OVP: Actress (1931-32)

OVP: Best Actress (1931-32)

The Nominees Were...

Marie Dressler, Emma

Lynn Fontanne, The Guardsman

Helen Hayes, The Sin of Madelon Claudet

My Thoughts: There are a lot of really terrific lineups that Oscar has pulled together through the years.  Some, like 2001 Best Score, it's so good it still haunts my dreams over what I picked to win, while others (like 2007 Cinematography) I stand tall in my victor choice, but I am just in awe of how strong the quintet that Oscar picked is.  Best Actress of 1931-32...is not one of those lineups.  I currently have 121 Best Actress nominations left to see (I'll hit one more this week, so watch me on Letterboxd if you don't already as I post every film review there rather than just ones that fit our series here), but of the years that I have finished, this is easily the worst Best Actress lineup I've encountered.  I don't even like any of these nominations (none of them will show up in my My Ballot later this week), but the rules of the OVP are simple-I gotta pick at least one of them to win, and so we shall proceed.

Marie Dressler is the best film actress of these three (the other two are such stage legends they both got Broadway theaters named after them but Dressler knew movies), and was coming off of an Oscar win the previous year with Emma.  But this has none of the fight of Min and Bill, and Dressler is largely relegated to window dressing in Emma.  The film plays out like a melodrama, and her broad-as-a-barn comedy style is a bad fit for a character that is meant to have some more tender feelings at the end of the picture that I don't think she connected with.  Dressler is very watchable, it's worth noting, but she's not super good in this (and neither is the film itself).

Helen Hayes film was a mixed bag even when it came out (I cannot remember which film critic called it this, but they dubbed it The Sin of Maudlin Claudet) which is both bitchy & accurate.  Hayes plays this character to the hilt, but unlike Dressler has a bit more fun with the camp.  She's not as good of a movie star as Dressler, but she's probably a better actor underneath it all, and it shows as the film progresses, with her getting to scenery-chew, but generally in a way that doesn't make you want to click the remote.  Neither of Hayes Oscar wins were for particularly good movies, which is a pity given how storied her acting legend was in her lifetime.

Speaking of storied acting legends, we have Lynn Fontanne.  Some actresses of her era, like Jeanne Eagels, were able to get to the big screen and just nail their first roles in the cinema.  Fontanne...does not.  The performance probably would've worked on a stage, but we aren't watching on a stage-we're walking on a big-screen, and neither she nor her husband Alfred Lunt can sell this one-note, staid affair, and it feels like they neither make sense as romantic partners in the film, nor as sentient human beings given how stupid the premise of this picture is.  Hard pass.

Other Precursor Contenders: I would assume that in fourth place was one of the women that had recently been nominated for Best Actress and were starring in Best Picture nominees, Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express) or Greta Garbo (Grand Hotel).  Perhaps the two (who had a frosty real-life relationship) split the gorgeous European-goddess vote, but it's weird that neither of them got into this field, especially as Dressler & Hayes were their films only citations.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Dietrich, without a doubt.  The work she's doing in Shanghai Express is not the best she's ever done, but she looks so damned beautiful it's kind of another level of acting (and she is, for the record, terrific).

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar could not deny Helen Hayes playing a hooker (which would become a route that would work for everyone from Donna Reed to Elizabeth Taylor to Kim Basinger in the years that followed).

My Choice: I feel the need to point out that I give Oscars for the OVP in a vacuum.  Marie Dressler, for example, is the better movie star and by far my favorite performer of these three...giving her a statue right now would mean I don't have to worry about her getting bumped for Min and Bill the previous year, which is a field I haven't yet completed so I don't know if she's safe.  But that's not how this works, and of the three, based solely on what's in front of me, I think Hayes is more interesting and "deserves" the win in a field I don't like at all.  Dressler follows, then Fontanne.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you sticking with Oscar and I with Hayes, or do you want to strike out on your own?  Am I alone in thinking that this is Oscar's worst Best Actress lineup?  And why did Garbo & Dietrich not get layup nominations this year?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 1931-32: Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Story, Art Direction, Cinematography, Previously in 1931-32

