OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

2023 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Yesterday we finished up our month with Kris Kristofferson, and today, we are putting the final cap on our "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood" season.  I will totally own this, our fifth season, is probably my favorite season we've done since Season 2 (when we tackled sex symbols), and maybe my favorite ever.  I knew going into this that westerns have always been one of my favorite genres, and getting to see such a wide array, including a lot of hidden gems that have been on the To Do list for a while, was an absolute treat.  But I didn't realize how many of the films would end up being downright classics, from Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy to some of the gorgeous westerns that Anthony Mann made with Jimmy Stewart, there are movies on this list that have quickly catapulted to my favorite westerns list, and I have even added a few already to my home collection.

The biggest thing that excited me, though, was how this really ended up being the tale of Hollywood, starting with The Big Trail and ending with Heaven's Gate, and how much of Classical & New Hollywood came in-between.  This has been the case in all of our seasons, but seeing it through the most American of genres, the western, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time.  We'll get into our sixth season, where we will be "Crowning America's Sweethearts," on Saturday, but one last time, take a look at some of the best from this season of "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood."

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Gary Cooper, Man of the West

February: James Stewart, The Naked Spur

March: Gregory Peck, The Gunfighter

April: Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

May: Randolph Scott, Ride the High Country

June: Yul Brynner, Westworld

July: John Wayne, The Shootist

August: Franco Nero, Querelle

September: Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

October: Robert Redford, Barefoot in the Park

November: Sam Elliott, Molly and Lawless John

December: Kris Kristofferson, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

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

Marlene Dietrich

Clint Eastwood

Robert Redford

James Stewart

John Wayne

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

James Stewart, The Man from Laramie

James Stewart, The Naked Spur

John Wayne, The Shootist

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

The Big Country

Destry Rides Again

A Fistful of Dollars

For a Few Dollars More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

High Plains Drifter

The Naked Spur

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Ride the High Country

Westworld

Winchester 73

Witness for the Prosecution

Top 12 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Dan Duryea, Winchester 73

Mariette Hartley, Ride the High Country

Burl Ives, The Big Country

Katy Jurado, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Diane Ladd, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Elsa Lanchester, Witness for the Prosecution

Charles Laughton, Witness for the Prosecution

Una O'Connor, Witness for the Prosecution

Lee van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More

Lee van Cleef, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

OVP: The Omen (1976)

Film: The Omen (1976)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw, Harvey Stephens

Director: Richard Donner

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Score*, Original Song-"Ave Satini")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

We've talked about this a lot through the years on this blog, but horror & Oscar rarely mix.  Only a handful (The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense) have competed for Best Picture, and only a couple of actors (Kathy Bates, Ruth Gordon, Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster) have won Oscars for acting in horror films.  This is despite the genre boasting a number of truly great performances, scripts, and especially scores.  It is insane that films like Halloween and Scream, whose scores are synonymous with the genre (and movies in general) didn't even get nominated for Oscars.  It also means that when one wins, it's a big deal.  The Omen is one of those wins, and in an even more bizarre twist, it was the only win that Jerry Goldsmith ever got.  Yes, Jerry Goldsmith, the maestro behind Planet of the Apes, Chinatown, and Alien won his only Oscar for a movie about a middle-aged couple who thinks they might be raising the antichrist.  All-of-this-is-to-say The Omen was a must-pick gap when I was selecting the movies for this year's horror lineup.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a wealthy couple Robert (Peck) and Katherine Thorn (Remick).  In the opening scenes, Katherine has just given birth to a son, one who has died during childbirth, and Robert is trying to figure out the best way to tell his wife.  He soon learns he doesn't have to-a priest offers up an abandoned baby for him to raise, and so instead of telling his wife he tells her the baby is in fact their own biological child.  But the child, Damien (Stephens), it turns out, is unusual.  Animals react oddly to him, and strange things happen when he's around, including someone killing themselves in the opening scenes of the movie.  The film progresses with Katherine finding herself tortured and injured by Damien, and Robert getting strange warnings about the child, eventually going on an investigation of sorts where he discovers that Damien is not just any kid-he is the son of the devil, and has come to destroy the world as foretold in the Book of Revelation.  Before the end of the film, Katherine & Robert are both dead, and Damien is living with the President of the United States...where he can easily take over power and control of the world.

I had never seen The Omen, at least not fully through, but it's one of those movies that is so enmeshed in pop culture it's hard to not know where it's going.  It's been parodied repeatedly (off-the-top of my head I can think of American Dad!, but I know there are others), and the name Damien is shorthand for "evil" even more than Hannibal, Freddie, & Chucky are at this point.  The film weirdly functions as a mystery more than a horror, one that surely played better when you didn't know what was about to happen.  Peck, in the twilight of his stardom, is oblivious to what's obvious to the audience, but he is a good stooge, and the ending (where he dies rather than Damien, which wasn't the original choice of the director who wanted them both to perish) makes the film considerably better.

