2024-25 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Debbie Reynolds & Audrey Hepburn, two of
our stars this year

It took longer than I expected, but we have finished up our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.  I will be honest-I don't entirely know whether or not this will be our final season.  I have two ideas rolling around my head for a theoretical seventh season (I do love this series...along with the My Ballots, it's my favorite thing I do here), both of which would be interesting, but I also am respecting that I chose to step away from longer-term blog commitments for a reason, and to some degree I'm making more of that time (exercising more, watching more OVP movies, reading considerably more), while other writing projects I've not yet gotten a good routine around in the way I used to have for this blog.  If we do do another season, it won't be until January, so we will for sure be getting a few months off regardless as I attempt two writing projects in the meantime.  I am unequivocally glad that I decided to finish this season up, though, regardless, as I don't love an unfinished project, and this had been bugging me.

One of the things that I'm struck by this season is that, for a large part, the movies this season were not as well-received by me as our past five years.  Part of this is my self-imposed rule that I don't repeat films I've already seen.  Some of these women have been in great movies, occasionally (like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill) in movies that I would happily name-check as all-time favorites.  But I will also own that the title of being "America's Sweetheart" means that, even more than our second season focusing on sex symbols, the public limits how much risk the studio is willing to take on you.  With the exception of Sally Field, none of the women we talked about this month were able to have the same level of financial success when they were America's Sweetheart as they would after they would free themselves of that title, and thus while there are definitely good performances...they aren't as frequent.  I did still see some great work (and great movies), but I will own that none of the 12 films that I saw this year looks like a future medalist in our My Ballot Best Picture category (at best, it'll be one of the other titles that fill up the ten-wide Best Picture field), and only a couple of the performances will likely end up as My Ballot nominees for acting.  Still, there's more to life than awards, and there's lots of fluff & fun to recommend here.  Below, find my superlatives from our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Mary Pickford, Sparrows

February: Shirley Temple, Curly Top

March: June Allyson, The Glenn Miller Story

April: Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

May: Doris Day, The Pajama Game

June: Debbie Reynolds, Mother

July: Annette Funicello, Beach Party

August: Sandra Dee, Gidget

September: Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

October: Sally Field, Norma Rae

November (but really August 2025): Julia Roberts, Mystic Pizza

December (but really September 2025): Meg Ryan, Joe Versus the Volcano

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

June Allyson

Doris Day

Sandra Dee

Audrey Hepburn

Julia Roberts

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Sally Field, Norma Rae

Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

Debbie Reynolds, Mother

Mary Pickford, Sparrows

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Babes in Toyland

Beach Party

Courage Under Fire

The Glenn Miller Story

Love in the Afternoon

Mystic Pizza

Norma Rae

The Nun's Story

Ordinary People

The Poor Little Rich Girl

Sparrows

Two Girls and a Sailor

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

Frankie Avalon, Beach Party

Josh Brolin, Flirting with Disaster

Jimmy Durante, Two Girls and a Sailor

Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People

Tommy Kirk, Babes in Toyland

Hattie McDaniel, The Little Colonel

Jimmy Stewart, The Glenn Miller Story

Donald Sutherland, Ordinary People

Elizabeth Taylor, Little Women

Bobby Van, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

Denzel Washington, Courage Under Fire

Ed Wynn, Babes in Toyland

Secrets (1933)

Film: Secrets (1933)

Stars: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard

Director: Frank Borzage

Oscar Nominations: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

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

(Editor's Note: I'm aware it's not Saturday, but we're not going to short-change Miss Pickford because I didn't time my Saturday particularly well this week and over-booked myself...next month's star I've already written half of her articles already, so we'll be back on schedule)

As we talked about with our last article, Mary Pickford had experienced the first high-profile flop of her career with The Taming of the Shrew in 1929, her second sound film and a bad time to be having flops as the studios were nervous about any Silent Era star that couldn't translate.  This was the beginning of the end of Pickford's film career.  No longer able to play teenagers or child roles (by 1929, Pickford was already 27), the kind that made her a star, studios didn't know what to do with her, and increasingly actresses like Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, & Joan Crawford began to succeed her as the most important women in Hollywood.  Her final film & our movie today, Secrets, was released in 1933.

