1948 Oscar Viewing Project

I put this on Twitter, but one of my goals going forward is to have at least one Oscar Viewing Project ballot or one Oscar My Ballot each month until I have finished the project.  Because I just finished being on vacation (I was in Florida, having a blast in DisneyWorld), we're going to actually get a couple of these this month, both from 2024 in a few weeks AND from 1948 today.  Yes, I have officially seen all of the nominated films of 1948, and thus we are going to discuss the movies of this year.  We generally start with a look at the box office from a given year, but I will note that pre-1980 box office numbers are hard to find accurately, as it wasn't as consistently reported in trade papers before then.  Additionally, certain types of films (like, say, Disney films) tend to have been re-released in theaters more frequently than others (hence how movies that were considered flops initially like Bambi would eventually end up in the black).  That said, this is what Wikipedia has for the top domestic grossers of 1948, so we'll use it as a jumping off point (with a grain of salt):

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Paleface

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Easter Parade

6. The Three Musketeers

7. The Snake Pit

8. The Emperor Waltz

9. Homecoming

10. Sitting Pretty

As you'll see below, Oscar didn't start taking a really big detour from what was popular with audiences until the 1990's, as 9/10 of these movies are ones I not only saw, but would've seen in connection with the OVP, the sole exception being Homecoming with Lana Turner & Clark Gable (which I'll see for the My Ballot that year).  Other top grossers that year that sometimes are listed on the Top 10 include Sorry, Wrong Number with Barbara Stanwyck, Yellow Sky (which I have seen despite no nominations because I love westerns) with Gregory Peck, and A Date with Judy starring a young Elizabeth Taylor.  As you can see, Oscar wanted to embrace what was popular, particularly in a year of upheaval for Hollywood, as the theatrical monopolies had ended, and 1948 was a weak year at the box office.  With that context, I want you to go back to a different time, to a time of Truman defeating Dewey, of the creation of both Israel and the frisbee.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (like I said above, hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention, anymore.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture discussed below), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. The Red Shoes

2. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

3. Hamlet

4. The Snake Pit

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: I actually did a podcast devoted to this specific topic (if you go to the Gilded Films podcast site, you can find both of their episodes on 1948, as I'm the guest on both of them) so feel free to listen if you want a voice reveal (and some great convo on this contest).  For me, it's not a difficult decision on the winner here.  The Red Shoes is just on another level.  There are really good movies here (honestly-there is no bad movie in this quintet, though I do frequently have to re-remind myself that I like Johnny Belinda as Oscar liked it way more than me), but the sheer modern scale of The Red Shoes here is unbeatable, besting worthy defenders like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Hamlet.

Director

1. John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

3. Anatole Litvak (The Snake Pit)

4. Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda)

5. Fred Zinnemann (The Search)

The Lowdown: With The Red Shoes out of the race, I've got a much closer contest, pitting John Huston & Laurence Olivier for the top spot against each other, much like in real life (weirdly, both were directing themselves, as both of their pictures in the collage are from them acting in their movies, though Olivier was the lead while Huston had a bit cameo).  I actually like Olivier's Hamlet more than most modern critics, as I think it's moody and just a little bit creepy (it's easy to see how the Coen Brothers were inspired by this when they did their telling of Macbeth), but Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of those movies it's impossible to deny Huston's impact, giving us a perfect decrescendo into hell with Humphrey Bogart.  Kudos also to Antaole Litvak who also had a lot of modern touches (rare for a social issues picture) in The Snake Pit.

Actor

1. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

2. Montgomery Clift (The Search)

3. Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

4. Lew Ayres (Johnny Belinda)

5. Dan Dailey (When My Baby Smiles at Me)

The Lowdown: Bogart's snub in 1948 was a big deal, some calling it the biggest of its kind since Bette Davis was looked over for Of Human Bondage in 1934.  It's insane, given how good he is (he'll be on my My Ballot for this year) that he was missed, but looking at just Oscar's choices, I'm going with the same selection as the Academy, giving Laurence Olivier (an actor I am very hit-or-miss with) a pretty easy victory.  Olivier might be too old for this part, but he leans in really well with the uncomfortable Oedipal overtones that Shakespeare provides his prince for his mother Gertrude, and while Clifton Webb is delicious & Monty Clift has a terrific star-is-born turn, this is a case of an actor's "time" also being for some of his best work.  I will also say that Dan Dailey getting Humphrey Bogart's nomination here is both perplexing (like...why?) and bordering on a war crime he's so bad.

Actress

1. Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)

2. Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number)

3. Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

4. Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama)

5. Ingrid Bergman (Joan of Arc)

The Lowdown: No one is as bad as Dan Dailey of the 20 nominations (an embarrassingly terrible performance), but Best Actress is not a great lineup compared to the guys despite having generally better actors.  Irene Dunne is playing I Remember Mama like she's channeling Loretta Young (not a compliment), and Ingrid Bergman once again proves that for one of the best actresses of her generation, Oscar nominated her for the wrong roles.  The win is between de Havilland, whose really raw performance adds to The Snake Pit's accuracy-to-life, and Barbara Stanwyck as a truly vicious femme fatale who totally nails the film's rough ending.  Stanwyck is the opposite of Bergman (she tended to get nominated for her best work, this being the least of her four nominated turns but still solid), but I'm going with de Havilland given she provides more accuracy.  Jane Wyman, the actual winner, uses physicality well in her role but doesn't add enough beyond being great casting given her giant saucer eyes are so crucial to filling in gaps in the underwritten plot.