The Oscar nominations are unusual.  Goldsmith's score is great.  This isn't his best score (that would be Chinatown) but it would've been a crime had he never won one, and I love that he got it for quality work (it's eerie), and that a horror film managed to pull off this victory.  The song nomination, though, is so strange.  The song itself is fine, but it's the subject matter that is crazier.  In 1976, while tunes by Barbra Streisand & Tom Jones were up for AMPAS approval, somehow these two pop icons were up against a song that was literally an ode to Satan.  The 1970's, man...I wish we could get back to the days that Oscar was willing to go out there with his nominations.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

OVP: The Big Country (1958)

Film: The Big Country (1958)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Bul Ives, Charles Bickford

Director: William Wyler

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Burl Ives*, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Last week we talked a lot about Gregory Peck's long career in westerns, and how they were a large part of his persona throughout the 1950's.  This week, we're going to end our season with another western (it is our theme for a reason-he made a lot of them), but we're going to talk in terms of Peck's career around how, after a long decade of being leading man in a variety of films, he finally gained his stature as one of the "important" actors of his generation by securing an Academy Award for Best Actor, which to this point had alluded him.  Between 1960-64, Peck appeared in a lot of very big & well-received movies, including The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, and How the West Was Won, but it was not in a western but as a small-town lawyer that Peck found his signature role.  Playing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Peck got his Tom Joad, his George Bailey, his Sergeant York role that would define his career, and is usually the performance that he is name-checked with.  Decades later, Atticus would be named by the American Film Institute as the "Greatest Hero in American Film History" and would win him an Oscar in 1962 against the very stiff competition of Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.  As I've seen The Big Country many times before, we are going to focus on the Oscar win of a different actor, Burl Ives, today with our film as we finish up our month devoted to Peck.

(Spoilers Ahead) A giant, nearly three-hour western from director William Wyler, The Big Country is an adaptation of a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by novelist Donald Hamilton.  This is a big movie, so I'll try to summarize enough to keep us grounded.  To start we have James McKay (Peck), a docile sea captain who is in the West to meet his spirited fiancee Patricia (Baker), whose father the Major (Bickford) owns much of the land in the area.  His rival, and by proxy Patricia's rival, is Rufus Hannassey (Ives), with whom he has a long-standing feud that we initially read as being Rufus's fault (after all, his daughter is engaged to our leading man), but as we continue we begin to understand that this is a complicated, shades-of-grey western where Rufus is just trying to get access to a water reservoir that is owned by Julie Maragon (Simmons), a kindly schoolteacher who is best friends with Patricia.  After a standoff between the Major & Rufus at Patricia & McKay's engagement reception, things escalate, with all sides starting to show their true colors.  Patricia, not liking McKay's more gentlemanly attitude, particularly after ranch-hand Steve Leech (Heston, in a rare for this era supporting role) insults him, calls off the engagement, and the film ends with the Major & Rufus killing each other in a standoff, with McKay & Julie ending up together and riding off to their own ranch & life in the west.

I really liked The Big Country, much more than I expected for a western that rarely makes it onto the pantheon of great movie western lists.  I thought the cinematography was astounding.  The fistfight scene between Peck & Heston, shot much in the dark, is glorious, and there's a clear love of the countryside that encapsulates the best of western photography.  The movie needed a bit more focus (there's maybe one too many plotlines keeping it away from being an all-timer), but I think the strangest thing for me was how good Ives was.  Ives' win here is generally considered by most Oscar historians to be something of a proxy win for his more notable work in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that year, which he'd been campaigned as lead for by MGM, but he's superb here as a man who understands the value of everything around him, and is much smarter and even mildly sympathetic compared to what you'd find for a traditional western villain of this era.  His views on honor, and the way he handles his whimpering son (loving him, but also not respecting him) is really smartly played, and adds levels to a movie that could've been paint-by-numbers.  It's a cool win, something I honestly didn't anticipate going into this movie given other reviews I've read of this picture.

Coming out of To Kill a Mockingbird, it's clear that Peck was ready to move onto a different chapter of his career, his time in Hollywood cemented by the city's highest honor.  While he'd make other movies, including roles in MacArthur and The Boys from Brazil, as well as in smaller parts in remakes of his films Cape Fear and Moby Dick, he'd never be in a movie as big as the ones from his 1940's to early 1960's heyday.  He would go on to a number of leadership roles in the industry, including as AMPAS President and Chairman of the American Film Institute.  He would become involved with politics, being a critic of the Vietnam War, and would campaign for a number of Democratic politicians, including US Senator Donald Stewart and Peck's own son Carey who ran for Congress in California in the late 1970's.  He even did voiceover work in the (successful) commercials made to stop the confirmation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987.  Peck died of pneumonia in 2003 at the age of 87.

Next month, we're going to take a step back and take a look at an actress whose career started before Peck's and the one woman we're going to profile this year for Saturdays with the Stars, a performer who for a time in the 1930's & 40's would find success in the most unlikely genre imaginable given how her career started: the western.

OVP: The Gunfighter (1950)

Film: The Gunfighter (1950)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker, Karl Malden

Director: Henry King

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

As we talked through last week, headed into 1950, Peck had had a few years of alternating success-and-failure.  Films like Gentleman's Agreement and Twelve O'Clock High had succeeded, but there was enough question mark with other films flopping that it wasn't clear how Peck would hold up in the dawning era of television.  While our movie today, The Gunfighter, was not a commercial success, Peck would soon recover the following year with Captain Horatio Hornblower (which we discussed a few years ago when our Star of the Month was his leading lady Virginia Mayo), which would start a run of successful films for Peck...that wouldn't necessarily be critical hits.  David and Bathsheba, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Roman Holiday, and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit would all be big hits for the actor, but with the exception of Roman Holiday none of them were well-received by critics.  During this time frame, Peck fought his profile as a western star, frequently turning down roles for fear of typecasting, including the lead role in High Noon that would win Gary Cooper an Oscar.  An exception to that was The Gunfighter, our movie today, which was the reverse of much of his 1950's work-a middling commercial performance, but a success with the critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a headstrong cowboy named Eddie trying to start an argument with Jimmy Ringo (Peck), a gunslinger whose reputation within the confines of the film rivals that of Wyatt Earp.  He shoots him dead, but it underlines the main point of Ringo's life.  A youth that made him a legend (and a criminal) has turned into a curse, as he is now hounded by men trying to shortcut to their own legend.  Chased out of town by this man's brothers, he returns to his home town, where he meets an old friend who is now the local marshall Mark Strett (Mitchell), and tries to find his wife Peggy (Westcott), who is under an assumed name because of fear that people will know her (and her son's) connection to Ringo.  There he tries to sort out his life, and we learn of his regret over leaving his wife & son, as well as we understand that part of the Ringo legend is just that, but it's impossible to escape.  In the end, another cowboy shoots the youth who has spent much of the film bragging about being just as good as Ringo (to the point where he also tries to shoot him), shoots Ringo in the back.  Ringo, dying, insists that the youth not be hanged but instead have to endure the shadowy half-life he's been forced into, as men will soon try to prove themselves against "the man who shot Ringo."

