The Great Ziegfeld 1936

The Film:

It's a musical. An MGM Musical. And it's also a bio-pic of someone I already know a bit about (the first bio-pic to win the award). It's not a film I had seen, although I knew the (in)famous "Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" sequence from That's Entertainment. All the signs point to this being my sort of film....

It was very heavily promoted by MGM, who threw lots of money at the production as well as the promotion - and it became a massive box office hit.

Getting the project off the ground was apparently quite a feat in itself. Ziegfeld himself had only been dead a couple of years and his wife (Billie Burke, played by Myrna Loy) and many, many of his mistresses and business associates were nearly all still around, each with a different take on what really went on.

Billie Burke sold the rights to her story in order to pay off Ziegfeld's debts - but she blocked the casting of Marilyn Miller, who then threatened to sue if she was mentioned at all in the film (although she's quite obviously the character "Sally Manners" - who has a much smaller part to play than you would expect....). So the story behind the story is fascinating in itself, and the very large production numbers are infamously spectacular. Time to settle down with the popcorn....


The Ceremony:

Still very much a gala dinner rather than a performance!

The Awards were held at The Biltmore again, on the same weekend of the year as last year - 4th March 1937. They were definitely starting to take shape as a real event by now (which was the 9th ceremony) and the evening included music from the Victor Young and his orchestra - he was becoming a big name in musical accompaniment in Hollywood and is probably most famous for working with Bing Crosby.

The main big change this year was the introduction of Best Supporting Actor / Actress categories - long overdue, since Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar for a decidedly supporting role back in 1931. The triple nominations for the actors in Mutiny On The Bounty the previous year was probably the main thing that prompted the change for this year. These categories have been awarded every year since and have been really important in highlighting lesser known actors and films - particularly comic actors and character actors.



Other Notable Winners That Night:

Frank Capra, Luise Rainer and Paul Muni - Best Director,
Best Actress and Best Actor 

Frank Capra won Best Director for the second time in three years - this time for Mr Deeds Goes To Town (see below for my verdict on that film!).

Luise Rainer won Best Actress for playing Ziegfeld's first wife, Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld. She's a German actress, playing a French actress speaking in English. She emotes a lot - more, or less, successfully than Garbo in Grand Hotel (depending on your point of view) but with a similar amount of moping about in her room on the telephone.

Paul Muni won his only award (from several nominations) for playing Louis Pasteur. He's playing Emile Zola in our next film, so I'll say more about him then.

The first Supporting awards went to Walter Brennan (one of his three - matched only by Nicholson and Day Lewis!) and Gale Sondergaard (again, more of her next time).

Here's a nice bit of (clearly staged) film of Luise Rainer receiving her award:

Best Song:

A lot of songs nominated this year, including Pennies from Heaven and I've Got You Under My Skin, which have both stood the test of time. Nothing from Ziegfeld, as none of them were "original". An absolute classic won again this year. "The Way You Look Tonight" from Swing Time. Take it away Fred:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Don't worry Gary - your time will come. And at least you didn't
get killed after five minutes in this one!

I do like my musicals but I think it's going to be another 25 films or so until one that I really love wins Best Picture. The Great Ziegfeld would not have been my pick for this year.

There are quite a few big hitters on the list this year (and one of my favourite Deanna Durbin films - Three Smart Girls!) but one stands out clearly for me. The award should have gone to Mr Deeds Goes To Town. Hands down. Absolutely. Watch me beat down anyone who argues otherwise....

Yes, I'm an unashamed Capra fan, so I may be a little bit biased. But I watched this film again a couple of months ago and it is still incredibly watchable, beautifully filmed, scripted, acted etc - and massively relevant to the modern world. Longfellow Deeds' speech in the courtroom near the end reminded me of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and made me wish that every Trump voter had been forced to watch this on a loop in the lead up to the elections. And when you think about what was going on in the US in the mid-30s, and what happened to left-leaning Hollywood a few years later, it is a real shame that this lost out to the nostalgic excesses of Ziegfeld.


Our Verdict:

Pretty girls, just like melodies - great overblown excessive ones!

I don't  really know where to start with this one. I was quite looking forward to a good old fancy 30s musical - but overall the whole thing was a bit of a let down.

The film was very lovely to look at, the dialogue was far less cheesy than I thought it would be, and the acting was really rather impressive. I particularly liked William Powell in the lead. He did a very good job at playing someone who (and here's part of the problem) ultimately wasn't very likeable or particularly interesting.

Not quite the same impact as the NHS sequence at the
2012 Olympics - but impressive, nonetheless!

