney fanatic, but not an organized one, that you're missing these in your "Disney completist" list, and I definitely was, so I'm moving through this list, and I weirdly decided to start with the last one, and the one that is generally considered to be the best, The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad.

(Spoilers Ahead) The films are not, like the previous package films, a number of movies, but instead here just two, and both have literary roots.  Narrated by Basil Rathbone, the first half is an animated adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, where we see the rambunctious Mr. Toad spending all of his money on reckless adventures, and when he sees his first automobile, he decides he must have it and spends all of his time dangerously roaming the countryside.  Even his more cautious friends Ratty & Moley cannot stop him, but the law does when Mr. Toad is accused of stealing an automobile, and is framed in a trial by a group of weasels and a man named Mr. Winky who are plotting to take Toad Hall (his palatial estate) for themselves.  Mr. Toad is saved by his friends, returns to Toad Hall, but never is reformed-the movie ends with him now moving on to airplanes in his "need for speed."

The second movie is a retelling of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  Here we have Ichabod Crane, the dandy schoolmaster who comes to Sleepy Hollow and begins to woo the beautiful Katrina van Tassel, buxom (boy howdy-someone was thirsty in the animation room while drawing Katrina) and the daughter of the richest man in town.  It is implied that while he loves her, he's probably more after her money, and seems to be able to charm her away from Brom, the man she was originally inclined toward (Brom also is drawn thirstily, and clearly is an early inspiration for Gaston).  The film's climax is when Ichabod meets the Headless Horseman on the outside of town, riding a black horse (worth noting-the same color as Brom's horse), and is scared out of town.  The film ends with Brom & Katrina married and the narrator (Crosby) implying that Ichabod did not die that night, but ended up married to a wealthy widow in another town (getting his money after all), but the legend of what happened to him continues to persist.

It's worth noting that if history was different, this package film wouldn't exist.  The Wind in the Willows was considered an option for Disney to make into a feature-length film as early as 1938, one year after Snow White.  Along with Bambi and Dumbo, Wind in the Willows was one of only three productions to be allowed to continue at the beginning of World War II when Disney Studios were in dire straits financially, but of the three Wind was considered the least promising and was shelved until it came back in the post-war era, frequently paired with a number of films (including a canned big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Gremlins) until it was finally settled to package it with Sleepy Hollow, and to hire big-name actors as the narrators to gain more publicity for the film (the first time that movie stars were used to gin up excitement for a film, now a commonplace practice).

The films themselves are fun, if admittedly lighter-weight Disney.  Wind in the Willows is a great adventure, with some winning animation, but it would never hold a candle to movies like Bambi or Dumbo.  I don't do halves for my star rating, but if I did Wind in the Willows would be a 3-star, as it's a bit frivolous and repetitive even if it's good-natured, and Sleepy Hollow would get 4-stars, a it's more atmospheric and the animation is better.  Particularly the sequence with the headless horseman is fantastic-the cinematography playing with the audience (frequently it feels like we're taking the place of Ichabod in the chase), and genuinely haunting.  Overall, though, I'll go with 3-stars here.  The idea of a stringed-together short film isn't really my jam unless there's some overarching theme (anthology films always struggle with story consistency), and this movie definitely doesn't have any cohesion.

Alias Jesse James (1959)

Film: Alias Jesse James (1959)
Stars: Bob Hope, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Gloria Talbott, Jim Davis
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Rhonda Fleming-click here to learn more about Ms. Fleming (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