The Gunfighter was nominated for Best Motion Picture Story, and man was that earned.  There are aspects of the film that honestly function more as an episode of The Twilight Zone than as a standard western.  The film has a thoughtful treatise on what it means to make mistakes in your youth that haunt you.  You understand as we go that much of Ringo is myth, not real (for example, he disputes with an old woman exactly how many men he's killed, claiming it's far less than what she's heard), but it's something he can't escape.  His ability to have a normal life is stolen from him not by anyone else, but by his own misdeeds.  The ending is vicious, with him inflicting that pain, one far worse than a hanging, onto the young man who has no concept of what he's just done to himself by trying to steal a legend rather than earn it.

Peck is very good in this movie, and I personally found the mustache (which producer Darryl Zanuck hated), quite fetching & a good look for him.  He embodies the spirit of a man who once threw his life away, but who desperately wants it back even if he's still slightly too immature to understand at the outset that that's impossible.  The rest of the cast, though, is underwhelming and keeps this from being a classic.  Helen Westcott so underplays Peggy that you secretly wish Jean Parker (who is a saloon girl) was taking on the part as at least it would have some life to it, and Millard Mitchell, a constant presence in westerns of this era, is kind of boring in a key role as a marshall trying to protect Ringo (but more so trying to protect his own reputation due to his connection to Ringo).  Even Karl Malden as a barkeep is given nothing to do.  These side parts are crucial in giving us the more human side of Ringo, but instead of giving us the complicated reading the remainder of the picture does of legend, they feel kind of like filler.

OVP: Duel in the Sun (1946)

Film: Duel in the Sun (1946)

Stars: Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, Butterfly McQueen

Director: King Vidor

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jennifer Jones, Supporting Actress-Lillian Gish)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

As we discussed last week, Gregory Peck's initial career took off like a rocket, with huge hits such as The Yearling, Spellbound, and The Valley of Decision making him a household name pretty much overnight.  The late-1940's, though, were something of a disappointment.  He starred in another Hitchcock film, The Paradine Case, which was a big flop, as well as the western Yellow Sky and the romance The Great Sinner, neither of which set the box office on fire.  While Twelve O'Clock High and The Gunfighter would bring life back to his career, during this time frame he only had two really notable films.  The first was Gentleman's Agreement, which won the Best Picture Oscar (and got Peck his third nomination) and was a massive success, but one that I've seen before so it wasn't eligible for this series.  The second was one I had heard legend of after reading about movies for 25+ years, but somehow had avoided actually watching: David O. Selznick's infamous follow-up to Gone with the Wind, the soap opera western Duel in the Sun, our movie for today.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on the novel by Niven Busch, Duel in the Sun is the story of a young biracial woman named Pearl Chavez (played by the very much not biracial Jennifer Jones), the daughter of a white father and a Mexican mother.  After her father (Marshall) kills her mother for having an affair, she's sent to live with his childhood sweetheart (and second cousin) Laura Belle (Gish) on a giant ranch she lives on with her husband Senator Jackson McCanless (Barrymore) and their two sons the proper Jesse (Cotten) and the lascivious Lewt (Peck).  This sets up an inevitable love triangle between the two men and Pearl, with her drawn to Jesse's decency, but clearly there is a hormonal attraction between she & Lewt that cannot be denied in the Texas heat.  Along the way, she tries to find ways of escaping Lewt, including marrying Sam Pierce (Bickford), but Lewt kills Sam, making him a fugitive from the law, but still Pearl can't stop her desire for him.  When it becomes clear that Jesse can save her, even after he's shot by Lewt trying, Pearl understands that the only way that she'll break free of Lewt is to kill him, which she does...but in the process, she also ends up in his arms, their desire in life to be together impossible to deny, even as they're literally murdering each other.

Duel in the Sun was not, it has to be said, Gone with the Wind.  Selznick's obsession with equalling his previous film's success, particularly with the woman he was obsessed with & having an affair with at the time, Jennifer Jones, is kind of the stuff of Hollywood legend.  This was a deeply troubled shoot, and cost nearly $8 million to make & promote, which was basically unheard of at the time, and so despite a solid box office, it barely broke even.  The problem, of course, was that it wasn't Gone with the Wind (nothing is, quite frankly, though Titanic probably comes close enough to earn comparison)-chasing that dragon is the stuff of heartache, even for the man who initially produced it.  The film is tackier, it's less enthralling, and no aspect of the production quite lives up to that film.