(Spoilers Ahead) Secrets is about a couple, and it takes place in four acts.  The couple are Mary (Pickford) and John (Howard), and initially the power dynamic between them is inverted to what it would eventually become.  She's the daughter of a prominent businessman, he is a lowly clerk in her father's office.  But they begin to romance, and after John is fired from said job, they decide to run away into the American West together rather than her marrying another man.  There, they encounter hardship initially, but after a while great success, with John fulfilling his promise and becoming a governor, and then a senator, and Mary raising four of their five children to adulthood.

The movie is weirder than it sounds, and not because it's intended to be weird.  The four-act structure feels very regimented (you can tell this was based on a play), much to the film's chagrin as it makes it feel like four little movies rather than one big one.  After all, between Act 2 & 3, we go from these two being inseparable pioneers to John repeatedly cheating on Mary with a woman named Lolita (they were not subtle with the character monikers in this movie), and because this is Pre-Code, this is said straight out.  While John obviously stays with Mary, this weirdly doesn't cast a pall on the rest of the film, and I'll be honest, Pickford isn't a strong enough actress in sound to pull this tricky balance off.  It feels like she goes from being hurt to "oh well, my husband cheats on me, but at least he loves me" a little too quickly.  Pickford's inability to adapt to sound in terms of her acting style probably mattered more than her age & her speaking voice...I get why she retired after this, because there wasn't really room for this style of acting in the 1930's.

Pickford, as I mentioned above, would never headline another movie, though she'd sneak into a couple of short films as a cameo in the years that followed.  She would also continue to produce films in the years that followed, including 1949's Love Happy, a Marx Brothers picture which featured a small cameo from a very young Marilyn Monroe, but I'll be honest, most of Pickford's post-America's Sweetheart life is pretty sad.  She became an alcoholic, and divorced Douglas Fairbanks in 1936.  Both of her younger siblings died of alcohol-related illnesses in the 1930's, and she became reclusive, only seeing a handful of friends & family (including longtime pal Lillian Gish).  She was considered for the lead role in Sunset Boulevard (director Billy Wilder even went to meet with her at Pickfair), but by that point, isolated with memories of her stardom and faded glory in an aging house...Mary Pickford had basically become Norma Desmond.

Next month, we will talk about the actress who would succeed Mary Pickford as America's Sweetheart, someone whose career would also go south after she got too old...but would end up with a second career & a much happier ending than America's first Sweetheart.  We'll start our conversation about her on Thursday.

The Taming of the Shrew (1929)

Film: The Taming of the Shrew (1929)

Stars: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Edwin Maxwell, Joseph Cawthorn, Clyde Cook

Director: Sam Taylor

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

Mary Pickford had it all circa 1927.  She was the biggest actress in Hollywood, had a storybook marriage, and thanks to her founding of United Artists, she was an early star who was actually getting the fruits of her labor, even producing some of her successful films like Sparrows we saw last week, making her a very rich woman.  But sound became her undoing.  Like many of the major stars of the era (including Greta Garbo) the studio waited to see if sound was sticking around as a trend before having Pickford in a sound film, not wanting to risk one of their bigger stars on a fad.  When it did prove permanent, contrary to legend, Pickford's first sound film was a success with both audiences & critics.  We oftentimes use a modern lens when we appraise older movies, and Coquette is (by my estimation) one of the worst movies to ever win Best Actress, both in terms of a performance & in terms of the film's overall quality, but at the time critics liked it & audiences did too.  People have accused her of "buying" the Oscar given her stature in Hollywood (she was a founding member of the Academy) and she did campaign, even inviting people to her palatial estate of Pickfair to see it, but honestly given that the Oscars have long been eager to crown the reigning queen of Hollywood (everyone from Audrey Hepburn to Julia Roberts to Emma Stone), she likely would've won anyway.  It wasn't until her next film, our film today The Taming of the Shrew, that Pickford started to see her career unravel in the Sound Era.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite coming in at about 60 minutes, The Taming of the Shrew is a relatively faithful adaptation of at least some scenes in the Shakespearean play.  We have Petruchio (Fairbanks) challenged to tame the wild, willful Katherina (Pickford), in part so that Katherina's younger sister Bianca can marry.  Katherina & Petruchio marry, largely against her best judgment, and in the process he begins to (to use modern parlance) "gaslight" her into thinking that he's trying to do what's best for her, in the process thinking he's tamed her, and made her obedient.  In reality, she's in on the ruse, having heard him confess his plans to his dog (yeah, that's an actual scene in the movie), and winks at both the other women and the audience when she gives her speech about women needing to "obey" their husbands.