By the end of the 1950's (where we will end our look at the actress), Rhonda Fleming's career was in a weird place.  She had had a very big hit just two years prior to our picture today, Gunfight at the OK Corral, that might have turned around her career had she had a more significant part in it (we would have certainly profiled that for this series, and I'll likely see it at some point, but she didn't get above-the-line billing for it so it didn't qualify under our rules).  She had, in 1957, opened up a wildly successful nightclub act in Vegas and she had become independently wealthy through shrewd real estate investments (Fleming would not be one of those stars who soared and would go broke later in her career), but it was clear that a film career that had been given great promotion throughout the decade was coming to a close.  At 36, she reunited  with the man who had made her career in 1949 with The Great Lover, Bob Hope, but starring opposite Hope in 1959 didn't mean as much as it had ten years earlier, as Hope's career (in film, at least) was also winding down.  As a result, Alias Jesse James would come out just one year before Fleming would announce her "semi-retirement" from cinema and while she'd appear in pictures occasionally after 1960, she never had another starring role in the movies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a silly little western, one that exists almost solely for Hope to be a witty dope as Milford Farnsworth, an insurance salesman who accidentally gives a $100k life insurance policy to outlaw Jesse James (Corey), and his boss tasks him with tracking down James, stating that he either needs to prevent James from getting killed or die trying.  James and his brother Frank (Davis) see Wendell as an easy mark, someone who can be duped, and whom they can kill (and pretend it was James in order to get the insurance money).  Milford keeps foiling their plans by accident, living through preposterous situations, until he finally realizes toward the end of the film what is happening.  Along the way, he falls for Jesse's girlfriend Cora Lee (Fleming), who takes a shine to him despite the seemingly sexless nature of Milford (at one point Jesse tells Milford, who has just been kissing Cora Lee, something to the effect of "oh, Milford good, it's just you-I thought I saw a man through the window."  Like all films of the era, Milford gets the girl who is totally out-of-his-league, and then takes over as president of the insurance company, with a family of redheads in tow.

The film is most well-known for two scenes toward the end of the picture.  The first is an extended chase sequence where Hope is literally running at the speed of a moving horse as he's fallen through the bed of his carriage.  It's funny, and Hope makes the most of the physical comedy (Hope's humor, though dated and predictable, has a retro feeling watching it today that probably felt tired when the movie came out in 1959 & he was an everyday part of most people's film-watching lives for the past 15 years).  The most famous scene, though, is having Milford "shoot down" the James gang, but instead it's actually a series of western heroes who show up (without context) to shoot down the gang.  This is a delight, so if you genuinely haven't seen the movie skip to the next paragraph as I wasn't kidding about the spoiler alert.  The film has not only Hope's old pal Bing Crosby (just as a random cowboy), but also (in their famed costumes) Fess Parker's Davy Crockett, Gary Cooper's Will Kane, Jay Silverheels's Tonto, Hugh O'Brian's Wyatt Earp, James Arness's Matt Dillon, Ward Bond's Seth Adams, Gail Davis's Annie Oakley, and Roy Rogers as himself.  It's a who's who of popular western figures at the time, and for years the film was difficult to find on home release because of the copyrights involved with recruiting these characters.  The film marks the final cinematic appearance for both Bond and Arness.

Rhonda Fleming's role is, as you might be able to tell, minimal.  She once again plays a beautiful woman, someone for our hero to fall-in-love with within seconds of meeting her, and to be almost comically attractive to the point where men do stupid things to stay in her favor.  Fleming was very good at this type of role as we've seen throughout this series, and her Cora Lee is funny & she finds ways to elevate her even when she's not an interesting character on-paper.  However, the assertion made by Fleming that we discussed at the beginning of this series was apt-after working on films like Spellbound and Out of the Past (genuine masterpieces), Fleming used her newfound fame and leading lady status to kind of make forgettable pictures.  She definitely got fame & money, but she was correct in that she sort of sold out for playing toss-away parts in pictures that seemed to be beneath an actress as talented as she was.  It's hard not to think of two other actresses born the same year as Fleming (Gloria Grahame & Anne Baxter) who also took promising careers in supporting parts but unlike Fleming transformed them into memorable leading roles, and have as a result enjoyed a career longevity that Fleming has lacked.  Had she demanded at her heyday to get better parts in better movies, Fleming certainly had the talent to get off of a list of "actresses Oscar never acknowledged" and might not have needed to go into retirement in such unceremonious fashion.  Instead, she's the sort of actress you're surprised to watch in Out of the Past and realize how good she can be.

Fleming, though, is probably better remembered than the woman we'll profile starting on Thursday, an actress who enjoyed only a few years of proper leading lady status, and is arguably the most obscure leading woman we're going to profile during our 2019 series.  That said, unlike Fleming, she managed to get one truly great film out during her career that is better-remembered now than anything Fleming ever made in her career.  Stay tuned!

