OVP: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Film: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, OJ Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Jack Collins

Director: John Guillermin

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Fred Astaire, Art Direction, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score, Song, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen's career hit its financial peak in 1974, when he starred with Paul Newman in today's film The Towering Inferno.  At this point, Newman & McQueen were two of the biggest names in movies, and there were quite a few arguments over who would get top billing in the picture (ultimately it was a draw, with McQueen's name first but Newman's name higher), but after this both would suffer career lulls.  Newman would rebound eventually in the 1980's with films like The Verdict and The Color of Money, the latter winning him his only competitive Oscar, but McQueen would never regain this position.  He'd make an ill-fated Ibsen film in 1978 (one that would basically disappear from public consciousness), and then a pair of pictures in 1980 (Tom Horn and The Hunter), both decent-sized hits that might have hallmarked a comeback, but that wasn't to be.  Just over three months after the release of The Hunter, Steve McQueen would be dead.

(Spoilers Ahead) But before we get into that, let's get into the height of his career, at least commercially.  The Towering Inferno was a landmark movie in terms of its box office in 1974.  In the previous years, films like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure had found a formula for success-put a bunch of famous stars, including at least a few studio system legends that can scoop up a supporting acting Oscar nomination, and place them in an insane disaster situation, one that will have at least a few of them die, but the audience can look on in horror as we wonder who from this insanely-stacked call sheet might be safe.  This film is no less than these, and arguably has the starriest cast  of the bunch, but is much more in the vein of Airport (which I did not enjoy) than The Poseidon Adventure (which I did enjoy, in large part due to Shelley Winters' solid work).  The film has the tallest building in the world on fire, and all of our characters, including architect Newman and firefighter McQueen, fighting to stay alive as more-and-more paths to the ground floor are forfeited.  Along the way, some live (including, surprisingly, conman Fred Astaire), and some die, most shockingly Jennifer Jones, who in a morbid twist would be flung from the top of a giant building in the movie two years before her daughter would commit suicide in exactly the same way.

If only the movie was any good.  Technically, this is impressive-the set design, effects, and especially the stunt work are out-of-this-world, but the film spends no time trying to develop the characters, giving us two-dimensional feats from genuinely talented actors.  It's not like someone like Faye Dunaway or Paul Newman can't add a bit of three-dimensionality to their work, but there's no call for it.  Our star of the month, Steve McQueen, feels almost ancillary to the plot of the picture even as he's supposed to be the hero.  Fred Astaire would receive his only competitive acting Oscar nomination for this movie, and man is it unnecessary-he barely has anything to do, other than shout for a dead Jennifer Jones toward the end of the picture.  It feels weird to live in a world where Fred Astaire (whom I love) never got a competitive acting nomination, but, like...over John Cazale in The Godfather, Part II or John Huston in Chinatown...let's not be ridiculous here.

As I said above, Steve McQueen would disappear from movies after this, having a bit of a nomad period where he just went out into the country in a motor home, in the process turning down parts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now that might've dramatically changed his legacy.  But his health by the late 1970's was in terrible shape, and he developed mesothelioma (likely due to asbestos exposure from his time in the Marines).  The National Enquirer, at that point most famous for its ongoing coverage of the death of Elvis Presley rather than the right-wing attack ads that it would become known for to modern supermarket shoppers, broke the story that McQueen was dying shortly before his death (he'd been trying to keep it a secret), and McQueen attempted a number of experimental procedures, including a surgery to remove a tumor from his liver in Mexico, a procedure he couldn't have performed in the United States because no doctor would do it (since it would kill him).  12 hours into the surgery, the American doctors were proven correct, and Steve McQueen died at the age of only 50 from a heart attack.

Next month, we're going to talk about a man who was good friends with McQueen, even if they also had something of a professional rivalry during McQueen's early stardom.  Like McQueen, he also would die young, but unlike McQueen, that death would cement his legacy in a way that would in many ways outlast any films he made in life...and would become the source of near constant conspiracy theory in the decades to come, in ways that would haunt his family for generations.

