OVP: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Film: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Stars: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

We've talked about this before, but with noir, it's not always clear when I'm headed into the movie whether or not the film in question is, in fact, film noir.  Ace in the Hole is one of the bigger titles that has this problem.  Directed by Billy Wilder in 1951, the film was poorly-received when it first came out and flopped at the box office, despite Wilder coming off of the critical acclaim of an undisputed film noir like Sunset Boulevard the previous year.  The movie has since been rescued by critics, but it's debatable whether or not it's actually a film noir.  In 2022, Eddie Muller (the president of the Film Noir Foundation) said it wasn't, that it was more a depiction of sleazy journalism, and to a degree I agree with him.  This film doesn't entirely fit within the traditional confines of noir, even if it has elements of it.  But because it's oftentimes called noir, I thought it was a good choice for our series this month.  And whatever it is, it's indisputably a great movie.  

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Chuck Tatum (Douglas), a ruthless, ill-tempered journalist who is forced to work for a small town newspaper after becoming basically unemployable at larger papers.  Tatum comes across a man named Leo Minosa (Benedict) trapped in a cave, an amiable guy whom the sheriff assumes he can get out in about 12 hours.  But Tatum, understanding that people will clamor for such a human interest story, convinces the sheriff and Leo's unhappy wife Lorraine (Sterling), who was about to leave him, to take the long way to rescue Leo, therefore extending the rescue to a week rather than the initial 12 hours, and getting him a big story.  It works-he gets national news attention, which results in huge sales for the local paper, and gives Chuck the chance to get back on top.  But in the process, Leo's prognosis gets worse, with him eventually getting pneumonia.  Chuck tries to save him the original way, but it's no longer an option because they've damaged the path by going the long way.  Leo dies, but before that he tells Chuck he has left an anniversary present for Lorraine in their home.  Chuck forces Lorraine to wear it (a fur stole), nearly strangling her with it, and in the process she stabs him in self-defense with a pair of scissors.  Chuck eventually confesses to his crimes, though it's clear that they will never reach the readers who were enthralled with Leo's story, and then dies from the wound that he got from Lorraine.

This is one of of three movies (along with Sunset Boulevard and A Face in the Crowd) that Wilder made in the 1950's that was about the media, specifically critical of the way that journalism & entertainment were merging in an unhealthy way.  As I mentioned above, only Sunset Boulevard was financially successful of the three, and it's easy to see why that resonated more with audiences, given that it was about a "crazy" movie star, and people love to see a celebrity fall.  The latter two are more indictments on their audiences, and Ace in the Hole in particular.  This is a nasty story-it's about how people will turn a man who is in danger, someone we should want to save, into a story.  The ending of the movie is literally a carnival (the alternate title of this is The Big Carnival), with people celebrating in some aspects Leo getting out of the cave, but more so their own stake in his misery.  There are fights between people over who has been at the cave the longest, and watching people put in their own claim on a piece of one man's fame-through-misery.  The focus is obviously on how characters like Chuck & Lorraine are profiting off of Leo, putting his life at stake for a few dollars, but honestly what struck me about my screening was the people they were catering to.  In an era where we literally watch the Capitol be stormed, and the focus is less on the horror & more on the reaction from politicians of how it happened...it's easy to see the terrible way we all contribute to the degradation of our humanity just for a few dollars and a few moments of macabre entertainment.

It's helped by a pair of wonderful performances from Douglas & Sterling.  Kirk Douglas is a complicated actor for me, as there are times I genuinely do not get his appeal, but other times I'm totally invested in him.  I can't quite say I'm a fan, but when he's good, I totally can subscribe to it, and this is a case of him being very good, playing his Chuck as someone who has never questioned his own morality, mostly because he finds such a thing a nuisance on his way to the top.  Sterling is also good.  I loved the way that she throws herself at Douglas, a love story that even he knows makes little sense, mostly because it's the only thing she knows she can use against a man.  She's been stuck so long that she struggles with changing her own plan even if it means a faster means to an end.  I kind of wish the film had the guts to give us one last moment with her, though the Hays Code might've gotten in the way there.  Lorraine essentially gets out of this with cash & a widow's lease on life...I wish we'd either have seen her completely get away, or forced into her own nightmare, being "Leo's Widow" as the only way to make money going forward (which is probably what would've been her fate).  That lack of focus and maybe a minute or two of repetitive storytelling are my only complaints, though.  This might not be noir, but it's proof that Wilder (more than any other filmmaker of his era) could see the dawning of a new era in America...and it wasn't shining.

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

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

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

OVP: The Big Sky (1952)

Film: The Big Sky (1952)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt, Arthur Hunnicutt
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Arthur Hunnicutt, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We will jump back five decades from our French film yesterday to 1952 as we look at Best Cinematography nominees this week.  The Big Sky is a generally well-regarded western from the early 1950's when Kirk Douglas had graduated to proper leading man status, but probably wasn't quite at the point where he'd be amongst the biggest names in Hollywood (like he would be in the late 1950's).  The movie is a retelling of the novel by AB Guthrie, Jr., and isn't necessarily what you think of when you list one of Hawks' best films-after all, the man made Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and that's just the A-list.  But The Big Sky is a surprisingly moving story of friendship buried within the traditional confines of a western, and I left moved but unsurprised that a director as visionary as Hawks was able to craft such a compelling narrative cinematically.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the 1830's, laid-back Jim Deakins (Douglas) comes across a suspicious man named Boone Caudill (Martin) in the wilderness, and while they are opposites, they quickly become good friends, and soon traveling companions as they go out searching for Boone's uncle Zeb (Hunnicutt).  After finding him (and then promptly getting thrown in jail), they join his band of trappers, who are traveling some 2000 miles up the Missouri River to seek trade with the Blackfoot.  They are led on this expedition by Teal Eye (Threatt), a beautiful woman who is the daughter of a chief, and will be how they barter with the Blackfoot into giving them the trade business.  This trade comes with peril, though, as the Missouri Trading Company (a rival) finds out about Zeb's plan to establish trade with the Blackfoot, and consistently attack them (at one point even burning their boat), as they move up the river.  Along the journey, amid multiple dangers, both Jim & Boone fall in love with Teal Eye, and form a romantic rivalry.  In the film's closing moments, Jim pitches his love to Teal Eye, but she only loves him as a brother-she wants Boone.  Boone initially resists, shaming her, and Jim gives him disparagement, but eventually Boone decides to stay with Teal Eye, the two men able to repair their friendship, but likely never to see one another again as Jim returns home.

The Big Sky is the kind of movie that really comes together in the last twenty minutes, which is always a challenge for me as a reviewer.  Up until that point, the film's focus on the constant attacks on Zeb's trading company feels half-hearted, sturdy stuff but I'd want something more even if I'm having a good time (westerns are in my top three favorite film genres).  But the love story, particularly the one of friendship between Boone & Jim (there's some Celluloid Closet going on here), comes into focus in the final moments, and it lifts the picture to be something more than it seemed.  When Jim, angry about losing out on his love, but angrier still that he will never be able to look at his friend in the same way if he doesn't take the woman he loves, confronts Boone-it's great cinema, and the final goodbye from Jim & Boone worked for me.  As a result, we're giving this a 3-star rating, but a very high one, bordering on a 4.

It is in these moments that you come to understand why Hunnicutt received his Oscar nomination.  The actor has so far in the film been a fun comic presence, but not the sort you see nominated in the 1950's (it feels more what you'd see nominated in the 1930's).  However, the smooth-talking Hunnicutt makes the most of a late confession over the woman in his life that got away, and how he never forgot her (and in the process, Jim realizes perhaps that he'll never forget Teal Eye or Boone, the great loves of his life).  It adds a strong depth to Hunnicutt's performance that otherwise was lacking, and while this isn't immediately the sort of performance that would spring to mind for a nomination, it's certainly a reputable one (though his early scenes do feel like he's doing a bit too much of a Walter Brennan impression).