Scared Stiff (1953)

Film: Scared Stiff (1953)
Stars: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Lizabeth Scott, Carmen Miranda, Dorothy Malone (plus two hilarious cameos I won't spoil here, but I do tag below)
Director: George Marshall
Oscar History:  No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The career of Lizabeth Scott was incredibly short for a woman that was the lead for 21 of her 22 pictures.  When we think of careers of major stars, they slip quietly into the night, their fame slowly downgraded as they move into lesser and lesser roles/films, eventually getting to play parents and judges and more dismissible parts.  Scott didn't do that.  While she did occasionally make films after her partnership with Hal Wallis (whose obsession with her fueled much of her stardom, though it's kind of distasteful to give him too much of the credit since she was clearly a hit with audiences for a time), Scott's movie star career ended just a few short years after it began, sputtering out in the mid-50's.  Therefore, we're going to end our month-long journey with her penultimate film for Wallis, and her playing weirdly both against-and-within type, as a mysterious, tortured heiress in the middle of a criminal ring...who is aided by the slapstick stylings of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Larry Todd (Martin), a cool lounge singer who is caught romancing a mobster's girlfriend (Malone) and his bumbling best friend, busboy Myron (Lewis).  The two go out on the run with Larry romancing an heiress Mary (Scott) who has just inherited her family's home, a small island off of the coast of Cuba.  The film sets into play a number of hijinks as the trio try to evade the mobsters who are trying to get after Larry & Myron, all the while trying to understand why Mary keeps getting threatening messages to sell her island and not to go there.  We learn soon that the island is haunted, but it's also very much being guarded by someone who has been in plain sight the whole picture, and we get an ending where Mary & Larry get the treasure, and live happily ever after while Myron is left to tag along.

I believe this is the first actual movie of Martin & Lewis I've ever seen, usually only watching their standup acts together or television appearances as themselves.  However, it's not hard to realize that Larry and Myron are pretty disposable as characters, and really they're just playing their big-screen personas here.  Based on a cursory look around the internet, this appears to be one of their best-loved pairings, but I'm not super familiar with the critical consensus on their pictures-if you have thoughts on the best Martin & Lewis movie, I'd be curious to know, as I quite liked their chemistry here.  There's an ease here, and Lewis is hilarious if repetitive, and while some of the jokes are so well-known that they're antiques, you can't hide star charisma, which is what both these men have.  The musical numbers in the film are pretty disposable (there's one where they literally sing the word "enchilada" seemingly a 100 times), but it's pretty fun.  There's also a cameo by Bing Crosby & Bob Hope at the very, very tail of the movie that made me do a spit-take I was so shocked it came out of left field.

Scott, in our final film profiled this month, seems more at ease here than she has in any other role we've seen.  After nearly a decade of playing similarly-designed femme fatales and damsels-in-trouble, it's great to see her play with this character a bit and milk her sturdy delivery and incredible beauty for laughs. It's interesting to see Scott getting to play with this motif a bit, never scoring the biggest laughs (Lewis is there for a reason), but at least having a ball in the picture, against someone like Carmen Miranda, who essentially also plays herself here, in her last role.  Miranda more than almost any other actor in Hollywood's Golden Age, got stuck playing the same character over-and-over again, and it's weird to contradict here Scott, who did get some room to breathe with her character despite as we've seen this month routinely being typecast, and Miranda, who was never given that sort of leverage when she was typecast herself.  Miranda's character feels unfortunately disposable as a result-there's a scene where she's randomly missing for seemingly no reason (other than for Lewis to dress in her famous fruit hat), and then shows up in a future musical number, no questions asked.  Scott at least is afforded more courtesy with her character, and I feel like I leave understanding a bit more of her talents.  Next month we'll investigate a different actress who also got her start in noir, but soon expanded into proper leading lady roles throughout the 1950's...something she'd later regret.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 4

This article is part of a 15-Year Anniversary series commemorating the American Film Institute’s 25 Greatest Stars.  For the Actresses, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  For the Actors, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, and 3.

We've now gone through all of the actors that were on the list of the 25 greatest from the AFI.  A crowning achievement, to say the least.  And yet, don't you feel like a few names were missing?  Like I did with the actresses (click through all of the links above if you're catching up, as there's been a lot of discussion centering around this conversation), I thought it was appropriate to chronicle ten superstars of the era who probably just missed the cut.  These ten men were the closest in my opinion (if you disagree, click on the comments below):

Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)

