AI Destroys All It Touches...Even TCM

Few things in this world are quite as sacred to me as Turner Classic Movies.  Each month, I largely get Hulu Live solely so that I can watch Turner Classic Movies and the Food Network, and I make a point of watching 6-7 airings on the channel as part of my monthly movie intake.  The cinematic commercials, the celebration of all things Hollywood, the sea of movies both immortal and largely forgotten...Turner Classic Movies is a religion in my house.

When it comes to TCM, you also of course have the introductions, sharing tidbits, trivia, and lore around the movies that you're about to see.  Originally this was my hero Robert Osborne doing the intros, but in the years that followed TCM becoming more of a cult following, others were added to the arsenal, and since Osborne's death, their leader is Ben Mankiewicz.  Mankiewicz, the nephew of Oscar-winning director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and grandson of Citizen Kane scribe Herman Mankiewicz (profiled in the Oscar-winning Mank), is the most famous of the presenters, and is the narrator on both of TCM's podcasts, Talking Pictures and The Plot Thickens (both of which I've listened to every episode, and if you knew how picky I am about my podcasts, you'd understand what a compliment that is).  Mankiewicz is synonymous in my house with TCM, and as a result held in very high regard himself.

So imagine my utter horror when I saw a piece that Mankiewicz recently did for CBS This Morning (here's a link if you're curious) where the TCM host went to the Las Vegas Sphere, the gigantic, surreal glowing orb that has gained status in the past couple of years as the most recent pop culture landmark in the American atlas.  Initially it made sense to have Mankiewicz doing a piece about the Sphere hosting a screening of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.  The event has 4-dimensional elements, including a simulation of the famous tornado at the start of the film, capitalizing on the recent 4DX trend.  It's tacky, but it's harmless...I'd go if that was all there was.

But as the clip continues, you see exactly how The Wizard of Oz, a movie that was not made for a gigantic domed screen like this, is adapted, and it made my blood stop.  In order to make it big enough, the filmmakers extended the screen, creating scenes not seen on the original movie, through AI technology.  You see them take the grain out of Judy Garland's face, extending Oz into a blasphemously large bit of extended CGI, taking a film that was once a towering depiction of cutting-edge technology in 1939 turn into a screen saver.  You also see them use AI to create actual performances.  In one clip, actor Charley Grapewin (who played Uncle Henry in the movie) is superimposed into scenes the actor is out of frame, to protect "story continuity," creating the actor from pixels.

CBS and the Sphere knew what they were doing having Mankiewicz use his reputation to provide cover for this piece (and this event).  I texted my brother "this is the equivalent of having Marilynne Robinson do an ad for ChatGPT."  Few people are more synonymous with film preservation and protecting the memory of Classical Hollywood pictures in the same way as Mankiewicz.  They even tried to get ahead of some of the criticism that started to pour out online by having Garland's daughter Lorna Luft say her "mom would approve of this"...but it's hard not to be mortified that Mankiewicz would lend his name to such a horrendous bastardization of the movie-watching experience.

AI is new technology, but it's pretty clear that when it comes to the arts, it's at best creating soulless facsimiles and frequently going into territory of ghoulish cruelty & grave-robbing.  The screenshots that we see look awful.  Mankiewicz unconvincingly calls it "dazzling" but if you look at it, it looks like actor Ray Bolger is trapped in a screensaver, all of the beauty of the original sucked out to create a sea of glossy, flat color.  We hear from Luft, but let's be honest-Luft was a child when her mom died...is it appropriate to assume she can speak for her mother, someone she never even knew as an adult, and what she would've wanted, given Garland died almost 60 years ago?  There's no attempt to talk to Grapewin's family about what he would've wanted, having his performance created from thin air & using his likeness without his approval...given he died in 1956, it's unlikely that if his children are still alive that they would've even known their father as an adult (I can't find any evidence that Grapewin had children, so it's possible no one even bothered to ask his family if they were okay with this).  Either way, Garland & Grapewin have no consent over what's happening here...they don't get to choose what happens to their bodies, and they're being used for profit.  It feels rough and uncomfortable to frame it that way, but it's true-when dead actors are used for their performances, they essentially are being made to do things they had no choice to do...in a society that talks a lot about valuing consent, this is a situation where consent was clearly not given, and no amount of family members giving the thumbs up is ever going to convince me this isn't morally repugnant.

Which brings me back to Ben Mankiewicz, a man I went into this really admiring, but come out utterly stunned he would put his name and reputation on this endeavor.  TCM is supposed to be celebrating cinema, about giving it a place in modern culture.  It's not about ripping and shredding up the work of the actors like Garland & Grapewin who made Classical Hollywood so special, just to make another buck that they'll never see.

Words and Music (1948)

Picture: Words and Music (1948)

Stars: June Allyson, Perry Como, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Ann Sothern, Tom Drake, Cyd Charisse, Betty Garrett, Janet Leigh, Marshall Thompson, Mel Torme, Vera-Ellen

Director: Norman Taurog

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

By the late 1940's, about the time that Ann Sothern would be soon entering her forties (she was born in 1909), her career had hit a decided slump.  The Maisie pictures ended in 1947, and while she had consistently made movies throughout the decade, other than Maisie the movies hadn't really caught on in the same way-she wasn't an established star like Judy Garland or Gene Tierney, not the kind who could demand respect & acclaim & Oscar nominations, and as a result her contract was in peril with MGM.  In 1948, she tried to jump-start her career with two musicals, April Showers, which was a poorly-reviewed musical for Warner Brothers, and then Words and Music. Words and Music was a weird film for Sothern because by most standards, it was a hit, wildly popular both domestically & abroad...but due to exorbitant costs (including giving Judy Garland a fortune for what amounts to little more than a cameo), the film couldn't break even, and as a result, Sothern's star continued to diminish.  Today we'll look at Words and Music which, despite an all-star lineup of MGM talent, is listless & forgettable.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a semi-autobiographical look at the creative partnership between Richard Rodgers (Drake) and Lorenz Hart (Rooney), two of the bigger names of the early 20th Century for musical theater.  Most modern audiences know Rodgers for his partnership with Oscar Hammerstein, which produced classics like Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific, but his time with Hart was very successful.  American songbook classics like "The Lady is a Tramp," "Manhattan," and "Blue Moon" came out of their partnership.  Throughout the film, we see how Rodgers wooed his eventual wife (played by Janet Leigh here) while Hart's stature causes him to suffer with women, and tumble into a deep depression.  This is interspersed with "cameos" from much of the biggest names in the cast doing musical number versions of classic Rodgers & Hart numbers.