S.O.B. (1981)

Film: S.O.B. (1981)

Stars: Julie Andrews, William Holden, Richard Mulligan, Robert Preston, Robert Webber, Robert Vaughn, Larry Hagman, Marisa Berenson, Stuart Margolin, Loretta Swit, Shelley Winters, Robert Loggia

Director: Blake Edwards

Oscar History: The film has a weird awards history, getting nominated for a WGA Award, a National Society of Film Critics prize for Preston, and a Globe for Best Picture, but also being cited for a Razzie for  

Worst Director & Screenplay.  Oscar didn't want to get its hands on such a polarizing picture & skipped it all-together.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Julie Andrews-click here to learn more about Ms. Andrews (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we took a look at what would become a major cinematic renaissance moment for Julie Andrews, teaming up with her husband Blake Edwards for the smash-hit 10.  This would become a recurring theme for Andrews for the next several years, regularly leading Edwards films.  We've talked about a few of these on the blog (or some I've seen & not discussed...I watched movies before I started writing this blog, I have to admit).  The best and most successful of these films was Victor/Victoria, where Andrews plays a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.  The film was a critical & commercial smash, and won Andrews her third (and to date, final) Oscar nomination.  But as we only watch film I'd never seen before, we're going to talk a different film from this era, the movie that tried the hardest to crack the veneer of Andrews' squeaky clean image: S.O.B.

(Spoilers Ahead) S.O.B. is a pretty cruel sendup of the Hollywood machine.  We have Felix Farmer (Mulligan), who has produced what is sure to be a major flop called Night Winds after an unparalleled string of successes, many alongside his wife Sally Miles (Andrews), an, Oscar-winning angelic figure for the movies who is in the middle of trying to leave him, as Felix has gone mad while producing the movie. The first third of the film Felix tries to commit suicide, frequently to comic effect (at one point he falls on Loretta Swit's brassy gossip columnist & puts her in a full-body cast for the remainder of the picture), until it occurs to him-if they recut Night Winds, they can make it pornographic and play off of the public's titillation if Sally goes topless.  After Felix buys back the film from the studio, Sally has no choice and does, indeed, go topless.  Afterward, though, the studio realizes that this gimmick might work & go behind Felix's back to get the movie back, driving him mad, and leads him to standing up the studio with a toy gun...after which, in a shock, he is killed by real bullets from the police.  Felix is therefore dead, but the movie thanks to all of the publicity becomes a huge hit, with Sally winning another Oscar for the film.

The movie is vicious in the way it skewers Hollywood, oftentimes watching people stripped of their humanity as they try to find some way to scrounge a buck on a picture.  No one, not even Andrews' Sally, is a saint in the movie, though she does come the closest of the bunch.  The film is very funny, filled with black humor, and Preston & Winters provide the best comic relief of the bunch (both are terrific as soulless figures that know their way around the edges of Tinseltown).  Andrews in the center is hardly at her best, even if she's clearly playing a fictionalized version of herself (she's called "Peter Pan" quite often, perhaps to make it seem like she might be Mary Martin or Cathy Rigby, but, come on...she's Mary Poppins), but she's good.  The movie is good.  It's not great (it's meandering & a bit too long at parts), but it's not Razzie-worthy in any respect.

Andrews would continue to make movies and is still quite active today, nearly 60 years after she became America's Sweetheart.  A botched vocal surgery would rob her of her brilliant voice, but an appearance as Queen Clarisse in 2001's The Princess Diaries revived interest in the actress, and since then she's been playing some version of the Julie Andrews persona in everything from Shrek to Despicable Me to Bridgerton for a new generation.  She, like many of the women we've profiled in recent months, was able to escape Hitchcock's shadow & is hardly considered part of his legacy by modern audiences.  That will not be true on Monday, when we start our penultimate star of the year, a woman who would be defined by Hitchcock...but a star who would have more to say about Hitchcock's modern legacy than any of his leading women.

OVP: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Film: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Stars: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney, Earl Holliman

Director: Mark Robson

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Film Editing, Best Special Effects*)