The movie ignores most of the side characters, including Bianca, keeping them only for tertiary parts, and stays focused on the superstar couple at the center.  This makes sense.  Everyone in American in 1929 would've known who Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks were, as they were the first Hollywood marriage to become a tabloid staple, and this is the only film the two ever made together.  It's interesting to look at Taming of the Shrew against some of the other pictures of the era, partially because it's so grand & its look really stand out.  When comedies & gangster pictures were starting to come en vogue, this feels like a tribute to the biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille or the gargantuan stories of DW Griffith that had started to fade.

Being out of style feels retro today, but at the time probably just read as tired, as the film was a flop.  It wasn't helped by Pickford & Fairbanks being badly miscast in the movie.  Pickford, after seeing her in multiple films this month, strikes me as a good actress, but a limited one who didn't do well getting out of her lane.  That was true here-she's never believable as Katherina, the headstrong woman, given she plays every scene like a pixie.  The only convincing scene she does is the final one, where she's supposed to be in on a joke with the audience, and the sly wink works.  Fairbanks, though, is truly bad here.  He's never believably of his time (while the side characters all feel more authentic to a Shakespearean stage play, he reads as a loudmouthed movie star), and spends half the film laughing boisterously, which initially comes across as a character trait, but, eventually reads as someone trying to remember his next line.  There's lots of future evidence that people who were lovers in real life simply couldn't translate that chemistry in the film itself...this is proof that's happened since Hollywood's beginning.

Sparrows (1926)

Film: Sparrows (1926)

Stars: Mary Pickford, Roy Stewart, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Charlotte Mineau

Director: William Beaudine

Oscar History: Predated the Oscars

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

I apologize for anyone playing along (bless you if you are), but we missed last week's Mary Pickford movie, and I honestly don't have a good excuse (I barely remember last weekend, but I know I could've done better so I can't recall why I didn't get this seen).  Anyway, we are back this week, and I'll make a point in the next week to see both of our remaining Mary Pickford films so the woman who inspired the concept of America's Sweetheart gets her due on the blog.  Today we're going to look at the film that is considered by many to be Pickford's best work, and came at a crucial turning point in her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie stars Molly (Pickford), the eldest of a group of orphans (Pickford is the only one who is clearly an adult-the rest are actual children) who live in a type of indentured hiding in the back swamps of what I'm assuming is supposed to be Louisiana.  They are given this space by a cruel & greedy farmer named Mr. Grimes (von Seyffertitz) who at one point sells an orphan into slavery (or some version of it) when he is spotted by a neighboring farmer.  Mr. Grimes kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy man Mr. Wayne's (Stewart), and while initially he wants to hold her for ransom, he eventually thinks it might be easier if he just throws the baby into the swamp.  Molly protects her, and during a daring escape, she brings all of the children to safety (during that time, Mr. Grimes and his accomplices drown in the muddy swamp).  After returning Mr. Wayne's daughter, he decides to give all of the children a home in his palatial mansion, them finally having their prayers answered.