The film's biggest problem is that, even for an MGM musical, the plot is pretty thin.  Rodgers' life seems idyllic & pretty much an overnight success (in a fourth-wall break in the opening scenes of the movie, he basically admits as such), which might make for fine domesticity in real life, but isn't great for a movie.  Hart's life was much more complicated, but it was his homosexuality (and the homophobic culture of the 1940's) that caused his alcoholism, self-hatred, and eventual friction with Rodgers that led the partnership to break up.  No one in the film can pull off him simply being upset about being short work (since him being gay in an MGM movie would've been unthinkable), particularly Mickey Rooney.  Forget for a fact that Rooney is about as good of an example as you can come up with for a short guy whose success led to romantic touchdowns (the man married Ava Gardner, for crying out loud); Rooney is simply not a good enough actor to play a part this subtle, and his histrionics totally derail the movie.

The film's best part are the musical cameos, though our star Sothern hardly stands out in this regard.  Admittedly, Sothern is a fine singer but her skill-set is best used in comedy & dialogue.  When you put her next to Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, & June Allyson, all four troupers whose biggest talent was as musical-comedy stars...you just can't compete.  Garland had $100,000 worth of medical bills at the time & used her cameo here to get them all paid off, but honestly the real highlight of the movie is Lena Horne, singing the hell out of "The Lady is a Tramp" in what is the most-remembered sequence in Words and Music.  Alas, Horne was too much of a financial risk in Southern theaters at the time, and so we don't get enough of her...and the rest of the movie can't compare.

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: Babes in Arms (1939)

Film: Babes in Arms (1939)
Stars: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, June Preisser
Director: Busby Berkeley
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Mickey Rooney, Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Young Best Actor nominees is not going to be the theme of this week (tomorrow our nominee is in his mid-fifties), but with yesterday's Saturday Night Fever won John Travolta a nomination at the age of only 23, it feels fitting that today we talk about a nominee that was even younger at the Oscars: Mickey Rooney.  Rooney is one of the most famous figures in classic American movies, and lived longer than almost any of his contemporaries, dying at the age of 93.  He is famous both for his stature, and because of his longevity, occasionally for his age, but at one point Rooney was a teen idol, and was the second-youngest Best Actor nominee ever at the age of 19 for today's movie Babes in Arms.  The film teams Rooney with his frequent costar Judy Garland, and like Saturday Night Fever, is another musical.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Joe Moran (Winninger) and his family, including his son Mickey (Rooney).  Moran is a longtime vaudeville hoofer who was once super successful on the stage, but has fallen on hard times as people have moved past vaudeville to movies.  All of the former vaudeville performers live in a neighborhood in the same town, and their children are somewhat ostracized, and considered poorly-taken-care-of by other local parents.  When the kids worry that the parents aren't willing to modernize their show, Mickey and his best girl Patsy (Garland) team up all of their friends to put on a show that might be able to raise the money their parents need to keep their homes/children, and of course while the parents are unsuccessful on the road, the kids put on a bravura performance and win over the town/parents, proving that they have what it takes to be a second generation of stars.

The movie at once is impossible to hate but way too slight to love.  Considering the score and the stars, you'd assume that Babes in Arms would be a timeless seasonal classic, rather than one that is only a classic when it's brought up (rather than instantly name-checked).  The plot is inconsequential to the movie, and the kids always being right (while the parents are always wrong) feels a bit hackneyed even for 1939.  Rooney's performance, in particular, feels too earnest for me.  There's little difference between this and his schtick as Andy Hardy, and it plays like the Oscar nomination (his first of four) was more because MGM wanted to get some sort of adult recognition for one of its most bankable leading men than because he'd earned it with serious talent.  One fun fact-in the film Rooney does (solid) impressions of both Lionel Barrymore and Clark Gable, the latter of whom was favored to beat Rooney at the Oscars that year but didn't when they both lost in a shocker to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips.

The film's other nomination is much more earned.  Watching Babes in Arms now, it's really shocking how many of the musical numbers are also songs you hear in Singin in the Rain.  I didn't know this was coming, and was floored when four songs ("Good Morning," "You are My Lucky Star," "Broadway Melody," and "Singin in the Rain") showed up in the film.  I'd fault them for copying the great American musical, but this film came out 13 years before it so it's just ingenuity (and Stanley Donen owes Busby Berkeley a check).  Honestly, while the big ending number is problematic (Rooney & Garland appear in blackface), and a bit hammy, the rest of the musical numbers are a delight, and thus the Scoring nomination feels like an easy pill to swallow, even if Rooney's nomination in 1939 of all years feels wasteful.

Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)

Film: Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
Stars: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Cecilia Parker, Fay Holden, Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford
Director: George B. Seitz
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Despite urban legend, Lana Turner was not discovered in Schwab's Pharmacy.  The definitive version of how the screen icon was discovered will probably never be definitively known, but we can chart the earlier part of her filmography regardless.  She worked briefly at Warner Brothers, but her career was going nowhere, and so director Mervyn LeRoy, her mentor, brought her with over to MGM with little complaint (akin to the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth, if film fans were akin to such analogies).  While at MGM she got her first real break as a screen actress in the oddest place of all-Love Finds Andy Hardy, a movie that didn't quite catapult her to stardom, but did put her into a newer echelon of actress-someone whom studio executives suddenly knew the name of and wanted to see her stretch in more substantial parts.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Andy Hardy (Rooney), an all-American boy who is trying to save up enough money to take his girl Polly (Rutherford) to the dance.  However, when Polly can't go to the dance, Andy still wants to go by himself, and continues saving for the car.  When a friend convinces Andy to date his girlfriend Cynthia (Turner), in hopes of making sure Cynthia isn't swept off-her-feet by other boys, Andy has to trick Polly, a problem that is compounded when it turns out Polly can go to the dance.  Andy thus has to find a way to please both girls, and is aided in this by Betsy (Garland), who is a few years younger than Andy but is terribly smitten with him.  This all happens while Andy's mother (Holden) is off caring for his ailing grandmother, and so for much of the film Andy is being raised by his father Judge Hardy (Stone) and his older sister Marian (Parker)