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 Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned earlier this month in our introduction about Grace Kelly, the actress-turned-princess didn't make a lot of movies (a total of 11 narrative films in her career), and almost half of those movies were made in 1954, so it makes sense that we would get a second film in the span of Kelly's career from that year.  Last week we talked about Kelly's relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, which frequently bordered on (or, let's be real, crossed into) the abusive, and an indication of the problematic troubles the director would get into with many of his upcoming leading ladies during what is considered his peak creative period (ranging from the early 1950's to the early 1960's).  This week, we're going to talk about The Bridges of Toko-Ri, but we're also going to talk about the other major moment in Grace Kelly's 1954-the Oscar win that still strikes passion in the hearts of filmgoers everywhere considering whom she beat to get that trophy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Bridges at Toko-Ri is about Harry Brubaker (Holden), a reluctant naval officer in the middle of the Korean War.  Brubaker is not exactly a pacifist, but he also cannot relate to his fellow man, and feels like he's in a war that the American public doesn't entirely understand nor do they care about in the same way they did World War II.  He is mentored by Rear Admiral Tarrant (March), who sees a lot in Brubaker that reminds him of his late son, who was killed in World War II (and Tarrant has not been able to emotionally reckon with the death of his child).  Brubaker's wife Nancy (Kelly) shows up unexpectedly for Brubaker's leave, though their romantic rendezvous is interrupted when Brubaker's hotheaded friend Mike (Rooney) gets into a fight with a guy who has run off with Mike's "girl" (it's clear as the film goes on that she was using him for money & had no romantic inclinations to him).  While away, Tarrant tells Nancy about the horrors of war, and that her husband (whom she is angry about helping Mike rather than staying with her) might not come back.  In fact, this is the case as (I told you there was a spoiler alert here), both Holden's & Rooney's characters do die during a reconnaissance mission, making all of the prophecy about Brubaker's potential death come to pass.

Bridges at Toko-Ri could be a great movie.  The special effects are impressive (that Oscar win feels legitimate considering the combination of real-world and scale model effects during the battle sequence, which feel pretty seamless onscreen & probably why it was also cited for editing), and the story of the film is quite fascinating, and somewhat ahead-of-its-time.  World War II was the last war (to date) that was fought to any degree on American soil, and as a result all of the American wars since have been in another country's backyard, making patriotism more symbolic than something that is part of day-to-day fear.  That conversation, which runs heavily through the movie, is a conversation worth having, and it's particularly striking in 1954, when a war movie of this nature wouldn't usually be so introspective.

But the movie doesn't rely upon that narration, and the effects are secondary to the plot.  Holden doesn't give us much beyond the surface-level as Brubaker, and Kelly is bland as his wife, in a limited role considering her billing where she has little to say other than to try & be an audience surrogate (she is gone during long stretches of the movie-this is a supporting part).  March, the best actor in the cast, is also the best in show but he's not really central to the plot, and lord help me, Mickey Rooney is actively bad in this movie.  Rooney is one of my least favorite actors of the Classical Hollywood (he might honestly be the least amongst the major stars of the era), and he plays hotheaded, entitled Mike with the grace of a bulldog, totally clomping over the more delicate aspects of the story.

As I mentioned above, Kelly didn't win an Oscar for this, but she would win for The Country Girl, a movie I have seen before which is why we aren't featuring it this month for Saturdays with the Stars.  Kelly is okay in The Country Girl (I generally rag on this performance, but looking back on my notes about it at the time, I'm more middling than actively against it), but it's the sort of performance that makes sense for a win.  She'd made five films that year, was a beautiful young woman making her mark in Hollywood, and for the most part her competition was not the kind that would win: you had two recent winners in Jane Wyman & Audrey Hepburn, and Dorothy Dandridge was making history as the first Black actress to be nominated for Lead Actress, but 1954 Hollywood wasn't progressive enough to give her the trophy.  But the fifth nominee was Judy Garland in A Star is Born, generally considered to be one of the best performances in Hollywood history.  Garland is spectacular in the part, and was not only enjoying the kind of comeback only a true legend could pull off (years of drug & alcohol abuse had made the early parts of the 1950's a question mark if she could do a role like this again, or honestly if she'd even live to make it to 1954), but she had just given birth to her son Joey two days before the ceremony, which would have added a great bit of heartwarming drama to the ceremony.  Kelly's win was rough on Garland, who clearly expected the win, and perhaps knew on some level she'd never get another chance like this (despite a future nomination in 1961, she'd have been right-Judy Garland would never win a competitive Oscar).  Next week, we're going to talk about one of the last films that Grace Kelly would ever make, and how, less than two years after she was crowned the toast of Hollywood, she would leave it forever.