We can't neglect this week's theme, of course, and will need to address the Cinematography.  The movie is filmed almost exclusively outdoors, which usually helps in terms of Cinematography, but it's not using that as a crutch.  The film makes strong use of wide shots, particularly in open scenes along the river & at the Blackhawk camp, and the scenes along the river capture the mood of the film, looking beautiful but finding peaceful & rough shots to match the course of the movie (as if the river is its own credit in the movie).  It kind of feels like it'd have been better in color, to be honest (there's so much beauty in those shots you wish you could catch the blues of the sky & water), but this is a find for cinematography-gorgeous & calming.

Paths of Glory (1957)

Film: Paths of Glory (1957)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Oscar History: Despite a BAFTA Best Picture nomination and universal praise for the film (then and now), the film received no Oscar nominations, likely due to the controversial nature of the movie's depiction of the military.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

One of the realities of the quarantine for all of us has been that we're staying at home constantly (and if we're not, we should be-social distancing is more important now than ever).  And with that, you can either sit around, be lazy, watching the same TV show over-and-over again (no judgment, this has been part of my "mental decompression" process over the past few months, especially with Bob's Burgers, and I support any form that social distancing takes place if it's medically sound), or you can start to cross off certain things from your To Do lists, and for me, that's been seeing a lot of movies.  Even without access to a movie theater, I'll likely hit the same number of movies I saw in 2019 by Columbus Day, perhaps even Labor Day, at the current rate I'm going.  And with that, I've seen an enormous number of quality, 5-star films.  I normally don't throw out 5-star ratings very often (indeed, I try to save them for only the most hallowed of cinematic experiences), but this week you're going to get two of them-one today, one on Tuesday.  And that's because I'm going to be watching two major classics of 1950's cinema, the first of which is arguably the most important English-language film I'd never seen until this past Friday: Paths of Glory.

(Spoilers Ahead) Paths of Glory is short, particularly considering director Stanley Kubrick would not be brief in later landmark pictures in his filmography (it's only 88 minutes long).  The movie is about a French battalion in World War I whose General Mireau (Macready) is given an order to try to take a well-defended German position called the "Anthill."  Mireau knows this is impossible-the task is not something that his troops will be able to execute successfully, and will surely end with countless lost lives, but is informed that if he does this, he may well be in-line for a promotion.  Mireau greedily gives the orders, and his men die in the battle, with his B Company refusing to continue the fruitless attack (at one point Mireau even orders that his own men are fired upon, but his captain refuses).  When word breaks, Mireau wants to sentence 100 of the men for cowardice, but is persuaded to randomly choose three men, all of whom are chosen for the personal gains of their commanding officers.  The film then shifts into a slow death march, with Colonel Dax (Douglas), the one man in this military who sees this trial for the sham that it is, trying to persuade the commanding officers to come to their senses and not kill these men, but to no avail.  The film ends with the three men shot for cowardice, and the remaining troops having a moment of lonely song in a bar before being sent back into battle.

Paths of Glory at the time invited an incredible amount of criticism from military and government leaders, especially in France, Germany, and Spain at the time (always the contrarian, Winston Churchill loved the movie).  There's a reason for that-Paths of Glory is an obvious entry in the "war is hell" canon, but more so it is deeply critical of the concept of military command, and the greed that it involves.  The film shows Macready and Menjou (both excellent in their roles), playing ambitious, shallow generals who move around men's lives less like they are trying to win a war and more like they're planning a place setting at a dinner party.  Kubrick, ever a stickler for detail, smartly shoots certain sequences in long or wide shots to counter the ugly, war-torn trenches with the gaudy opulence of the general's palaces & residents.  It shows how oftentimes the generals and politicians are making decisions based on their own personal greed and wish to advance more than what is best for the troops and winning the war.  This concept is commonplace in film (and in coverage of military & political figures) now, but in 1957 this was unthinkable & quite shocking.

Kubrick, more than any other director though, had a way of finding what was shocking in its time and making it age well.  Paths of Glory like Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange after it, has such a specific motif that it still feels fresh sixty years later, even as it clearly has influenced countless military films since then.  His cinematography is gorgeous, moving, and precise, as is his direction.  The film's message of how war can rob the soul of a man is timeless, and he smartly makes every scene count (there's no fat in this movie).  The performances are also quite strong.  As I mentioned Macready & Menjou both play their parts beautifully, and I have to admit this is best I've ever seen Kirk Douglas.  If you follow this blog, you'll know that I am hit-or-miss with Douglas so this might reek of a backhanded compliment, but don't take it that way-it is a crime, even in a year as stacked as 1957, that Douglas didn't get an Oscar nomination for his work here.  Paths of Glory is a true achievement, a fresh, modern look at a tale as old as humanity, and one that has somehow remained unstained in the decades since.

Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)

We spend a lot of time in Classical Hollywood on this blog, and in most cases we discuss actors who have long since passed.  Katherine Hepburn.  Bette Davis.  Clark Gable.  Spencer Tracy.  This past week, we added another name to that list, a man whose longevity (dying at the age of 103) has rivaled him in recent pop culture as much as his initial cinematic output.  This week, we lost Kirk Douglas.

Douglas's work runs nearly the entirety of Classical Hollywood, ranging from his early work playing second fiddle to actors like Barbara Stanwyck & Ann Sothern into his era of Hollywood leading roles, characters as diverse as Vincent van Gogh and Ulysses.  In 1960, he had his most iconic role in the film Spartacus, where Douglas took huge strides to end the Black List by hiring screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to pen the movie.

Kirk Douglas, if you look far enough into this site, has a complicated legacy with me.  While I forever adored the acting style of his son Michael (one of my all-time favorites), I was less enthused by his work, especially in older articles.  Douglas's overly dramatic presence in later pictures sometimes rubbed me the wrong way, but in recent years as we started to get into his earlier pictures, I've developed an appreciation for the way his presence as a desperate man in movies like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers or Out of the Past (my personal favorite of his films) informs the movies and brings them an added nuance their leading characters sometimes lack.  Douglas can rest assured that, while his time on this earth is no more, his lasting legacy, that of countless movies and cinematic experiences, will continue to live on, not just on this blog as we see more and more of them, but in the hearts of any filmgoer who is always ready to investigate a new (old) story.

I Walk Alone (1947)

Film: I Walk Alone (1947)
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey
Director: Byron Haskin
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

In our third week with Lizabeth Scott, we also welcome back two stars that seem to be popping up at TMROJ a lot in the past few weeks, Kirk Douglas & Burt Lancaster.  Lancaster & Douglas would make seven films together over the next four decades (ending their long-running tenure as a cinematic pair with 1986's Tough Guys)-this is the only film where they don't have equal billing, though, as Douglas (who, like Scott, was having a big few years as an actor) was not yet an established star like Lancaster.  That such a film set off such a long film partnership is odd, because while I Walk Alone is fine, it's also relatively forgettable, the sort of late-night television you watch and wonder the next day what it was called.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Frankie (Lancaster), a man freshly out of prison and trying to find the money he is due from his former partner Noll (Douglas).  Noll & Frankie had been bootleggers in 1933 (which, considering their ages would have made Lancaster & Douglas teenage bootleggers, but let's not get bogged down by facts just yet), and made a promise they'd split any money they made 50/50, even if one of them got caught and sent to prison.  Year later, Noll, now a legitimate businessman with a thriving nightclub, is visited by Frankie asking for half of what he has, and Noll refuses, but first tries to have his girlfriend Kay (Scott) seduce Frankie to figure out what his angle is, and the two fall in love (Noll is also stepping out with Kay with a wealthy socialite and has no intention of marrying Kay, which is why she doesn't come across as a harlot for the 1940's crowd).  The movie has multiple standoffs between Noll & Frankie, one of which ends with their mutual friend Dave (Corey) dead at Noll's hand, and eventually Noll gets his comeuppance when he's gunned down by police, after it's clear he was the one who killed Dave.