The film gets its title from the Bible (specifically Luke 12:7 where it's written "Don't be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows") as the film oftentimes compares the orphans to the sparrows, trying to be seen by God.  The film is really well-lensed, and the story is super compelling for a Silent Era drama.  The swamps are genuinely terrifying, and cinematographer Hal Mohr (who would win two Oscars during his lifetime) does a great job of highlighting this, lingering on dolls sinking into the mud to show how deep & unforgiving they are.  For a studio film in 1926, the use of German Expressionism is obvious and really warranted.  He also uses trick photography where Pickford and the orphans are seen onscreen with real-life alligators.  Pickford would claim later that this was done with her in the scene, but Mohr has said this is insane (no studio was going to risk America's Sweetheart getting eaten by a reptile), and restored versions of these scenes back him up, though my copy I couldn't tell.

It also has to be said that Pickford is superb in this movie.  This is the last film where she played a child, but she honestly works better as a teen mother figure, which is how she reads in Sparrows, younger than Grimes but clearly more nurturing than the children she's played opposite.  At the time, Pickford was the most powerful woman in Hollywood (and give or take Charlie Chaplin, the most powerful actor period in Tinseltown).  Seven years earlier, she'd founded United Artists, which produced this film and gave more power to the people actually making the movies (like Pickford, Chaplin, DW Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks) than the studio chiefs.  This was a hugely lucrative time for her, regularly turning out films that made $1 million in box office receipts (huge at the time) like Pollyanna, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Rosita, and today's picture.  Pickford was even one of the producers of this film, unheard of for a woman in 1926.  At 34, Pickford was on top of the world...but The Jazz Singer was about to throw a giant anchor into her career.

The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)

Film: The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)

Stars: Mary Pickford, Madlaine Traverse, Charles Wellesley

Director: Maurice Tourneur

Oscar History: The film predated the Oscars

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

Mary Pickford wasn't born into a show business family, but it became one quickly after her father died when she was six-years-old.  After being widowed, her mother put her daughters (Mary was one of three siblings, along with sister Lottie and brother Jack) into stock theater company, which she worked in until her late teens, at which point she was discovered by DW Griffith, who signed her to Biograph.  Pickford's work ethic, which would be a marked characteristic throughout her career, meant she made over 50 films her first full-year in movies, which was smart as she started to become a known commodity.  This became even more apparent when, after Florence Lawrence, she became one of the first major stars of the early Hollywood years to get billed by her name, meaning she wasn't just a "Biograph Girl" but "Mary Pickford"-far more valuable and exchangeable amongst the studios.  In the 1910's, she was the most popular film star in America, only rivaled by Charlie Chaplin.  One of those massive hits was today's film, The Poor Little Rich Girl.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on a stage play by Eleanor Gates, the movie is about Gwendolyn (Pickford), a poor little rich girl whose parents don't have time for her (her father works, her mother plans society luncheons), and has no playmates.  We see (this is a silent film, so there's no dialogue other than title cards, and a lot of the story is told in large brushstrokes) her life as being pretty empty, being taught as the only student in her school, her only playmates being snobby little children who are not as kind as Gwendolyn, and her literally being on a balcony overlooking poor people in the streets, whom she longs to play with.  Most of the first half of the film is Gwendolyn getting into antics, but after an accidental overdose of sleeping medication, she nearly dies, and during that near-death experience, she dreams of a bizarre forest world with creatures that she could play with, and is lured by Death to come and join him in eternal rest...but eventually Life wins, and she rejoins her family, now less consumed by greed and more focused on their daughter.

The movie features Pickford as a child, which was a common trope for her in her early years.  Pickford would've been 24 when this was released, and to modern audiences she would've been barely believable as a teenager, much less an 11-year-old, playing that age, but it works better than you'd expect in the film.  Pickford's short stature and youthful complexion helps, as does her over-exaggerated acting style & commitment to the bit.  I'll be totally honest when I say the only Mary Pickford movie I had seen before this month was Coquette, which has the ignoble stature of being one of the worst performances to win a Best Actress statue, but watching this-while I don't know if Pickford is a great actress yet, it's pretty clear to see she's magnetic, and why audiences loved her in movies like The Poor Little Rich Girl.  She has a presence, and with a limited plot, she knows how to milk most of the movie.