The World of Suzie Wong (1960)

Film: The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
Stars: William Holden, Nancy Kwan, Sylvia Syms, Michael Wilding
Director: Richard Quine
Oscar History: No nominations, though Kwan won the Best Newcomer Golden Globe and was nominated for Actress in a Drama, which generally would indicate she was close to getting a nomination.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

Nancy Kwan's stardom almost certainly wouldn't have happened were it not for Marlon Brando's wandering eye.  Kwan had been understudying the role of Suzie Wong in the national touring production of the play, which starred actress France Nuyen in the lead role.  Nuyen was more famous than Kwan due to her role in the blockbuster South Pacific, and as a result was the frontrunner for the film part opposite William Holden, even though some (including star William Holden) had preferred Kwan's audition, and so Nuyen was hired to the lead (with Kwan getting the consolation of the part on Broadway).  However, Nuyen's troubled relationship with Marlon Brando, whom she suspected was cheating on her (and knowing Brando, he probably was), caused her to gain weight on the set & not to be able to handle playing the part.  She was fired, and Paramount hired Kwan as the female lead (weirdly, two years after Suzie Wong, Nuyen would costar with Holden in Satan Never Sleeps, so there wasn't too much ill-will from this situation with either party).  And thus, Kwan had something very rare for an Asian-American actress in 1960's Hollywood-the opportunity to play the lead in a major studio motion picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around Robert Lomax (Holden), a struggling artist living in late-1950's Hong Kong.  In the opening scene he meets a girl named Mei Ling (Kwan) on a boat who seems to be the over-privileged daughter of a wealthy Chinese figure, who accuses him of stealing her purse.  When Lomax accidentally books a hotel in a red light, he realizes the girl is not the daughter of a wealthy man, but a verbose prostitute who goes by Suzie Wong.  The film chronicles his complicated relationship with Suzie, who is secretive (she will learn about you, but doesn't want you to know too much about her), and of course their relationship breaks both racial & class norms considering she is a Hong Kong prostitute and he's a painter with connections to wealth (but he himself doesn't have money).  The film has some dark turns in its second act (we learn that Suzie's got a secret son and that Sylvia Sims' Kay, Suzie's rival for Robert's affections, is not the open-minded progressive she seems to be when it comes to fighting for his heart), but overall it's a pretty light movie up until the last thirty minutes, a romantic drama with some comic elements.

The film is really hard to review for someone modern-day.  The movie is interesting in the sense that Suzie is a fully-fleshed character-this is very much her story, not Robert's, and she's not a side distraction as he figures out his next move.  But this is also a movie that deals with a lot of stereotypes about Asian women (exoticizing them, making all of the named female Asian characters play prostitutes, and she does play a subservient role to Robert).  Robert is occasionally violent with Suzie, and Suzie seems to encourage this as a sign of affection, something we wouldn't allow in a modern film, and it's by-far the most uncomfortable aspect of the movie.  But it was also a step forward for Hollywood to have any Asian actress getting such a significant role.  While actors like France Nuyen & Miyoshi Umeki were getting important roles in movies, they weren't leads, and really Kwan was the first actress since Silent Film Star Anna May Wong to be afforded an opportunity like Suzie Wong.  Along with James Shigeta (her future costar) getting to play a lead role in Columbia's The Crimson Kimono the year before, in 1960 we were seeing a brief moment where Hollywood was willing to give Asian actors the kind of stardom that had eluded them since the Silent Era.

And Nancy Kwan took that opportunity & made it her own.  She's the best part of the film, and while the character is problematic & occasionally you can see that this is her first movie (certain line readings feel a bit rehearsed), you can't deny she's an intoxicating film presence.  She makes Suzie her own & runs with it, completely crafting a character that feels three-dimensional as the movie wears on.  While the film itself gets too heavy-handed (though the bay shots in Hong Kong are gorgeous, and kind of jaw-dropping to see such well-lit location shoots in the 1950's), especially in the back-half, it's the sort of role that would've normally gotten her Oscar talk, and given her Globe nomination, one has to wonder if she was somewhat close to being the first openly-Asian actress to ever be nominated for an Oscar (Merle Oberon was not open about her ethnicity, and is to-date the only Asian actress to be cited for Best Actress).  The box office wouldn't have hurt her AMPAS case-Suzie Wong was a smash hit, becoming Paramount's second-biggest hit of the year after Psycho, and gave the studio an overnight sensation star that didn't fit their typical mold.  Unlike Lena Horne earlier this year, though, Kwan would be able to follow up Suzie Wong with a groundbreaking musical...which we will take a look at next week.