It's strange to watch Lancaster become the hero here, and possibly we watch the film violate the Hays Code by having him be a criminal who gets away pretty much scot-free at the end, simply by making the argument that he's a better person than Douglas's Noll.  This is odd because Douglas's character, at least until Frankie shows up, is working within the law (even though he hadn't always), trying to make his business profitable and respectable.  The movie therefore feels more like one that would be released in the 1950's or 60's, where establishment, moneyed villains, rather than the type of hoods that Lancaster is playing here, would become en vogue.

This juxtaposition is probably the most interesting part of I Walk Alone.  Lancaster, whom I've been warming to this month, goes completely bombastic and overacts throughout the movie, every mood swing needing to be underlined.  This is what has always kept me from being a fan of his work in the past, and while I'm now someone who is going to be less shy of his filmography, I don't know that I'll ever be an ardent fan.  Douglas is also growing on me, and is considerably better as Noll, giving him a creepy supporting sheen that works for the picture.  But the movie is repetitive, and its politics are complicated.  It's honestly a pretty socialist film, with Lancaster demanding to be paid for his initial investment in the partnerships despite doing little of the tangible work, and I'm quite surprised that it was Martha Ivers, and not a picture like I Walk Alone that has been associated with the Black List in a major way.

Scott gets a relatively thankless role as Kay, basically a beautiful woman for the two men to spar with and spar over, but I honestly think this is the movie where I kind of become obsessed with Scott.  I have two more pictures of hers to see before the end of the month, including the film that is generally considered to house her finest performance, but while I'm not entirely sure she's a good actress, she's utterly compelling onscreen.  Her stilted delivery, broad-shouldered stance, and baritone voice shouldn't work, but they do.  You instantly get why someone would fall for Kay, becoming enamored after a decadent French dinner, and why these two men want to make sure she's on their side before the end of the battle.  Scott's work here is impossible to ignore, and by-far the thing you best remember as you contemplate the film.  A stiff, but never lifeless, personage on the screen is so rare in movies of this era that it feels almost like method acting coming from Scott.  Like I said, I don't know if it's a great performance, but it left me entranced.

OVP: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Film: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Judith Anderson
Director: Lewis Milestone
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

Lizabeth Scott became a star by the sheer force-of-will of mega-producer Hall Wallis.  Unlike virtually every other star in our series, Scott didn’t really have a wilderness or supporting part period-she made 22 films in her career and 21 of them she got star billing.  The reason for that is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a film that she got to be ranked alongside Barbara Stanwyck & Van Heflin despite being a virtual unknown (to underline point here, below-the-line but with nearly as large of a part is Kirk Douglas in his screen debut, who without Wallis pushing him wasn’t given the same level of publicity as Scott).  Barbara Stanwyck at the time protested (she didn’t share star billing with anyone that wasn’t her equal), but Wallis insisted, and Martha Ivers delivered enough to make Scott the star that Wallis wanted.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a well, strange, movie.  The film hearkens back to a young Martha (played by Janis Wilson as a child, Stanwyck as an adult) trying to run away with Sam (eventually to be played by Van Heflin).  The problem is she’s the richest girl in town, and her aunt (Anderson) is cruel & domineering of her.  Martha attempts to escape one night with Sam but in the process accidentally kills her aunt.  Certain to be sent to jail and see her life ruined, she is convinced by a greedy tutor (Roman Bohnen) that he’ll keep her secret, and eventually pushes Martha onto his son Walter (Douglas) who will then inherit her family fortune and political power.  The film cuts to the characters’ adulthood, where Sam is going through town and learns that Martha is still there, successful as ever, and befriends she and Walter, who find Sam suspicious and try to run him out of town (or even have him killed) as they assume he saw Martha kill her aunt and will tell that they let an innocent man go to the chair for Martha’s crime.  The movie eventually ends with a murder-suicide between Martha & Walter, and Sam runs off into the sunset, letting this chapter of his life go.

You’ll notice two things in that description-one, it sounds normal but it’s not.  Martha is diabolical, and more than willing to dispose of people in order to get what she wants.  The film feels a bit gimmicky in Stanwyck’s performance, letting her play Martha as wild-eyed as she possibly can.  It kind of works because she’s such a good actor she can do scenery-chewing with great aplomb, but it’s not particularly strong acting, especially when you consider that Stanwyck is capable of a role like Phyllis Dietrichson, the grand teton of femme fatales.  Arguably the best performance in the film comes from Kirk Douglas, playing a sniveling man capable of both murder and being totally whipped by his hot wife.  Douglas rarely played this kind of weak character in a career that would find him most identified with Spartacus or western heroes, but he’s really good in the part.

The second thing you’ll notice is that I don’t talk about Scott’s character at all, and that’s because she’s totally unnecessary for the actual film.  She plays the love interest for Van Heflin’s Sam, Toni.  Toni has some petty crime under her belt, and is blackmailed by Walter to get to Sam, but she’s ancillary to the main showdown between Martha, Walter, and Sam, and it’s easy to see how Scott would’ve gotten lower billing if it weren’t for Wallis. Her performance is…fine.  It’s a throwaway part, and she doesn’t elevate it the way that Douglas does, but as I’ve read about Scott, she became famous so fast that she struggled with learning how to act while getting to headline proper films (with her beauty & husky voice, she was unkindly compared to Lauren Bacall).  We’re going to get to some of the peak Scott performances in a few weeks, but this week-and-next we’ll be staying in the earliest reaches of her career, where she starred with luminaries like Stanwyck & Douglas, and struggled to stand out.

OVP: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Film: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Stars: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Jeffrey Lynn, Paul Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Thelma Ritter
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Adapted Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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 Linda Darnell-click here to learn more about Ms. Darnell (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

It's occasionally difficult to know where to end our months with each star-do we go with their final major success, as we did with Ann Sheridan & Alice Faye, or do we go to the depths of their film careers like Virginia Mayo and Cyd Charisse?  Considering how tragic Linda Darnell's life ended up being, with her eventually going into bouts of alcoholism and being burned alive in one of Hollywood's most horrific deaths, it felt wrong to wade through the final stages of her career, when she would have the occasional lead role, but was perhaps most well-known in the 1950's for the part she didn't get (despite a love affair with Jopeph L. Mankiewicz, it was Ava Gardner who won the lead in The Barefoot Contessa even though Darnell was certain she would be its star and her life may have profoundly changed if she'd gotten the part in the picture which was a smash hit for United Artists).  We will instead leave her at arguably the professional peak of her career, the Best Picture-nominated A Letter to Three Wives, featuring what many consider to be her finest performance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the lives of three friends: Lora Mae (Darnell), Deborah (Crain), and Rita (Sothern), all of whom are frenemies with a woman who is never seen but has made passes at each of their husbands at some point named Addie Ross (an uncredited Celeste Holm does the narration, recalling in many ways Mankiewicz's magnum opus All About Eve).  All three women are chaperoning a school field trip when they receive a letter from Addie Ross, cattily pointing out to them that she has decided to skip town...and is taking one of their husbands with her.  The movie progresses with each woman wondering, silently, on the trip whether or not their husband is the one who ran away with the woman, and recalling scenes from their marriage that could have led to such infidelity.  Rita, after all, is a career woman (considering it's 1949, this is handled with less sexism than you'd think though it's obviously still there), Deborah is a bit dowdy & doesn't fit in with her husband's friends, and Lora Mae's husband thinks she's just a gold-digger, waiting for her chance at his fortune.  None of the marriages seem to be in particularly strong shape, though it's pretty clear that Rita's to George (Kirk Douglas, when he was still taking supporting roles of a sort) is in the best shape, and they lay down the cards pretty quickly that he isn't the culprit.  It turns out that, despite Deborah's husband not showing up at the country club dance, it was Lora Mae's Porter (Paul Douglas, who was only in his first year of moviemaking at the time despite being 42) that had run off with Addie, only to change his mind.  The film ends with Lora Mae & Porter admitting that they love each other, and a happy ending, with Addie saying "good night" to the audience as they all dance.