It also helps that the film's approach is quite inventive.  The filmmaking is fun (I love the distinctive way they get a title card of her shouting "I hate her" through a keyhole), and the last 15 minutes is genuinely a gas.  I expected Mary Pickford to be playing someone a decade younger than her in this movie-I did not expect her to go on an acid trip complete with human-like donkeys and the personification of death like she was in an Ingmar Bergman movie.  Silent films are an acquired taste, and to be honest I'm usually more partial to epics or comedies of the format than family dramas, but this works primarily because it's willing to take such a large swing late in the film, totally upending our expectations.

Saturdays with the Stars: Mary Pickford

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  To start our series, we're going to look at the woman who originated the title, an actress who was as powerful as any other during the 1910's & 1920's, and was one of the first movie stars to become a household name.  When silent pictures (and her storybook marriage) fell apart, though, she became the first actress to lose the title of "America's Sweetheart"...despite living another fifty years past her heyday.  This month's star is Mary Pickford.

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Marie Smith, the eldest daughter of Methodist immigrants.  Her alcoholic father died when Gladys was just six-years-old, and her mother, along with her siblings Lottie and Jack joined theater troupes, and by the time she was 15, Gladys was on Broadway in the hit play The Warrens of Virginia (during which time she became known by the stage-name Mary Pickford).  When the play closed, Gladys auditioned for DW Griffith, and he signed her to a contract of $40 a week (about $1300 a week in 2023 dollars), and she became a staple in his company, one of the most popular actors in Biograph films.  She eventually left Biograph for Famous Players-Lasky, and eventually Paramount, and in 1914 she became one of the first stars (after Florence Lawrence) to be billed with her stage name and not just "Biograph Girl."  By 1916, she was the biggest star in movies after Charlie Chaplin, and signed a $1 million contract (the equivalent to $20 million today) with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, the first actress to get such an amount.

Pickford's career is too long to fit into one biography, and indeed, we'll talk about it throughout the month.  She was not just the biggest actress in the country for nearly a decade, but also founded a movie studio (United Artists), the Academy Awards, and was one-half of the first Hollywood super-couple with Douglas Fairbanks.  She was known as "America's Sweetheart" during much of the 1910's, and we're going to look at that era, but we're also going to talk about what happened after.  One of the recurring themes we're going to find with the actresses here is that while a few had storybook endings to match their sweet-as-pie persona on the big screen, many of them struggled to live up to that when the press moved on to a new actress, and perhaps no one suffered more from that than Mary Pickford, whose final decades were filled with sorrow & grief.

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.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 3

I'm on a roll here, so I'm just going to keep this countdown going (we'll possibly have a quick break in-between Parts 3 and 4, but we're only at the halfway point here so lots of great actressing to come).  If you missed Parts 1 or 2, please click here and here so you're all caught up.  And now, onto the last nine actresses from the AFI's 25 Greatest Actress countdown.

17. Lillian Gish (1893-1993)

Oscar Nominations: Gish would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career for the bawdy western Duel in the Sun.  The Academy wisely gave her an Honorary Oscar at the 43rd Academy Awards for an extraordinarily long (it would stretch 75 years) career.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her incredible longevity, and having a name that is synonymous with Silent Era cinema.  She doesn't have a specific film role that people know her from, but the name Lillian Gish conjures a bygone era of Hollywood.
My Favorite Performance: Her career stretched so many decades and so many periods it's difficult to pick a specific favorite, so I'm going with two and I don't care what you think.  If it's Silent Era Gish, it would have to be her mesmerizing work as Eternal Motherhood in Intolerance (a film that has to be seen to be believed), but if it's Sound Era Gish surely I would need to go with her work as Rachel Cooper (forever brandishing that gun) opposite Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: It would probably have to be one of the D.W. Griffith films (she starred in all five of his most acclaimed and successful pictures), and considering it contains one of the most iconic images of her, I'll go with Gish floating on ice in Way Down East.