OVP: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

Film: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
Stars: William Holden, Jennifer Jones, Torin Thatcher, Isobel Elsom
Director: Henry King
Oscar Nominations: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Jennifer Jones, Costume Design*, Score*, Original Song-"Love is a Many-Splendored Thing"*, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This week we are looking at five random Best Actress nominees, all films that I saw for the first time while on quarantine.  Yesterday we started with Barbara Stanwyck's first nomination for Stella Dallas, and today we jump some twenty years into the future with Jennifer Jones' final nomination (of five) for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.  I don't entirely know why I have always been fascinated by the concept of this movie.  It might be the cumbersome title (with the grammatically correct but still unusual hyphen sported in the middle of it), or it could be the omnipresent grandeur of the title song (even if you've never seen this movie, you probably have already started singing it in your head).  But I genuinely had no idea what it was about, and maybe my intrigue stemmed from a genuine love of romantic epics.  Regardless, it got me my very first Best Picture nominee from 1955 (only one ceremony left and I'll have seen a nominee from every single Oscar Best Picture field), and of course going with the theme, we have Jennifer Jones' swan song with an Academy that was quite generous with her considering the scope of her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place during the Chinese Civil War, and focuses almost exclusively on the relationship with Han Suyin (Jones), a Eurasian doctor who works in Hong Kong, and an American war correspondent Mark Elliott (Holden) (it's weird, quite frankly, how there is literally no side story in this film-can anyone think of an epic of this time period that would have done something like that other than Lawrence of Arabia?).  The two are clearly in love, though Mark is married, and Suyin is certain that she will never love again after her husband passed away years before the story.  Making matters more complicated is the racism of it all-it's considered inappropriate for the biracial Suyin to marry Mark, and the white people who pull the strings (and can decide if Suyin gets employed) make sure to let her know this as the movie progresses.  In the end, it doesn't matter-Mark dies covering the war, and Suyin mourns him on the hilltop they first fell in love, and last said goodbye.

There's a lot to unpack with a movie like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, because racism is definitely going to poison most of the enjoyment you might get out of the picture.  The reality is that Jones, in real life, is not of any Asian descent-she is entirely of European descent, and therefore is in yellow face here.  This is pretty disqualifying for modern audiences (as it should be), but even if you're going to try to view it within its time, it's hard to do that because Jones' ethnicity is really the only thing the film has any interest in with her character, and Jones is quite frankly not a good enough actress to make us vest in her as a performer even if her character is a stereotype.  Almost every scene is her pointing out that she's Eurasian, as if to constantly remind the audience that white Jennifer Jones isn't supposed to be white, and as a result the comments she makes about Chinese culture, and about the difficulties she faces as an Asian woman...it's rough, and pretty disgusting.

On a technical level, though the film is impressive looking.  The cinematography's great-I loved the outdoors shot (in a rarity for the 1950's, chunks of the film were shot on-location, and it shows), and the lavish houses are incredible even if they're mildly ridiculous.  The sound work is good, the costumes are meticulous & lovely, and the score, is well, wonderful.  The song is sung by an orchestral choral in the film, but would be covered by everyone in the years that followed (most successfully the Four Aces), and it's gorgeous.  It's so effective, in fact, that you'll think that you just saw a better movie than you did.  Then you'll see a still photo of Jones in the movie, and be reminded that, yeah, this is problematic even for a film trope that is always problematic.

OVP: Executive Suite (1954)

Film: Executive Suite (1954)
Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Nina Foch, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

There is no genre harder to gage in how it will age than straight-dramas.  For any classic film fan, there's really few joys greater than investigating a classic movie for the first time, but I have to say that dramas always have their own risks.  Westerns, whether comedy or drama, you know what you're getting into; same with action-adventures, love stories, horrors, noir, but straight dramas run multiple different pitfalls.  The issues that are being discussed (because almost every drama has an issue at its core) may no longer be applicable, or applicable in the same way.  What might have seemed important at the time could, in fact, be unimportant now, and societal norms may shift to make the film much more dated than you'd hope.  As a result, I headed into Executive Suite (as part of Operation Clean My DVR), not knowing what I was in store for, and actually ended up pleasantly surprised.  The film, with an inexplicably gigantic cast of stars, works despite on-paper seeming like something that might not.

(Spoilers Ahead) Executive Suite uses the ticking clock aspect of storytelling well-while the film isn't quite in real time, it's only the course of about a 24-hour period, where an unseen man, a wealthy and controlling titan of industry, has died, leaving a gaping hole over who will be his successor at a successful furniture manufacturing company.  In the 24-hour period, we see multiple different men jostling with each other and other members of the board trying to figure out who will end up being the CEO, though the chief protagonists in that regard are Don (Holden), the young upstart with a lot of big ideals for the company, and Shaw (March), a practical man who lives mostly by the adoration of the shareholders.