The movie is charming from start-to-finish.  It's hard not to make easy comparisons to All About Eve, not only because it shares several cast members (Holm, of course, and Thelma Ritter in a role so early in her career she didn't even get onscreen billing despite a substantial part that might have won her an Oscar nomination a few years later), but because it's the rare classic Hollywood movie that genuinely just puts women out in front, with all of the male actors relegated to supporting roles.  Eve is better, but that's an impossible bar to compare to, and this is a rich screenplay filled with witty asides (Darnell, Sothern, Ritter, & Holm all bat the one-liners out of the park), and is equally funny and dramatic.  The movie never shies away from the stakes here-the women all are in troubled marriages, and all don't want their marriages to end, but are aware that this isn't an ideal situation.  I liked that Mankiewicz didn't just go around blaming these three women for the problems in their partnerships, having the men own up to such things as well as the female characters, and while it just missed the Best Picture win to All the King's Men, it certainly would have made a worthy capper to the 1940's.

It's impossible not to compare the three lead actresses.  At first, I liked Sothern the best, as she was having the most fun with Mankiewicz's dialogue and in the first half it's hard to tell why Darnell's Lora Mae seemed so distant compared to the other actresses' closeness.  As the film goes on, though, we find that Lora Mae is the most interesting part of the three, and Darnell (in the best performance we've chronicled from her all month) aces it.  Lora Mae isn't a gold digger, but she is someone whom men just see as cheap and there "for a good time."  Ravishingly beautiful, but a poor girl, she's someone Porter thinks can be had for a steak dinner or a promotion, but in fact she wants something real and isn't afraid to lose him to get it.  That's what makes the stakes of the ending so great-Lora Mae is the only one of the three women who hasn't admitted to herself how much she loves her husband (and how much she loves him), and as a result is the only one of the three women you could see being abandoned before the curtain ends in a melodrama.  That she doesn't isn't a fault of the film, and actually to its aid, and one has to assume that Darnell was close to an Oscar nomination for this part, perhaps only missing out because she was splitting the vote with her costars (surely she would have campaigned correctly as a lead, but in our era of category fraud, she now would've gone supporting).  Darnell proved here with her superb comic timing & strong dramatic work that she was more than just a pretty face, and should be remembered not just for her beauty, but for being a damn fine actress.

Oscar's Long-Suffering Gentlemen

As you may have guessed due to the massive increase in articles on this blog in the past two weeks, I'm in a bit of a house-cleaning mode for the blog, getting all of the articles I meant to write in 2018 but never had time to, out the door for your enjoyment before we dive into some of the new series/articles of 2019.  While doing so, I was looking through my drafts folder and realized that I owe you a sequel to an article about Oscar bridesmaids that I wrote in December.  There I took a look at the living actresses who have been nominated 3+ times but never won a competitive Academy Award.  At the time, it seemed possible that both Glenn Close & Amy Adams could be removed from such a list, but instead they just moved further into the front, both still waiting for an Oscar that might never come (but don't tell them that).

Today we're going to look at the 12 men who are living and don't have an Oscar, but have lost at least three times.  Despite the focus on Close & Adams, there are actually three men on this list who moved up thanks to this past year's ceremony, and we actually had a tragic change in this list from what it would have been had I finished it in December, as the man who would have been our #1, Albert Finney, passed away last month.  Since I didn't have time to write him an obituary at the time, consider this a bit of a memorial post to the fine actor.

Finney was very rare when he died.  I wrote in my December article that only 11 women have died with 3+ Oscar nominations and never winning a competitive one, but for men it's nearly as rare, with 13 such men who have died without a competitive Oscar.  This list includes such icons as Mickey Rooney, Peter O'Toole, and Charles Boyer, all of whom won Honorary Oscars, as well as noted character actors such as Clifton Webb and Charles Bickford.  Below you will find an additional dozen that are waiting for that competitive Oscar-speculate in the comments which ones you think have the best shot at actually taking a trophy home before their final curtain call.

Honorable Mention: Warren Beatty, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt have 3+ acting nominations without ever taking a trophy for their thespian abilities (and are still with us), but they all have competitive Oscars of their own.  Beatty won Best Director for 1981's Reds, Pitt won Best Picture in 2013 for 12 Years a Slave, and Damon won Best Original Screenplay for 1997's Good Will Hunting.  As a result, I kept them off of the list even though technically they'd qualify.

Note: These are ranked by how many nominations an actress made, then by who got their most recent nomination the latest, and then by who got their first nomination first.

12. Viggo Mortensen

Nominations: Eastern Promises (Actor in 2007), Captain Fantastic (Actor in 2016), & Green Book (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Casey Affleck, & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: It would have been 2018 had awards bodies not A) fallen weirdly in love with Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody and B) Green Book hadn't gotten a significant amount of flack for its treatment of black characters, though that latter hardly stopped it in the Best Picture & Screenplay categories so maybe it was just the former.  You could make an argument that Mortensen may have been a more palatable choice than, say, Christian Bale had Malek not been on a missile trajectory to winning his Oscar.
Well, He Still Won...: Mortensen hasn't been very lucky with awards bodies.  About the most notable trophy he's picked up would be for Best SAG Ensemble for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but he's never won a significant award for his solo acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't know.  Aside from Green Book, Mortensen's past nominations were genuine surprises, and ones that had no chance of actually winning.  If he continues to make populist films like Green Book this could theoretically happen, but he's not the type of actor who seems comfortable with campaigning, and as a result I'd wager he won't take this, unless he gets the right biopic.

11. Woody Harrelson

Nominations: The People vs. Larry Flynt (Actor in 1996), The Messenger (Supporting Actor in 2009), and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Supporting Actor in 2017)
He Lost to: Geoffrey Rush, Christoph Waltz, & Sam Rockwell
Closest to the Win: The Messenger?  1996 he was in fourth or fifth place, and Three Billboards was a near-miss for a nomination, so The Messenger you could quite plausibly state that he was second place, though a distant second place to Waltz.
Well, He Still Won...: Harrelson has never won a major trophy for film, but he did take an Emmy for his time in Cheers.
Is This Happening Someday?: I think so.  Harrelson is the sort of actor who demands respect at this point, and appears in prestige films regularly (he works regularly, period).  Give him the right supporting part in a film, and it feels like he'd be able to sneak in as a career-capper sort of trophy.

10. Mark Ruffalo

Nominations: The Kids are All Right (Supporting Actor in 2010), Foxcatcher (Supporting Actor in 2013), & Spotlight (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Christian Bale, JK Simmons, & Mark Rylance
Closest to the Win: None of these movies.  I honestly can't even wager-he was at least in third for all of them, perhaps no higher than fourth.  Ruffalo's nominations are weird because all of these felt like citations you could predict, but also are for work that was never going to come close to an actual win.
Well, He Still Won...: Ruffalo took the Emmy for Best TV Movie for his work as a producer on The Normal Heart but he hasn't picked up a major trophy yet for acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: Yes, it is.  Ruffalo just turned fifty, is well-liked (all of his costars seem to adore him), and now that he's not under contractual obligation to Marvel, he's got more time to make arthouse films, which feels like where he's at home.  He just needs to get in on a Best Picture nominee, and he could win...I honestly think he's famous enough he could win lead.

9. Edward Norton

Nominations: Primal Fear (Supporting Actor in 1996), American History X (Actor in 1998), & Birdman (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Roberto Benigni, & JK Simmons
Closest to the Win: Call me crazy, but maybe 1996?  The Academy was feeling frisky that year (just ask Lauren Bacall), and he had just won a Golden Globe.  Most pundits, if you look back, thought it was a battle between Gooding and William H. Macy for Fargo, but I wonder if Norton (who also appeared in Everyone Says I Love You and The People vs. Larry Flynt) was more in the thick of the wins than people gave him credit for at the time.
Well, He Still Won...: Norton lost the Oscar to Gooding, but managed to pick up a Golden Globe in 1996 for Primal Fear.
Is This Happening Someday?: I'm going to guess no.  Norton has had a lot more pits than valleys in a career where he's never really stopped working.  I think he's the definition of an actor who starts out strong (surely everyone assumed he was the next big thing by 1999), but Birdman feels more the exception than the rule, and he's not the type that will go after the (quality) Oscar-bait projects.  They'll need to come to him.