18. Shirley Temple (1928-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Temple never received a competitive Oscar nomination or win, but she did pick up the first Juvenile Award at the Oscars in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential child star.  Like Gish, very few people could name an actual Shirley Temple movie, but everyone knows who she is, thanks to those dimples and her curly hair.  Her moniker is also synonymous with a fruity non-alcoholic cocktail that every little kid has in hopes of emulating the fancy (not so angelic) drinks their parents are imbibing.
My Favorite Performance: All right, the third leg of this competition is when my shame grows exponentially.  I have never seen a single child performance of Shirley Temple's.  That said, I have seen some of her work as an adult, and though it has been many (MANY) years since I last saw it, I actually remember her fondly in John Ford's Fort Apache.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Clearly there's a few that I need to get caught up with, so I don't know if I should cite Temple on the staircase with Bill Robinson in The Little Colonel, her pining for "Animal Crackers in Her Soup" in Curly Top, her iconic work as Johanna Spyri's titular heroine in Heidi, or jumping aboard the good ship lollipop in Bright Eyes.  I probably need a marathon.

19. Rita Hayworth (1918-1987)

Oscar Nominations: Ms. Hayworth is our third performer to never win or be nominated for an Academy Award, proving that clearly the bombshells did not play well with classical AMPAS (the other two so far being Marilyn and Mae West).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her iconic looks and glamour.  Though not as central to pop culture as Marilyn, she was the 1940's equivalent of the actress, and her name conjures sophisticated beauty and a spectacular mane of red hair.  She also has a key role (as a poster) in The Shawshank Redemption, which many modern film stars will recognize her photo from.
My Favorite Performance: This is going to make me hang my head, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don't believe that I have ever seen a Rita Hayworth movie.  I was always entranced by her beauty as a cinema-adoring young man, but without AMPAS to guide me in her direction I never got into one of the movies.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Surely Gilda has to be at the top of the list (I have seen her "put the blame on Mame" in film clips, of course), what with her brilliant hair-tossing.  My adoration of Orson Welles also means that The Lady from Shanghai would also be high on my wish list.

20. Lauren Bacall (1924-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Bacall would receive an Oscar nomination very late in her career for The Mirror Has Two Faces (losing in a major upset to Juliette Binoche).  In 2009 she would receive an Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
Probably Best Known Today For: Her short but memorable marriage to Humphrey Bogart.  Bogie and Baby are one of those couples like Liz and Dick and Paul and Joanne that continue to dominate the public's obsession with Hollywood romance to this day (Brangelina, anyone?).
My Favorite Performance: I mentioned this in my obituary to Bacall, but To Have and Have Not remains my favorite of her work.  I love the sheer confidence that she portrays, never really seeming the nineteen-years-old she is onscreen, and commanding that leading role in a way few other actors could in their debut performances.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen half of the Bogie/Bacall filmography, and of the two I have remaining, I think The Big Sleep is probably the more pivotal movie to check out (rather than Dark Passage), though both flicks are in my Netflix queue.

21. 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 this list still with us).  Loren recently starred in 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 Favorite Performance: I am pretty lax in my Loren film-watching, but I can claim that I have seen her Oscar-winning work in Two Women, and for lack of a better choice, I'm going to go with that for my favorite (still have a lot to see here).  I also remember really liking Houseboat as a kid.
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.

22. Jean Harlow (1911-1937)

Oscar Nominations: Like our three other major sex symbols on this list, Harlow would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original Marilyn.  Harlow was to the 1930's what Rita was to the 1940's and Marilyn was to the 1950's-a bombshell the public couldn't get enough of, and like Monroe, she is also remembered for her tragic early demise (from kidney disease in 1937 at only 26).
My Favorite Performance: I could totally cheat here and say City Lights, which is indeed one of my favorite silent films and a truly wonderful movie, but Harlow has only a bit part in it.  As a result, Harlow joins Rita Hayworth on the list of actors whom I have seen no major movies of their filmography.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: At this point, everything, clearly.  I'm most looking forward to Red Dust, where she is at her most glamorous, and the critically-acclaimed Dinner at Eight.  Honestly, though, you could easily add Hell's Angels, The Public Enemy, Platinum Blonde, or Libeled Lady to that list and I would have no qualms.