Love Finds Andy Hardy is an odd film to associate with Lana Turner's eventually sexy, blonde goddess persona for a variety of reasons, but first of all it's a strange picture in general for us to profile here because it's the fourth film in a series of movies I haven't seen any of the other movies.  I normally wouldn't do something like that (I tend to favor seeing the story in the original order), but these serials were so popular in the days before television, and aren't really like the sequels we encounter today.  Instead, they're more like an episode of television, and so checking in on the Hardy family (the series would ultimately have sixteen excursions, as well as a short) seems more like seeing an episode of I Love Lucy or The Dick van Dyke Show out-of-sequence than missing Empire before going into Jedi.

The movie itself is kind of frothy.  This is wholesome family entertainment in a way we'd almost exclusively associate with television (think Ozzie & Harriet or The Donna Reed Show for context), but it's not particularly rapid fire and the jokes are far too genial to be funny years later.  Some of them are a little gross (there's a crack about Andy kissing Polly, even when she doesn't want to, that will have your antennae up pretty quickly), and there's not a lot of great slapstick or sight gags to make these compelling.  That said, it's not a bad movie either.  Rooney is fun as Andy-you see pretty quickly why this series made him a household name, and Garland is winning as Betsy, getting to sing a few ballads and the two have smashing chemistry with each other.  I'm going with 3-stars here because if you don't attach a genre to the movie (like, "comedy," and suddenly expect a laugh riot), it's fun.  It's just not the sort of thing that exists on-screens today where first you pitch the trailer, then the movie.

As for Turner, I'm going to be honest-I'm at a loss how she became a star off of this.  Her part is small, and while she's fun as a girl who will "let you kiss her all she wants" (Turner is basically the "trampy girl" trope where you know she won't end up with sweet-hearted Andy), it's hard to imagine what she'd graduate to just a few short years later.  Turner's so young here (just seventeen), and there are even cracks about the future sex symbol's appearance being less than ideal (particularly about her "red hair")-it's an odd chapter in the career of such a major star, and such a complete departure from what we'd normally associate with her that I'm glad we took this early detour in her career.  Next week, though, we'll get to one of the quintessential Lana Turner roles.

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Film: Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
Stars: June Allyson, Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Van Heflin, Lena Horne, Dorothy Patrick, Van Johnson, Tony Martin, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Robert Walker, Cyd Charisse, Angela Lansbury
Director: Richard Whorf (Vincente Minnelli, Busby Berkeley, Henry Koster, & George Sidney all also directed scenes in what sounds like a rough shoot, but none were credited)
Oscar History: No nominations
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 Lena Horne-click here to learn more about Ms. Horne (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For the past two weeks we have focused on the two major highlights of Lena Horne's film career during Classical Hollywood.  Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky were big deals, major motion pictures that starred African-American casts and were distributed by major studios.  However, these were anomalies.  For much of Horne's career in the 1940's and 50's, her film career was that of mere cameos.  Frequently she'd appear in films like Thousands Cheer, Swing Fever, and Ziegfield Follies as nothing more than someone that could belt out a classic tune, and then move on with the plot, oftentimes playing herself or simply a "famous singer."  This was because, since Horne was not playing stereotypical roles like maids or servants, she couldn't be seen in movies of the era in the South, and the studio couldn't afford to put her in major productions for risk that the lack of a southern box office would mean they couldn't recoup some of their investment.  This becomes particularly bitter with a movie like Till the Clouds Roll By, a 1946 MGM extravaganza, but we'll get to why in a second.

(Spoilers Ahead) Till the Clouds Roll By is the first of a quartet of biopics produced by the studio during this era where it's loosely based on the life of a famed composer (in this case Jerome Kern, as played by Robert Walker), but mostly it's an excuse for the studio to put its biggest musical stars into the picture singing the greatest hits of those composers (worth noting that the second of these films, Words and Music, also starred Lena).  As a result, the plot here is a bit thin, even by the standards of a 1940's musical.  We have Kern, falling in love with his wife Eva (Patrick), being mentored by another composer James Hessler (Heflin), and eventually trying to find some sort of path for Hessler's daughter Sally (Bremer) when she turns out spoiled & eventually, a runaway.  All of this is told in flashback by Kern to his cab driver on the night of Show Boat's premiere, which would help him to reach a new echelon of success.

The film on its merits is, well, a mixed bag (charitably).  I actually knew very little about Kern's life, and it's worth noting that while there are countless standards here, you might not be as familiar with him as you'd think either.  With the exception of Show Boat, while his songs are still well-known from other shows, none of his musicals are really done anymore, and so he's not recalled in the same way that someone like Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe might be today since their films/musicals are more frequently revived.  However, the acting in this portion is dreadful (even performers as gifted as Walker or Heflin can't sell this dreck), and you spend the entire movie wishing they'd get back to the singing.

That's because the musical numbers in Till the Clouds Roll By are sublime.  Angela Lansbury sings for the first time onscreen in the cheeky "How'd You Like to Spoon Me" and Judy Garland (very pregnant with Liza Minnelli during the shoot) is at her "awe shucks" best with "Look for the Silver Lining."  Some of the numbers are cut short (at 135 minutes, this is a particularly long film) to make way for the unnecessary plot, such as Dinah Shore's "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and, most regrettably, a ballet between Cyd Charisse & Gower Champion to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," but you'll leave being enchanted by these numbers.