8. Joaquin Phoenix

Nominations: Gladiator (Supporting Actor in 2000), Walk the Line (Actor in 2005), & The Master (Actor in 2012)
He Lost to: Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: None of these are close wins.  Walk the Line couldn't even get a Best Picture nomination, and that's the one that makes the most sense when you compare it to its competition (and he's at best in third behind Hoffman & Heath Ledger).
Well, He Still Won...: It always feels weird to say this, but the only major trophy that the deeply method & dark Phoenix has ever won was for the Comedy Golden Globe (for Walk the Line).
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't think so.  If anyone on this list is the modern successor to Albert Finney, it's Phoenix, who is an actor that is too good not to occasionally be nominated for awards, but also clearly hates them and I doubt the Academy would ever want to give him a microphone.

7. Nick Nolte

Nominations: The Prince of Tides (Actor in 1991), Affliction (Actor in 1998), & Warrior (Supporting Actor in 2011)
He Lost to: Anthony Hopkins, Roberto Benigni, & Christopher Plummer
Closest to the Win: You could make a sincere argument that he was the frontrunner in 1991, with tough competition from Hopkins and Warren Beatty (Hopkins victory has aged very well, to the point where we feel like it was inevitable but that was not what people thought at the time).  However, he was also in the thick of things in 1998, when James Coburn stunned for a victory in Supporting Actor, so there was clearly a lot of support for Affliction (considering how Benigni's career aged, the Academy probably wishes they had given it to Nolte).
Well, He Still Won...: Nolte nabbed the Golden Globe for his work in The Prince of Tides (hard to believe in this era of uniform awards seasons, but Nolte managed to win Drama Actor over the man who'd eventually take the Oscar)...please take note AMPAS-creativity is a good thing.
Is This Happening Someday?: No.  Nolte's shot at ever winning this Oscar died the day that infamous mugshot was taken.  He's nearly 80 years old, and he wouldn't be an awful choice for an Honorary Oscar if it would occur to anyone, but a competitive trophy ain't going to happen-the Warrior nomination was probably the closest he was ever going to get to a career honor.

6. Johnny Depp

Nominations: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Actor in 2003), Finding Neverland (Actor in 2004), & Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Actor in 2007)
He Lost to: Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: Pirates, for sure.  The 2003 Best Actor race was a genuinely close affair, with Penn, Depp, and Bill Murray all in a threeway locked race.  I remember at the time some people even speculated that it could end in a tie of sorts.  Can you imagine a year where the Globes and SAG honored three different lead performers in this era?
Well, He Still Won...: Depp is beloved by the Golden Globes (he's been nominated ten times, including multiple citations before Oscar gave him the time of day), but only won once, for Sweeney Todd (the year of the strike, so we've never seen a major Johnny Depp speech)
Is This Happening Someday?: Probably not.  Depp has become something of a pariah, a sellout on-par with Nic Cage at this point, and the abuse allegations against him will age more poorly as time goes by.  I honestly don't think he'll even get an Honorary Oscar considering how much of his once darling arthouse reputation has been drowned in a series of big-budget schlock.

5. Tom Cruise

Nominations: Born on the Fourth of July (Actor in 1989), Jerry Maguire (Actor in 1996), & Magnolia (Supporting Actor in 1999)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, & Michael Caine
Closest to the Win: Cruise has genuinely been close to winning all three times he's been nominated.  Day-Lewis won in 1989 because Cruise was too young and too new to prestige, Jerry Maguire was a loss because Cruise, like his idol Paul Newman, probably was still too rich & famous to need an Oscar to complete the ensemble, and Magnolia would have happened had Miramax not been shoving caviar down the entire Academy's throat (also, everyone's worked with Mike Caine, and seems to love him, so him being thirsty for the thing probably helped).
Well, He Still Won...: Proving you learn something new every time you research an article, Cruise won the Golden Globe every single time he was nominated for the Oscar for the same film.  Oscar just never bit compared to the starstruck HFPA.
Is This Happening Someday?: I can't tell.  Cruise is still famous enough that he could make this work if he really wanted to, and I think (unlike Depp) he'd be forgiven his baggage.  I just don't think he wants to make the types of pictures that would allow him into an awards season, and honestly-can he still pull off such a character?  He hasn't done something like Magnolia or even Jerry Maguire in so long I honestly don't know if he still can, well, act.  An Honorary Oscar could be in the cards though, especially if they set precedence with Harrison Ford or Sly Stallone.  A lot of Academy members paid their mortgages thanks to Cruise's star power.

4. Kirk Douglas

Nominations: Champion (Actor in 1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (Actor in 1952), & Lust for Life (Actor in 1956)
He Lost to: Broderick Crawford, Gary Cooper, & Yul Brynner
Closest to the Win: At the time, most people assumed that Kirk Douglas, then one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, was a shoo-in for a trophy for Lust for Life.  The Academy, though, seemed to like Oscar-lookalike Yul Brynner more in the crowd-pleasing The King & I and so Douglas went empty-handed.  One has to assume if they had known at the time that he'd never get another nomination that he might have won, but who knows what the Academy would do, even with hindsight.
Well, He Still Won...: Douglas deservedly won the Honorary Award at the 1995 Oscars, back when they still broadcast the Honorary winners at the ceremony, so the world was treated to his emotional tribute to his son.  In addition to a slew of Honorary trophies (everything from the DeMille to the Kennedy Center Honors to the AFI Life Achievement Award), he picked up the Golden Globe in 1956 for Lust for Life.
Is This Happening Someday?: No, obviously not.  Douglas is retired and 102.  He got his Honorary Award, and basically every other lifetime achievement award the industry could throw at him, and he'll die a legend.  Kirk Douglas will still be one of the iconic movie stars of all time even without a competitive Oscar, which is surely better than a statue.

3. Bradley Cooper

Nominations: Silver Linings Playbook (Actor in 2012), American Hustle (Supporting Actor in 2013), American Sniper (Actor in 2014), & A Star is Born (Actor in 2018)...he also was nominated for Best Picture for American Sniper & for Picture/Adapted Screenplay for A Star is Born
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: American Sniper felt at the time like it was on the rise, and honestly I wonder if with two more weeks of gargantuan box office if Cooper could have bested Eddie Redmayne.  Also, still not sure what happened this year with the similarly-gargantuan box office for A Star is Born...though at least there Malek came with his own pile of gold.
Well, He Still Won...: Cooper has competed at the Golden Globes, BAFTA's, and Tonys in addition to the Oscars, but like Dafoe, he's never picked up a major trophy.
Is This Happening Someday?: We enter a trio of actors who have been nominated four times without a victory (with Finney's death, no living male actor has received five nominations without winning at least one of them).  Cooper arguably should be first on this list since he has more losses than anyone, but I'm only counting acting trophies.  Also, he's going to win someday unless we're witnessing a Kirk Douglas situation.  Cooper surely has the respect of the industry, and has a hunger for that trophy, which they usually award (especially in men), though he may have to be a little less pretty to finally get there.