The big set pieces were great fun (I liked them more than Andy did - but I expected that) and they had learned a lot since Broadway Melody about how to film very stage-bound numbers. The "Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" number is the one I knew and it looks great. There were also a couple of others - including one with loads of beds, another with some trained dogs (see clip below), and a great bit of pre-scarecrow Ray Bolger throwing himself across the stage.

The problem is, there weren't quite enough of them compared to how much time was spent on the overall story. We were about an hour in before we got the first one. And an hour in was only a third of the way through the film.

This was a looooong film. Far too long for such a slight story - he makes money, he loses it, he finds women, he loses them, he puts on shows, he dies. That's the story. About a quarter of it was singing and dancing. And I can't really tell you what took up all the time for the rest of it.

Thank you Fanny Brice!!

The second billed name is Myrna Loy and she doesn't turn up for over two hours - and then is criminally under-used (although the real Billie Burke may have had something to do with that....). Frank Morgan is great as Ziegfeld's friend/rival but the character seems to run out of steam half way through. (Lots of Oz interest here though - with Ray Bolger, Frank Morgan and the real Billie Burke all going to appear in the Wizard of Oz in a few years time...)

The absolute saving grace of the whole film is the appearance of Fanny Brice playing herself (although she's billed as Fannie Brice). I've seen Funny Girl a few times but I'd never seen any footage of the real thing. She is a breath of fresh air at just the right moment and gets a nice chance to show off her singing and comedic talents. And all credit to Barbra Streisand who did such a good impression of her! I only wish there had been more Fanny Brice and a lot less faffing around with everything else.

Weirdly, this film appears to have inspired a lot of gifs!

I think I had two main problems with The Great Ziegfeld. One, it was about an hour too long. Other three hour plus films that spring to mind are Gone With The Wind, Giant and The Godfather. They were all big family sagas with plenty of action and a lot to say. This film really wasn't.

Secondly, it wasn't really sure if it was a musical film or just a film about musicals. It felt like a drama with some set pieces thrown in (which neither 42nd Street or even The Broadway Melody really did) - and it didn't quite live up to the trailers because of it. 

I'm glad I've seen it. But I won't rush to see it again.

Mutiny On The Bounty 1935

The Film:

This is a story I know pretty well (most people do, I suppose?) but I've never seen this version of it. I vaguely remember not being interested in the Marlon Brando version when it was on - probably on a Sunday afternoon - when I was much younger. (To be fair, if there weren't any children in it, people didn't sing and/or dance and there was no magic going on I wasn't really interested until I was about 12 or 13.)

It was a $2 million epic that received multiple nominations (although it only actually won one award) and was a big box office smash. And the casting of the previous two Best Actor winners is pretty impressive.

But - how far does it stand the test of time? Does it still look technically impressive at all? Does the acting stand up? Are the historical inaccuracies too obvious and distracting? Are there going to be too many culturally inappropriate natives to deal with? And will it be worth two and a quarter hours to find out......


The Ceremony:

The 8th Awards were held on March 5th 1936 at The Biltmore and were presented by Frank Capra - which was quite fitting after him cleaning up the awards the previous year.

The only new award this year was for Dance Direction - an award that only lasted for a few years, which says something about the changing emphasis in Hollywood. It was the second and last time that "write-in" nominations were allowed - and Cinematography was won via that method. It is also the only year (to date) where three of the Best Actor nominations were for the same film, and this may have been a key factor in introducing Supporting categories the following year.

Most notably, this was the first year that the awards themselves were referred to as Oscars!

One hell of a line-up at the ceremony - Frank Capra, DW Griffith, Jean Hersholt,
Henry B Walthall, Frank Lloyd, Cecil B de Mille, Donald Crisp. 

And I've found a little bit of film too:

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Bette and Victor

Despite all the nominations - including the three for Best Actor - Mutiny on the Bounty only won one award (the last time so far that this has happened!)

Best Director was the first of several for John Ford, for The Informer. Victor McLaglen won Best Actor for the same film, and Bette Davis won the first of her Best Actress awards for Dangerous.

DW Griffith, pictured with the dignitaries above, won an honorary award. His major works were completed before the Academy Awards started so this was a way of recognising how important he was to the development of motion pictures. His most famous work, Birth of a Nation, was in 1915 and is really impressive as a piece of film making (if a bit on the long side!) but now more famous for some quite nauseating racism - some horrible blackface, and the KKK riding in as the heroes! All that aside, he probably still deserved his award for "invaluable initiative and lasting contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts".