Supporting Actor

1. Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda)

3. Cecil Kellaway (The Luck of the Irish)

4. Jose Ferrer (Joan of Arc)

5. Oscar Homolka (I Remember Mama)

The Lowdown: Both of the supporting turns I'm going with the actual Oscar winner, and while I'm usually cognizant that I have a bias toward the actual victors (because, unlike the 2000's & 2010's, the winners here have been the "winners" my whole life), unlike Olivier (where Clift or Webb would make acceptable victors), the supporting winners are heads-and-shoulders above the rest (again, both will make my My Ballot list).  Huston's turn as a weathered gold miner is so calculating, and filled with such meaningful backstory in the way he portrays it, I wish that he'd worked with his son on ten more pictures.  The only thing that comes close to it is Charles Bickford's concerned father in Johnny Belinda, but even there it's not close to what Huston is bringing to a better movie.

Supporting Actress

1. Claire Trevor (Key Largo)

2. Agnes Moorehead (Johnny Belinda)

3. Barbara bel Geddes (I Remember Mama)

4. Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama)

5. Jean Simmons (Hamlet)

The Lowdown: Finishing out the acting races is Claire Trevor.  Trevor is one of those actresses who rarely played leading roles despite leading lady beauty, but she was also better suited for character work, as she understood the assignment in westerns & noir.  In Key Largo, she gets one really critical scene where she belts out a torch song to her own humiliation (it's a hard scene to watch, but it makes the movie), but she's good throughout.  No one else is in the same hemisphere as her.  Even second place Agnes Moorhead (not as good as Bickford, despite being a more reliable actor otherwise) is only in second because I didn't have anywhere else to turn and I like her as a rule.  This is all Trevor.

Motion Picture Story

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. The Search

5. Louisiana Story

The Lowdown: A quick reminder that Motion Picture Story is technically about the concept of the movie, which is a writing gift, but it's not (for example) about the specific dialogue in the picture.  This helps a movie like The Naked City, which is really better as an idea than a picture itself (though I liked it), but I have to dock points for something like Louisiana Story, whose almost documentary-like naturalism gets in the way of the actual tale it's attempting (or is it...this is a weird movie, speak up if you've seen it in the comments).  My top prize goes to The Red Shoes, which is really gifted in the way it uses its romances almost as a red herring, over Red River (which, conversely, uses its ambition as a red herring to cover some of its romances).

Screenplay

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

2. The Snake Pit

3. The Search

4. A Foreign Affair

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: 1948 is the most recent year where the Screenplay categories were not split out between adapted & original screenplay, and so we have four adapted films against the original The Search.  I actually wish I could give this to The Snake Pit, because it's the sort of picture that Oscar generally loves and I generally don't (social issue pictures are not my jam), but it's done so well I could actually find some common ground between us...but in this case both Oscar & I are siding with the work of John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the truly great studio film screenplays of the era (no notes-even the Hays Code couldn't ruin this one).

Score

1. The Red Shoes

2. Hamlet

3. Johnny Belinda

4. The Snake Pit

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Movies are rarely gusty enough to do what The Red Shoes does with its score.  Look at a film like Tar, for example, which is about classical music and thus uses actual classical music throughout the picture to instruct that.  But The Red Shoes literally spends so much time talking about how it is written for a classic ballet, but instead of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev, it's literally original music.  The chutzpah...and that they land it, making it sound like a genuine classic...it's impossible to deny, though the moodiness of Hamlet or the windswept grandeur of Johnny Belinda both would've made fine wins (this is the best of the many Johnny Belinda nominations, and the one that I'll come closest to duplicating with my My Ballot even though I won't actually).

Scoring

1. Easter Parade

2. Romance on the High Seas

3. The Pirate

4. The Emperor Waltz

5. When My Baby Smiles at Me

The Lowdown: Similar to Motion Picture Story, I'm not entirely sure how to grade this, and it's more difficult as we'll actually have this for the My Ballot for 1948 (we will not do the same for Motion Picture Story).  But I'm going to look at this as the best overall musical in terms of the way it's staged, sung, & conducted in the picture itself (with perhaps a bonus point or two for truly original song scores).  With that in mind, you can't really beat Easter Parade, with Judy & Fred sounding lovely, particularly with him taking on "Steppin' Out With My Baby" and our first real Ann Miller MGM musical.  Romance on the High Seas benefits from a young Doris Day, and The Pirate has a beautiful choreography from Gene Kelly, but neither are as good as what Easter Parade is achieving.