Oscar Nominations: 4 nominations, though he would never win an Academy Award during his short but celebrated career.
Why He Was Close to the List: Montgomery Clift was one of the first leading men to really be emotional or sensitive onscreen.  Paving the way for the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando (and people like Ryan Gosling and James Franco today), he was intensely beautiful, but also someone with a secret, an introvert with something to tell.  He probably is still referenced so often today not just because of his tragic life and his closeted homosexuality (the gays are taking over this list, for the record-he's not the only one that I'm name-checking), but because his acting style is far more utilized by today's leading men and women than that of Bogie or John Wayne.  He was a pioneer of the hidden emotion.
Why He Missed: Clift's career never fully recovered after his near-fatal car accident in 1956, when his emotional state (already a bit damaged) and his physical appearance became altered and deteriorated quickly as a result.  Consequently, his filmography is impressive but quite brief, costing him against someone as prolific as Edward G. Robinson or Robert Mitchum.
My Favorite Performance: Looking through, I've actually seen almost all of Clift's films (I didn't realize this, but I have well over 50%, better than any other actor we've profiled, male or female, except for James Dean).  I will go with his sensational work in A Place in the Sun, where he plays a social-climber who wants nothing more than to leave his past where it is, but cannot escape it.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: As I said, I've seen most everything.  I'll go with Hitchcock's I Confess as I'm curious to see what Hitch does with an actor that he knew was gay off-screen (Hitchcock was pretty good about the gay allegory and worked it well with Anthony Perkins).

Bing Crosby (1903-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crosby received three nominations in his career, winning for Best Actor for Going My Way.
Why He Was Close to the List: Crosby's stature in the film community is still recognized today, particularly with his work in Holiday Inn and White Christmas (it helps when you star in a holiday classic-take note actors wanting longevity).  Crosby's vocal prowess and singing ability was legendary, and his many films with Bob Hope are still remembered to this day.
Why He Missed: A couple of reasons.  For starters, like Hope, his principle fame didn't seem to just be from the cinema, but instead from a different format (for Hope, it was stand-up and television, for Crosby, it was music).  It appears that most of the actors listed by the AFI are chiefly famous for their on-screen ability (only Judy Garland really made the crossover to another medium with an equal level of success).  There's also the little factor that Crosby's reputation has taken a severe downturn since his death due to his parenting skills and bizarre will (much like Joan Crawford's, an actress who probably could have made it to the Top 8 had it not been for Mommie Dearest).
My Favorite Performance: Unlike Clift, I don't love Crosby in quite the same way (I always found Bing a bit stiff onscreen) and so I'll go with a personal favorite from childhood in White Christmas.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: In one of those rare situations where I haven't seen a Best Picture winner (I've seen over 80% of them), I've never seen Going My Way, which would need to be at the top of the list.

Errol Flynn (1909-1959)

Oscar Nominations: Flynn never received an Oscar nomination or win in his career, a stunning bit of news considering how long he was a Box Office draw.
Why He Was Close to the List: Flynn lives on today as a swashbuckler par excellence.  His name conjures images of dashing technicolor and elaborate sword battles.  It helps when you're creating an on-screen persona if you have one that no one else has ever had or can imitate, and that was the case with Flynn, who was a cad but one that you rooted for onscreen.
Why He Missed: Flynn doesn't have a particularly large list of easily-recognizable classics in his oeuvre, with the obvious exception being The Adventures of Robin Hood.  His extremely questionable relationship with Beverly Aadland (when she was just fifteen) further damaged his reputation in Hollywood, which was already pretty badly damaged from years of pretty open philandering (he reportedly romanced Marlene Dietrich and Delores del Rio while married).
My Favorite Performance: I'm not going to embarrass myself here.  I've seen a spattering of Flynn films, but none of note, and none that I'm going to claim as a favorite for such a legendary actor.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Clearly I've got my work cut out for me (there's a chance you do too if my theories about his filmography are to be believed).  Together we can make a point of hitting The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Sea Hawk.

Charlton Heston (1923-2008)