If you get past that comparison, though, it's not a bad movie even if it's clearly a "bad" movie.  The film rarely makes a lot of sense, but it goes off of impulse, all id and no ego.  But it's entertaining throughout.  The score is fun, the cinematography is really horny but it works (the cameramen are obsessed with the gorgeous Jones & Peck in all of their carnal lust).  The acting is bizarre, but not boring.  Jennifer Jones, whom I've seen enough of at this point to be able to say she wasn't a very good actress, makes so many choices, swinging for the fences in every scene, but it kind of works with the unbalanced nature of the script.  Save for Beat the Devil, this is undoubtedly Jones' most intriguing performance (at least of what I've seen), and while she's not Oscar-worthy, she certainly is something.  Lillian Gish is a bit bland in the only film that she'd be nominated for an Oscar for (it's a pity it wasn't for The Wind or The Night of the Hunter instead), likely getting it with one deathbed confessional, but overall playing a kindly matron in one of Oscar's worst Supporting Actress lineups.  Butterfly McQueen is playing basically the exact same character she got in Gone with the Wind, channeling Prissy as if that will get Selznick literally back to his original movie (she's the only principle actor to appear in both films).

And as for Gregory Peck?  His casting is...a choice.  I've talked about this a bit, but it's strange that Peck would become most associated with To Kill a Mockingbird, a film where he exudes absolute no sex appeal, because his exaggerated face (big eyes, pouty lips) and lanky frame were used to make audiences thirsty in the mid-1940's, and that's definitely the case here.  He looks hot in Duel in the Sun.  The only problem here is that Peck is not meant to be playing a "sexy math teacher" vibes like he'd play in most of his films of this era, but instead is supposed to be a dangerous "bad boy you make out with under the bleachers" sort of vibes, a forbidden sexiness that you know is wrong but you can't help it.  Peck, though, is not good at this-he's too inherently decent, and playing a villain here who also has to turn you on...it just doesn't work.

OVP: The Yearling (1946)

Film: The Yearling (1946)

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

Director: Clarence Brown

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

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

Saturdays with the Stars: Gregory Peck

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we focused on Jimmy Stewart, who despite a long career in westerns almost made them a side hustle given how in-depth his long time in movies was.  This month, we're going to talk about an actor with a similar modus operandi, one who would definitely have westerns as a cornerstone of his career, propelling him into new levels of stardom and, most crucially, box office success.  But like Stewart, it's not necessarily what audiences know him for today.  Instead, similar to Stewart, he is most renowned for a character that has served as a modicum of goodness, a character would become the de facto "honest lawyer" for the cinematic legal profession.  This month's star is Gregory Peck.

Born the son of a Catholic pharmacist, Peck endured a complicated childhood.  His parents' divorce at a young age meant that he was raised for much of his early years by his grandmother, with whom he'd regular go to the movies.  He attended a preparatory school, during which time his grandmother passed away, and while he had aspirations at UC-Berkeley to become a doctor, his handsome looks, tall stature, and deep voice made him a natural actor, and so he dropped out, starting work on the stage before signing a star contract with Fox.  He didn't have to serve in WWII due to a back injury (which the studio lied about its origins-it had actually been from taking a dance class with Martha Graham, but they decided that would reflect badly on the actor and so they said it was from a rowing accident), and during that time he started to get larger success in movies like The Keys of the Kingdom and The Yearling, both of which won him Best Actor nominations.

Gregory Peck's star journey is a bit unusual.  Unlike a lot of actors where it's clear when his stardom peaked and valleyed, he became a big deal very early in his career (Keys of the Kingdom was only his second movie), but was more of a critical darling or overshadowed by his female costars in movies like Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman until the early-1950s, when films like Captan Horatio Hornblower, Snows of Kilimanjaro, and Roman Holiday were smash hits for the actor and he proved he had true box office potential.  Much of what we'd consider to be his best work of the era was either not as successful or would completely get overshadowed by his work as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the role that won him his Oscar and is pretty much the one film everyone name-checks when referencing the actor.  This month, we're going to try and track this unusual star's career path, including looking at several of the westerns that would be critically-celebrated, though that Peck wasn't always as appreciative of at the time, afraid of being typecast.

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

Film: Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)
Stars: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty, Terence Morgan, James Robertson Justice, Christopher Lee
Director: Raoul Walsh
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 Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most people today would think of A Streetcar Named Desire and Strangers on a Train as the watershed moments for Warner Brothers in 1951.  After all, they were both critically-acclaimed hits, the former an Oscar behemoth still recalled today while the latter is considered one of the best Hitchcock films of its era (or any era).  But if you looked at Box Office receipts, no film could compare with this little-remembered Gregory Peck vehicle based off of the novels by CS Forester (weirdly enough, this isn't the best-remembered film based on a Forester novel from 1951, as he also wrote The African Queen).  Initially thought to star Errol Flynn, the former swashbuckler was worse-for-wear by 1951, and so Peck was cast; for his leading lady, he wanted Margaret Leighton, but she declined so Walsh went with one of his most frequent actresses, Virginia Mayo.  And since Mayo is our star of the month, I chanced upon Horatio Hornblower, one of the biggest hits of the 1950's.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the first three novels by Forester (according to accounts I read while researching this article-I've unfortunately not yet read his books).  Hornblower (Peck) is a captain in King George's navy, and is currently on a mission to help arm a man who wants to steal the Americas away from the Spanish, with whom the English are at war.  Once he reached the island, after months at sea, he makes a pact with the madman of an island king (who basically fancies himself a god).  The man, who seems to despise Hornblower for not instantly worshipping him (there's a lot of problematic things about this particularly segment of the picture, a big part of which is because white actor Alec Mango is playing the role in brownface), convinces Hornblower to take down a Spanish ship so that he can use it to burn the Americas to the ground, but once Hornblower takes down the Spanish ship, it is revealed that the British and Spanish are now allies (oh what you wouldn't give for a cell phone in 1807), and thus Hornblower has essentially commit treason in trying to do right by his country.  He eventually destroys the ship with the island king on it, thus saving his own reputation.