Original Song

1. "It's Magic" (Romance on the High Seas)

2. "Buttons and Bows" (The Paleface)

3. "The Woody Woodpecker Song" (Wet Blanket Policy)

4. "For Every Man There's a Woman" (Casbah)

5. "This Moment is Magic" (That Lady in Ermine)

The Lowdown: Yes, for those who grew up watching his cartoons, the title song from Woody Woodpecker performed by the Kay Kyser Orchestra, was Oscar-nominated (the only time in the history of the Best Original Song category where a short film was nominated).  But while it's a cute little ditty, I have to go with "It's Magic" as it does a really incredible job of establishing Doris Day as a star in the picture.  "Buttons and Bows" is also a standard, but it has less to do with the success of the film (and let's be honest, is more of a standard than a classic, if that makes sense).

Sound

1. Moonrise

2. The Snake Pit

3. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: One of the big reasons that the Oscar Viewing Project will take me so long is that, just a few years earlier, the Sound categories were popping out a dozen or so nominees each year, and then by 1948 they randomly became only a three-wide affair.  The quality here is better, though, with only a trio of nominees, and gives us the single finest "hidden gem" nomination of this bunch: Moonrise.  Moonrise is a dynamite picture (if you've never seen it, please add it to your Letterboxd Watchlist as it's masterful), and it's also a cool nomination.  The film features one song moment (though it's not a musical one), that is executed perfectly, and it also works really well with the circus motif to create strong background noise to heighten tension.  Oscar gave the statue to the also solidly authentic work in The Snake Pit, but for me it's all about Moonrise.

Art Direction - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: For the record, we will not be separating between Black & White and Color for my My Ballot's (though we will have five nominees, so for this at least we'll have more than Oscar).  The win here is easy for me-Olivier's Hamlet is a really cool combination of stage play and realism (again, much like the Coen Brothers' lauded turn with Macbeth), and totally upstages anything that is done in Johnny Belinda.  Honestly, the real credit from staging in Johnny Belinda is believably making California look like Prince Edward Island (if there was an Oscar for location scouting...this is the one it should've won).

Art Direction - Color

1. The Red Shoes

2. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Both very worthy nominees (say what you will about the end product of Joan of Arc, it surely looks terrific), but much like Moira Shearer, I cannot deny The Red Shoes.  Even the title cards for the movie are crafted to match the set, as if they are somehow part of the movie itself, everything so careful, beautiful, and deliberate.

Cinematography - Black & White

1. A Foreign Affair

2. Johnny Belinda

3. The Naked City

4. Portrait of Jennie

5. I Remember Mama

The Lowdown: Back to the arbitrarily chosen nominee count, Oscar went with the naturalism of The Naked City, which is understandable.  Shot entirely on location in New York, the movie uses real life so well it's hard not to fall for the gimmick (this is one of the hardest My Ballot quintets I'll have ever had to assemble, for the record, as I don't know that any of these will end up on it, and normally the Top 3 would be gimme choices).  I'm instead going to pick the naturalism on display in A Foreign Affair to reward, where Marlene Dietrich is shot in actual war-torn Berlin as if she was back with von Sternberg (compliment).  At some point someone needs to explain to me how I Remember Mama got a nomination in this category when much better options existed (hell, if you just stick to movies Oscar was already watching, you have Moonrise or The Snake Pit right there!).

Cinematography - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Three Musketeers

3. Green Grass of Wyoming

4. The Loves of Carmen

The Lowdown: There's literally room for one more nomination, and in one of those situations where I have to assume there was a paperwork mistake (like Roddy McDowall accidentally going lead for Cleopatra), The Red Shoes was cut from this, which it definitely should've won.  With that out of the way, I have a moment to honor its competitor Joan of Arc, though honestly not by much-this is not just the best lineup of this list, it's also one of the best lineups I've seen Oscar assemble during the Classical Hollywood era...every single one of these I gave 4/5 stars in my personal rankings (which is hard to get as I grade on a curve).  Even The Loves of Carmen in last place has a wonderfully vibrant motif (and Rita Hayworth has rarely looked so lovely).

Costume - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. B.F.'s Daughter

The Lowdown: Despite costumes being in movies since the dawn of time, it took until 1948 for the Academy to bother rewarding the men & women who made them (this is the first year of the category).  For Black & White, I will go with Hamlet, which gives us not just lovely frocks for Jean Simmons to prance about in, but we also get some attention-to-detail loveliness in the menswear (guys like wearing pretty things too).  BF's Daughter gets nominated almost entirely for a stunning white-and-gold dress that Barbara Stanwyck wears about halfway through (hopefully this link works, but you can see it here) which is breathtaking...but nothing else in the movie compares so it can't really be on the same level as Hamlet.

Costume - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Emperor Waltz

The Lowdown: Similar to how we constantly talk about John Williams in Best Score and whether or not I'm giving him another Oscar (he was nominated so often), we'll be doing the same for Edith Head.  In our second profiled year of Head's 35 competitive nominations (we did 1957 here) Head won, but while I was intoxicated by Joan Fontaine's glorious green dress with matching hat in The Emperor Waltz, it was the only look that really stood out to me, and so I'm more inclined to the many armored outfits of Ingrid Bergman wore in Joan of Arc instead.