Best Song:

This is clearly now going to become a thing on this blog, so I might as well give it its own sub-heading. This year Fred and Ginger lost out twice ("Cheek to Cheek" and "Lovely To Look At") to the epic that is the Lullaby of Broadway, from Gold Diggers of 1935. The whole sequence from the film lasts about 13 minutes - this is just some of it:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

He gets everywhere - and can probably
sing better than Russell Crowe!

The list is quite an impressive one again - including the sequel to a previous winner (Broadway Melody of 1936), the version of David Copperfield with WC Fields, a swashbuckling Errol Flynn (Captain Blood), and one of several versions of Les Miserables (where, thankfully, Charles Laughton doesn't have to sing Stars!). It also includes Top Hat which I love (unsurprisingly).

But I do think that the Best Film won again this time!


Our Verdict:

Seamen's rights, or the lure of Tahitian ladies?
You decide!

I wasn't expecting to do much more than just appreciate this film - big blockbusting action films are not really my thing. They have to be really good for me to like them. However, I was very pleasantly surprised! Right from the opening scenes I was hooked in and I stayed hooked for the whole film.

Considering that Cavalcade - also directed by Frank Lloyd - was only two years earlier, both the technical advances and the whole way that the story was filmed an edited were way beyond anything in that film. And I think that is what underpins the whole film. Along with great acting, impressive pacing, good use of humour, great cinematography. In short, I really liked it!

Gable sans 'tache - more than a hint
of Clooney about him?

Firstly, the story. I've never really been too fussed about this era of history, particularly the whole naval "Rule Britannia" for-King-and-country-ness of the sort of films made about it. With my Sociology hat on I'm far more interested in what happened after they got to Pitcairn (and how it all led to the sex abuse trials in 2004) than who strung who up to get there in the first place. Having said that, the story was told really well. The first ten minutes or so when they are all preparing for the voyage (and the entrance of the Captain!) is really well done - with real humour and a light touch that cleverly introduces the main characters. By the time they set sail I was ready to go with them.

From that point onwards the story kept up its pace really well. There was never too much time spent dwelling on long speeches - and even the action sequences (which were impressive - and very wet!) were short and to the point before moving on to the next bit of the story. The torture inflicted on board (the film portrays it as such) is shown unflinchingly but without gore and the mutineers are shown to be just as bloodthirsty. And I never got bored!

Suspicious cheese - thankfully, absolutely none of it on
display in the acting.

Secondly, the acting. Clark Gable was playing Clark Gable (he usually does) but I was totally convinced that he was Fletcher Christian and that he came from Cumberland, even with his unmistakably American accent. Even though the tone of the story paints Christian as too much of a hero, Gable manages to hint at a darker side by the end of the film - I could well believe that he was more interested in getting back to some Tahitian women than he was in securing justice for the crew.

Smug, superior and nasty - all in one look!

Charles Laughton (who seems to be in everything in the mid-30s!) is brilliant as Bligh. His face helps, as it does in his other famous roles, but his actual acting is also pretty impressive. He presents Bligh as a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, but there is a little bit of pathos in there - in the scene where his fellow officers refuse to eat his tainted cheese, when he's adrift and saving his men and in the court martial where he simultaneously wins and loses. Historians have since shifted the balance of blame firmly from Bligh to Christian, but Laughton's Bligh does what he was written to do.

The third in the nominated trinity is Franchot Tone playing a fictional mashup of officers who serves as our viewpoint for the first part of the film and then as the balancing conscience (and ultimate hero) for the second half. Nice acting - and very clever writing!

Ok, so this photo is gratuitous. But so what!

The fact that the relevant parts of the film were actually shot in and around Tahiti adds something to the overall effect. And the special effects are far less "ship in a bathtub" than I was expecting. Despite a fair bit of the budget going on the stars, the rest of it was well spent.

Mutiny On The Bounty has unexpectedly summed up exactly why this Oscar Challenge is proving to be a great idea. Along with Cavalcade and Cimarron this is a film that I would never in a million years have sat down to watch otherwise - and it's by far the best of the three!



Frank Lloyd's grandson has a great Youtube channel with lots of his films on it (it's where we found Cavalcade) including this short "making of":

It Happened One Night 1934

The Film:

Note how big the stars' names are and how small the film's title is.
Hollywood is very much becoming Hollywood!!

This is the first of the Best Picture Winners so far that I'd already seen. I've seen it several times and it's a bit of a favourite.

It holds the distinction of being the first (of three, up to now) to win the "big five" - Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay. It's also the first rom-com to win Best Picture as well as being one of the first real "sleeper hits".