This is the first 50 minutes or so of the film, and arguably the best 50 minutes of the film as Peck is a commanding presence who is aided by some pretty terrific effects during the ship battle sequences.  It's at this 50 minute marker that our Star of the Month shows up as Hornblower's love interest Lady Barbara.  It feels unkind to disparage our star so, but it's not entirely Mayo's fault that Lady Barbara feels like such a downer compared to the rest of the voyage.  It feels fairly certain that Forester's original novel had little interest in Lady Barbara as a character, instead focusing mostly on the adventures of the male protagonist, and it shows.  Mayo is a charming actress, and can play a character whose description basically could be "beautiful love interest" with ease, but considering how good she is in White Heat or The Best Years of Our Lives, it's a pity that one of her biggest hits basically has her there as an ornament.

Its disinterest in the female characters aside, this is a good action film.  I liked Peck, stoic & strong, in the lead even if he basically plays Hornblower as Superman.  There's some great costumes and while the dramatics of the romance never work, almost all of the action set-pieces do.  If this movie had been made today, it would have had endless sequels (wait, it was and it did-hi Ioan Gruffudd!), and it's a pity that Warner never made the same investment in Peck's career.  The film's ending feels a bit unearned (Mayo's Barbara has once again been absent for a huge swath of the film), but there's enough to recommend this picture for me to give it 3-stars.

Oscar Trivia: Presenting the Oscars, Part 1

All right Oscar trivia nerds, it's time to step up to the plate as a project I came up with last month and have been scouring through books and websites since to figure out (okay, one book and one website, but I don't get to do a lot of research projects in my life so indulge me) has come to a close and now we'll have some articles as a result.  I recently was googling, and could not find a list of the most frequent presenters at the Oscars.  I found lots of lists of the most-common host (Bob Hope), but never regarding the presenters and I thought that was just silliness, so I took it upon myself to come up with the list.  As I was compiling, I realized there was a whole host of trivia to come out of such an idea, so I figured why not create a blog post or two on the matter.  Therefore, we'll be having a short three-part series called Presenting an Oscar over the next week.  Today, we'll go with a straight-up list of the Top 10 most frequent presenters, as well as a little trivia about them in regard to Oscars.  Shall we begin?

(Note: People count as Oscar presenters if they introduce an award, performance, clip reel, or nominated film.  I'm not counting hosting unless you also presented a specific award and I'm not counting performers of musical numbers for this list at least.)

8. Michael Douglas (tie)

Times He's Presented: 12
First Presented: 1984 (Best Documentary Short)
Latest Presented: 2012 (Best Director)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Yes, twice in 2000 and 2002 (the latter with his father Kirk, for Chicago, a film starring his wife)
What's His Oscar History?: Douglas is weirdly two-for-two when it comes to Oscar, having won for both Best Picture (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Best Actor (Wall Street).  Those are his only two nominations.  It feels like the right number of wins, but I'm surprises Douglas, a movie star for over forty years, hasn't been able to score more nominations.

8. Goldie Hawn (tie)

Times She's Presented: 12
First Presented: 1970 (Best Actor, famously stating "oh my god" before announcing George C. Scott...it's vintage flower-child style Goldie if you've never seen the clip)
Latest Presented: 2013 (Best Picture segments for Captain Phillips, Philomena, and 12 Years a Slave)
Has She Presented Best Picture?: No, and considering how frequently it's levied at the Oscars that they are pretty repetitive and sexist when it comes to who gets to hand out the top honor, this seems like a pretty damn good choice.  Get on it AMPAS!
What's Her Oscar History?: Hawn won an Oscar for Cactus Flower in 1969 and was nominated eleven years later for Private Benjamin.  It's worth noting that Goldie, despite being a frequent attender and even a two-time host of the Oscars, wasn't there to pick up her only Oscar, instead having Raquel Welch pick up her trophy.

8. Audrey Hepburn (tie)

Times She's Presented: 12
First Presented: 1954 (Writing Awards)
Last Presented: 1991 (Honorary Award to Satyajit Ray)
Has She Presented Best Picture?: Yes, four times (second only to Jack Nicholson) in 1955, 1960, 1966, and 1975
What's Her Oscar History?: Audrey won Best Actress in 1953 for Roman Holiday, and was nominated in 1954 (Sabrina), 1959 (The Nun's Story), 1961 (Breakfast at Tiffany's), and 1967 (Wait Until Dark).  Her humanitarian work also won her the Jean Hersholt in 1993.

8. Nicole Kidman (tie)

Times She's Presented: 12
First Presented: 1991 (Presented by Best Song nominee "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)")
Latest Presented: 2014 (Best Foreign Language Film)
Has She Presented Best Picture?: Not yet, though there's time considering she's relatively young by such standards.  Her ex-husband Tom Cruise did, though, in 2011.
What's Her Oscar History?: Despite a truly impressive filmography in the past decade (one could argue this number should be double what it is), Kidman has three Oscar nominations from 2001 (Moulin Rouge!), 2002 (The Hours), and 2010 (Rabbit Hole), winning for The Hours.