Past Best Actress Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Anna Christie (1930)

Film: Anna Christie (1930)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Director, Actress-Greta Garbo, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

And we will see this to completion!  All week, in honor of us finally reaching the 2016 Best Actress OVP Ballot, I have decided to declare this week "Best Actress Week" on the blog, and have been reviewing daily a different Oscar Best Actress nominee that I saw for the first time during quarantine.  While we've been kind of all-over-the-board with nominations from melodramas to epic romances to action-adventures to silent war movies, today we're going to stay pretty close to yesterday's The Divine Lady in terms of timeline (just one year after), but unlike Corinne Griffith, today's star did not stay just in the Silent Era, but instead transitioned quite well into sound (in fact she did so with this film), and became a legend rather than an Oscar curiosity.  Greta Garbo was one of the last major players at MGM to transition to talkies in part because they worried about her thick accent being untenable in movies.  Garbo would prove them wrong, and would be a major star for the entirety of the decade, in part due to this film, Anna Christie, which was a big hit in 1930.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is focused on Anna (Garbo), the daughter of a Swedish sailor (Marion) who is returning home to New York after a terrible childhood spent with relatives in St. Paul, Minnesota.  She was sent there by her father who couldn't take care of her, and while there she was raped by her cousin, and eventually found herself working at a brothel.  She comes to New York in hopes of finding a new life, and falls in love with a rough-and-tumble sailor named Matt (Bickford), who wants to marry her, but she's afraid of her past coming out & him not loving her.  In a climactic scene, Anna does tell Matt that she was the victim of assault, and because she had no money, went into prostitution to survive.  Matt rejects her at first, but in the film's final scenes, they unite, realizing that their love will conquer all.

It's a short film, based on a play written by Eugene O'Neill.  The film, I'll be honest, kind of drags.  The movie's plot is pretty thin, even if we adjust for differing sexual politics about assault and prostitution ninety years after the fact-the first twenty minutes of the film have Marion, Garbo, and Marie Dressler (as an alcoholic who has also dabbled in prostitution), drunk out-of-their-minds, saying the same sort of dialogue over-and-over.  It picks up a little bit in the boat scenes, but really the whole movie's point is the climax, where we have Garbo confessing not only to Bickford, but also to her father the disappointments of her youth, and the hatred she has projected on men since they have betrayed her all her life.

This scene basically makes the whole movie worth it, and surely was the reason Garbo got an Oscar nomination.  It's rough to watch-this is pre-Code and while there are certain things that wouldn't have been able to be said in 1930, this is not 1940 where Garbo would have used veiled euphemisms to tell what happened to her, and it's interesting to watch how her character reserves more of her hate for the way that Matt & her father react to her rape & the prostitution that followed, rather than to the actions themselves, giving an understanding to the character that might have been lacking in a less gifted actress.  The ending is sugary and unrealistic, and really other than that one scene Anna Christie fails to intrigue, but as anyone who loves live theater can tell you, one great monologue can wash away a lot of flaws, and that's what happens in Anna Christie.

Dinner at Eight (1933)

Film: Dinner at Eight (1933)
Stars: Marie Dressler, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke, Madge Evans, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, John Barrymore
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In a quest to prepare for 31 Days of Oscar, I have been trying to quickly and efficiently view as many movies from my DVR as is physically possible (every year this is an uphill battle, every year one that I lose).  As a result, you'll be seeing a lot of obscure Oscar nominees on this blog in the coming weeks as I progress through the Oscar Viewing Project & 31 Days in a fight to see what day I actually run out of space.  Weirdly, though the first film that I decided to watch lounging on my DVR wasn't an Oscar nominee, but simply a movie that I have long wanted to see, and in a signficant moment for my cinematic viewing career, the first time I have ever seen a Jean Harlow picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) Dinner at Eight is the sort of movie that doesn't get made today, and quite frankly doesn't really have an obvious evolutionary successor in movies today either.  An all-star film, it is littered with fine theatrical performers (the Barrymores, Dressler, Burke), and is the sort of drama that plays largely like a comedy because everyone is so eloquent.  Centered around a dinner party that Millicent Jordan (Burke) is throwing for a noble couple that are visiting from England, we see all of her guests, as well as her ailing husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore), encounter struggles during the height of the depression.  It's a very serious film when taken on the surface, but these actors are so eloquent and frequently witty (particularly Dressler & Harlow) that there's enough comic relief so you'll be forgiven into thinking that it's a dramedy of sorts.