I'll give you one guess over who wins (let's not forget this was made in 1954), but the film actually rises above its predictable nature in that regard.  We're well aware that Holden is the one in command here, and will eventually become the successor, but the film is still pretty riveting nonetheless.  It helps that Robert Wise hired a slate full of movie stars to fill up his picture; it was reported years later that they made this film, similar to the Grand Hotel-style all-star casts of the early 1930's, to compete with television, and while not all of the acting is on the same level, everyone is very watchable and knows how to command a scene when they're expected to do so.  I particularly liked Shelley Winters as a secretary having an affair with her boss, and Fredric March is commendable at making his mustache-twisting villain into a real human being (March is such a fine actor-the fact that he largely made pictures like these without any sort of genre hooks is the only explanation why he isn't still just as famous with casual moviegoers).  Nina Foch won the film's sole acting citation, and she's good, but it's the sort of good you only notice when someone else points it out to you-her character is mysterious, and rises above what could have been completely stock work (think of that scene where she's opposite of March and telling him off as carefully as she can, knowing he's likely to be her next boss), but I'll admit that I wouldn't have paid her much heed had I not been looking for the OVP.

The film's other three nominations are about on the same page-they're all good, though one wonders if they were listed simply because the movie is actually quite good and these were easy categories.  Art Direction is solid-I loved the C-Suite hallway stairs (it's such a nice, elegant touch, the sort that would happen dozens of stories above the earth), though the rest of the film (especially the homes and the other offices), don't have this level of inventive detail.  The costumes are all very appropriately tailored to this level of importance (one wonders if the Mad Men costume designers looked at a film like this for inspiration), and again there's the great touch of Nina Foch's pencil necklace, but overall I was less impressed with other parts, such as the men's suits which felt completely interchangeable.  And finally, the cinematography has a gimmick (never properly seeing the face of the dead CEO, and a first-person camera early on in the picture), which was catnip at the time to that particular AMPAS branch, but again (aside from those great C-Suite hallway shots), there's not a lot to recommend this nomination.

Stil, even if it didn't quite deserve all of its Oscar accolades, I can't help but be fascinated by this movie.  It's wildly watchable, particularly Winters and March, and the sort of film that's less about the acting or visual elements and more about the sum of its parts.  Think of something like Argo where nothing specifically is singled out as "the best" but it's damn fine entertainment.  At least those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Have any of you seen Executive Suite, and if so, what are your thoughts?  If not, share some favorite straight dramas that have stood the test of time in the comments!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 3

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 and 2.

So far we've chronicled six of the biggest legends of cinema, and as a whole they were fairly uniform-the leading men of their eras, whether romantic, dramatic, or comedic.  Here we get a few more of the classic leading men, as well as someone who went on to become a character actor, and while we deceptively will get nine winners, it's really a dozen fellas.  Let's take a look at the final set of the AFI's 100 Stars honorees...

17. Kirk Douglas (1916-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Douglas would receive a trio of Oscar nominations in his career, all for Best Actor, but would lose every time (he probably came the closest to winning for 1956's Lust for Life).  Douglas would deservedly win an Honorary Award in 1996 from the Academy.
Probably Best Known Today For: Living forever?  Hopefully that's the case-it clearly helps your star exponentially to have some longevity around it (unless you do what the next guy on this list did, though that doesn't seem like as enjoyable of an alternative).  Douglas has been one of those great, enduring links to Hollywood's classical age, and as recently as 2010 (when he famously handed the Oscar over to Melissa Leo) he has been in the public eye (he still blogs for the Huffington Post).  Douglas also, of course, is known for his work in Spartacus and for being Michael Douglas' father.
My Favorite Performance: I have to admit that I like the idea of Kirk Douglas more than I like him in practice as an actor.  I love that there's still a great film actor out there from Hollywood's Golden Age remaining active and as a link for today's audiences into the Hollywood of the past, and I do hope that Kirk Douglas just continues living forever.  That said, I've never had that moment of adoration with one of his films (I admittedly have a few to go with this particular gentleman), so I'll go with his Oscar-nominated work in The Bad and the Beautiful for now.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: As I stated above, there's a few to go here, including his iconic work in Spartacus, his near miss with the Academy in Lust for Life, and his work in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Paths of Glory.  Anyone up for a marathon (actually-that goes for any of these articles; in hopes of getting more comments going I'll offer up a weekend of reviews on some of the missing links on a few of these actors if we can get some discussion going)?