Film Editing

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Fun fact-The Red Shoes will not be sweeping the My Ballot awards in the way you're thinking right now because, well, there are a lot of really good movies in 1948 that Oscar chose to ignore that I'll get into.  But I cannot deny with this specific lineup that the Powell & Pressburger film shouldn't take the cake.  The way that the ballets are structured and shot, jumping the line between reality and fiction, are made in the editors' room, even against solid naturalism in The Naked City and the gigantic cattle drives of Red River.

Special Effects

1. Portrait of Jennie

2. Deep Waters

The Lowdown: The early years of the special effects categories are odd because while effects have always been a part of the movies, that doesn't mean that they were as common as they are now (where even crowd work in a rom-com is likely done at a computer).  Portrait of Jennie takes out Deep Waters both because Deep Waters doesn't really have a lot of effects to champion (just a gigantic storm sequence late in the picture), and because of the way it uses the film's cinematography as a tool with the color lensing in the water effects at the end of the movie to give us an ethereal beauty.

I Confess (1953)

Film: I Confess (1953)

Stars: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, OE Hasse, Dolly Haas

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Anne Baxter-click here to learn more about Ms. Baxter (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Similar to last month, we're going to end our month devoted to the career of Anne Baxter with the reason she's included in this series, her teaming with Alfred Hitchcock.  We've already discussed this a bit, but Baxter nearly was cast in 1940's Rebecca, but was deemed too young for the role by Hitchcock himself.  13 years later, he was ready for her, though, with today's film I Confess.  In 1953, Baxter was not the ingenue that she'd been when Hitchcock had first met her.  Last week we talked about her in the 1948 film The Luck of the Irish, but in 1950 she'd have what would be her defining role, and her sole nomination for Best Actress, as the titular Eve Harrington in All About Eve.  While that was a huge hit, Baxter decided not to sign again with Fox three years later, and instead became a freelance actor, with I Confess being her first film under this newfound status as an artist-for-hire.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Father Logan (Clift), a priest who has heard the confession of German immigrant Otto Keller (Hasse), who has murdered a man he was trying to rob.  Keller knows that Logan is bound by the sanctity of the confessional, and therefore cannot tell a sole his crime.  In the coming days, though, Inspector Larrue (Malden) begins to suspect Logan is the killer, and indeed it does feel like he's done some suspicious things, and has an unusual relationship with Ruth Grandfort (Baxter), the wife of a local politician.  As the film wears on, we learn that Ruth & Father Logan were once in love, but when he went off to fight in World War II they split apart.  They reconnected years later, and spent a (chaste) night together when she was married, and both were being blackmailed by the man that Keller murdered, threatening to cause a scandal for catching them together in such a compromising position.  As the film wears on, Father Logan stands trial, and while he's found not guilty, the public is not convinced.  In the end, though, Father Logan is exonerated when, after killing his wife who is about to expose his secrets, Keller confesses in a gunfight with the police & Father Logan, the latter never breaking the sanctity of the confessional despite being put through great trial.

I Confess is one of the least famous movies in Hitchcock's filmography of the 1950's, and considering the very buzzy cast here, I was genuinely curious as to why.  The reason, it turns out, is that the movie itself isn't particularly good.  The film casts Clift as a sexless lover, and one could make a sincere argument that he's supposed to be gay (many Clift characters of this era you could make that argument about the closeted actor), but he doesn't work as the lead.  Baxter has stated since then that Clift's heavy drinking & depression made him a difficult leading man to work with, and one wonders if she would've pulled off better chemistry with a James Mason or Farley Granger in the lead role.  As it is, the movie drags and is a bit tedious with a tepid chemistry between the two leads, and no one comes out the better here.  This is perhaps the least of all of Hitchcock's films from this decade.

Anne Baxter would continue making movies for most of the 1950's, and would have one of her most iconic roles three years later as Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (give or take All About Eve, this is what modern audiences most associate her with now), but like many actresses of her era, she began the shift to television, making appearances on Dr. Kildare, Ironside, and Batman.  Her most noted role was in Hotel, in the 1980's, a series she'd do until her death in 1985 from a stroke, a role that she'd win when a different actress dropped off of the project...in a true sense of life imitating art, that woman was Bette Davis.  Next month, we're going to take a trip back to the 1940's as we briefly break chronology to talk about one of Classic Hollywood's most lasting figures, and one of Hitchcock's favorite leading ladies.