2. Willem Dafoe

Nominations: Platoon (Supporting Actor in 1986), Shadow of the Vampire (Supporting Actor in 2000), The Florida Project (Supporting Actor in 2017), & At Eternity's Gate (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Michael Caine, Benicio del Toro, Sam Rockwell & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: I would guess that last year Dafoe was in second place, and I still think it's a bummer that he didn't gain more traction for a clearly better role than Rockwell's, but he hasn't really been close for any of his other work, so I'd go with that film.
Well, He Still Won...: Dafoe has won a mountain of critics' prizes, but never picked up one of the major televised awards.
Is This Happening Someday?: I would assume not, but honestly that fourth nomination threw me a bit.  There were other more obvious contenders (John David Washington, for example) that could have easily snuck in and taken the fifth slot for Best Actor, and Dafoe doing so indicates that there's some appetite to get him an Oscar...but if there was a proper appetite, wouldn't he have won for Florida?  He works with high-profile auteurs, so if one of them gets a film with a little more traction/nominations it could happen, but it'd help if it was in the next couple of years since he's got some recent losses under his belt.

1. Ed Harris

Nominations: Apollo 13 (Supporting Actor in 1995), The Truman Show (Supporting Actor in 1998), Pollock (Actor in 2000), and The Hours (Supporting Actor in 2002)
He Lost to: Kevin Spacey, James Coburn, Russell Crowe, & Chris Cooper
Closest to the Win: Other than The Hours, Harris was close on all three of the other films.  It was down to he & Kevin Spacey in 1995.  In 1998, it was down to he and Robert Duvall (and then in a huge upset James Coburn won, proving that this "closest to the win" is very much a guessing game).  And in 2000, he was surging at the last minute enough to get his costar Marcia Gay Harden across the finish line, but he wasn't able to invade the Crowe/Hanks battle.
Well, He Still Won...: Harris grabbed Golden Globe awards for The Truman Show and Game Change (the HBO TV movie).
Is This Happening Someday?: I doubt it.  Harris still works (Westworld), but he refuses to campaign, and honestly has gotten to the point where I don't even think he'd show up to accept it (he didn't for Game Change), and unless you're Maggie Smith, you don't win if you don't show up.

Along the Great Divide (1951)

Film: Along the Great Divide (1951)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Virginia Mayo, John Agar, Walter Brennan
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.

We continue our month devoted to the career of Virginia Mayo this week with a film that I had never heard of from her filmography before I started researching, and honestly even after I researched her a bit, this was one that slipped by me.  However, as one of the films I wanted to profile fell through (thanks a lot, Amazon Prime), I decided to add this since it was randomly available on streaming (thanks a lot iTunes!).  The movie is actually more significant to Kirk Douglas than Mayo, as it was his first ever western, a genre that would become a cornerstone of his career, and he decidedly has the lead even though he shares top billing with Mayo.  Mayo, though, is well-served in the film, particularly considering the pedigree of Raoul Walsh behind the camera, the man she worked with most in her career (making four pictures together).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on upstanding Marshall Len Merrick (Douglas), a man of the old west who has recently come to the area as a lawman and stops the lynching of a suspected murderer Keith (Brennan), who is being hanged by the family members of the dead man whom Keith claims he didn't kill.  Merrick forces them to hand over Keith so he can bring him to have a proper trial-by-jury, but the men pursue Merrick & his deputies throughout the desert as they try to return to civilization.  Along the way, the group is joined by Keith's tomboy daughter Ann (Mayo), who initially mocks Merrick but they slowly begin to fall in love.  As the film progresses, we get a twist (that if you were paying attention at all you'd have figured out in the opening frames), and as a result Keith is exonerated and Ann & Merrick get to (literally) ride off into the sunset together.

The film is brief, clocking in at just 88 minutes, and this ends up being a relatively wise decision.  The story here is sparse, with the love story getting short shift perhaps because Mayo & Douglas's chemistry works better when they're fighting, and so there isn't much need for an extra twenty minutes of wooing.  Still, Walsh is a proper director (the man behind White Heat, which he did with Mayo and High Sierra is no one's idea of a hack), and you get some really gorgeous shots of the desert, as well as a strong bit of leading work from Kirk Douglas & Mayo.

Douglas is not my favorite movie star, but he was in so many films that occasionally he pops for me (I feel similarly about Burt Lancaster), and this is one of those roles.  I love the tortured look he gets when he must condemn Keith at the trial, having to relive the melancholy that happened when he had previously damned his own father.  He also gets to have a weirdly homoerotic relationship with his deputy (played by John Agar) that shows perhaps the lonely desert roads might have taken a tour through Brokeback Mountain.  All-in-all, it's a fun role, and it's easy to see why westerns became a hallmark of his career.  Mayo is also good, sinking her teeth into her country girl role, and doing quite well with the big dramatic scene at the end of the picture where she tells off Merrick.  Next week we'll get to the Walsh/Mayo reunion I had planned on investigating during this month, but for now I'm glad that I caught Along the Great Divide, a pretty solid western where pretty much everyone rises above the material to produce a succinct picture.

Tab Hunter, and 18 Remaining Stars of Hollywood's Golden Age

Tab Hunter

A few years ago, I did a series of articles where I (for some reason that was likely related to a TCM screening or perhaps just my love of classic cinema nostalgia), I went through the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Stars" list comprehensively taking a look at my interactions with the stars, and which stars I was surprised to see on the lists, which stars I was happy were on the list, and which stars were still living from the list.

I was reminded of that this week when Tab Hunter, at the age of 86, passed away.  Hunter was hardly what one could consider a "master thespian," but was certainly a proper movie star, and one of the few Golden Age headliners of his era.  The blond Adonis, who would later lean into his camp factor with pictures like Polyester and Grease 2, gained a second act in his career when he wrote a bestselling memoir called Tab Hunter Confidential, and became one of the few men of his era to actually come out of the public during his lifetime.  In honor of Hunter, I thought it would be fun to revisit the articles I wrote a few years back with a look at specifically the actors and actresses who are still alive who were nominated for the list, including the three stars who actually made the Top 25: Sidney Poitier (#22), Kirk Douglas (#17), and Sophia Loren (#21).  Without further adieu.

The Living Actors...

Kirk Douglas (1916-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Douglas would receive a trio of Oscar nominations in his career, all for Best Actor, but would lose every time (he probably came the closest to winning for 1956's Lust for Life).  Douglas would deservedly win an Honorary Award in 1996 from the Academy.
Most Known For: Living forever?  Hopefully that's the case-it clearly helps your star exponentially to have some longevity around it.  Douglas has been one of those great, enduring links to Hollywood's classical age, and still frequently does interviews & appearances, oftentimes with his famous son Michael or his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones.  During his career, of course, he was perhaps best known as Spartacus.
Is He Still Working?: He is not-Douglas retired in 2004, with his last film being an independent film called Illusion, though I always think of his last film being Diamonds, where he reunited with his Young Man with a Horn costar (and lifelong pal) Lauren Bacall.
My Favorite Performance: I'd pick either his iconic work in Spartacus, a truly spectacular feat of movie star-quality, or his sleazy performance as Whit Sterling in Out of the Past.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Though I'm slowly working my way through Douglas' filmography, as he was a star for so many years, I'd say Lust for Life would be toward the top of the list, as would Paths of Glory, both pictures I'll get to hopefully soon.

Sidney Poitier (1927-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Poitier received two Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (becoming the first black man to win Best Actor).  Poitier also won an Honorary Award in 2002.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being an iconic and celebrated figure in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and along with Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Harry Belafonte, being one of the very first black movie stars (he's also Ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan, as he actually has dual citizenship with both the Bahamas and the United States-random fact!).  Poitier is one of the most widely-respected actors in the industry, and one of its most enduring stars.
Is He Still Working?: Poitier quit acting in 2001, with the television movie The Last Brickmaker in America-his final theatrically-released film was 1997's The Jackal with Richard Gere & Bruce Willis.
My Favorite Performance: I know that some like to quibble about how Poitier never received an Oscar nomination for In the Heat of the Night, but part of me thinks it was more to do with vote-splitting (he also had Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love out that year) than racism.  Still, he certainly deserved an Oscar nomination for his iconic Virgil Tibbs.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never actually seen the movie that landed Poitier his Academy Award.  For whatever reason Lilies of the Field has never made it to the top of my queue, though I've seen a lot of Poitier films through the years.