8. Jack Nicholson (tie)

Times He's Presented: 12 (and yes, I figured this number would be greater too, but Jack took some long breaks in presenting)
First Presented: 1971 (Best Picture)
Latest Presented: 2012 (Best Picture)
Has He Presented Best Picture?  If you are actually asking this question, you need to start watching the Oscars.  Jack always presents Best Picture, having done it eight of his twelve times at presenting.  He did it in 1971, 1976, 1977, 1989, 1992, 2005, 2006, and 2012.  It's worth noting that with A Few Good Men competing in 1992 and The Departed in 2006, he's actually presented in years where he was in the eligible picture, which is rare.
What's His Oscar History?: Jack Nicholson is a twelve-time Oscar-nominated legend.  Cited for Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Detail (1973), Chinatown (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Reds (1981), Terms of Endearment (1983), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Few Good Men (1992), As Good As It Gets (1997), and About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson is second only to Meryl Streep in terms of nominations and second only to Kate Hepburn in terms of wins (he won for Cuckoo, Terms, and As Good As It Gets).  He is also tied with Michael Caine for most consecutive decades with a nomination.

8. Steven Spielberg (tie)

Times He's Presented: 12 (again, I thought it would be more too)
First Presented: 1979 (Best Director, along with Goldie Hawn no less...wonder if Spielberg could convince her to make another movie?)
Latest Presented: 2010 (Best Picture)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Yep, three times (2003, 2008, and 2010)
What's His Oscar History?: Steven Spielberg has a truly weird career with the Oscars.  While everyone today thinks of a Spielberg film as a gimme nomination, prior to his wins for Schindler's List, it was very hit-and-miss.  He wasn't nominated for directing Jaws, The Color Purple, or Empire of the Sun, and films like Close Encounters couldn't seal-the-deal in the Best Picture race with a nomination.  Still, he has 15 nominations with three wins amongst them (Best Picture/Director for Schindler's List and Best Director for Saving Private Ryan), plus he also has the Thalberg Award won in 1986), so it's not like they haven't amply rewarded the man.

7. Dustin Hoffman

Times He's Presented: 13
First Presented: 1967 (Best Cinematography)
Latest Presented: 2012 (the Writing Awards, with Charlize Theron)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Twice, in 1986 and in 2004 (which he co-presented with his Meet the Fockers costar Barbra Streisand)
What's His Oscar History?: Hoffman has been nominated seven times for Best Actor, for The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Lenny (1974), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Tootsie (1982), Rain Man (1988), and Wag the Dog (1997); he won for both Kramer and Rain Man.

5. Bob Hope (tie)

Times He's Presented: 14 (he also hosted the show eighteen times, a record that will likely stand forever considering the fickle nature of entertainment)
First Presented: 1938 (Short Subjects)
Last Presented: 1990 (Presented a montage called "My First Movie")
Has He Presented Best Picture?: No, likely because he was always too busy getting ready to close the show.
What's His Oscar History?: As Hope lamented many, many times through the years he was never able to get nominated for an acting award during his illustrious career (likely because he dabbled in comedy more than drama, and also because he was far better at playing Bob Hope than he was a fictional character).  The Academy didn't forget him, however, and gave him five honoraries in 1940, 1944, 1952, 1959 (the Jean Hersholt), and 1965.  One hopes they shell out at least one eventually for his modern-day equivalent Billy Crystal.

5. Jack Lemmon (tie)

Times He's Presented: 14 (he also hosted the Oscars four times)
First Presented: 1955 (Art Direction, which he handed out with singer Peggy Lee)
Last Presented: 1997 (the Writing Awards with his longtime costar Walter Matthau, who with eleven awards presented just missed this list)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Yes, in 1965 to The Sound of Music
What's His Oscar History?: Lemmon was nominated for eight Oscars in 1955 (Mister Roberts), 1959 (Some Like It Hot), 1960 (The Apartment), 1962 (Days of Wine and Roses), 1973 (Save the Tiger), 1979 (The China Syndrome), 1980 (Tribute), and 1982 (Missing); he won for Mister Roberts and Save the Tiger.

4. Gregory Peck

Times He's Presented: 16 (in addition to being a major movie star, Peck also served as president of the Academy which helps in his count here)
First Presented: 1957 (Art Direction, with Eva Marie Saint who has presented ten times at the Oscars so far, nearly making this list)
Last Presented: 1994 (Presented the Quiz Show Best Picture segment)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Once, in 1964 to My Fair Lady
What's His Oscar History?: Peck was nominated five times in 1945 (The Keys of the Kingdom), 1946 (The Yearling), 1947 (Gentleman's Agreement), 1949 (Twelve O'Clock High), and eventually winning in 1962 in To Kill a Mockingbird.

3. Tom Hanks

Times He's Presented: 17
First Presented: 1986 (Best Animated Short Film, with co-presenter Bugs Bunny)
Latest Presented: 2011 (Best Cinematography and Art Direction)
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Twice, in 2001 and 2009.
What's His Oscar History?: Everybody's favorite movie star of the 1990's has been nominated five times in his career, in 1988 (Big), 1993 (Philadelphia), 1994 (Forrest Gump), 1998 (Saving Private Ryan), and 2000 (Cast Away), winning for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.

2. John Travolta

Times He's Presented: 18
First Presented: 1977 (Best Supporting Actress)
Latest Presented: 2014 (Best Original Song, with Idina Menzel, whose name he infamously butchered the year before...considering he'd presented 17 times at that point you'd think he could have better practiced).
Has He Presented Best Picture?: Nope, not yet, though I'm sure it will eventually happen-maybe when he eventually takes over number one?
What's His Oscar History?: Travolta is a two-time nominee, for 1977's Saturday Night Fever and 1994's Pulp Fiction.  While he's never won, I have to imagine that either an Honorary Award or an "old-age" style award is in his future as he seems genuinely popular in Hollywood and consistently makes movies, though lately not very many good ones.