The Misfits (1961)

Film: The Misfits (1961)
Stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach
Director: John Huston
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Few films have productions as steeped in lore as The Misfits.  If you study film history at all, The Misfits shows up in a lot of texts about this era.  It was, as we'll discuss below, the final film of two Hollywood legends.  It also had pretty much everyone on the set at each other's throats, from Clark Gable & John Huston quarreling throughout the shoot (weirdly in the first & only film that they ever made together) to Marilyn Monroe & screenwriter Arthur Miller's marriage falling apart on the set of the movie they were making together to of course the continued "slow suicide" of Montgomery Clift after his car accident.  Pretty much everyone on the set suffered from some form of alcohol abuse, and production delays abounded.  But what of the film itself?  I have weirdly, despite having read about this movie for most of my life (and having written in college a 120-page paper about American cinema in the 1960's), never actually gotten around to seeing it, and if I was going to do a month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, there was no way I wasn't going to plug this gap in my film-watching.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Misfits is a little hard to explain in a conventional way, but let's give it a shot.  The picture starts with Roslyn (Monroe) getting a divorce in Reno from her husband for emotional neglect (her husband is played by Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy in a truly 1-minute cameo, if not less).  She is staying with a local landlord named Isabelle (Ritter), and being as she's played by Marilyn Monroe, Roslyn quickly gets attention from the men of the town, including two cowboys: Gay (Gable), a rough-and-tumble guy and his driver best friend Guido (Wallach).  Roslyn & Gay move in together in Guido's house, even though it's not entirely clear that they are romantically linked (it's treated in many ways throughout the movie not as a love story, but more as a father getting a chance to raise the surrogate daughter that he gave up for his cowboy ways), though Guido clearly lusts after Roslyn.  At a rodeo, they meet Perce (Clift), a dumb rider who nearly kills himself and decides to join up with Roslyn, Gay, and Guido as they wrangle mustangs in the desert.  Slowly, Roslyn understands the cruelty of these men's lives as she sees them basically track and nearly murder a bunch of wild mustangs.  She calls them out on it, and in the dark with Perce she frees them, angering Gay.  Guido, still obsessed with her, tries to make a move but she says he's heartless, and it turns out she's right-he encourages Gay to leave her, but instead, after an extended shoot where he tries to tame a stallion, he lets them loose, driving off into the sunset with Roslyn, their future uncertain but knowing they love each other.

The Misfits is a strange film.  Honestly-I didn't really know what to expect considering its place in film lore and its position in the early 1960's, when even westerns that would be conventional like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would challenge some of the assumptions we have about heroes and villains.  It's more avant-garde than you'd think.  While yes, at its center this is the story of one man (Gable) struggling with modernity, aided in that struggle by a beautiful woman (Monroe)-basically the plot of most westerns-we also realize that it's Monroe's Roslyn who was right the whole time, not just about him needing to give up this life, but that perhaps this life wasn't necessary to begin with.  The film is brutally violent in scenes (the mustang wrangling is disturbing, particularly since with John Huston in the director's chair, there's no assurance those horses weren't injured at some point), and sex permeates the movie.  Aside from a scene where Monroe is topless (you see her from the back), you have Eli Wallach's Guido lusting after Monroe in a way that I don't remember seeing in a movie like this, at least not very often.  It feels carnal, and is a big payoff for the later scene where Monroe tells him off.

Because honestly-this movie is fantastic.  You can quibble over whether certain sequences go too long, or whether it's too much mood, but I loved it.  The script is tight-Miller was writing it as he went along, but it doesn't show as his vision comes together in the end.  The direction is glorious-Huston enjoys the action sequences the most (and they're thrilling if also gut-wrenching), and the score is divine.  Best of all is the acting.  Wallach, as I mentioned, is out-of-this-world good; if this movie hadn't been considered a disappointment at the box office, it's easy to see him getting an Oscar nomination.  Ritter is great as ever; there's this weird, odd scene in the center of the movie where she opines about the husband who left her for her best friend, and everyone is confused about why she's happy to see them, but it works.  Ritter's face & gestures indicate an understanding of love, even love that's lost or mistreated, that I found so moving.  And then there's Clift, who finds an authenticity in his rodeo clown that feels genuine.  Clift occasionally feels like he's about to forget his lines (and indeed, that might have been the case-if I had to pick a weakest link in the cast, he'd be it though he's still solid), but at least he picked a character where that is convincing.

Gable & Monroe are sensational in the leads.  Even with the box office disappointment, I'm kind of stunned Gable didn't get a posthumous Oscar nomination for this-it might be the best performance he's ever given (give or take Rhett Butler), and I like Gable in a lot of movies.  As he's worn down, you find a man who has long since lost his youth & his reason for even existing, but he keeps on living, and has to find a way to acknowledge that he's still living.  It's so profound, and while Gable is an A+ movie star at his best, I didn't really know he was this good of an actor.  The same has to be said for Monroe.  This could be another dumb blonde where men do crazy things to sleep with her, but it's not.  She finds something there in this lost soul, a woman who has something to say but doesn't understand how to get it out.  Monroe, deeply introverted in real life, rarely played such characters onscreen (there are actually very few introverts in Classical Hollywood cinema), but here it suits her grandly. This is possibly Monroe's best performance too (give or take Sugar Kane), and it's a bummer she didn't think so (Monroe disliked the movie & her work in it).