Honestly-it's a very well-done movie, one that I'm surprised didn't get more Oscar love (in an era where supporting performances were crowned it's impossible to think that some of these people wouldn't have been nominees), particularly considering it's nearly the equal of Grand Hotel the previous year (it's been a few years, but I think I favor the Best Picture winner just slightly over this one).  The film is less a cohesive plot and more a series of acting duets between the principle players, as we learn more about them.  It's very well-written, and you leave without a proper villain (Wallace Beery comes the closest as a gruff businessman, but even he gives an understanding of wanting to stick it to people who simply didn't want his success because of where he grew up), but instead a sharp understanding of these characters.  It's surprisingly thorough-no one goes into cartoon-mode, and there's more than room for such a fare (I suspect on the stage that actors would lean a bit more heavily into their stereotypes).

Look at the way that Harlow finds a courage in her trophy wife as the film progresses, essentially blackmailing her husband into a better life for both of them.  Dressler, who can be truly hammy, shows her cards early and plays her Carlotta as a woman who is scared not only of being broke, but perhaps more so of being a joke, someone who was taken seriously and is now on the outskirts of her life.  Perhaps best of all is John Barrymore, who courageously plays an actor who is starting to be washed-up and perhaps being outdone by those around him who were more talented than handsome.  It's a small part (in one of several ironies in the film, he's an actor complaining about how small his part in a play is), and one that borrows quite a bit from reality (Barrymore's struggles with booze, age, and his then faltering matinee idol status feels a bit reality-inspiring-art), but it's terrific work.  His final scenes are harrowing, as we realize that he can't bounce back to who he once was, and to paraphrase The Hours, "he has to die so the others can appreciate life more."  The film itself is a jewel, and while it's hard to adjust to melodrama when you're not used to it, once you do you find that this film's "forgotten classic" status is more than earned.

Oscar-Connected Lost Films, Part 2

Last week, we chronicled through the Top 10 missing Oscar-nominated films (the films that keep my OVP-loving heart up at night knowing that I'm doomed to failure even if I manage to hit most of the pictures).  Today, however, I decided to try a slightly different tack (one that includes a bit more of a list).  Here we have lost films starring Oscar-nominated actors or directed by Oscar-nominated directors.  While this list is far from complete, these stand out in my mind as some of the more important feature-length films that are hopefully still in someone's attic.

Note: While I couldn't include every missing feature-length film starring an Oscar nominee, I'm curious about which ones are on your "where is it?!?' list, so please share below in the comments!

12. Tenderloin (1928)

Directed by future Oscar winner Michael Curtiz and starring Dolores Costello and Conrad Nagel, the film is in a weird place in history as it's the second Vitaphone feature, and reportedly featured the first feature where actors actually spoke their lines (though the dialogue was so hammy people actually laughed when it first came out).  Considering its place in history, you'd think this would have hung on, but it's still considered lost.

11. Lilies of the Field (1924)

While it shares the name of an Oscar-winning film, it actually has no connection to the movie starring Sidney Poitier.  Instead, it gets its AMPAS connection through leading lady Corinne Griffith, who would be one of the first women ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (in The Divine Lady).  The film sounds pretty messed up, and I'm curious to see how the sexual politics of the period play out, but like all of the other eleven films on this list, it's lost for now.