1. Jack Valenti

Times He's Presented: 24
First Presented: 1966 (Honorary Award to Y. Frank Freeman)
Last Presented: 2002 (Best Documentary Short Subject)
Has He Ever Presented Best Picture?: Nope, Valenti's appearances at the Oscars almost always happened in the middle hour of the ceremony and he rarely got a marquee award.
What's His Oscar History?: For those of you saying "who?!?" in regard to Valenti topping movie stars like Travolta and Hanks on this list, Valenti was once one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood.  The head of the MPAA, he was imperative to creating the modern ratings system and spent years fighting the idea of home video (saying it would be the death of the movies).  Valenti was also in one of the most iconic photos in American history-he can be seen in the bottom left corner of the picture of President Lyndon Johnson, as he served as a media adviser for him.  Despite his repeated awards from the industry (he won an honorary trophy from both the PGA and DGA), he never won an Honorary Oscar.

And there you have it folks-we'll get into some other fun minutia of the presenters later this week, but in the meantime-who is a surprise on this list?  Who did you expect to top the list?  Do you have a favorite amongst these presenters?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 2

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 number for Part 1.

I'm really enjoying this series, even if it's timeliness is questionable (I'm hoping you are too!).  Where last we left off, I had just finished discussing James Cagney's surprisingly high ranking on this list.  We're now going to discuss the next eight fellas on the list, going through their Oscar history, chief, fame, my favorite performances and the ones I've shamefully neglected (please play along with your own thoughts in the comments!).

9. Spencer Tracy (1900-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Tracy was one of the most beloved in the history of the Academy (he's probably the closest analogy to Meryl Streep amongst classic Hollywood, even better than Kate Hepburn or Bette Davis, since it seems like he ALWAYS was nominated, whereas Hepburn and Davis went through periods of their career where they missed).  He received nine nominations for Best Actor, winning for Captains Courageous and Boys Town.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being half of one of the most scandalous relationships in the history of Hollywood.  Though married, Tracy carried on a decades-long affair with actress Katharine Hepburn, to the point that they are generally considered one of Hollywood's most iconic couples, despite not discussing the relationship publicly during his lifetime.  Tracy was a bit of a cad, though, if we're being honest.  Amongst his other conquests were Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, and Gene Tierney.
My Favorite Performance: Hmm-I've seen only one of Tracy's nominated performances (his films, if you look at them collectively, are not what you'd call "in my wheelhouse").  I'd probably go with Woman of the Year, one of the better pairings between he and Kate.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I mean, I'm missing eight nominated performances-that's pretty damn glaring.  Probably toward the top of the list would be Judgment at Nuremberg and Inherit the Wind, though-both seem like classic Tracy "actorliness."

10. Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

Oscar Nominations: This is actually a bit tricky.  Chaplin won three Oscars in his career: one honorary one at the 1971 ceremony, a competitive one a year later for Original Dramatic Score for Limelight, and an Honorary Award at the very first Oscars for acting, writing, directing, and producing The Circus.  Chaplin received another trio of nominations, and possibly a fourth depending on if you count his nomination for Best Actor (which was later taken away) for The Circus.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential Silent Era star.  With his cane and mustache and waddle he's the definition of an icon-most of the populace hasn't seen a Charlie Chaplin movie, but few wouldn't recognize him going through the gears of Modern Times or eating a shoe in The Gold Rush or charming a girl in City Lights or even parodying Hitler in The Great Dictator.  He is an icon of the cinema.
My Favorite Performance: You just can't beat City Lights, and I don't know that anyone could try.  I frequently debate with myself what my favorite Silent film is, but City Lights is in the Top 3, if not the top spot period.  It's one of the most romantic movies ever made.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen three of his four "major" films, but have never gotten around to The Great Dictator, the only film that Chaplin officially received an Oscar nomination for acting for (he lost to Jimmy Stewart).

11. Gary Cooper (1901-1961)

Oscar Nominations: Cooper received five Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Sergeant York and High Noon.  Cooper also won a posthumous Honorary Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Looking super duper.  While Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Pride of the Yankees, and High Noon are genuine, recognizable classics, it was Cooper's mention in "Puttin' on the Ritz" that has entered the lexicon most fully.  Cooper also was one of several men on this list that had a notoriously long list of romantic conquests: Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and most famously (and tragically) Patricia Neal.
My Favorite Performance: I haven't seen High Noon in decades, and I remember not particularly caring for it when it first came out-I have a suspicion that would have changed quite a bit since then (I've seen clips enough to form that opinion), but I'll reserve that right until I re-view the film.  In the meantime, we'll stick with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Cooper and Tracy are not what you'd consider my favorite actors (along with Burt Lancaster, these are kind of the trio of actors from this era that I respect but don't love).  That said, I know that I need to get around to seeing The Pride of the Yankees at some point to see Cooper become the luckiest man on the face of the earth (does anyone else always picture Bill Pullman whenever that quote comes up?).