Absolutely no one except Frank Capra and Robert Riskin even wanted to make the movie - Capra persuaded Columbia to let him do it as long as he did it quickly and cheaply. Neither of the leads were first choice, and both took the parts reluctantly. Clark Gable wasn't too keen, but was on loan to Paramount and had some contractual obligations to get out of as smoothly as possible so said ok. Claudette Colbert really didn't want to do it and was eventually persuaded by doubling her fee and making sure filming only took four weeks. (They both won their only Oscar for this film!)

The studio didn't do a great deal of promotion and didn't expect much, but a couple of good reviews and a lot of word-of-mouth made it a box office smash by the end of the year.

And the rest, as they say, is history.


The Ceremony:

Bette - so badass she got votes without
even being nominated!

The ceremony took place on 27th February 1935 at the Biltmore Hotel. This was the first ceremony that honoured films from the previous calendar year, rather than from a season.

The number of award categories went up to sixteen - including Score and Song - and the unusual practice of "write-in nominations" (a peculiarly American election practice) happened for the first time. Enough people were up in arms that Bette Davis was snubbed for her performance in Of Human Bondage that they voted for her anyway, and it counted.


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Shirley and Claudette.

Most of the main winners we already know! But there was one scene-stealer on the night....

Shirley Temple won a special "Juvenile Award" making her the youngest ever Oscar winner at the age of six (although it maybe doesn't count because it wasn't through competition....). I know many people today find her too cutesy sickly sweet - Andy is not a fan! - but she was by far the biggest box office draw of the era. Her success saved Fox and allowed them to merge with 20th Century - and they are still very much around (for better and worse...) and she helped to get a lot of people through the Depression. She also regularly danced with Bill Robinson - in mainstream films in the 1930s - which was significantly progressive for the times!

This was the first year of the Best Song category, which was won by The Continental from The Gay Divorcee. I need no better excuse for a bit of Fred and Ginger:

(Oh, and guess who won the Animation award?!)


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Claudette waiting for Will Hays to come and cover her up!

Looking back 80 years on a film that is still watched today and clearly influenced so many others, it's hard to suggest that any of the other films on the list might have been a worthier winner.

The list isn't anywhere near as inspiring as the previous year, but includes several big names (in acting and directing) - including Colbert in two other films. She plays the lead in De Mille's epic Cleopatra, which is probably the film that everyone initially thought would win things. It won Cinematography. Claudette Colbert looks like a prototype Princess Leia in all the stills I've seen, with De Mille clearly making the most of the last few pre-Code months!


Our Verdict:

It's all about chemistry - and carrots!

This was probably my fifth or sixth time watching the film - but Andy hadn't seen it before. I'm an unashamed fan of Frank Capra films, particularly the Stewart and Cooper ones. So I'm definitely going to be biased towards this sort of character-led, positive gentle comedy (a sort of gentle version of Screwball). And of course I really love this one!

Strangers on a bus

With hindsight it's really clear to see why this won all the awards it did. The script is very well written - it keeps the story going without sagging and provides us with two very likeable and quick-witted leads who both have some great comedy lines. The directing is subtly very clever, especially when you remember how tight the budget and the timings were on this film. I particularly like the scenes shot on the bus, which jumps around convincingly and helps us to focus on the blossoming relationship between Ellie and Peter (let's not look too closely at the inside/outside continuity issues - like the bus driver completely changing body as he rolls into the ditch!). It was also one of the first films to use back projections for the car scenes. And it does it quite effectively, certainly compared to some other films in the 30s and 40s.

The famous Walls of Jericho

Above all, though - it's the two reluctant leads and the chemistry between them that really make this film. Clark Gable is quite brilliant as the charming, flirtatious, possibly slightly dodgy but ultimately thoroughly decent newspaper hack. This was a rare comedy appearance for him, but he comes across as just incredibly comfortable in the role. Claudette Colbert is equally as good as the spoilt heiress who gradually comes to her senses and learns a few things along the way - whilst still getting the upper hand where it matters. For such a glamorous star she spends about 90 minutes of the film in the same low-key costume - and her and Capra between them manage to show that, if you're a good enough actress, it's the performance that really counts, not the glamour and the costumes! (Mind you, her make up is flawless and she manages to keep a neat wave in her hair after several nights sleeping on buses and hay etc - but I can forgive them that!). Andy said several times that both the characters and the dialogue reminded him of When Harry Met Sally. I can see the comparison - and there are probably several more that could be made. This film sets a nice blueprint for lots of rom-coms to come.

Thumb 0 - Leg 1

This is the last pre-code Oscars and this film is a great example of a last attempt to get away with a few things before Hays and his crew spoil the fun A respectable married woman sharing a room with another man, using her shapely legs to get what she wants etc, and getting away with it - not on after 1934! On the other hand, the Walls of Jericho also make their own point - as does the trumpet (off screen) which suggests they are falling down at the end of the film. An early example of how to get round the code and suggest more off screen than would ever be allowed on screen!