10. Red Sky at Morning (1944)

One of several missing films from the early career of future Oscar-winner Peter Finch, this one struck me as odd simply because of its late release date.  While portions of films from the 1940's and 50's are missing (most famously A Star is Born), this entire movie (about a sailor who falls in love with the wife of a captain) is completely gone, which is unusual for a film with a now recognizable star.

9. The Promise (1969)

By far the latest film on this list, and the only one that features a currently living Oscar nominee that I can find.  Sir Ian McKellen, very early in his career, made the first big-screen adaptation of an Aleksei Abuzov play, that is now considered lost.  Weirdly, it featured another actor who'd gained some fame the year previous (John Castle) for starring in an Oscar-winning film (The Lion in Winter) and was reusing Oscar-winning sets from the previous year's Best Picture winner Oliver!, so how this remains lost is also a mystery.

8. Men of Tomorrow (1932)

One of those films where you didn't know what you had until it was gone, the film actually stars Maurice Braddell and Joan Gardner, but it was the supporting cast that calls out a bit more ferociously, featuring Oscar-nominee Merle Oberon and future Oscar-winner Robert Donat in his film debut.  The film apparently was a bit salacious and had to be trimmed for re-distribution (and was dubiously marketed in the United States in 1935 because Oberon and Donat were headliners at that point, even though they weren't the stars of the picture).

7. White Man (1924)

One of the earliest films on this list, White Man would be a largely forgotten film starring Kenneth Harlan and Alice Joyce were it not for a bit part (that of Joyce's brother) played by one of the biggest leading men in Hollywood history: Clark Gable.  Yes, the future Oscar-winner made his film debut in a small role in this film, now largely lost (perhaps due to the fact that Gable wouldn't be a huge star for a bit longer after this).

6. Convention City (1933)

A plethora of big name actors are featured in this film, including Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjeu, Dick Powell, and Mary Astor, 75% of which were Oscar nominees (Menjeu even was a nominee already at that point).  But what sets this film apart is that it is apparently quite scandalous, with a number of double entendres and Blondell's costume budget being smaller than Jack Warner wanted it to be.  As a result, it's one of those movies that you want to see more out of shock value than anything else.

5. The Forward Pass (1929)

This would be worthy of inclusion simply based on the premise alone: how many movies in cinematic history have ever been made about football, and turned into a musical?  Throw in Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and future Oscar-winner Loretta Young and the intrigue is factored up.  But it's a cameo by a 22-year-old John Wayne (in one of only a couple of his films that are considered lost) that makes me truly curious-what was John Wayne like at 22?!?

4. The Callahans and the Murphys (1927)

Toward the top more for the director of the film, and what he was able to do with his leading lady in other films.  George W. Hill, while never an Oscar nominee, managed to helm two major Oscar contenders early on in the Academy's history: The Big House, which was an early Best Picture nominee, and Min and Bill, which won Marie Dressler (who stars in Callahans and the Murphys) her only Oscar.

3. For the Love of Mike (1927)

Another film with a man who'd later bring his leading lady an Oscar, but here we have even bigger names than Hill and Dressler: Claudette Colbert and Frank Capra.  Seven years before both of them won Oscars for It Happened One Night, these two screen icons made a silent picture (Colbert's only one), which bombed and almost caused Colbert to quit the movies.  Thankfully she didn't and went on to make decades of classics, but this one is sadly not one that can be discovered by new film audiences.

2. Hollywood (1923)

What gets a film you've never heard of into the Top 2?  Well, it's that literally every major star of this era somehow managed to make it into the film!  Yes, while the leads are a pair of unknowns (Hope Drown and Luke Cosgrave), you have everyone from Will Rogers to Douglas Fairbanks Sr. to Baby Peggy, as well as six-Oscar nominated/winning entertainers (Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Mary Astor, and Cecil B. DeMille), all made more impressive as the Oscars hadn't even happened when this came out.  Throw in one of the only screen appearances Fatty Arbuckle made after his arrest, and you have arguably the biggest curiosity on this list.

