The Greatest Show On Earth 1952

The Film:

Apparently the clue is in the title - if you believe everything you read! I have vague memories of half-watching this one way back, getting bored half-way through, but thinking it was just about ok because Jimmy Stewart is in it. I also misremembered it as being about three and a half hours long. It's actually only two and half hours, so maybe that tells you something else about my previous experience with the film!

This one is generally remembered as one of the worst Best Picture winners - mainly because of what didn't win in it's place. High Noon was a nominee, but the suggestion that it was an allegory for the McCarthy witch-hunts may have been what put off the voters. Singin In The Rain was also released this year and got a few nominations, but not one for Best Picture. Maybe the Academy felt they had lavished all the technicolor praise that they needed to on Gene Kelly the previous year. Either way, both of these films are right near the top of the AFI all-time list. The Greatest Show On Earth is not.

The Ceremony:

Look closely - they were already doing score sheets way back then!
(That's a fab enough fact for me to ignore the stray apostrophe!)

The Hollywood end of the ceremony was held at the Pantages Theater again (as it would be for the rest of the decade) on March 19th 1953.

Although not the first to be filmed, it was the first to be televised and also the first to be held simultaneously in Hollywood and New York, something which happened for the next five years. Part of the reason for the coast-to-coast ceremonies was due to an increasing number of nominees having commitments on Broadway at this time of the year (a ridiculous number of awards were accepted by proxies the year before). This also accounted for the late start of 10.30pm - so people could get there after their curtain came down.

Bob Hope presented from Hollywood and Frederic March from New York, with Conrad Nagel emceeing for the TV audience.


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Gloria Grahame - now the subject of her very
own movie (and potentially several more!)

They didn't completely overlook High Noon - it actually won more awards than TGSOE, one of which went to Gary Cooper as Best Actor.

John Ford won his fourth Directing Award for The Quiet Man - he overtook Frank Capra and still holds the most awards in this category.

Shirley Booth won Best Actress, becoming the first woman over 50 to win the award, as well as the last one born in the 19th Century.

Best Supporting awards went to Anthony Quinn and Gloria Grahame - and I've put a photo of Gloria up there because she's currently back in the film spotlight, not quite managing to die in Liverpool. She was an interesting character in more ways than one (some more dubious than others) - but she beat Jean Hagen to the Oscar, so she probably deserves more recognition for that than she gets. (Having just watched Born Yesterday I now wonder whether that was the reason that Jean Hagen didn't win - Judy H was doing that voice to great effect two years earlier.....)

Best Song:

Another of High Noon's awards was for Best Song. Much imitated, much parodied and probably well deserving of the award (even if it did beat Thumbelina!). Take it away Tex....

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

"Come on with the rain...."

I've already mentioned them both and I can't objectively separate the two. With the benefit of hindsight, both of these films wipe the floor with TGSOE.

Singin In The Rain is now seen as (arguably) the greatest screen musical. It's a personal favourite and one that I have seen over and over again. Although the ballet from An American In Paris is pretty unbeatable, everything else in Singin In The Rain wipes the floor with its predecessor. Particularly the story and the expert way in which all four of the leads (Kelly, Reynolds, O'Connor and Hagen) play their parts for comedy and drama in all the right proportions.

"Come on with the showdown....."

It was totally robbed - and couldn't even get a nomination for Best Song because all the songs (including the title song) had been used in previous shows and films - which was sort of the point of the story. It is a wonderful film!

Out of the actual Best Picture nominees we also had Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge (not that one!) and Best Director winner The Quiet Man. But it was all about High Noon. Gary Cooper won his second Oscar as the sheriff with a stronger sense of duty than Kant, biding his time (despite Grace Kelly's protestations) waiting for the gang that are coming to kill him. It's a masterpiece of tension and an early example of a very different type of western - no "yee-haws" and not a great deal of action. But a compelling and intelligent story. Unfortunately the production got caught up a bit too much with McCarthyism and too many people talked of the film (admiringly, rather than disparagingly) as a clever allegory against blacklisting. And that is probably why it lost the big prize (although Zinneman would go on to direct two other Oscar-winning films - including next year's winner - with very different settings, but very similar heroes!)