23. Carole Lombard (1908-1942)

Oscar Nominations: Lombard only received one Oscar nomination in her career, for her work in My Man Godfrey in 1936 (she lost to Luise Rainer).
Probably Best Known Today For: If Lombard is known for anything today, it is likely her tragic demise.  Lombard, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and at the peak of her career tragically died in a plane accident when her aircraft crashed into a mountain.  The death was felt all over Hollywood, and the press heavily covered her mourning husband, Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: It's hard to really top My Man Godfrey, one of a string of truly brilliant comedies of the 1930's (the dramatic films, in my opinion, didn't hold up to the screwball masterworks of this era), and Lombard had wildly good chemistry with William Powell in the picture (this despite them having been divorced several years earlier-can you even fathom that happening now with someone like Brad and Jen or Tom and Nicole?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not To Be, which has been rescued by cinephiles after a tepid initial reception.

24. Mary Pickford (1892-1979)

Oscar Nominations: Pickford received one Oscar nomination in her career, and thanks to her insane celebrity at the time she won despite its questionable quality (for Coquette).  A more appropriate award came over 45 years later when she picked up an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original America's Sweetheart.  Much like Lillian Gish, most people would have difficulty coming up with any of her films, but her name brings to mind the Silent Era and her role as one of the biggest stars of early cinema (likely the biggest female star of the era).
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to balk on this one, as the only Pickford performance that I have seen is Coquette, which is tragically bad (possibly the worst Oscar-winning performance I have ever seen).  I don't think it'd be appropriate to pin one of Hollywood's most significant founders with that as their best work.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Obviously most of her principle work in silent pictures.  I would probably start with Sparrows, which is considered one of her finest and most interesting pictures, and far more in her acting wheelhouse than Coquette.

25. Ava Gardner (1922-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Gardner would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career, for Mogambo in 1953 (she would lose that year to Audrey Hepburn).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her extremely high profile marriages to and relationships with some very famous men.  She was married three times, to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and most notably to Frank Sinatra in one of the most storied Hollywood marries of the 1950's.  She was also in a romantic relationship with Howard Hughes (chronicled in The Aviator, where she was played by Kate Beckinsale), and had a strong (possibly romantic) friendship with Ernest Hemingway.
My Favorite Performance: I haven't seen a lot of Gardner's work, but certainly my favorite of her performances was in Show Boat, partially because of Gardner but mostly because it's one of my mom's favorite films.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the classic 1959 drama On the Beach, where she stars opposite Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire in a movie about the fallout of nuclear war.

And there you have it (fifteen years after the fact)-a look at the 25 greatest actresses from the American Film Institute.  We'll continue our five-part series tomorrow, but in the meantime head to the comments and discuss today's nine actresses-who is your favorite in the bunch?  What are your favorites of all of their films?  And what movies did you just write down as ones you still need to see?

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

We have a particularly robust list of things to cover this week in the world of links, so without further ado, let's dive into what I was reading and pondering this week.

In Entertainment...

Ronan Farrow

Vanity Fair: Actress Mia Farrow, during an intimate interview with Vanity Fair, recently stated that her son Ronan could in fact be Frank Sinatra's child.  This has set off the gossip world (well, the high class gossip world that doesn't worry about the Kardashians or the Giudices), and both Sinatra's widow and Woody Allen (the man considered to be Ronan's father, as he was married to Farrow at the time) have scoffed at the idea.  Personally, I think if anyone alive is going to know the paternity, it's going to be Mia (considering she's the only "guaranteed" biological parent).  It does make a lot of sense-Ronan Farrow, who is drop dead gorgeous and the funniest person on Twitter, does bare a striking resemblance to the late crooner (more striking than Woody).

Also in Vanity Fair: Since we're on the subject of my social media boyfriend, Ronan Farrow is rumored to be getting his own MSNBC show, which I would watch religiously.  Farrow is a Rhodes Scholar (like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow) and used to work for Hillary Clinton in the State Department.  This news got me a lot more excited than Alec Baldwin's recent show on the channel.