Oscar Nominations: Heston received only one Oscar nomination in his career, but he won for it in Ben-Hur.  He also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978.
Why He Was Close to the List: Heston was one of the biggest and most recognizable stars of the 1950's, frequently leading his way through biblical epics like El Cid, Ben-Hur, and in particular The Ten Commandments that are still watched heavily today (most of these films you can catch on Turner Classic Movies during Easter).  He also made Planet of the Apes late in the 1960's, adding another classic to his list of motion pictures.  All-in-all, there is no one else in the history of the movies that quite had the stature and heroic gravitas that Heston did onscreen (for those unfamiliar with his onscreen work-and for the love of pete, please change that-Russell Crowe in Gladiator probably comes the closest), and with the shift toward more relatable heroes, we probably won't see another one ever again.
Why He Missed: While with Flynn and Crosby I think part of their miss on the list came from their offscreen behavior, I'm utterly confident that Heston's was a result of that as his filmography is too big to ignore otherwise.  Heston's neoconservative beliefs and in particular his strong advocacy for the National Rifle Association alienated him from a generation of moviegoers and bitterly divided public opinion on him, an opinion that only got worse in the years following the creation of this list (particularly after Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine was released).
My Favorite Performance: I genuinely loved Ben-Hur and think that it's an epic masterpiece, but Heston was better in Touch of Evil, where he has to match wits with Orson Welles and watches his entire world slowly deteriorate.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen the Big Five films from Heston (all name-checked above), so I'll go with The Agony and the Ecstasy, an adaptation of the Irving Stone novel where Heston plays Michelangelo.

Rock Hudson (1925-1985)

Oscar Nominations: Hudson received one Academy Award nomination in 1956 for Giant (he lost to Yul Brynner).
Why He Was Close to the List: Hudson's fame comes from two different places.  First was his acting in the 1950's and 1960's in larger-than-life roles romancing Elizabeth Taylor and most frequently Doris Day (he later enjoyed success on television opposite Susan Saint James in McMillan & Wife).  The second source of his fame surrounded his personal life (he was one of the very first major stars in Hollywood to come out as gay) and his bringing AIDS to light in a major way to the public (Hudson ended up dying from the disease, but his admission that he had AIDS was a hugely influential point in the AIDS awareness movement considering now everyone in America knew someone who had the disease).
Why He Missed: Hudson's fame at this point is almost entirely surrounding his sexuality and his association with AIDS.  His filmography hosts films like Giant and Pillow Talk, but it's not really large enough to compete with someone like John Wayne or Kirk Douglas who enjoyed decades of hits and significant movies.  Also, Hudson suffers a bit from that stereotype that pretty men can't act (don't believe this is a stereotype?  Compare the Best Actor lineup to the Best Actress lineup in any given year and tell me I'm wrong).
My Favorite Performance: I love Hudson as the hunky fake Texan in Pillow Talk, where he manages to be both charming and incredibly sexy while wooing Doris Day.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Like Clift, I've seen most of Rock Hudson's most significant films. I'll probably pick Ice Station Zebra (which plays constantly on Turner Classic Movies), one of his last major hits.

Charles Laughton (1899-1962)

Oscar Nominations: Laughton earned three Oscar nominations during his career, winning for The Private Life of Henry VIII.
Why He Was Close to the List: One of the great Shakespearean and theater actors, Laughton commanded major respect on the screen in almost everything he did (for those unfamiliar with his persona, think Philip Seymour Hoffman meets Laurence Olivier, with a bit of homosexuality for flavoring).  He brought a theatrical sense to the screen, and had the good sense to play in large epics during most of his career, meaning that his filmography is spattered with major classics from Mutiny on the Bounty to The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Witness for the Prosecution.
Why He Missed: Laughton never quite had THAT film to claim as his own.  All of those films are bona fide classics, but they aren't classics you instantly think of when discussing the term.  As a result, you end up with someone similar to Myrna Loy for the ladies-when you mention them as a candidate for a greatest stars list, you say "of course!" but they don't spring to mind unprompted.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, as I've missed most of Laughton's most significant acting work and don't want to embarrass myself, so I'll go with his sole directorial effort in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: If I cannot find a favorite performance that means another marathon list, so we'll put the four films I listed above along with Spartacus and Captain Kidd and make up for lost time.

Steve McQueen (1930-1980)

Oscar Nominations: McQueen received just one Oscar nomination in his career, for 1966's The Sand Pebbles.
Why He Was Close to the List: What James Dean was to the 1950's, Steve McQueen was to the 1960's.  McQueen was a devilishly handsome daredevil who played by his own rules and frequently romanced some of the leading ladies of his day (including Ali McGraw) and played rebellious, modern roles like that of Frank Bullitt in Bullitt, one of his most noted pictures.  His death at only age fifty added a mystique to McQueen's already enormous aura.
Why He Missed: Two reasons: one, McQueen's partying and racecar-driving caused him to miss out on a huge number of classic films, and as a result his filmography is much slimmer than most of the men listed here.  Secondly McQueen was more of an actor that was famous in the 1960's, considerably later than Hollywood's Golden Age and is more in-line with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Paul Newman, though his early death occasionally groups him with the stars of an earlier era.
My Favorite Performance: I have always enjoyed him as the totally crushable Rocky in the (admittedly dated, but still enjoyable) Love with the Proper Stranger.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen McQueen in Bullitt, a genre of film that isn't really my cup of tea, but clearly is one that I should hit sooner rather than later regardless of the film subject.