And no songs are more enchanting than Lena Horne's two numbers, for my money the best in the production (and look at that cast list-this is hardly an ensemble filled with backbenchers).  Her "Why Was I Born?" is regal & glorious.  Horne once opined in an interview (with Judy Garland, oddly enough) that she always struggled to "sing pretty," but I don't know that anyone has ever looked so glamorous while singing in Classical Hollywood-if they have, I can't recall it.  Watching this scene, you'll either cry because you're moved, or because you are so angry that MGM couldn't have given Horne some proper classic musicals during this era.

Because, as the other song showed, Horne never really got a chance after Stormy Weather & Cabin in the Sky.  Here she sings "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat, one of the biggest numbers for Julie Laverne.  Horne desperately wanted the part when MGM decided to make the actual film, and in fact her costar here Kathryn Grayson (who plays Magnolia Hawks in Clouds' production of Show Boat) ended up playing the part she plays in this 1946 film when the big-screen Show Boat was made in 1951.  However, thanks to the Hays Code banning interracial romance onscreen, Horne's part was given to her friend Ava Gardner, a white woman despite the part being written for a biracial woman.  As a result, a role that Horne was born to play (and does so beautifully here) went to a woman who didn't even end up singing onscreen.  Combined with her regret over not getting the title role in Pinky (which won Jeanne Crain, another white woman playing a biracial performer, an Oscar nomination), Horne essentially left Hollywood for Vegas and the nightclub circuit.  Next week we will conclude our look at Horne with one last film role, far removed from the oppression Classic Hollywood put on her acting career.

OVP: Judy (2019)

Film: Judy (2019)
Stars: Renee Zellweger, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon
Director: Rupert Goold
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Renee Zellweger*, Makeup & Hairstyling)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I actually saw End of the Rainbow with Tracie Bennett, not on Broadway or even the West End, but when it made its American stage debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (for those who don't know, this blog is situated in Minnesota, which may explain why I occasionally struggle to be on the cutting edge of seeing some of the awards contenders).  I remember being absolutely astounded by the show, but mostly Bennett's raw look at the world of Judy Garland (a Minnesota treasure in her own right).  Garland's life has been told so many times, and been told definitively with Judy Davis & Me and My Shadows, but she brought a raw urgency to Garland's final years, where she was mostly just a shell of the vibrant force that was once a major movie star and a voice of a generation, and had long since lost her battle with pills and booze.  This is the Judy we're given in Rupert Goold's onscreen rendition of End of the Rainbow (renamed Judy cause heaven forbid we get a distinctive film title), which at once gives us a more intimate look into Garland's last stand, and also saddles it with an impossibly sad ending that it can't really recover from.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts) Judy Garland (Zellweger) is the mother of three children, the younger of two are living at home with her and the older of them enjoying her own start of fame (and like her mother, the demons that would come with it).  Judy is broke, and in order to make money since she can't get enough cash from American nightclubs (and is uninsurable on a film set thanks to her unprofessional behavior), she goes to London, where a packed out audience is waiting for her.  Judy is having an offscreen romance with her soon-to-be final husband Mickey (Wittrock), but that's as ill-advised as her consistent limit-pushing, using the same pills that once allowed her to work 18-hour days on the MGM lot to simply stay awake.  The movie alternates between her time on the set of The Wizard of Oz, with a creepy LB Mayer obsessed with controlling the "girl next door" and present-day Judy, whose demons are still there from that time in the spotlight.  The film ends on a high note, with Judy getting to have one great closing number of "Over the Rainbow" before the curtain closes (and we know that this comeback will be her last).

The movie is disappointing.  It can't really grab the electricity of the live play, where Bennett was able to give us a different kind of heightened Judy, manic but still bursts of genius coming out from a voice that won't come back.  Here the film is more preoccupied with trying to cover the bases of Judy lore, and almost every time it does so it fails.  At this point Garland's personal life is so famous we don't really need the flashbacks to her hellish time on the MGM lot, in many ways feeling like watching Bruce Wayne's parents die just to establish her current anguish-we know why Judy Garland is sad, we don't need it underlined.  Additionally, her relationship with Mickey Deans is confusing and underwritten-the writers clearly have an opinion on him (and it's not complimentary), but they don't have the guts to go after it, and instead just kind of depict him as a handsome leech.  About the only angle that felt genuinely interesting was an early scene where Garland is chatting with her daughter Liza Minnelli, who in 1969 was about to graduate from "Judy Garland's talented daughter" to a legitimate superstar.  Seeing the jealousy in Garland's eyes as she sees the world being laid bare for her daughter (while she, who has given her life to the entertainment industry, can't even get a job), is a challenging thing I've never seen a Garland biopic, and I kind of wish they'd explored this angle just a little bit further.

But biopics, especially ones based on musical superstars, are rarely about getting out-of-the-box, and instead are simply about a famous actor playing another famous person and singing the jukebox hits.  Zellweger uses her actual voice, a risky move while playing someone who was a considerably stronger singer than she is in real life, but let's face it-Garland in 1969 wasn't really "Judy Garland" anymore so having a less-talented singer take on the vocals isn't a fatal flaw.  Zellweger also resists the urge to imitate Garland's distinctive speaking voice, but in doing so she alienates herself too much from Judy.  I'm the last person to complain about a lack of mimicry in a biopic role (I think it's an overrated virtue), but I left Judy thinking that Zellweger hadn't successfully played a singer who was once the greatest in the world.  There's nothing there in her Judy that makes me bask in even a faded superstar, just an empty, funny celebrity who was brought down by pills.  The glamour, the movie star realness of Judy Garland isn't there even in a dilapidated capacity, and I felt the film & performance was hollow as a result.  You can tell she's trying, and every once-in-a-while she hints at what might be possible, but whether out of an urge to stray away from an impression or because Zellweger (who hasn't had a movie of this demand & pop culture importance in a decade) is out-of-practice, I felt her central work was flat.  Judy is a movie that could have been great, but unlike the real life Garland, it's not brought down by erratic swings-it's just too safe, unable to exhibit even a basic shred of originality.