1. The Mountain Eagle (1927)
An easy choice for the list, as The Mountain Eagle is the only lost film of Alfred Hitchcock's extensive filmography.  Hitch reportedly hated the film (and the production was apparently a nightmare) and was glad it was gone, but for the legions of his fans (myself included) it remains a film that we most hope is discovered in someone's attic.  I mean, it's hard to really compare with finally getting the only missing feature-length film from Alfred Hitchcock.

OVP: Min and Bill (1930)

Film: Min and Bill (1931)
Stars: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau
Director: George W. Hill
Oscar History: 1 win (Best Actress-Marie Dressler*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

So, as part of the Comcast eviction, I will also be losing my beloved TiVo (it makes zilch sense not to go with the Genie, and so my friend and I must part).  In the process, I'm going to be cleaning out all of my TiVo films in the next week or so before I cancel (I stock up films that I can't find on Netflix that are part of the OVP to view and peruse), so we're going to A) be getting a slew of reviews in the next couple of weeks and B) they're going to seem very, very sporadic.  We're talking almost every decade imaginable, every category imaginable.

The first of these, though, is a Best Actress winner from near the Academy's infancy, Min and Bill.  It's fun to imagine that once upon a time, Marie Dressler, a woman who made her name in Vaudeville became a star in the era of Jean Harlow and Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo, despite being in her early sixties and overweight, and regularly beat them in popularity polls.  One of the key launching pads for her late career blitz was with this film, opposite Wallace Beery, which was a huge hit and won her an Academy Award.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a woman, a cranky, no-nonsense type with a heart of gold (this was Dressler's raison d'etre) who has raised a young girl (Jordan) as her own and has a flirtatious relationship with one of her tenants, a fisherman named Bill (Beery).  The film, made in the early 1930's, follows a fairly straight-forward pattern: Dressler at first is frosty to the idea of Jordan's Nancy growing up, and being forced to go to school, but eventually warms to the idea.  This warming is aided by the reappearance of Nancy's morally loose mother Bella (Rambeau), who is clearly bad for Nancy, and whom Nancy has been told by Min is dead.

The film continues on at this rate at a stunningly short 66 minute clock time, with Dressler occasionally indulging in comic touches-a boat ride with Nancy that goes horribly wrong, a number of fights with both Beery and Rambeau, but the film is far more dramatic than the casting and pictures from the film would allow you to believe.  The film takes a dark note later in the film as Min refuses to see Nancy, even though she throws her life savings at trying to keep Nancy and her birth mother apart, and eventually kills Bella to keep her from ruining Nancy's happiness (eventually Nancy marries a handsome and successful young man).  The movie ends not on a happy note, but a bittersweet one at best-Nancy will get her happily ever after, but Min will be arrested for murder as a result.

When you're grading acting of this era, you may find yourself grading slightly on a preconceived curve.  The acting of the film doesn't have the method naturalism that has been expected of the likes of Brando and de Niro and Streep in later years.  Instead, you have a woman that does what she does best-perform to the rafters, as she's trained in the theater.

That's not to say that she's not good in the movie, and I liked Dressler considerably better here than in Emma, one of her followups to this film.  Her best moments are when she looks like she's about to lose everything, particularly the great scene where she shoots Bella.  You can see the determination in her eyes, seeing her think through the consequences of what she's about to do, repeating empty threats to Bella before you find the gravitas in her voice and you realize they've no longer become empty.  The film loses some of its spark when Rambeau and Dressler aren't at the helm-Beery, charming in his own way, is a bit too much of a camera-mugger to really earn his top billing on the title and Jordan's Nancy is completely interchangeable with the dozens of performances of women trying their best to be Mary Pickford.

Those are my thoughts on a very short movie, but what are yours?  Have you seen Min and Bill, and if so, are you a fan of Dressler's work?  Whom do you think should have taken the Best Actress Oscar?  And what Dressler film should I check out next?