18. James Dean (1931-1955)

Oscar Nominations: 2 nominations, both posthumously, for East of Eden and Giant
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential "live hard and die young" star.  Eternally youthful (it's always a weird moment the first time you realize you're older than James Dean ever was), he made three classic movies, and then died in an automobile accident.  Since then, in a similar way to Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, he has become an icon of the 1950's, frequently featured in poster art and 50's nostalgia and becoming synonymous with being "cool."
My Favorite Performance: It's also a weird moment when you actually see Dean onscreen for the first time-it's kind of like seeing Marilyn for the first time in a movie.  It's an odd juxtaposition because you have become so used to seeing them, almost as cartoons in poster art for so many years that to realize that this beautiful creature actually was a person at one point-it's a tad bit jarring.  That said, my favorite performance of Dean's would be his troubled, sensitive young man in Rebel Without a Cause, a marvelous movie and one of the most nuanced performances of the 1950's.  It's one of those performances where you say "what might have been..."
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: While he technically had uncredited roles in a handful of movies (that's what happens when you become hyper-famous: they find the random tiny roles you did when you were just trying to make rent), he was only billed in three films: Rebel, East of Eden, and Giant.  The only one of these I haven't seen is East of Eden, so clearly that's the miss here.

19. Burt Lancaster (1913-1994)

Oscar Nominations: Lancaster received 4 Oscar nominations, winning for 1960's Elmer Gantry
Probably Best Known Today For: Being awash in the suds with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity.  That image, of them making out in the sand, is one of the most iconic in film history, and if he hadn't had anything else in his career that alone would keep him forever in the public memory.  That said, he was an actor with an extraordinarily long career (spanning four decades), and he's also pretty memorable from his work in Field of Dreams and his late career comeback in Atlantic City.
My Favorite Performance: Like Kirk Douglas, I am missing a few pieces here but haven't been wild about what I've seen so far.  I actually quite liked his tiny role in Field of Dreams-it's probably my favorite performance in that movie.  I'll go with that, though From Here to Eternity is an appropriate if not all-together inspired choice (he's like the fourth or fifth best performance in that movie-the Monty Clift/Donna Reed story has always intrigued me more from that picture).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Elmer Gantry, clearly, with his Oscar win for that film, though seeing him with a young Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City is definitely keeping that movie pretty high up on my to-watch list.

20. The Marx Brothers (1887-1979)

Oscar Nominations: None of the Marx Brothers ever received an Oscar nomination in their careers, though Groucho won an Honorary Oscar in 1974.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being one of the great comic teams of classic cinema.  The brothers: Chico (1887-1961), Harpo (1888-1964), Groucho (1890-1977), and Zeppo (1901-1979) appeared in a number of classic comedies together in the 1930's and 40's and are famous for their madcap antics in some of the era's most celebrated comedies (there was a fifth brother named Gummo that was part of the act but left when he was drafted during World War I and didn't appear in any of their films; I couldn't find a quality photo with Zeppo, who isn't pictured to the left, but he wasn't as significant of a part of the Marx Brothers as his three older brothers).
My Favorite Performance: In my opinion you can't really go wrong with a Marx Brothers comedy, particularly with Duck Soup or A Night at the Opera (I will admit that I get these two particular films mixed up as the whole point of a Marx Brothers film is not the plot but seeing the madness that comes out of what's happening onscreen).  If forced to pick between the two...maybe A Night at the Opera.
Glaring Miss in Their Filmography: I have never gotten around to Animal Crackers-this is noted as one of Groucho's funniest performances, so I'd probably go with that.