There's even a nice musical interlude (which feels far less forced than the ones in Cavalcade) - it made me nostalgic for similar sing-a-longs in my youth, so here it is so you can join in too:

Thank you Mr Gable - see you again next time!

Cavalcade 1932/3

The Film:

Two years earlier, Cimarron was billed as "Terrific as all Creation". This film is apparently "Great as Life Itself!". The passage of time has deemed both of these films as among the least worthy winners - Cavalcade has the same low IMDB rating as Cimarron. However, Cavalcade has the added indignity of winning when there are several films in the nomination list that have far better stood the test of time - and also one that is considered one of the greatest early classics of sound cinema but doesn't get a single nomination anywhere....

None of that is Cavalcade's fault and it will be interesting to try and work out quite what all the fuss was about when it was awarded both Best Picture and Best Director that year. It was the first non-American film to win Best Picture and it would appear that the Academy were charmed by the ever-so-Englishness of the whole thing. From what (little) I'd read before watching it, it sounded very much like the whole of Upstairs Downstairs crammed into two hours - it covers pretty much the same timespan with a similar sounding family. I still consider UpDown to be one of the greatest TV Dramas ever made, so I was anticipating being a pretty harsh critic.

Cavalcade (unsurprisingly) was proving difficult - or, at least, rather expensive - to find on DVD. But then we found the whole thing on Youtube, which saved me about £30! It all seems legit (it's been up there for years) and it's quite a nice print. So, if you want to see what all the (lack of) fuss is about, here it is:

Your host for the evening.....

The Ceremony:

The 6th Ceremony was held again at the Ambassador   Hotel, on March 16th 1934, and it was hosted by Will Rogers. Although no footage of the ceremony exists, it's fair to assume that this was the first of many ceremonies that included some comedy schtick from the presenter (previous presenters were movie execs and, the year before, serious silent film star Conrad Nagle)

It was also the first year to feature a fairly major gaffe - not quite of La La Moonlight Land proportions, but still pretty embarrassing. When Rogers announced the Best Director he shouted "Come and get it Frank!", forgetting that two of the three nominated directors were called Frank. Mr Capra got there first, but Mr Lloyd was the winner. In the great scheme of things I'm sure Capra didn't mind too much - he won two awards the following year and another four after that!

This was the last year that the ceremony recognised films from a season rather than a calendar year, and so the eligibility period spanned nearly 18 months. From now on they all stick to a date somewhere in February, March or April and recognise films from the previous calendar year.


Other Notable Winners That Night:

I don't need an excuse to put up a ravishing photo of the divine
Katharine! It was her or Charles Laughton - no contest really!

Katharine Hepburn won the first of her (still unbeaten) four Best Actress awards, for Morning Glory. By all accounts not the greatest film, but she was great in it. She also appeared in another nominated film that year, Little Women. I can vouch for the fact that she was completely brilliant in that!

The Academy clearly had a thing for British talent and British history that year, as Best Actor went to Charles Laughton for his depiction of Henry VIII.

Disney won yet another Oscar but, to be fair, there wasn't a great deal of competition in animation at the time. It'll happen.....



What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Where's my Oscar?!!!

This is the most controversial one yet - and possibly ever! There were ten films nominated that year. Among them are such fondly remembered (and still watched) classics as 42nd Street, The Private Life of Henry VIII, She Done Him Wrong (probably the most famous Mae West film), Little Women, A Farewell to Arms and I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

Whatever the particular merits of Cavalcade, it's easy to argue with hindsight that any one of these films is better in some way or other - and therefore should have won the Oscar. Personally, from this list, I'd go for 42nd Street. (But then, I would, wouldn't I?)

Far more shocking, with decades of hindsight, is that the most famous, innovative, game-changing, enduring and financially successful film of 1933 didn't even get a nomination. In any category. There were no technical categories at this point - if there were King Kong would have cleaned up in all of them. And, considering its box office success, it seems bizarre that it wasn't on that pretty long list of nominees.


Our Verdict:

Upstairs and Downstairs - what will the next three decades
bring? Go on - have a guess! You're probably right!

So, it probably shouldn't have won. But if it hadn't we wouldn't be watching it. And we'd probably be watching one of the above mentioned films that I've already seen before. The question remains - is it any good?

The answer - I don't really know! I sort of like it, and I'm glad I watched it. But did I like it just because I'm a sucker for this sort of thing (Early 20th Century British social history, to be precise) or is there more to it? It's definitely a curate's egg. And a well scrambled one at that.