OVP: Emma (1932)

Film: Emma (1932)
Stars: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Marie Dressler)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I swear I didn't plan this, but we're going to take time to combine the last two films reviewed here and take the director of Romance and one of the stars of The Hollywood Revue, and combine them into this short, sweet (or saccharine, depending on the scene) movie from 1932.

Emma tells the tale of a housekeeper who looks after four children for the bulk of their entire lives.  Being as this is Marie Dressler, the housekeeper is an "all bark, no bite" sort of character who may scold and scold the children but the second their backs are are turned, she's praising and forgiving them to high heavens.  The film unfolds in three parts, the first establishing the death of the children's mother, the second with Emma going on a vacation and (SPOILER ALERT) being proposed to and married to the children's father, played by Jean Hersholt.  The last third is about Emma, who has inherited the entire state of Hersholt's suddenly dead father, fighting for her life as she is accused of murdering him by the three older ungrateful children (including a woefully underused Myrna Loy).  Only Richard Cromwell's youngest child Ronnie believes her, and tragically dies in a plane crash trying to save her.  Dressler of course gives the inheritance then to the three remaining children (but not before being fully exonerated) and joins a new family with five young children.

If it sounds like your typical melodrama, it is, but you can't help but love Dressler even if her performance is a bit "paint-by-numbers."  Dressler, who is largely unknown to today's audiences, was an enormous star of the early Sound Era.  Even though she was in her late 50's and was overweight, she still won the exhibitor's poll three years in a row (the sign of the "most popular" actress in Hollywood) over the likes of Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Jean Harlow.  Dressler was known for her comic mannerisms, and they are on full display here.  It's hard not to be charmed by her, even when you're cringing occasionally at the "broad-as-a-barn" comic and sentimental tropes she relies upon (an actress of the stage for many, many years, it's evident that she's relying on some vaudeville tricks for the film's most famous flight simulator sequence).  It's a tough call between her and ultimate Oscar-winner Helen Hayes in the same year, though I think I'd give the tip of my hat toward Hayes just because her character has more emotional range.  I'm looking most forward to the remaining nominee, Lynn Fontanne, the great, great stage star (though probably not quite as great as Helen Hayes-you can debate that one), whom I've heard is the best of the three.

Like he did with Garbo in Romance, Brown fixates his camera on his leading lady (she's in all but two of the scenes in the movie), and has little time for the remaining players.  Even so, the rest of the cast is serviceable.  I believe this may be my first introduction to Jean Hersholt as an actor, though his charitable work is far more well-known today.  He is indeed the man that the annual Academy Award for do-gooders is named after, and here he is a sweet if bumbling inventor who struck it big and now wants to retire with the woman who has raised his children.  Myrna Loy is probably the most well-known member of the cast, but clearly wasn't at the time, as she is relegated to the role of snooty villainous instead of being able to exercise her considerable comic chops alongside Dressler.  Rounding out the cast is Richard Cromwell, who plays the typical youngest child with a strong sense of fun and aw-shucks appeal.  Not much is there to be said of his acting ability, though he was a ridiculously beautiful man, particularly in this film, and would go on to briefly be married to Angela Lansbury and (allegedly) become a favorite lover of Howard Hughes.

What about you?  Are you a fan of Marie Dressler and her hambone antics, or do you lean more toward the Crawford/Garbo end of the Sound Era?  Do you have a favorite in Clarence Brown's filmography? And do you also find yourself developing crushes on movie stars from the Thirties?

OVP: The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)

Film: The Hollywood Revue of 1929
Stars: Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Anita Page, Marie Dressler, Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy
Director: Charles F. Reisner
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars (with a caveat below)

Contrary to what it says below, this is not my first Best Picture nominee-it's actually my 275th.  But it is the first nominee since I've started chronicling the OVP on the blog, so hooray for Best Pictures!  And what a strange but spectacular film to start with.