The film, as I mentioned above, was the end of the road for two Hollywood legends.  Gable died 12 days after shooting of a heart attack.  He wasn't that old all-things-considered (the film would be released on his 60th birthday, a few months after shooting), but you can tell that decades of smoking & drinking had worn down the matinee idol.  Monroe, 24 years his junior, also would never complete another film.  Though she had started shooting the (yet-another-troubled-shoot) film Something's Got to Give, Monroe died before it was completed, of a drug overdose, a potentially intentional one.  We've discussed the many conspiracies surrounding Monroe's death before (click the link if Hollywood true crime is your jam), but in the light of just watching The Misfits, it feels especially tragic, and adds a sense of anguish to the final scenes of Gable & Monroe driving off into the sunset that John Huston never could have intended.  Here we have two of the true legends of cinema, uniting for the only time, in some of their best ever work, and soon to die tragically young.

That ends our month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential sex symbol in a year-long series devoted to cinematic sex symbols.  As we'll see in July, though, we aren't entirely abandoning Marilyn-her legacy will be felt next month, both in terms of heightened, sexualized glamour...and unfortunately, even more tragedy.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 4

This article is part of a 15-Year Anniversary series commemorating the American Film Institute’s 25 Greatest Stars.  For the Actresses, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  For the Actors, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, and 3.

We've now gone through all of the actors that were on the list of the 25 greatest from the AFI.  A crowning achievement, to say the least.  And yet, don't you feel like a few names were missing?  Like I did with the actresses (click through all of the links above if you're catching up, as there's been a lot of discussion centering around this conversation), I thought it was appropriate to chronicle ten superstars of the era who probably just missed the cut.  These ten men were the closest in my opinion (if you disagree, click on the comments below):

Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)

Oscar Nominations: 4 nominations, though he would never win an Academy Award during his short but celebrated career.
Why He Was Close to the List: Montgomery Clift was one of the first leading men to really be emotional or sensitive onscreen.  Paving the way for the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando (and people like Ryan Gosling and James Franco today), he was intensely beautiful, but also someone with a secret, an introvert with something to tell.  He probably is still referenced so often today not just because of his tragic life and his closeted homosexuality (the gays are taking over this list, for the record-he's not the only one that I'm name-checking), but because his acting style is far more utilized by today's leading men and women than that of Bogie or John Wayne.  He was a pioneer of the hidden emotion.
Why He Missed: Clift's career never fully recovered after his near-fatal car accident in 1956, when his emotional state (already a bit damaged) and his physical appearance became altered and deteriorated quickly as a result.  Consequently, his filmography is impressive but quite brief, costing him against someone as prolific as Edward G. Robinson or Robert Mitchum.
My Favorite Performance: Looking through, I've actually seen almost all of Clift's films (I didn't realize this, but I have well over 50%, better than any other actor we've profiled, male or female, except for James Dean).  I will go with his sensational work in A Place in the Sun, where he plays a social-climber who wants nothing more than to leave his past where it is, but cannot escape it.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: As I said, I've seen most everything.  I'll go with Hitchcock's I Confess as I'm curious to see what Hitch does with an actor that he knew was gay off-screen (Hitchcock was pretty good about the gay allegory and worked it well with Anthony Perkins).

Bing Crosby (1903-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crosby received three nominations in his career, winning for Best Actor for Going My Way.
Why He Was Close to the List: Crosby's stature in the film community is still recognized today, particularly with his work in Holiday Inn and White Christmas (it helps when you star in a holiday classic-take note actors wanting longevity).  Crosby's vocal prowess and singing ability was legendary, and his many films with Bob Hope are still remembered to this day.
Why He Missed: A couple of reasons.  For starters, like Hope, his principle fame didn't seem to just be from the cinema, but instead from a different format (for Hope, it was stand-up and television, for Crosby, it was music).  It appears that most of the actors listed by the AFI are chiefly famous for their on-screen ability (only Judy Garland really made the crossover to another medium with an equal level of success).  There's also the little factor that Crosby's reputation has taken a severe downturn since his death due to his parenting skills and bizarre will (much like Joan Crawford's, an actress who probably could have made it to the Top 8 had it not been for Mommie Dearest).
My Favorite Performance: Unlike Clift, I don't love Crosby in quite the same way (I always found Bing a bit stiff onscreen) and so I'll go with a personal favorite from childhood in White Christmas.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: In one of those rare situations where I haven't seen a Best Picture winner (I've seen over 80% of them), I've never seen Going My Way, which would need to be at the top of the list.

Errol Flynn (1909-1959)

Oscar Nominations: Flynn never received an Oscar nomination or win in his career, a stunning bit of news considering how long he was a Box Office draw.
Why He Was Close to the List: Flynn lives on today as a swashbuckler par excellence.  His name conjures images of dashing technicolor and elaborate sword battles.  It helps when you're creating an on-screen persona if you have one that no one else has ever had or can imitate, and that was the case with Flynn, who was a cad but one that you rooted for onscreen.
Why He Missed: Flynn doesn't have a particularly large list of easily-recognizable classics in his oeuvre, with the obvious exception being The Adventures of Robin Hood.  His extremely questionable relationship with Beverly Aadland (when she was just fifteen) further damaged his reputation in Hollywood, which was already pretty badly damaged from years of pretty open philandering (he reportedly romanced Marlene Dietrich and Delores del Rio while married).
My Favorite Performance: I'm not going to embarrass myself here.  I've seen a spattering of Flynn films, but none of note, and none that I'm going to claim as a favorite for such a legendary actor.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Clearly I've got my work cut out for me (there's a chance you do too if my theories about his filmography are to be believed).  Together we can make a point of hitting The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Sea Hawk.