There goes the Queen, the end of an era!

I was right in my prediction that it sounded very Upstairs Downstairs. In terms of story it was all five seasons rolled into one, but in terms of script and acting it too often resembled the dodgier episodes of Season One (sorry, that's a bit of a specific reference, I'll try to stay off the UpDown from now on).

One big difference is that it was filmed in or around the final year it depicts. Yet another film that looks at either the First World War or society shortly after it (in this case, both) with absolutely no knowledge of what's about to happen next. That adds an extra poignancy to the ending, when the couple are reflecting on the past and pondering the future.

Hmmm now let's see. What completely random ship to
America in 1912 might this be? And how can we be certain?

However, this is also the main reason why I am really struggling to review it properly. It's almost impossible for me to get into the mindset of someone watching it in the mid-30s. I have hindsight which gets in the way, in several different ways. Firstly, I know what happens next so their hopes and predictions for the future just seem very lame and pointless. Also, the style of storytelling comes across as very clunky and almost amateurish - lots of over-the-top stereotypes, a bit too much exposition, bloody great obvious clues as to what is going to happen next ("What if we die tonight?" is not a usual question to ask on your honeymoon, but the caption just told us its 1912 and they are on a great big ship, so guess what??), lots of scenes where people are in a room but are staring forward at the camera rather than at each other (it's obvious it was adapted from a play)

It's like the last thirty years went by in a blur of short scenes,
long songs and not particularly convincing make up

The other thing is the sheer Noel Coward-ness of the whole thing, which a modern audience is always going to find funny in the wrong ways and the wrong places. The accents are incredibly plummy and the acting often correspondingly wooden. On one hand this sort of stuff has been done so much better since (UpDown and the like) and on the other hand this sort of stuff has been parodied to death over the years - "many, many times", to quote Celia Molestrangler!

Having said this, it's still got its merits. There are some very well staged crowd scenes with casts of thousands and some effective montages, particularly showing the war years advancing. (Although it's odd how much of a fuss they make of relieving Mafeking whilst montaging the whole of WW1). And Fanny Bridges singing 20th Century Blues slightly softens the blow of not watching Ruby and Ginger!

Overall, it's quite an impressive bit of film making, but it just hasn't stood the test of time (maybe I feel this more with this film than Cimarron because its set in Britain?). And, after just under two hours, I really wasn't that bothered about the Maryotts or the Bridges. Not like I am about the Bellamys, Hudson, Rose and co.

Sorry Ruby, you're not quite what we're looking for
- where's Fanny Bridges?

So - I'm glad I watched it, I probably won't bother again, I'm glad I didn't pay £20+ for the Spanish release DVD and I still can't quite work out what the Academy saw in this over the others on the shortlist. I'm going to put it down to the fact that it is impossible for me to get inside the mind and soul of a 1933 Academy member.

Roll on 1934 - it's a belter!

Grand Hotel 1931/2

The Film:

Just look at those names!!!

This is the first one that I've really been waiting for. It's an absolute classic and I can't believe I haven't seen it before.

It's most famous now for being the film in which Garbo delivers her most famous line - "I want to be alone!". It's also probably the first film that can call itself "star-studded". The first time a big Hollywood movie had an A-list ensemble cast. There are five big names in this film - along with two more slightly smaller ones. This was unheard of in those days and was considered to be a ridiculous financial risk at the time. Except by MGM who had the last laugh - all the way to the bank. It's also considered to be the first film to be parodied - in comic strips, animations, comedy routines and other movies for years to come. High praise indeed!

By all accounts the cast didn't quite see eye to eye (although everyone loved John Barrymore - but you would, wouldn't you?!). There's probably another film to be made right there....


The Ceremony:

The first of many Disney Oscars

The Ceremony took place on November 18th 1932 at the Ambassador Hotel.
The number of categories increased again, with this being the first year to give awards for Short Films - including one for Animation (which went to Disney - the first of many). Walt Disney was also given the first Honorary Award, for the creation of Mickey Mouse.

Disney produced a Mickey Mouse short to be played at the ceremony, called Parade of the Award Nominees. Here it is:

Other Notable Winners That Night:

I think Wallace Beery must have popped out for a minute!
Possibly to try and do a deal with Manchester.....

This was the first and only (so far) time that two actors were awarded Best Actor - Frederic March for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Wallace Beery for The Champ. Both are quite famous and notable performances - but I feel slightly sorry for Alfred Lunt who was the only other nominee.

Best Actress went to Helen Hayes, who went on to have a long life and a varied and successful career - and who managed the rare achievement of completing an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony)

Best Director was much nominated Frank Borzage for Bad Girl - a typically pre-code crime drama which also won a screenplay award.