There's a part of me that wants to address the caveat right now, and so I will (hell, I'm the one who is writing here).  This film is not a narrative film in the traditional sense, and so therefore it's difficult to rank it alongside the other films of the year, and indeed, alongside other Best Pictures).  There are parts of the film, which I'll get to in a minute, that are pure and utter joy-a 5/5 star cavalcade if there ever was one.  But this is essentially a variety program-it's not the sort of film you'd ever see today, because you'd see it on television (or you would, if we still did variety programs instead of just results night on American Idol and The Voice).  So I'm going with a 3/5 because some of the musical numbers work well, some are horribly dated and probably weren't that great to begin with, and that seems to be a solid compromise.  I've seen none of the other 1928-29 nominees (and one of them is purportedly lost for all time-The Patriot by Ernst Lubitsch, check your attics!), but if none meet the 3/5 star ranking, this will almost certainly be my strangest Best Picture choice.

But let's get into the movie.  A musical revue, our masters of ceremony are Jack Benny and Conrad Nagel, though Nagel seems to disappear after about twenty minutes (being one of the studio's biggest stars at the time, he was probably rushed off to a different film), and so Benny does most of the heavy lifting in his film debut.  From a retrospective angle, the fascinating thing for me was the sort of, "where are they now?" aspect of the movie.  Not the actual question (this film is from 1929-they are all long gone), but the celebrity status of everyone.  In 1929, these were some of the biggest stars in the world, largely on equal footing from the poster.  Over eighty years later, Joan Crawford and Buster Keaton are still huge names, and Laurel & Hardy and Norma Shearer are somewhat familiar at least to cinephiles, but Marie Dressler, Conrad Nagel, and John Gilbert are names only known to the most devoted of film fans.

Crawford, by the way, does a song-and-dance to start the film, which is thoroughly enjoyable for the sheer sake of seeing Joan doing her flapper routine for the world to see.  Crawford, one of the biggest stars in film history, was always a trooper, doing whatever a film required, and she dances and sings with the best of them at the beginning of the film.  The bits with Keaton and Laurel & Hardy are slightly less adventurous, as anyone familiar with them have seen these bits a zillion times before.  The truly amazing performances are the ballet contortions and extended sequences, which include, and I'm not kidding here, a woman being used as a jump rope by three other men in a scene that OSHA would have killed in a nanosecond decades later.  There's a number of random song-and-dances, including hammy late-in-life success Marie Dressler (who was about to have two of her biggest career successes and her only two Academy Award nominations in the next couple of years).

And of course, there's the technicolor sequences, so vibrant and bold, and the two scenes that were ripped off by the most classic of musicals, Singin in the Rain.  The first, the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet (played by Norma Shearer and John Gilbert), which Jean Hagen and Gene Kelly would memorably spoof, which isn't nearly as awful as you would think-Gilbert would be the most high profile of actors to lose their career from the silent-to-sound transition, and though he has a serviceable tenor, it is markedly different from the strong lady's man he was trying to portray on-screen.  Shearer, of course, would find mad success in the "talkies" and become one of MGM's biggest stars in the coming decade, with an incredible six Oscar nominations.

And finally, the film ends with the classic Hollywood song "Singin in the Rain," with the entire cast coming out for the number (if you ever wanted to see Joan Crawford channel Gene Kelly, here's your chance, and notice Buster Keaton, who was not yet allowed to speak on screen, being the only person on stage not singing).  I do have to admit that it would have made the film twice as nice had they figured out a way to get Garbo into the movie (can you even imagine Garbo in a vaudeville act?!?), but as I stated above, a fun but hit-and-miss movie the likes of which you wish you could see again today, if only for the nostalgia of it all.

What about you-do you have a favorite number from this movie?  Are you, like I, not as well-versed in the late 1920's cinema or are you secretly listing the filmographies of Marion Davies and Bessie Love right now?  And what do you think Garbo would have done had she been in the picture (she was scheduled to star, but was pulled due to scheduling)?