12. Gregory Peck (1916-2003)

Oscar Nominations: Peck received five Oscar nominations in his long career, winning for To Kill a Mockingbird.  He also won the Jean Hersholt in 1968.
Probably Best Known Today For: His commanding and calming presence in the film To Kill a Mockingbird.  His work as Atticus has been celebrated by generations of young adults investigating the novel by Harper Lee and then coming to the movie.  Peck was also known to a number of people for his political causes, being a strong advocate for gun control and against President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork for the Supreme Court (one of the rare Democrats on a list that is pretty Republican).
My Favorite Performance: I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird sort of has to be at the top of the list, doesn't it?  If not that, I've always been truly mesmerized by him in Spellbound and of course enchanted by him in Roman Holiday.  I will also take this opportunity to point out that I have long had a crush on young Gregory Peck (yes, it's the ears).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I would probably have to go with The Yearling, one of those rare genuine classics of childhood that my parents didn't have me watch.

13. John Wayne (1907-1979)

Oscar Nominations: 3 nominations (one for producing), he finally won in 1969 for True Grit (a film that would later garner Jeff Bridges an Oscar nomination as well).
Probably Best Known Today For: Being Hollywood's quintessential cowboy.  Few people were so perfectly typecast as John Wayne, an actor who was occasionally brilliant but always a star.  I would assume that if you asked my generation about Wayne, they'd reply with some variation of "I remember my grandpa sitting around watching John Wayne movies all the time."  Wayne's filmography doesn't have a classic that stands out so fully that he's associated with it (Stagecoach may come the closest), but he himself is a universally recognized legend even today.
My Favorite Performance: You'd be hard-pressed to find a better Wayne performance (and he gave a LOT of them) than his work in The Searchers, which is to Wayne what Vertigo is to Jimmy Stewart.  An absolutely astoundingly good piece of acting from an actor that traded pretty hard in typecasting.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Wayne made SO many movies (he starred in 142 films, and from what I can tell was almost always the lead).  I will probably go with his Oscar-winning work in True Grit, but I've oddly both seen a lot of the essentials (Stagecoach, Red River, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) and yet missed quite a few more (Sands of Iwo Jima, Rio Bravo, True Grit, The Shootist).  Wayne's the sort of actor where you never really finish his filmography it's so long.

14. Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)

Oscar Nominations: 13 nominations for producing, directing, and acting, he won Best Picture and Best Actor for Hamlet, as well as Honorary Awards in 1947 and 1979.  Plus, Kenneth Branagh would be nominated for playing Olivier in My Week with Marilyn!
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the ultimate Shakespearean actor of the 20th Century.  Olivier brought Shakespeare to the silver screen in a way no other actor ever has, and was amply rewarded for it at the Oscars (four of his acting nominations were for playing the Bard).  Olivier is well-regarded as one of the first and most successful actor-directors, and for his long relationship with actress Vivien Leigh.
My Favorite Performance: Which of his stoic romantic leads is it easier to fall in love with?  I'll probably go with Maxim de Winter in Rebecca just slightly over his work in Wuthering Heights (Henry V isn't as much my cup of tea, I have to admit, even if it's his most well-regarded work).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: If I'm being honest, this would probably be Marathon Man-his villainous dentist has always seemed like a hammy but memorable-looking performance.  The film buff in me knows, though, that Hamlet with its pair of Oscars for Baron Olivier should probably be up there.  I'll eventually get to both though.

15. Gene Kelly (1912-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly won the Honorary Award at the 1951 Academy Awards, but only received one competitive nomination in his career for Anchors Aweigh.
Probably Best Known Today For: Laughing and singing in the rain.  His Don Lockwood puddle-jumping is one of the most memorable and celebrated scenes in the history of the movies, ranking up there with Janet Leigh's interrupted shower and Judy Garland clicking her heels.  Kelly would of course celebrate multiple dances on-screen, and while he wasn't quite as personally popular as Astaire off-screen (Kelly was apparently a bit of a tyrant on the set), he was effortlessly graceful onscreen.
My Favorite Performance: The sheer joy that is Singin' in the Rain.  It's so weird that in an era where the Academy was honoring some of the very best in musicals (just the year before they'd honored the Kelly vehicle An American in Paris with Best Picture) they for some reason couldn't get more excited for what is basically a perfect movie.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I'm going to go with the "last" of the great MGM musicals It's Always Fair Weather as the movie I'm most intrigued by seeing.  There's really no topping Kelly dancing, but Cyd Charisse is a good way to try.

16. Orson Welles (1915-1985)

Oscar Nominations: Welles was nominated for acting in, writing, and directing Citizen Kane (he won for writing), then had to wander through the wilderness of filmmaking until his Honorary Award at the 1970 Oscars (it's fascinating thinking about how many legends of the movies ended up with Honorary Oscars even though they already had one-I think we should make that a rule that if you've already won, you can't take the Honorary Oscar).
Probably Best Known Today For: Creating what is considered the go-to reference for the great American film, Citizen Kane (which, for the record, is one of the finest motion pictures ever put to a projector).  Welles would become rather large and a bit of a sell-out later in his career, but there was no denying the man was a genius and Citizen Kane remains a towering, complete triumph.
My Favorite Performance: After Marlon Brando, Welles is my favorite actor, so I've not only seen most of his movies, I've genuinely loved them.  I would probably put Charlie Kane at the top of the list, but Harry Lime (The Third Man) and Hank Quinlan (Touch of Evil) would be worthy choices as well.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: The Other Side of the Wind (kidding...kind of).  I'd surely have to go with his mesmerizing noir The Lady from Shanghai opposite Rita Hayworth.

And those are the second round of gents.  Considering the clip I'm on, there's a decent chance we'll have another actors' list this weekend, but these are eight of the most famous men in the history of cinema-any opinions to share?  The comments await!