The Six Women Who Danced with Astaire & Kelly

There's nothing I love more than a well-designed trivia question, particularly one for movies or politics.  Occasionally, I come across a particular trivia question I want to share with everyone, even people who aren't really into said genre, because it feels so well-structured and so simple.  A few weeks ago, I was randomly in a Wikipedia hole because I was looking up a film starring Mitzi Gaynor, and suddenly after googling if Gaynor had ever starred with Fred Astaire (she hadn't, though she'd made Les Girls with Gene Kelly), I thought: how many women have danced with both Astaire & Kelly on the big screen?

You can find the answer on IMDB if you look hard enough, but I figured since they keep it just to a sentence and don't list out the actual pictures, I'd do the work for you and include the list of the six women who have danced with both on the big screen:

(Note: I counted only narrative, studio films here.  Documentaries are excluded, as are television specials or awards shows, as then the lineup would surely get longer)

1. Rita Hayworth

Danced with Gene Kelly: Cover Girl (1944)
Danced with Fred Astaire: You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
Trivia Within the Trivia: During the filming of Cover Girl, Hayworth would elope with Orson Welles, oddly enough on the same day they filmed the wedding scene for the picture.  Kelly would reprise his role from Cover Girl in 1980's Xanadu (his final onscreen role), which may mark the longest gap an actor playing the same character has ever had between first and second films (can anyone think of a longer one?).
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: I unfortunately do not have the time to watch all of these movies (I will, eventually, though, as I've added a lot of them to my Netflix queue), so for each I'm going to go with pitting in YouTube the first dance number of each pair and see which one is better.  For Hayworth, it's "Put Me to Test" from Cover Girl versus "The Shorty George" from You Were Never Lovelier.  The Kelly number is classic, with both movie stars looking gorgeous in light green, but I loved the tap synchronicity of Astaire & Hayworth, both sporting spats and mixing multiple different dancing styles.

2. Judy Garland

Danced with Gene Kelly: For Me and My Gal (1942), The Pirate (1948) and Summer Stock (1950)
Danced with Fred Astaire:  Easter Parade (1948)
Trivia Within the Trivia: Garland also starred with both men in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), but didn't appear in any scenes with Kelly or Astaire.  That particular MGM film is far better known today as the only film (other than the That's Entertainment series) that had both Astaire and Kelly dancing with each other, to the tunes of George & Ira Gershwin.  Garland & Kelly also starred in Words and Music and Thousands Cheer, but it doesn't appear they danced together in either so I'm not counting them in the lineup (I haven't seen the picture, though, so if I'm wrong correct me below).
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: YouTube randomly selected "We're a Couple of Swells" from Easter Parade to compete against the title number from For Me and My Gal.  While the costuming of Easter Parade is priceless (Garland & Astaire dressed as swanky hobos), it's not really a killer dance number (Judy was a singer more than a dancer).  As a result, I prefer the slowly romantic number between a derby-wearing Kelly and Garland, tapping around a soda shop.

3. Vera-Ellen

Danced with Gene Kelly: Words and Music (1948) and On the Town (1949)
Danced with Fred Astaire: Three Little Words (1950) and The Belle of New York (1952)
Trivia Within the Trivia: Arguably the least-remembered of these six women today, Vera-Ellen may have been the best dancer of the bunch, and Astaire in particular admired her terribly.  She went to dance school as a child with Doris Day, the rare musical-comedy actress of this era who never appeared onscreen with Kelly or Astaire.
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: Astaire caught a bit of a lucky break here when "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" was #2 for the YouTube searches for Kelly, as that's one of my favorite Kelly numbers, but the search algorithm preferred 'When You Walk Down Main Street" from On the Town.  As a result, I'm going with Astaire's number, "Mr. and Mrs. Hoofer at Home" from Three Little Words, with Vera-Ellen in a shimmering lime green skirt dancing her through domestic strife.

4. Cyd Charisse

Danced with Gene Kelly: Singin' in the Rain (1952) and Brigadoon (1954)
Danced with Fred Astaire: The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957)
Trivia Within the Trivia: Again, I haven't seen the film here (there's a lot being added to my Netflix queue this Tuesday), so while It's Always Fair Weather definitely stars Charisse & Kelly, but I'm seeing no indication that they actually dance together in the picture.
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: Kelly presumably gets the advantage of "Erotic Dance" from Singin in the Rain here, with Charisse's impossibly long legs extended to take out his hat (arguably the most iconic moment in the actress's career).  At least I figured it was an advantage until I saw "Girl Hunt Ballet" in The Band Wagon, where a gangster-bedecked Astaire romances Charisse in a flaming red cocktail gown.  I don't know that I've ever used the word "sexy" to describe Fred Astaire, but it fits like a glove here.  The closest pairing of the bunch, but I give the edge to Astaire's high-hoofing (how does someone jump on their knees like that in their fifties?!?)

5. Leslie Caron

Danced with Gene Kelly: An American in Paris (1951)
Danced with Fred Astaire: Daddy Long Legs (1955)
Trivia Within the Trivia: With the recent death of Debbie Reynolds, Caron is the only living person to have danced with both Astaire & Kelly onscreen (she is 87).  In 1988, she pulled off an unusual feat for a ballet dancer, doing a number with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov (arguably the two most important male danzatores of the 20th Century) at the Paris Opera Ballet.
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: "Sluefoot" from Daddy Long Legs competes against the iconic ballet sequence in An American in Paris, and I can't take away two classic dance numbers from Kelly in the same article.  An easy win for the Best Picture winner, in the movie's best scene.

6. Debbie Reynolds

Danced with Gene Kelly: Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Danced with Fred Astaire: The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
Trivia Within the Trivia: By 1961, Astaire had largely retired from dancing onscreen (thinking he was too old), and wouldn't dance again on the big screen until 1968's Finian's Rainbow.  However, he gamely did a small dance with Reynolds during a party sequence in the film, and received a Golden Globe nomination for his troubles.
Who Had the Better Musical Number?: While it's a sweet scene, Reynolds & Astaire are simply dancing onscreen with each other, while "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain is one of the most impressive scenes in the history of the movies.  So, no contest for Kelly here.