Anthony Quinn (1915-2001)

Oscar Nominations: Quinn received four Academy Award nods in his career, winning twice for Supporting Actor in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life.
Why He Was Close to the List: Quinn was one of those actors that everyone deeply admired for his tenacity onscreen and his thespian chops.  Though he starred in very few major films (outside of a supporting role in Lawrence of Arabia), he, like Spencer Tracy, was an actor who carefully selected projects that would enjoy prestige and acclaim from critics, audiences, and awards' bodies.  It also helps that he worked for decades, right up until his death, giving multiple generations a chance to see his work in a theater.
Why He Missed: I touched on it, but Quinn never broke out in a specific role like other actors did.  His most famous part would be Zorba the Greek, but that's not a film a number of people see today.  He's well-respected, but not someone who survives in a memorable way in films since then (he also did a number of supporting parts, which may have cost him considering how headliner-heavy the AFI was in creating this list).
My Favorite Performance: It's been years since I saw it, but I have to imagine that Zorba the Greek will age pretty well if I ever re-visit it in the upcoming years, so I'll go with that for Quinn.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen neither of his two Oscar-winning roles (though oddly enough I've seen both of the films he lost the Oscar for).

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Rooney received four competitive Academy Award nominations in his career, but won for none of them.  He did win a Juvenile Oscar in 1939 along with Deanna Durbin and then won an Honorary Oscar in 1983 for life achievement.
Why He Was Close to the List: He was the top box office draw of 1939 and 1940!  Okay, that's a joke that has frequently been thrown out (I don't know why Rooney in particular gets hammered with swipes in that regard).  He was clearly a very popular entertainer (his fellow actors adored him), and his star endured for decades (his career ended up spanning over ninety years), ending only this past year with his death.  He is one of those rare actors who did musicals, dramatic pictures, silent films, child star to aging grandpa-he was one of a kind.
Why He Missed: His onscreen (and offscreen) persona was an acquired taste, and one that not everyone was a fan of, quite frankly.  He was a very good actor, though, and I think if this list had been made a decade later, seeing that Rooney would still be working and would become one of the final links to Hollywood's Golden Era, he probably would have made the cut.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, but not in the way that I did with Laughton.  I'm going to pick Rooney's terrific solo effort on The Twilight Zone in "The Last Night of the Jockey"-if you want proof the man could act, here's a fine place to start.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I could go with one of the Oscar-nominated roles, but I'll instead go with some of the Andy Hardy pictures, getting a view of what Rooney truly became famous for (he made fifteen of these pictures in the days before television).

Peter Sellers (1925-1980)

Oscar Nominations: Sellers received two Oscar nominations for acting, for Dr. Strangelove and Being There, losing for both.  He also was nominated for his Live Action Short Film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, which he also lost the trophy for.
Why He Was Close to the List: Sellers has long enjoyed an enduring fame, particularly amongst comedians, as one of the pioneers of the art form.  Think of how Steve Martin is revered amongst almost all comics now as being a true pioneer and artist-that's largely what Peter Sellers was in his era.  He also starred in Dr. Strangelove in not one but three roles, a comic triumph any actor would be envious of achieving.
Why He Missed: Sellers, like Steve McQueen, enjoyed his principle fame in later years, particularly the 1960's and 1970's, and as a result may not have felt like an appropriate choice for the "Golden Age Stars" list.  He was also very difficult to work with and very reclusive in his personal life, adding mystique but less public consciousness as a result.
My Favorite Performance: Only a fool wouldn't pick his comedic triumph in Dr. Strangelove, one of the most biting, provocative, and cutting films ever made, and Sellers is a key reason for all of that.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen Sellers in his last great film role, that of Chance Gardner in Being There with Shirley MacLaine (who, contrary to some opinions of Sellers, thoroughly enjoyed working with him).