Charlton Heston (1923-2008)

Oscar Nominations: Heston received only one Oscar nomination in his career, but he won for it in Ben-Hur.  He also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978.
Why He Was Close to the List: Heston was one of the biggest and most recognizable stars of the 1950's, frequently leading his way through biblical epics like El Cid, Ben-Hur, and in particular The Ten Commandments that are still watched heavily today (most of these films you can catch on Turner Classic Movies during Easter).  He also made Planet of the Apes late in the 1960's, adding another classic to his list of motion pictures.  All-in-all, there is no one else in the history of the movies that quite had the stature and heroic gravitas that Heston did onscreen (for those unfamiliar with his onscreen work-and for the love of pete, please change that-Russell Crowe in Gladiator probably comes the closest), and with the shift toward more relatable heroes, we probably won't see another one ever again.
Why He Missed: While with Flynn and Crosby I think part of their miss on the list came from their offscreen behavior, I'm utterly confident that Heston's was a result of that as his filmography is too big to ignore otherwise.  Heston's neoconservative beliefs and in particular his strong advocacy for the National Rifle Association alienated him from a generation of moviegoers and bitterly divided public opinion on him, an opinion that only got worse in the years following the creation of this list (particularly after Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine was released).
My Favorite Performance: I genuinely loved Ben-Hur and think that it's an epic masterpiece, but Heston was better in Touch of Evil, where he has to match wits with Orson Welles and watches his entire world slowly deteriorate.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen the Big Five films from Heston (all name-checked above), so I'll go with The Agony and the Ecstasy, an adaptation of the Irving Stone novel where Heston plays Michelangelo.

Rock Hudson (1925-1985)

Oscar Nominations: Hudson received one Academy Award nomination in 1956 for Giant (he lost to Yul Brynner).
Why He Was Close to the List: Hudson's fame comes from two different places.  First was his acting in the 1950's and 1960's in larger-than-life roles romancing Elizabeth Taylor and most frequently Doris Day (he later enjoyed success on television opposite Susan Saint James in McMillan & Wife).  The second source of his fame surrounded his personal life (he was one of the very first major stars in Hollywood to come out as gay) and his bringing AIDS to light in a major way to the public (Hudson ended up dying from the disease, but his admission that he had AIDS was a hugely influential point in the AIDS awareness movement considering now everyone in America knew someone who had the disease).
Why He Missed: Hudson's fame at this point is almost entirely surrounding his sexuality and his association with AIDS.  His filmography hosts films like Giant and Pillow Talk, but it's not really large enough to compete with someone like John Wayne or Kirk Douglas who enjoyed decades of hits and significant movies.  Also, Hudson suffers a bit from that stereotype that pretty men can't act (don't believe this is a stereotype?  Compare the Best Actor lineup to the Best Actress lineup in any given year and tell me I'm wrong).
My Favorite Performance: I love Hudson as the hunky fake Texan in Pillow Talk, where he manages to be both charming and incredibly sexy while wooing Doris Day.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Like Clift, I've seen most of Rock Hudson's most significant films. I'll probably pick Ice Station Zebra (which plays constantly on Turner Classic Movies), one of his last major hits.

Charles Laughton (1899-1962)

Oscar Nominations: Laughton earned three Oscar nominations during his career, winning for The Private Life of Henry VIII.
Why He Was Close to the List: One of the great Shakespearean and theater actors, Laughton commanded major respect on the screen in almost everything he did (for those unfamiliar with his persona, think Philip Seymour Hoffman meets Laurence Olivier, with a bit of homosexuality for flavoring).  He brought a theatrical sense to the screen, and had the good sense to play in large epics during most of his career, meaning that his filmography is spattered with major classics from Mutiny on the Bounty to The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Witness for the Prosecution.
Why He Missed: Laughton never quite had THAT film to claim as his own.  All of those films are bona fide classics, but they aren't classics you instantly think of when discussing the term.  As a result, you end up with someone similar to Myrna Loy for the ladies-when you mention them as a candidate for a greatest stars list, you say "of course!" but they don't spring to mind unprompted.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, as I've missed most of Laughton's most significant acting work and don't want to embarrass myself, so I'll go with his sole directorial effort in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: If I cannot find a favorite performance that means another marathon list, so we'll put the four films I listed above along with Spartacus and Captain Kidd and make up for lost time.