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

This was the first year that the Best Picture nomination list expanded - this time to eight. I won't list them all here but among the list are a few films that are considered classics now - Shanghai Express, Five Star Final (which sounds great - I'd love to watch that one!), The Champ (I remember the slushy remake in the late 70s!) along with a couple of Chevalier musicals.

Grand Hotel remains to this day the only Best Picture winner to have received just one nomination. Several other films that night took home multiple awards, but the general consensus was and still is that the right film won - and I'm certainly not going to disagree!


Our Verdict:

On one hand I really regret the fact that I allowed myself - a lifelong Hollywood fan - to get to the ripe old age of forty-five before finally watching this film. On the other hand, it was great to watch it for the first time with Andy as part of this challenge. We both really loved it. I think I like it even more one day later than I did at the time. I want to watch it again soon. It's probably now going to appear on lots of my "best of" lists. It is brilliant!!! (That's enough general gushing.....lets get on to some specifics...)

A double dose of Barrymore - utterly brilliant!

Grand Hotel is a comedy drama (in the true sense of the word - probably a pretty even 50:50 of the two) set in a luxury hotel in (then)contemporary Berlin. So, it's set in 1932 - the economic decline is in progress but the spirit of the 20s is still there and no one (including the film makers) knows what's about to happen a few years later....

Our five main characters are all staying at the hotel for a variety of reasons, with a variety of vices and secrets that intertwine and get revealed as the story progresses. Our two secondary characters are more permanent fixtures at the hotel who, in different ways, provide a more detached philosophical perspective on events.

Saying too much more would give too much away. I am so glad that I didn't know how it was going to end - who gets away with what, who ends up with who etc - because it helped to make the whole thing all the more satisfying.

The script is great - but it's the acting that absolutely nails it. My favourite among them is definitely John Barrymore. I had a great big grin on my face whenever he was on screen. Just wonderful. And his brother Lionel is with him, pre-wheelchair, playing an increasingly delightful character. Double Barrymore - that would have been enough for me!

John and Joan being fab in one of my favourite scenes.

Add Joan Crawford into the mix (early and non-scary Joan Crawford) and it gets even better. She's brilliant. Apparently, by the time the film was finished, everyone was worried that she was going to outshine Garbo and so they called Garbo back in to add some more scenes. I'm not sure if that made any difference - but Joan absolutely shines in the far less showy role. She plays really well against all three male leads (she doesn't have any scenes with Garbo) and particularly in her quick and witty dialogues with John Barrymore.

Wallace Beery is great - the only one who gets to ham up a German accent (pretty effectively!). He's playing a part that is very different to the one he won the Oscar for that year. And he gives the impression that he's really enjoying it.

You heard her - go away!

 And then there's Greta. She insisted that her name came first in the billing list. Fair enough. She definitely stands out as more of a film star and less of an actor than the others (in her scenes with John B it's very clear who learnt their craft through silent movies and who started with Shakespeare...). However, the part she plays needs all the over-acting and emoting and she does it so well. I'm not sure that she intended her role to be as comedic as it was, but it worked.

With such a well put together and well acted story going on, it's easy to forget just how early this is in the great Hollywood scheme of things. This is only 4-5 years after the first full length talkies and at the very beginning of the new era of talking Hollywood movie stars.

There are some really clever technical things going on. Great use of background music - some of it ambient (ie part of the physical scene) and some of it an early example of musical score. It's the first non-silent film we've watched yet that does this. There are some great fades and cutaways between scenes that work well. A few cuts and edits within scenes are a bit clunky and they haven't quite worked out how to do continuity effectively in talkies - the quick cutting head shots when GG and JB are deep in conversation are distractingly dodgy in parts!

Finally I know who Jean Hersholt was - so much
more than just an Oscar!

Having said that - it doesn't take anything away from the fact that I loved this film a lot! Easily my favourite winner so far and I will no doubt watch it again several times in the not too distant future.

One nice unexpected extra with Grand Hotel is that I finally got to find out who Jean Hersholt was (he of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award). Turns out he was a great man who did many humanitarian things himself, received the highest Danish honour and was single-handedly responsible for translating most of Hans Christian Andersen's work into English. And he was brilliant in this film as the Head Porter waiting for news on the birth of his child! I shall raise a glass to him when we are in Copenhagen next month!


As if the whole experience of watching this utter delight of a film wasn't enough in itself, I found this footage to put the cherry on the cake - about ten minutes of A List arrivals "signing in at the front desk" for the Hollywood Premiere. Wonderful stuff!

Cimarron 1930/1

The Film:

A poster that screams Epic!!!