Dean Stockwell (1936-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Stockwell has received one Oscar nomination, for 1988's Married to the Mob (he lost to Kevin Kline).
Most Famous For: The career of Dean Stockwell is a fascinating one, as he is one of those rare child actors who went on to have a very strong career as an adult, though in this case in character actor parts. Starting acting as a cherubic-faced youth in movies like Gentleman's Agreement and Anchors Aweigh, he eventually became a hit actor as an adult, dropped out of acting to get involved in the hippie subculture, reappeared in the 1980's in the art house cinema of David Lynch and Wim Wenders, and is most well-known today for playing Al Calavicci in Quantum Leap and Brother Cavil in the revival of Battlestar Galactica.
Is He Still Working?: Absolutely, and in a variety of different pictures (including Max Rose with Claire Bloom and Jerry Lewis, the late actor's final picture).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've actually seen a few Stockwell pictures, and thought he was terrific if terrifying singing Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in the exceptional Blue Velvet.  I'll go with his Oscar-nominated work as my missing piece, though I have always meant to watch the revived Battlestar Galactica.

Max von Sydow (1929-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Two nominations, one for Pelle the Conquerer, and another one for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (he lost both).
Most Famous For: Being a titan of acting.  He is frequently referenced by people who want to name check someone of great acting gravitas.  He is particularly well-known for his work in the films of Ingmar Bergman, but also has appeared opposite Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Susan Sarandon in recent years.
Is He Still Working?: Absolutely.  He's been in a bit of a blockbuster mode lately, with appearances in the Star Wars and Game of Thrones franchises (the latter winning him his second Emmy nomination).  He'll next be seen in Kursk with Colin Firth and Lea Seydoux.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I would do myself a disservice here if I didn't mention that I love von Sydow's work and he is one of my most beloved performers, particularly his films The Seventh Seal and Winter Light (Bergman being one of my all-time favorite directors).  Of the films I'm missing from von Sydow's filmography, I'd probably say The Emigrants would be the most egregious.

The Living Actresses...

Claire Bloom (1931-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: For her long and illustrious career on the British stage, as well as her many tabloid romances.  Ms. Bloom made her stage debut at sixteen opposite John Gielgud and a young Richard Burton, whom she had a passionate love affair with (Burton claimed he loved two women before Liz Taylor-his wife Sybil and Claire Bloom).  She would perform on in the West End for decades, and continue having tabloid-worthy relationships, including marriages to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth, as well as affairs with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brynner.
Is She Still Working?: Yes!  She actually appeared recently in the Best Picture winner The King's Speech, playing Queen Mary in the film, and will be playing Salvador Dali's sister in Spain's Miss Dali.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With Bloom it's hard not to pick her first international starring role in Limelight, where she plays a suicidal ballerina in the only film that features both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Ann Blyth (1928-Present)

Oscar Nominations: 1 nomination (for Mildred Pierce)
Most Famous For: Portraying the selfish daughter from hell in Mildred Pierce.  Her work opposite Joan Crawford won her an Oscar nomination early in her career, and she eventually went on to become a major star of musicals, at one point being a rival for Kathryn Grayson at MGM.  She eventually moved completely away from the cinema, instead starring in a series of television guest spots, including a memorable turn as a potential murderer opposite longtime friend Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote and as an actress with a secret on The Twilight Zone in "Queen of the Nile."
Is She Still Working?: Blyth quit working in film after her role in The Helen Morgan Story with Paul Newman.  She quit television in the 1980's, though she does occasional do interviews still.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen Mildred Pierce and The Great Caruso, the two most important pictures in her filmography, so maybe Brute Force with Burt Lancaster, where she plays a woman dying of cancer whose husband is in prison.

Doris Day (1922-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Despite a dazzling career and being a major public draw for fifteen years, she only received one nomination in 1959 for Pillow Talk (she would lose to Simone Signoret).  Every year, though, like clockwork, the rumors spread that she'll win an Honorary Award.

Most Famous For: A Box Office superstar, she was all the public could demand from the mid-1950's to the mid-1960's and starred in a string of romantic comedy hits.  Even today her name is extremely well-known with audiences (even if her movies aren't necessarily) and everyone knows her as one of America's Sweethearts.

Is She Still Working?: No-while she did some TV appearances in the 1970's on her eponymous show, Day retired from movies in 1968 in With Six You Get Eggroll costarring alongside Brian Keith and a young Barbara Hershey.
My Favorite Performance: I've seen many Doris Day films through the years (my mom was a big fan of hers), so I'm going to go with a childhood favorite right now in Calamity Jane.  It doesn't age particularly well (some of the songs are pretty sexist), but the music and sets and in particular Day are incredibly game and "Secret Love" is heavenly (and an oddly resonant coming out song for anyone who reads between the lines).

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: There's a few options here, but since I've seen some of the biggest pictures of her career, I'm going to go with one that intrigues me most: Move Over, Darling, where Day is united with James Garner and Polly Bergen.  The film was a huge hit and kept the lights on at 20th Century FOX after Cleopatra (not to mention I want to see how Day does in a role that was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe).

Olivia de Havilland (1916-Present)

Oscar Nominations: De Havilland would receive five Oscar nominations during her career, winning twice in 1946 and 1949 for To Each His Own and The Heiress, respectively.

Most Famous For: Certainly her best-known film is Gone with the Wind, and her work as Melanie Wilkes continues to be a career high-point.  Perhaps she's best known today as a last link to the classic age of Hollywood, which was highlighted once again when she sued Ryan Murphy regarding Feud where she was upset about her life being dramatized, though really she should have been angry at how awful Catherine Zeta-Jones was in portraying her.

Is She Still Working?: De Havilland still makes public appearances and does interviews (she became the oldest person ever to be named a Dame Commander by the Queen last year), but she has been away from cinemas for decades.  She did a spattering of TV work in the 1980's, including winning a Golden Globe for playing Dowager Empress Maria in a TV movie about Rex Harrison, but her final film performance was opposite Beau Bridges & Ursula Andress in The Fifth Musketeer

My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche with her bravura work as Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, though I've always had a soft spot for her work as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress.

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen The Adventures of Robin Hood, which is one of the few classic films of that era that I haven't caught yet that I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing, and I believe that it's actually toward the top of my Netflix queue, so we'll be getting there pretty quickly.

Rhonda Fleming (1923-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being the "Queen of Technicolor."  Along with Maureen O'Hara and Arlene Dahl (the latter of which oddly wasn't on the AFI ballot list, though she would have been eligible and is still alive, so clearly being a red-headed movie star is good for your longevity-hooray for Julianne Moore!), Fleming's red hair made her a major motion picture star, and one that photographed particularly well in Technicolor, which was very in fashion during the height of her fame.  Her best known films are probably from the 1940's, when she had supporting roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and the brilliant Out of the Past, but she was a bigger headliner in the 1950's when she appeared opposite Dana Andrews, Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas.  Like a number of women on this list, she was an ardent Republican in her personal life, particularly as an advocate for school prayer.
Is She Still Working?: No-her most recent film would be 1990's Waiting for the Wind with Robert Mitchum, her Out of the Past costar.  She still frequently makes appearances, though, and has participated in the Turner Classic Film Festival.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen Spellbound and Out of the Past, so I would probably go with the classic Western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday.

Mitzi Gaynor (1931-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being Krusty the Clown's go-to name drop?  Just kidding (Simpsons reference!).  Gaynor was in fact one of 20th Century FOX's biggest stars in the 1940's and 1950's, starring in a number of hit musicals.  While she could boast costarring roles with Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly, it was with Rossano Brazzi, a little-known Italian actor, that she enjoyed her biggest and most enduring cinematic success.  The movie?  Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, with Gaynor as the main character of Nellie Forbush, forever washing that man right out of her hair before a very enchanted evening.  She also had one of the most famous numbers in Oscar history (though she wasn't nominated for or even in the film) when she got one of the longest-standing ovations in the history of the ceremony for her performance of "Georgy Girl" in 1967.
Is She Still Working?: While she no longer acts, she frequently is featured in documentaries chronicling the Golden Age of the musical, and actually won an Emmy for her 2010 documentary "Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle!"
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've come to really admire Gaynor's work over the past couple of years, but somehow am still missing her most famous performance, as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific.