Steve McQueen (1930-1980)

Oscar Nominations: McQueen received just one Oscar nomination in his career, for 1966's The Sand Pebbles.
Why He Was Close to the List: What James Dean was to the 1950's, Steve McQueen was to the 1960's.  McQueen was a devilishly handsome daredevil who played by his own rules and frequently romanced some of the leading ladies of his day (including Ali McGraw) and played rebellious, modern roles like that of Frank Bullitt in Bullitt, one of his most noted pictures.  His death at only age fifty added a mystique to McQueen's already enormous aura.
Why He Missed: Two reasons: one, McQueen's partying and racecar-driving caused him to miss out on a huge number of classic films, and as a result his filmography is much slimmer than most of the men listed here.  Secondly McQueen was more of an actor that was famous in the 1960's, considerably later than Hollywood's Golden Age and is more in-line with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Paul Newman, though his early death occasionally groups him with the stars of an earlier era.
My Favorite Performance: I have always enjoyed him as the totally crushable Rocky in the (admittedly dated, but still enjoyable) Love with the Proper Stranger.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen McQueen in Bullitt, a genre of film that isn't really my cup of tea, but clearly is one that I should hit sooner rather than later regardless of the film subject.

Anthony Quinn (1915-2001)

Oscar Nominations: Quinn received four Academy Award nods in his career, winning twice for Supporting Actor in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life.
Why He Was Close to the List: Quinn was one of those actors that everyone deeply admired for his tenacity onscreen and his thespian chops.  Though he starred in very few major films (outside of a supporting role in Lawrence of Arabia), he, like Spencer Tracy, was an actor who carefully selected projects that would enjoy prestige and acclaim from critics, audiences, and awards' bodies.  It also helps that he worked for decades, right up until his death, giving multiple generations a chance to see his work in a theater.
Why He Missed: I touched on it, but Quinn never broke out in a specific role like other actors did.  His most famous part would be Zorba the Greek, but that's not a film a number of people see today.  He's well-respected, but not someone who survives in a memorable way in films since then (he also did a number of supporting parts, which may have cost him considering how headliner-heavy the AFI was in creating this list).
My Favorite Performance: It's been years since I saw it, but I have to imagine that Zorba the Greek will age pretty well if I ever re-visit it in the upcoming years, so I'll go with that for Quinn.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen neither of his two Oscar-winning roles (though oddly enough I've seen both of the films he lost the Oscar for).

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Rooney received four competitive Academy Award nominations in his career, but won for none of them.  He did win a Juvenile Oscar in 1939 along with Deanna Durbin and then won an Honorary Oscar in 1983 for life achievement.
Why He Was Close to the List: He was the top box office draw of 1939 and 1940!  Okay, that's a joke that has frequently been thrown out (I don't know why Rooney in particular gets hammered with swipes in that regard).  He was clearly a very popular entertainer (his fellow actors adored him), and his star endured for decades (his career ended up spanning over ninety years), ending only this past year with his death.  He is one of those rare actors who did musicals, dramatic pictures, silent films, child star to aging grandpa-he was one of a kind.
Why He Missed: His onscreen (and offscreen) persona was an acquired taste, and one that not everyone was a fan of, quite frankly.  He was a very good actor, though, and I think if this list had been made a decade later, seeing that Rooney would still be working and would become one of the final links to Hollywood's Golden Era, he probably would have made the cut.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, but not in the way that I did with Laughton.  I'm going to pick Rooney's terrific solo effort on The Twilight Zone in "The Last Night of the Jockey"-if you want proof the man could act, here's a fine place to start.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I could go with one of the Oscar-nominated roles, but I'll instead go with some of the Andy Hardy pictures, getting a view of what Rooney truly became famous for (he made fifteen of these pictures in the days before television).

Peter Sellers (1925-1980)

Oscar Nominations: Sellers received two Oscar nominations for acting, for Dr. Strangelove and Being There, losing for both.  He also was nominated for his Live Action Short Film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, which he also lost the trophy for.
Why He Was Close to the List: Sellers has long enjoyed an enduring fame, particularly amongst comedians, as one of the pioneers of the art form.  Think of how Steve Martin is revered amongst almost all comics now as being a true pioneer and artist-that's largely what Peter Sellers was in his era.  He also starred in Dr. Strangelove in not one but three roles, a comic triumph any actor would be envious of achieving.
Why He Missed: Sellers, like Steve McQueen, enjoyed his principle fame in later years, particularly the 1960's and 1970's, and as a result may not have felt like an appropriate choice for the "Golden Age Stars" list.  He was also very difficult to work with and very reclusive in his personal life, adding mystique but less public consciousness as a result.
My Favorite Performance: Only a fool wouldn't pick his comedic triumph in Dr. Strangelove, one of the most biting, provocative, and cutting films ever made, and Sellers is a key reason for all of that.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen Sellers in his last great film role, that of Chance Gardner in Being There with Shirley MacLaine (who, contrary to some opinions of Sellers, thoroughly enjoyed working with him).

And there are my hunches as to the ten men who just missed the AFI list-what are your guesses?  Who do you think was the closest (my gut is Heston)?  Who are your favorites?  Who did I forget from the just misses?  Share your thoughts in the comments!