21. Buster Keaton (1895-1966)

Oscar Nominations: Keaton would never win a competitive nomination or win from the Academy, but he did win an Honorary Oscar in 1960.
Probably Best Known Today For: ...not being Charlie Chaplin?  That's cruel, though it's worth noting that the rivalry that cinematic fans of their work have long fueled has decidedly come out in Chaplin's favor through the years, at least in terms of enduring fame (if it makes you feel better, Buster, Harold Lloyd clearly got the shaft of the three of you).  That said, his work as the great stone-faced comedian of the Silent Era is still known today and celebrated by many critics, a number of whom argue (vociferously) that he was better than Chaplin.
My Favorite Performance: I've only seen one Keaton film, and while I didn't love it (so far, I'm more on the Chaplin side of things), Sherlock Jr. is hard to argue with in terms of certain incredible scenes in the movie, particularly the scene where Keaton enters the movie during the dream sequence.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I mean, I haven't seen The General.  If I were going to create a list of classic movies that I haven't seen, the number one title on that list would be The General, so you know that my head is pretty damn low right now.  It's currently at Number 12 on my Netflix list-provided I don't get to re-arranging too much, we'll hit this by the end of the year.

22. Sidney Poitier (1927-Present)

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

23. Robert Mitchum (1917-1997)

Oscar Nominations: Mitchum received an Oscar nomination for The Story of GI Joe, but didn't win.  Mitchum is noteworthy on this list because, aside from James Dean who died at age 24, he's the only person to have never won either a competitive or an honorary Oscar.  Clearly AMPAS dropped the ball on that one.
Probably Best Known Today For: All right, I'm going to go there-Robert Mitchum is most well-known today for wearing his high-pants and being an "out-of-shape, in-shape" guy (you can thank Seth MacFarlane for introducing Mitchum to a new generation of filmgoers, albeit with a series of Mitchum cliches, and if you don't know what I'm talking about you don't watch Family Guy).  Mitchum was one of those great, enigmatic tough guys-frequently finding himself on the wrong side of the law but on the right side of a dame.
My Favorite Performance: Hands down this is Night of the Hunter.  Mitchum's creepy Harry Powell in this movie is one of the most chilling villains ever brought to the screen, and definitely a strong introduction to his work if you're not particularly familiar with him as an actor (he's one of the least known of this list of 25 men).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen Cape Fear, the original production with Gregory Peck and Polly Bergen-that would probably at the top just over his work in The Winds of War (a giant miniseries for ABC back when broadcast television invested in giant miniseries and it wasn't just something the History Channel and HBO created).

24. Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973)

Oscar Nominations: Robinson never received a competitive nomination in his long career, though he did win an Honorary Award in 1973 (though, sadly, it was given posthumously).
Probably Best Known Today For: Saying the phrase "see" a lot?  Robinson's persona is what is well-known today, most notably being parodied by Chief Clancy Wiggum on The Simpsons.  Robinson is also well-known as one of the cinema's most famous portrayer of gangsters, with Little Caesar coming to most people's minds.
My Favorite Performance: I actually would go with Double Indemnity, when he was starting to shift into supporting performances (he's one of those rare actors who did that shift during that era, rather than just petering out in terms of what work they were doing).  I love the calculating way that his character draws out scenes, getting more and more information (though there's not really a "bad" part of that movie).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I can never remember if I've seen Little Caesar-I feel like I have, but that might just be because that is one of those films that you see so many clips of that you are sure you've seen it.  As a result, I'll go with Orson Welles' The Stranger here, though I should clearly probably re-view Little Caesar just to make sure I've enjoyed it.

25. William Holden (1918-1981)

Oscar Nominations: Three nominations, he won Best Actor for 1953's Stalag 17.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being face-down in a pool.  I always wonder if actors sort of hate the fact that they become most well-known for an early role, constantly living in its shadow.  If William Holden did, at least he can take comfort in knowing that his work as Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard is a truly splendid piece of work, and established him as the easy-going, cool but potentially more below the surface handsome man that the 1950's desperately needed (as he became a major star as a result of that movie).
My Favorite Performance: I'll go with Sunset Boulevard.  With one big exception, I've actually seen most of the major movies of Holden's career, but I (like the public) liked him best early-on, charming Norma Desmond as a boy toy certain he'll be a great screenwriter, and then finding his way into a nightmare (this is also one of my all-time favorite movies just in general).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen the film that won Holden his Oscar, oddly enough. Stalag 17 has for whatever reason stayed off my radar, but as it was a major player in that year's Academy Awards, we'll get to it someday with the OVP.

And there you have it-we're done with the official entrants in the AFI's 100 Stars list.  We'll get into the also-rans tomorrow, but in the meantime-who are your favorites of these nine gentlemen?  Do you have a performance you gravitate toward?  Which of their films are you ashamed to admit you've never seen?  And which would you like me to discuss more in-depth on the blog?  Share in the comments!