And there are my hunches as to the ten men who just missed the AFI list-what are your guesses?  Who do you think was the closest (my gut is Heston)?  Who are your favorites?  Who did I forget from the just misses?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)

Film: Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby, Peter Falk, Barbara Rush, Victor Buono
Director: Gordon Douglas
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Original Scoring, Best Original Song-"My Kind of Town")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's been eons since we started going through the Turner Classic Movies collection on my TiVo, and given that it's 31 Days of Oscar right now, and my list of OVP movies could not be higher, I figured I'd start making a dent on the collection, and that starts with this 1964 Rat Pack adventure.

(Spoilers are gonna happen) The film is not quite sure what it's based on-there's obviously a Robin Hood element (with Sinatra and Martin's characters even sporting Nottingham-inspired names), but there's also a bit of Guys and Dolls in the cards as well.  The movie is about two dueling mob bosses Robbo (Sinatra) and Guy Gisborne (Falk), both of whom are put into a power struggle upon the death of their leader Big Jim (Edward G. Robinson, in an inspired and hilarious cameo) at the hands of the Sheriff and Guy.  As we move, it becomes apparent that Robbo is going to be the silver spoon character, and Falk is going to persistently trip over his own shoes (the problem with these movies, aside from the fact that with the realism of The Godfather eight years later, they all look a bit silly, is that their villains aren't remotely realistic, though a late-added character does add some spice, but we'll get to her in a moment).  For example, despite the fact that Guy Gisborne has seemingly hundreds of men and the will of the police, and Robbo has only his twelve Merry Men, Guy never seems to be able to go one-up on Robbo, when in reality he could crush him.

The movie adds a Robin Hood element when Barbara Rush, who plays Big Jim's "daughter" Marian (still confused on if that was actually the case or not, though I will admit to having some believability issues with Edward G. Robinson producing the Peyton Place star), tries to bribe Robbo into killing the Sheriff, and when Guy does it for him, she gives Robbo the money anyway, assuming he was the one who did the murder.  Robbo wants nothing to do with the money, and instead gives it to a charity, and thus is proclaimed a modern-day Robin Hood (a guy who covers up his indiscretions to the public through comparatively minor charity, a ploy used by everyone from J.D. Rockefeller to Mitt Romney). The film after this gets ridiculously silly, not just because Bing Crosby's naive, then suddenly not, character was a confusing mess, but also because of what happens with Barbara Rush.

Rush's character is definitely the most compelling, and it's hard to tell whether she's an ambitious Lady Macbeth in search of her weak backboned king or if she's just a bored housewife drawn to an array of weak-willed men.  By my count she goes to bed with both Martin and Falk, and probably Sinatra (though in a sad moment for him, not Victor Buono), and by the end of the movie her ambitions to stay in the public actually remain intact, as she's crusading against the mob, and Sinatra, Martin, and Davis are all three on the street, begging for change.  Rush's character is quite shrill, and not any sort of feminist, but she's the least cliched of the bunch, and after a career in decline, she at least scored a part in a hit movie as her career proceeded to deflate in the mid-1960's.  Of course, she got to be be married to and reproduce with a twentysomething Jeffrey Hunter, so that's enough reward for ten lifetimes.

The movie received a pair of Oscar nominations, and as you'd suspect with this cast, they're both musically-charged.  The film received one nomination for Best Scoring, a nomination that I suppose makes sense, but is a bit weak if you truly think about it: there's little doubt of the leads' vocal abilities (with the exception of Falk and his ill-advised trek into singing the first number), but the staging of the numbers seemed quite poor.  The voices of the three crooners seem to be competing with each other, which leads to some over-singing, and they aren't really willing to put much panache into the songs except for just standing there.  Compare it to some of the terrific musicals that were coming out in 1964 (My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins, for starters), and this isn't in the same league.

The main song, of course, fits well, and is a classic, and even with the awkward structuring of the musicals, you can't deny Ol' Blue Eyes belting out "My Kind of Town," for the first time (it's strange to think of this song ever not existing, and also how often Sinatra's hits revolved around cities-it's a wonder he didn't get "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" instead of Tony Bennett).  Overall, though, I will have to say that the fun of this movie (which was admittedly affected by some major real life drama, with both the JFK assassination and the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr. occurring during production) is largely sucked out during the musical numbers, and I was left wanting.

What about you?  Do you have a favorite of the Rat Pack members, or their movies?  Who was the best musical of 1964 (a year brimming with them)?  And what are your thoughts on largely forgotten star Barbara Rush, and her seemingly A-List career that never took off?