The only reason I even know that this film exists is because it won Best Picture. It's not one people really talk about anymore - and the only DVD copy we could find was released in South Korea.

It was the first Western to win the award (and there wasn't another one after it for decades) and was the first film to be nominated in seven different categories in one year.

It also currently has the joint-lowest IMDB rating of any Oscar Winner with a 6.0 (along with Cavalcade, which is coming up soon). I don't know how far this is because people don't see it very often any more, or that the print available is a bit dodgy. But it's more likely to do with the film just generally becoming dated.

Some reviews I've read say that the racial stereotyping in the film is very of its time and a bit inappropriate for modern audiences - see what I think of that idea below!


The Ceremony:

The 4th Academy Awards were held on 10th November 1931 at The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

That, and this photo, is all I've got for you this time!


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Cimarron won three of the seven awards it was nominated for, but none of the other big awards on the night. Norman Taurog won Best Director for Skippy (and remained the youngest ever director to win until Damian Chazelle beat him in 2017). Best Actor was Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul (although he only had a supporting role - a category that hadn't been introduced yet) and Marie Dressler for Min and Bill.

Although not a winner, nine year old Jackie Cooper deserves a mention for being the youngest nominee ever. He remains the youngest Best Actor nominee, although eight year old Justin Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Kramer vs Kramer in 1979. The two remain the only acting nominees under the age of 10 (the honorary juveniles don't count!)

Ok, Oscar geekery over....

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The other nominees were - East Lynne, The Front Page, Skippy and Trader Horn. A couple of dramas and a couple of comedies. The comedies are probably best remembered - Skippy is the film for which Jackie Cooper got his nomination, and The Front Page was remade several times (I've seen a couple of remakes - including His Girl Friday, which is great!)

The epic scale of this film means it deserves its award - the land rush sequence at the beginning must have looked really impressive to audiences in 1931. And, as we're going to discover as we continue watching, the Academy loves great big sweeping epics with casts of thousands!


Our Verdict:

Sabra and Yancey Cravat - they don't name em like they used to!

We really weren't expecting much from this film. Just looking at all the posters and write ups proclaiming it to be a "sprawling epic" of "frontier spirit" and all that sort of thing really put me off.

Proof that Richard Dix never quite moved on from the Silent Era!

However, there was one thing on the posters that I didn't make a connection with - it is based on a novel by Edna Ferber, who also wrote the source material for Giant (which I love and which is high up on my list of films which were robbed at the Oscars!). It's got a similar basic structure to Giant - following a family and a town/ranch developing through the years. And its got similar main characters - including a strong female lead to match the man of the house! And its not a Western in the conventional sense. There are a couple of (relatively short) shoot outs and an epic land rush at the beginning of the film with hundreds of horses and wagons all over the place. But, other than that, it's a family saga - following the relationship between Sabra and Yancey through several decades and the usual ups and downs.

Ecumenism in a saloon bar (with added shoot out!)

And it's actually really rather good. I liked both the leads. Irene Dunne was great as the mother who is trying to keep her family together while her husband keeps wandering off to get more land. She is the more conservative, the more suspicious, but she is the one who ends up running the family business and getting elected to Congress. And Richard Dix is wonderfully OTT as Yancey, who is a great character. He is idealistic and adventurous and he doesn't appear to have any social hang ups or prejudices. Although some critics talk about the racial stereotyping in the film, we saw it as being quite liberal and forward-thinking for its time. Yancey has nothing but respect for the Native Americans and fights for their rights as citizens of the new state of Oklahoma (I know, there's more to it all than that - but this is a 1932 film commentating on the 1890s. I thought it was impressively liberal). When he calls a church meeting (in the local saloon) he makes it incredibly inclusive - as well as the Native Americans, he notes that a Jewish townsman is also welcome.

Isaiah - tragic hero or merely a racial stereotype?

And then there's Isaiah. He's first seen hanging from the ceiling fanning Sabra's parents as they eat their meal. But he begs Sabra and Yancey to take him with them, and their treatment of him (he's pretty much just a friend to their son and a help around the house) contrasts with that of the family that Sabra leaves behind. Isaiah's tragic demise shows how disposable his race were to people in those times - but the response of his "family" gives him some dignity. So I disagree with the critics here - this was a far more measured portrayal of the times than a lot of later Westerns would show. There were no flags flying at any point in the film (except possibly in the opening scenes) and no glorification of violence or expectation that we would cheer the heroes and boo the baddies. It's just people getting on with things and trying to make the most of what they've got.

All in all, we were both surprised by how much we enjoyed this one. Something I would never have watched without this challenge, but I'm very glad I did!