A Mother's Day Celebration: Hollywood's Best Mother-Daughter Pairs

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought it would be fun to look at my five favorite mother-daughter pairs in Hollywood.  Below I have ranked the best mother-daughter pairs at the movies:

5. Diane Ladd and Laura Dern

Laura finally started to catch up with mama Diane at the Oscars this past year.  The Rambling Rose costars have had a long history with Oscar, with Ladd nominated three times versus Dern's two nominations.  Both are brilliant performers who also costarred on HBO's Enlightened.

4. Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher

Debbie was one of the biggest stars of the 1950's, headlining dozens of romantic comedies, and is still celebrated today (she recently won the SAG Life Achievement Award), while Carrie Fisher would have enormous success in front of the screen in the Star Wars films (she'll be in Episode 7 later this year) and behind the screen as a comedian and screenwriter.

3. Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson

Goldie Hawn is perfect, and I've always LOVED these two together whenever they do interviews or talks on the red carpet.  Kate hasn't had the career her mom has, but she's always insanely fun and I constantly wish she'd pull her mom out of retirement for some sort of mother-daughter comedy (who wouldn't want that?).

2. Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli

Both legends in their own-right, two of Classic Hollywood's biggest stars both won Oscars (Judy a juvenile award, while Liza emerged victorious with Cabaret), and both became immortal for their singing prowess and stage presence.

1. Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis

Janet's a Hollywood icon, starring in three of the best films ever made (Touch of Evil, Psycho, and The Manchurian Candidate) while Jamie Lee Curtis has headlined films as diverse as Halloween, True Lies, and Freaky Friday.  Together they're not just Scream Queens of different generations-they're my favorite mother-daughter pair in Hollywood.

Those are my favorites-how about yours?  Who else would you add to this list?  Share in the comments!  And Happy Mother's Day!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 1

So, with the recent death of Lauren Bacall, the American Film Institute's list of living "greatest actors" just got one person shorter.  Created in 1999, and for only actors who made their film debuts after 1950 (or had already passed away at the time), the list at the time was already pretty short on still-living members (only nine including the men), but is now down to three, and just one of those in females.

So in honor of this list, and Ms. Bacall, I thought it would be a cool idea to do a rundown of the actors on it, and my favorite of their performances.  This is partly both a public service and a personal bit of a shaming.  One of the sadder things that happened to me yesterday while discussing Ms. Bacall's passing was that I realized that most people I was talking to about her had never heard of her.  This is sad not only because modern cinema doesn't celebrate its past enough (cough, the Governors Awards, cough), but also because they are missing out on Ms. Bacall's work.  However, while I am certainly aware of all of the women on this list, I will admit heartily that I haven't extensively been watching most of their filmographies, and most of them have at least one major glaring miss from me in their filmography.  As a result, my Netflix queue (and hopefully yours) is going to be a lot fuller when all of this is done.  Let's start, and in anti-climactic list reading fashion, we're going to start at the top of the list instead of the bottom (they're all legends, why not mix it up as a result?).

1. Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

Oscar Nominations: 12, with four wins for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond
Probably Best Known Today For: Hepburn's warbling voice is oft-imitated, and I'm guessing that today she's best known for that rather than an actual film role.  If it is a film role, it's likely On Golden Pond, which was a HUGE success in 1981 (the second highest-grossing film of the year after Raiders-it beat Superman II, can you imagine that happening today?!?).
My Favorite Performance: This is a tough one, as Kate's one of the few actors on this list that I've seen a boatload of her movies.  I'd probably have to go with Bringing Up Baby over The Philadelphia Story, though (even though I like the latter film better) since Hepburn is just on all cylinders in that film (the jailhouse scene still leaves me in stitches).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: This is the part of the post where I reel out certain missing elements of my cinematic credentials.  I have seen eight of Hepburn's Best Actress-nominated performances, but probably the most famous that I'm missing is Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.  It's been considered quite dated and not as good by modern audiences, but there's no denying that it certainly has a pop culture cache, so I'll go with that one.

2. Bette Davis (1908-1989)

Oscar Nominations: 10 nominations, with two wins for Dangerous and Jezebel
Probably Best Known Today For: ...Having those Bette Davis eyes.  Kim Carnes immortalized Davis in a way few of her films ever could for Generation X, but cinematically she remains forever Margo Channing, fascinating her seatbelt for a bumpy night.
My Favorite Performance: I could be provocative and pick one of her other truly strong performances (Davis was the Meryl Streep of her day, for context), but you just cannot beat All About Eve.  The phrase "she was born to play that role" is a hackneyed cliche, but I'll be damned if it isn't true here.  Claudette Colbert was originally slated to play the part, but she had to back out due to an injury, and Bette Davis gloriously filled in.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm missing a few of her Oscar-nominated roles, the most glaring of which is probably Dark Victory, a performance that probably would have won her a third Oscar before even Walter Brennan got there were it not for some Civil War film where the main character has the same name as a color.

3. Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)

Oscar Nominations: 5 nominations, winning competitively for Roman Holiday and eventually winning the Jean Thalberg Humanitarian Award.  Hepburn would also receive the EGOT, the only actress on this list to do so.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her incomparable style (she's still regularly featured in ads for fashion houses) and Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of those few classics that has transcended generations in terms of its cultural significance.
My Favorite Performance: Holly Golightly is a tough act to beat, and I'm not going to try.  Her work in Breakfast was complicated, airy, with just enough of a scent of melancholy to keep the film grounded in Truman Capote's original story.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen all but one of her Oscar nominated roles (I'm missing The Nun's Story), and I've actually seen most of her most significant non-nominated work (this is probably the most complete of all of the filmographies we're going to discuss today), so I'll go with that.

4. Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982)

Oscar Nominations: 7 nominations, winning three of them in one of the best track records in the history of the Oscars (she won for Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express
Probably Best Known Today For: Casablanca, one of the truly iconic classic films and one of those few films that is thrown around as an indisputable high point of the art form (in the same way War and Peace is for the novel).
My Favorite Performance: Casablanca is my favorite film, and she's my favorite performance in it, so you do the math here.  Bergman has long been one of my favorite actresses because she brought that quiet, introverted acting style that is so celebrated now to life much earlier in her career than most people did.  She's also, in my opinion, the most beautiful woman in all of classic cinema (give or take Rita Hayworth).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: This is one of the final actors before I start ducking my head for cover and wondering if I can call myself a movie fan, as I've seen most of Bergman's most significant work.  From a curiosity standpoint you cannot beat Bergman meets Bergman in Autumn Sonata, but I think the most important film I haven't seen from her is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

5. Greta Garbo (1905-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Garbo received three nominations in her career (though four...kind of; back in the day you could be nominated for more than one film), but never won a competitive Oscar.  She did receive an Honorary Oscar in 1954, though she didn't show up to receive it (it was mailed to her house).
Probably Best Known Today For: Wanting to be alone.  Garbo's films have largely gone by the wayside in the public consciousness, but she herself remains an iconic figure of reclusion and thespian mystery.
My Favorite Performance: I have seen none of Garbo's most iconic roles, so I will go with the one Oscar-nominated performance of hers I have seen, Romance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Where to begin?  Probably with Camille, which is considered her greatest performance and got her her second Oscar nomination.  And considering she landed a nod in 1939, generally considered the greatest of all movie years, Ninotchka surely should also be mentioned.

6. Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)

Oscar Nominations: One of the only actors on this entire list with no history with Oscar, Monroe never received a nomination or a win.  She did win a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot, however.
Probably Best Known Today For: Never having left us.  No other actress on this list can remotely compare to Monroe in the ways that they have permeated modern pop culture.  She's still on billboards, in advertisements, and sold as poster art.  Andy Warhol helped, but pretty much every pop culture scribe has at some point gone to the Marilyn well for inspiration.  Most people would struggle to name one of her actual movies, but everyone knows HER.
My Favorite Performance: Of course it would be Some Like It Hot, which is one of the greatest screwball comedies ever made and Monroe is dynamite as Sugar Kane, the ukulele player.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Unlike most of the public, I've actually seen most of Monroe's most significant work.  Probably the biggest miss would be The Seven Year Itch, which contains her iconic white dress subway scene.

7. Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

Oscar Nominations: 5 nominations, including two competitive wins for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; like Audrey Hepburn, Taylor also won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, getting her Oscar count up to three.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her many marriages.  Taylor was married eight times and was a tabloid sensation, most notably for her two marriages to Richard Burton.  Taylor also became hugely identified with AIDS research in the 1980's and is perhaps the celebrity best known for her advocacy for HIV-infected people.
My Favorite Performance: It's tough to top what she did as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and I'm not going to try-that is a performance that has to be seen to be believed, and she heartily deserved her Oscar citation.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen most of Liz's most significant work, though I'm missing two big ones: National Velvet, her most iconic role as a child, and Cleopatra, the film that nearly bankrupt 20th Century FOX.

8. Judy Garland (1922-1969)

Oscar Nominations: 2 nominations for A Star is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg, though she lost for both.  Garland did pick up a Juvenile Award for The Wizard of Oz/Babes in Arms in 1939, though.
Probably Best Known Today For: The Wizard of Oz is a classic that every generation encounters on television, and Garland's Dorothy Gale is the heart of that story.  She's also the pinup for the "tragic child actor" story, as her work has long been overshadowed by her personal demons with drugs and booze.
My Favorite Performance: Definitely A Star is Born, which is really one of those brilliant art-imitating-life situations (Garland herself would become a tragically forgotten Hollywood star), and she just nails every aspect of this really superb movie (particularly that unforgettable intro in "The Man That Got Away").
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Garland has three truly iconic films, and I have viewed all of them (the other being Meet Me in St. Louis, for those keeping track at home), so I have to go with the B-work.  I could pick Nuremberg, but she's got such a small part in that so I'll instead pick one of the MGM classics, Easter Parade.

And we'll end there and make this a three-parter.  It's now time to confess-which of these women do you love and worship and which of these ladies do you have glaring misses in their filmography (or gulp, maybe haven't seen them in anything?).  Share in the comments!

Deanna Durbin (1921-2013) and the History of the Juvenile Oscars

This past week Deanna Durbin, Universal's girl-next-door, passed away at the age of 91.  Durbin is probably not well-known to today's movie audiences, but in her time she was a huge star.  Her movies even saved Universal Studios from declaring bankruptcy.

As a result of this, she won a special Juvenile Academy Award in 1938, the second person to win the award (the picture to the left is Durbin with her trophy).  At the time, the Oscars didn't generally recognize childhood performances in competitive categories, and so from 1934 to 1960, twelve individuals received Juvenile Academy Awards.  While there are only twelve (the same number as the number of men who have walked on the move-coincidence?...probably), and the last award was presented over sixty years ago, thanks to the young ages of many of the recipients, a number of these men and women are still alive, and in honor Deanna Durbin, I thought it would be fun to check to see what happened to each of them in the years that followed.

Shirley Temple
Born 1928 (still living)
Won in 1934

Temple, one of the biggest stars in the history of cinema, and probably the most well-known child actor of all-time, was a surefire winner in 1934.  After becoming the biggest Box Office draw in America, she slowly saw her popularity decline as she entered adulthood.  She, did, however, enjoy one of the oddest second acts in Hollywood, becoming a U.S. Ambassador to both Ghana and Ireland, and racking up a myriad of accolades to go with her Oscar, including the Kennedy Center Honor, the SAG Life Achievement Award, and the National Board of Review Career Achievement Award.

Deanna Durbin
Born 1921 (died in 2013 at 91)
Won in 1938

As mentioned before, Durbin won at the height of her fame as America's girl-next-door.  Like Temple, she couldn't find as much work in the years that followed, and eventually retired in 1949.  She was frequently asked to return to the screen, but spent the rest of her life in Paris, living a deeply private life with her husband and two children.