Marsha Hunt (1917-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Her politics.  You may be wondering where all of the Hollywood liberals are after so many conservatives highlighted on this list, but you're about to get one in Ms. Hunt, a star for both Paramount and MGM in the 1930's and 1940's who watched her career unravel during the 1950's as part of the blacklist.  Hunt was a vocal advocate for free speech and freedom to petition, and refused to denounce her activities protesting Congress on behalf of the blacklist...and therefore didn't work for most of the 1950's, extinguishing her career.
Is She Still Working?: Not really.  She made two random appearances in those films that only seem to exist on IMDB recently, but hasn't regularly worked in film since 1971's Johnny Got His Gun with Timothy Bottoms and Donald Sutherland.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm going to go with Born to the West, starring an extremely handsome John Wayne in his twenties, which gives Hunt an unusually robust screenplay to work with for a love interest role in the 1930's.

Angela Lansbury (1925-Present)

Oscar Nominations: 3 (for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as an Honorary Oscar she won earlier this year).
Most Famous For: Lansbury has enjoyed an incredible amount of succcess throughout her career, principally on Broadway (she has won five Tony Awards) and on television (as J.B. Fletcher on the long-running CBS show Murder, She Wrote).  Of course, Lansbury has had a plethora of film roles as well that have become part of her own personal lore.  Her work in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Disney's Beauty and the Beast would be toward the top of the public consciousness.
Is She Still Working?: Yep!  She's in the hunt for her 19th Emmy nomination for the BBC's Little Women and will be seen later this year in Mary Poppins Returns.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Here I've seen enough of her work (I've even seen her on-stage) to have a favorite performance (The Manchurian Candidate, though honestly I've loved almost everything-she's a personal favorite) and have all three of those Oscar-nominated roles done, so I'll go with the comic classic The Court Jester, which I have for some reason never gotten around to and in which she plays Princess Gwendolyn opposite Glynis Johns (who like Arlene Dahl didn't quite make the cut of the 250 finalists for the AFI Award, but is also still alive at age 94 and would have been eligible).

Piper Laurie (1932-Present)

Oscar Nominations: 3 (for The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God)
Most Famous For: We'll continue the list of actresses that you've actually heard of with Piper Laurie, who did make her first screen appearance in 1950 (just making the AFI eligibility cutoff), and who is most known to film audiences as the mother from hell in Carrie (oddly enough, Angela Lansbury arguably plays the cinema's other most famous mother from hell on-screen).  Laurie also was Paul Newman's love interest in The Hustler, and got a Best Actress nomination for it and was Catherine Martell on Twin Peaks.
Is She Still Working?: After an eight year absence, Laurie will be on movie screens once again later this year opposite Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh in White Boy Rick.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I have somehow never seen The Hustler, one of those great films from the 1960's and one of the most important roles of Paul Newman's (and of course Piper Laurie's) careers.  I should get on this quickly.

Gina Lollobrigida (1927-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Look at the picture to the left and I'll give you one (err...two) guesses.  Lollobrigida was the Italian sex symbol, a counterweight to the American Marilyn and the French Bardot.  She did make a handful of films with the leading men of the era (Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra), but quite frankly it was her incredible beauty and her bizarre change in careers late in life (she became a journalist, and eventually managed to land an interview with Fidel Castro of all people in the 1970's) that made her a household name.
Is She Still Working?: She is not acting, but she does still stay in the papers, recently auctioning off $5 million worth of jewelry to benefit stem cell therapy.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't know if I've ever actually seen a Lollobrigida film, so I would probably make it a bit of a marathon to catch up.  I'd start with her Golden Globe-winning work in Come September with Rock Hudson, follow it with her Esmerelda opposite Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finish things with her Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, which has the distinction of being King Vidor's final film.

Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Loren received two Oscar nominations in her career, winning for Two Women in 1961 (the first person to win for a foreign-language film).  She would go on to win an Honorary Oscar in 1991 for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: For starters, thankfully being alive and still working (the only woman on the Top 25 still with us).  Loren's most recent film is Rob Marshall's Nine, but is probably best known for her enduring beauty.  Consistently considered one of the most striking and attractive women in the history of cinema, she was a major star at the height of America's fascination with foreign language cinema. (Completely Random Aside-I once had a car that I named after Loren because the car was so pretty...my brother still drives it).
Is She Still Working?: Other than a random voice spot in Cars 2, Loren seems to have ended her career with Nine.
My Favorite Performance: Is it terrible to say Houseboat?  I genuinely loved this movie as a kid, and it's the sort of film I suspect I'd still adore as an adult.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I am going to go with Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, which unites Loren with one of her favorite directors (Vittorio de Sica) and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Rita Moreno (1931-Present)

Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1961's West Side Story)
Most Famous For: For thoroughly enjoying life in Ame-RIC-a.  Moreno starred in one of the great American musicals in 1961, taking over the role made famous by Chita Rivera on Broadway and becoming a household name as a result (as well as an Oscar-winner).  Though at that time she had been featured in three of the best-loved musicals of all-time (she was also in Singin in the Rain and The King and I), she didn't star in a lot of high-profile films again (a Latina actress in the 1960's frequently had to rely on stereotypical roles, which Moreno refused to partake of).  Instead she forged a bold multi-platform career, winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony in the 1970's to complete her EGOT.  She is best known from this period for her work on The Muppets and The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman).  Moreno also had a pretty spectacular personal life, being romantically involved with both Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley during her career.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely-she can be seen on Netflix's critically-acclaimed One Day at a Time as Lydia.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her three iconic musicals, so I'm going to go with The Ritz, which earned Moreno a Tony Award on Broadway and a Golden Globe nomination on film.

Margaret O'Brien (1937-Present)

Oscar Nominations: None, though she won the Juvenile Academy Award in 1944.
Most Famous For: Being one of the biggest child stars on the planet.  Margaret O'Brien was to the 1940's what Shirley Temple and Judy Garland were to the 1930's.  She even appeared opposite Garland in the most famous of O'Brien's movies: Meet Me in St. Louis, where she played Tootie.  O'Brien was a major star, but couldn't jump to adult roles like Garland, whom she is oftentimes compared to, and instead only made the occasional television or film appearance.  If you ever want a fun story, read about O'Brien's Oscar and how she lost it for some fifty years before it finally returned to her.
Is She Still Working?: I think so-it looks like she has a relatively long recent IMDB cast page but it's not entirely clear if these are just clips of her in her youth or her actually playing a role.  If the 2017 movie where she stars opposite Mickey Rooney in a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde actually exists, I need to see it immediately.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably go with the film that made her a star, Journey for Margaret with Robert Young and Fay Bainter, as I've seen (and loved) Meet Me in St. Louis before.

Jane Withers (1926-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being insufferable.  Or rather, playing insufferable, in the Shirley Temple classic Bright Eyes, where Withers plays her bratty nemesis.  Withers became one of the biggest stars of the late 1930's, joining Shirley Temple as a major box office draw despite being a child star, and then eventually going into supporting roles, like her work in Giant (she and James Dean were good friends) and eventually commercials, taking on what would become her most famous role for the Baby Boomer generation: Josephine the Plumber in the Comet commercials (for comparison's sake, think of Flo from the Progressive commercials and her ubiquity).  And continuing our streak, she was in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote and appears to be politically conservative.
Is She Still Working?: From what I can tell her most recent work would be voiceover contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, so I'm going to go with no since that was 16 years ago, though who knows-she may still be willing to give it a go.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I think Bright Eyes, Withers' most noted work, would probably have to be at the top of the list.