OVP: San Francisco (1936)

Film: San Francisco (1936)

Stars: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt

Director: WS van Dyke

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Original Story, Assistant Director, Sound Recording*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If you spend a lot of time on Film Twitter or the online awards circuit, you will find that one of the bigger conversations discussed is "category fraud."  This, for those unfamiliar, is when someone who is clearly a lead player tries for a supporting nomination because they think it will be easier to get the nomination.  The debate runs the gamut between clear cases of fraud (Rooney Mara in Carol comes to mind) to cases where it's more debatable (think Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers).  I'm not in favor of this, and as a general rule when we do our OVP acting write-ups, I make a point of docking one point from any lead performance committing category fraud.  But the opposite occasionally happens, and I will admit...I don't have quite the same problem with it.  This is when a supporting performance for some reason pushes for lead-it's less common, but it's a peculiarity throughout the Oscars.  Perhaps the most flagrant example of this happened the very first year of the supporting categories, when Spencer Tracy was nominated for lead actor...for a performance that clocks in at less than 15 minutes.

(Spoilers Ahead) San Francisco is about Mary Blake (MacDonald), a broke young woman who is trying to make it as a singer.  She encounters Blackie Norton (Gable), who (because she sings like Jeanette MacDonald) pretty much hires her on the spot.  The two start to fall in love, but there's an unease about how they picture domesticity-Mary wants to continue her career to greater heights, whereas Blackie wants her to continue to sing for his nightclub.  This causes a rift in their relationship, where Mary ends up engaged to another man.  The film culminates with a showdown as Mary tries to (against Blackie's wishes) save his club from financial ruin after she leaves it...only to have the 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupt their fight, killing hundreds in the process, including Mary's new fiancee.  Mary & Blackie reunite, potentially as lovers but certainly as grateful friends, before the ruins of San Francisco morph into a then-modern day San Francisco.

The movie itself, I'll be honest, is a snore.  I love me some Clark Gable, but Jeanette MacDonald...is only good because she's not Nelson Eddy (who is the worst).  Sure she can sing, but her screen persona is so vacant & too wishy-washy.  She reminds me of an operatic Loretta Young, and that is not meant as a compliment.  The one impressive moment of the film is surely the earthquake, and yes-that's spectacular.  I honestly was floored by how it seemed to come out-of-nowhere (even though it had been regularly telegraphed), and in a world without CGI, it has a proper sense of danger & unrest.  If there was a Special Effects Oscar in 1936, San Francisco would've been an easy sell for the win.

But the nominations that did happen, I'm not onboard with.  Directing (and assistant directing) feels like the only thing that's worthwhile is the earthquake scene, but that's maybe 15 minutes of the movie-I can't get behind that.  The story itself is confusing, boring, and pretty repetitive.  I will say that the sound recording gets a thumbs up from me though-between the earthquake & MacDonald's crazy high notes, there's a lot of sound recording here, and I think it comes together well, if not as well as something like Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz just a couple of years later.

Which brings us back to Spencer Tracy.  Tracy's nomination is genuinely confusing.  His priest is a chauvinist (a trope for the actor), one who condemns MacDonald for dressing too provocatively in one scene.  But he's also barely there, and pretty much an afterthought (I didn't include him in the writeup for a reason)-if he weren't Spencer Tracy, you wouldn't notice this character.  I'm at a loss on how this happened.  If MGM wanted a lead actor for San Francisco, Gable was right there and a big star.  If they wanted Tracy for a film, he was considerably more engaging in Fury, which was also an MGM property and one that was nominated for a writing Oscar so it was in the Academy's purview.  I'm not confused as to why Tracy was marketed as lead (it would take until the 1970's before we'd more regularly start seeing leading actors attempt supporting nominations on the regular), but I'm baffled as to why the Academy bought it.

OVP: Naughty Marietta (1935)

Film: Naughty Marietta (1935)
Stars: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester
Directors (according to IMDB they are uncredited): Robert Z. Leonard & W.S. van Dyke
Oscar History: 2 nods/1 win (Best Picture, Best Sound Recording*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Ahh, sweet mystery of life I've found you...growing up, my Grandpa's favorite actress was Jeanette MacDonald, and my mother was not a fan.  I never actually had seen one of her movies, but Grandpa presumably liked the wholesome aspects of Ms. MacDonald's films, and my mother thought that they were a bit saccharine.  Many years later, I decided tonight was the perfect night to give her a shot (not coincidentally, but I did chase the RNC with a bunch of famously GOP actors and their films: Loretta Young, June Allyson, Gary Cooper, along with MacDonald and her partner Nelson Eddy-who said I can't handle a lot of Republicans?).  This was partially because I desperately need room in the TiVo for tomorrow's 4.5 hour taping of Greed, and also because I have a bevy of MacDonald films filling up my TiVo, but I digress. I decided of all of the films that Naughty Marietta, a Best Picture nominee (my 277th) would be the perfect choice.

Like I said-I was wrestling with saccharine and wholesome going into the film, and I came away feeling both, and that may be a good thing.  For starters, MacDonald can act, which was something I was a bit nervous about, as I'd heard not great things (her onscreen costar we'll get to in a moment, but he lived up to, or down to, the hype).  She's very beautiful, and her lyric soprano could steal every woodland creature away from Snow White.  She also has a Jean Arthur spunk about her that I liked, and while her saintliness could hypothetically get grading, I never found myself saying "move it along," to her while she was onscreen.  Additionally, I rather loved her interactions on the boat, and her comic timing was solid.  In fact, aside from the fact that she was clearly a girl of the 1930's and not the 1700's, I have nothing bad to say about her.  Not a Garbo style thespian, but definitely a star.

The plot of the film, on the other hand, is a bit weak even for a musical (which notoriously have flimsy plots, let's be honest).  She's a French princess on the run from a wedding to a man she doesn't love, so she impersonates one of her servants and boards a boat to New Orleans full of women that are going to get married to men that they've never met (clearly, she didn't read the pamphlet).  Once she arrives in the New World, she comes across a handsome army captain (Eddy) whom she falls in love with, despite his macho and egotistical ways.  I could fill you in on the rest of the film, but you already know what's going to happen-the fun is in the music and the undeniable chemistry that MacDonald brings to all of her onscreen partners, including Eddy.  Eddy is a brilliant baritone, but when he's attempting to act, he brings a woodiness that's undeniable.  He's got a connection with MacDonald, but it's clear she's doing the heavy-lifting, and I'm excited to see her in a film like San Francisco, where she's paired with a charmer like Clark Gable as her screen partner.  The film also boasts two terribly fun supporting performances-Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, as the Governor of the New Orleans colony, and a bumbling fool of a man he is, as well as Elsa Lanchester as his domineering, comedically sharp wife.  The music is sensational, and very operatic (to be fair, the film is based on an operetta by Victor Herbert), and the most famous number, "Ahh, Sweet Mystery of Life, I've Found You,"is a show-stopper.  It's plain to see why this film won a Best Sound Recording Oscar-the cast are soaring in their respective choral pieces, and the two leads fill the entire screen beautifully with each serenade.  While it doesn't bring the technical virtuosity that, say, Top Hat did in the Best Picture category, it's still a fun way to spend a Sunday night.

And in hopes of spurring conversation, have you seen Naughty Marietta?  Are you a fan of MacDonald's and/or Nelson Eddy's?  Do you have a favorite Best Picture nominee of 1935?  And, putting your own politics aside, do you ever find yourself becoming a fan of entertainers of the opposite party?