CBS News: For those of us obsessed with the concept of finding lost films, this story is incredibly heartening.  One of the earliest films of Mary Pickford's career was discovered more than a century after it was made.  As Leonard Maltin says in the film, this is the first film that the Oscar-winning Pickford made where she received screen billing under that name (her real name was Gladys Marie Smith).  While this wasn't on my lost films list from a while back, it's still a great discovery, and makes me hopeful that we'll someday find others, including the ten on that list.

CNN: This is a long article, but a really cool one.  The thing that first drew me into it, of course, was Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer's name in the title, but it's fascinating to see some of the advances that we're making in musical production and in creating musical instruments.  I desperately want to learn to play the Swarmatron (which was the instrument behind some of the most mesmerizing pieces in our OVP winner of 2010, The Social Network)

New York Times: In the saddest artistic news of the week, we have learned that the New York City Opera has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  For those of us that love New York and opera in general, this is extremely disheartening.  This file was likely due to both the decline in popularity of opera and being overshadowed by the more famous New York Metropolitan Opera.

Film Experience: For those of you who have been obsessing about the Oscars online long enough to remember when Awards Daily was Oscarwatch and when Entertainment Weekly had its message boards on a separate site, you likely considered the return of Supporting Actress Smackdowns to be the best news you've heard all year.  Nathaniel, Brian, and the crew tackled the eclectic bunch of women that made up 1980's Supporting Actress race this past week, and even if you haven't seen any of the films, you'll still enjoy reading about the lineup.  Fun factoid: I was a part of the Smackdown six years ago when they tackled 1990.  You can read what I had to say here and here.

In Politics...

Lt. Governor John Walsh (D-MT)

National Journal: You may have noticed this week a large lack of discussion about the government shutdown, and there's a couple of reasons for me not discussing it.  Principally, the story seems to be progressing so quickly (and I write all of my articles the night before) that I didn't want to put together a long piece and then have it become totally irrelevant when I could have watched the next Richard Linklater Before film instead.  But this great observation by Patrick Reis so beautifully said my thoughts about the politics behind the shutdown that I felt I didn't need to write anything.

My biggest pet peeve about politics (no qualifiers-this is absolutely, positively, no-holds-barred the biggest) is when people ignorantly say "it's both side's fault" or "there's no difference between the two parties," and I'm so glad that Reis brought this up, because the government shutdown is a perfect example of why this simply isn't true-either you believe that the Republicans have shutdown the government to stop the ACA or you believe that the Democrats are causing this by not allowing any concessions on the ACA.  It's one or the other.

Politico: One of the more popular articles on TMROJ over the past week has been last Friday's rant about Sen. Ted Cruz.  So I of course wanted to share this article about Cruz and his icy relationship with his fellow senators.  Like I said before, Cruz is not someone that is in this for a long congressional career-he has his eyes on the bigger prize of the White House, and though having the help of the powers-that-be surely assists in that road, having the most appealing populist message for your base matters the most.

Montana Standard: The Democrats landed their final big recruit of the 2014 Senate cycle with Lt. Gov. John Walsh of Montana deciding to run for the United States Senate.  Walsh starts out as the underdog against Rep. Steve Daines (who hasn't announced yet, but is surely going to run for the GOP), but the Democrats have had a lot of luck lately in Big Sky Country so Walsh cannot be counted out; the Republicans haven't won a Senate or governors race here since 2000.

Texas Tribune: The Dems also officially landed one of the most exciting candidates of the cycle, even if she's a major underdog for the win.  State Sen. Wendy Davis, who became a hero for progressives across the country with her filibuster regarding women's reproductive rights, has officially announced that she is running to be the next Governor of Texas.

And Just One More...

Huffington Post: The Huffington Post put together a fun little bit about the increasing number of people who fancy themselves explorers, as well as tips on how to succeed as an explorer.  Since I'm a huge supporter of adventurers, I figured I'd throw it into the round-up in hopes that one of you finds an "extinct" animal species or discovers a cure for cancer in a rainforest somewhere.