Mickey Rooney
Born 1920 (still living)
Won in 1938

The girl-next-door needed the boy next door to go with her, and so Mickey Rooney picked up the first Oscar of his career in 1938 as well.  It's hard to believe since he's been such a parody of himself in the years since, but at the time he was headlining the Andy Hardy movies and playing opposite Judy Garland (as well as Spencer Tracy in 1938's Boys Town).  Rooney received an Oscar nomination the next year for Babes in Arms and four years later for The Human Comedy.  After serving during World War II, he returned to Hollywood and enjoyed fame in film and television, receiving Oscar nominations for 1956's The Bold and the Brave and 1979's The Black Stallion.  He became the only Juvenile Oscar winner to win a second trophy in 1983, another Honorary Academy Award.

Judy Garland
Born 1922 (died in 1969 at 47)
Won in 1939

Is there a star that burned as brightly and fell as far as Judy Garland?  Judy received her Oscar after one of the biggest years of her career, with The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms (her costar Mickey Rooney gave her a kiss on Oscar night, as seen in the photo to the left) both tearing up the Box Office.  Garland would of course go on to be the ultimate comeback kid several more times in her career, gaining two Oscar nominations for A Star is Born (losing in one of the closest Oscar races ever against Grace Kelly) and Judgment at Nuremberg, and giving one of the most lauded performances in the history of entertainment at Carnegie Hall in 1961.  She died from an overdose of barbiturates in 1969.

Margaret O'Brien
Born 1937 (still living)
Won in 1944

Following in Judy's footsteps (career-wise), O'Brien won the Juvenile Oscar five years after Garland, primarily for starring opposite her in Meet Me in St. Louis.  O'Brien couldn't cut it as an adult star, and only made occasional appearances on the silver screen in the later years.  There's a great story about O'Brien's Oscar, which had been stolen by a maid in the 1950's, finally returning to her in 1995 after being found at a flea market.

Peggy Ann Garner
Born 1932 (died in 1984 at 52)
Won in 1945

The brilliant young performer from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn won right after O'Brien, and gave one of the best performances to be honored for this award (though I haven't seen them all, Garner is one of the few I would have nominated in the competitive awards).  Like almost everyone on this list, Garner was unable to break-out into adult film roles, though she did feature in Robert Altman's movie A Wedding in 1978.  She passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 52.

Claude Jarman, Jr.
Born 1934 (still living)
Won in 1946

Jarman won this award after his film debut, The Yearling, a film that scored seven nominations in 1946 and could have probably made it eight if Jarman didn't have this avenue to win his award (he was the Hailee Steinfeld of his day).  Headlining a Best Picture for your debut film typically means that you're destined to fall a bit, and Jarman's career was quickly over.  Interesting side note though-he ended up having seven children in three marriages, so yeah, that's a lot of kids.

Ivan Jandl
Born 1937 (died in 1987 at 50)
Won in 1948

Jandl also won his Oscar for his screen debut, starring opposite Montgomery Clift in The Search (he's so adorable in this movie-prepare to say "awe" multiple times).  Jandl was from the Czech Republic and didn't speak English, so he learned his lines phonetically.  While he made other films in the Czech Republic, this was his one and only American film (though once you've starred opposite Monty Clift, where else is there to go?).

Bobby Driscoll
Born 1937 (died in 1968 at 31)
Won in 1949

Like Judy, Bobby Driscoll had a pretty horrible life, but unlike Judy, he didn't remain in the spotlight throughout all of it (and it was decidedly shorter).  Driscoll was rumored for this award for his performance in Song of the South (as was his costar Luana Patten), but didn't win until three years later for his work in So Dear My Heart and The Window (you can see him receiving the award to the left from Donald O'Connor).  Driscoll was a huge star in his youth, and also made films like Treasure Island and was the voice of Disney's Peter Pan.  His career started to go south as an adult, however, and he eventually fell into the world of drugs and crumbling marriages.  He oddly got involved with Andy Warhol's Factory for a time in the 1960's, before becoming homeless and dying from drug-related heart failure.  As a sign of his fallen stature, it wasn't until over three years after his death that it was announced to the public, despite his Oscar-winning status.

Jon Whiteley
Born 1945 (still living)
Won in 1954

Also a young actor whose career petered out as he grew up, Jon Whiteley's life has had a much happier ending.  After winning for The Young Kidnappers (along with his costar Vincent Winter), Whiteley appeared in a couple of films before quitting the business all-together.  He went on to become a well-known art historian at Oxford, and to be happily married with two children.

Vincent Winter
Born 1947 (died in 1998 at 50)
Won in 1954

The second-youngest of all of the winners (after Temple), Winter was only seven when he won along with his costar for The Little Kidnappers, and is chronologically the youngest of all of the winners, despite another star winning six years later.  Winter also had a relatively happy adult life.  After moving away from the front of the camera in his early years, he went on to be a production manager on a number of high-profile films, regularly working with Steven Spielberg in the 1980's.  He passed away from a heart attack at age 50.

Hayley Mills
Born 1946 (still living)
Won in 1960

The daughter of the great British actor John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, acting was in the blood for Hayley Mills, one of the few child actors to rival Shirley Temple in her popularity, and therefore a perfect bookend for the awards.  Mills won her Oscar for her work in Pollyanna, a huge commercial success, and went on to have a string of hits with Disney, including The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, and The Moon Spinners.  While she had one big hit out the gate from Disney (The Trouble with Angels), her film career petered out and she largely left the film industry, only to return in the 1980's with work in television, most notably Good Morning, Miss Bliss, a short-lived series that nonetheless spawned the massively successful Saved by the Bell.  In an interesting side note, at the height of her fame, she was offered the title role in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, though Walt Disney insisted the role wasn't appropriate for her image, and the part went to Sue Lyon.

And those are the twelve winners.  Interestingly enough, despite the award being an option at the time, the Oscars still nominated a few child actors during this time period, including Bonita Granville, Brandon deWilde, Sal Mineo, and Patty McCormack (all of whom lost their competitive Oscars).  This all changed when Patty Duke pulled off the trophy for 1962's The Miracle Worker, and with proof that child actors could win the competitive Academy Award, the Oscars stopped giving out the Juvenile Oscar.  Since then, two actors under eighteen have won the award (Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin), and a myriad of actors have received nominations, including Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin, and last year's Quvenzhane Wallis.