Our Verdict:

Dorothy Lamour - one of a trio of strong women in this film -
they all get great lines, she delivers hers best!

If anyone out there is a Charlton Heston fan I'd better apologise in advance because I'm probably going to make mention of his total lack of charisma and talent in this film far more than he really deserves. (In fact, we watched the really-not-very-good-but-still-fun Wayne's World 2 the other night and he impressed me more in his 30 second cameo there than he did in two and a half hours here).

Heston (and those two other films above) aside there is actually a lot more going for this film than I had remembered and that history generally gives it credit for.

One of these two is one of my favourite screen actors.
The other one is Charlton Heston.

Firstly, the thing that most people remember about it. James Stewart is never seen out of clown make-up (except in a photograph) and is brilliant throughout, playing comedy and drama with ease. A shocking omission that he wasn't nominated for Supporting Actor.

Secondly, apart from Jimmy, the best written and best acted characters in the film are the women. There are three strong, kick-ass women played by strong and fiesty actresses who also manage to mix up the comedy and drama (and circus skills) really well - Dorothy Lamour and Gloria Grahame do a better job than Betty Hutton in my opinion, but they are all really good. (The other lead actor is Cornel Wilde as Hutton's rival trapeze artist. Who I almost forgot to mention, as he made very little impression on me!)

Betty and Gloria mooning over Heston whilst wiping
the floor with him in the acting stakes.

The third great thing about the film is how it showcases the circus. Parts of the film act almost as a behind-the-scenes documentary (which is fascinating in itself), other parts are basically film footage of the actual performances - some spectacular, some weirdly compelling, others horribly dated. And this means that many of those performers got their only chance to be preserved on film to be watched again in 2017! There are many good reasons why the circus is not what it used to be, but it's good to have a record of what it was. And who better than Cecil B de Mille to film it all.

Bob and Bing - three seconds on screen and
they still manage to out-act Heston!

I've got to this point and realised that I haven't really mentioned the plot at all. That's probably because you could probably guess most of it without watching it. There's the "circus under threat, got to bring the crowds in or they'll shut us down" strand, that weaves in with the "love triangle" strand (which has a few extra angles in it for good measure), along with the "who is the real star" storyline that you find in all backstage musicals and a few different versions of the "dodgy dealings, wrong side of the law" trope (one version done much better than the other!). All tied up with a disaster sequence in the final reel. CBdM threw the lot at this thing - maybe that's why  I remembered it being much longer than it is!

Having said all this, we both actually rather enjoyed The Greatest Show On Earth. I've seen High Noon a couple of times, I've seen Singin In The Rain more times than is probably healthy - but I wouldn't have seen this one if it hadn't won the Oscar. Which almost lets it off the hook!

An American In Paris 1951

The Film:

I've known this film for as long as I've known that films can have real people in them, rather than just being cartoons! My Dad introduced me to musicals at a very early age - if they were on telly over a weekend, we would watch them together. And when we got our first video recorder (pretty early on in the great scheme of things - I was only about 8 or 9) these were the sorts of films he would record to build up some semblance of a video library.

Most of my early musical memories included Gene Kelly. (Rogers and Hammerstein - apart from Sound of Music - were a bit too grown-up for an eight year old!). Bing, Frankie, Judy, Doris, Fred, Howard and Gordon also got a good look in. But Gene Kelly was the one that hooked me in early on. Having said that, I'd always much rather be watching On The Town or Singin In The Rain than this one - and those two are the two of Kelly's big three films that I can practically recite all the way through, not this one!

My varied reactions towards Leslie Caron are weird and totally illogical (and will be explored here in greater depth in 1958!) and that may go some way to this one not really being a favourite. But I really love Gershwin and the ballet here is my favourite of the "big three". And there's Oscar Lavant (lots of Oscar Lavants!) to look forward to again. So I am looking forward to this one, far more than Andy is!

It was a shock winner - and here (in colour!) is the moment it was announced:

The Ceremony:

The awards were given out at the Pantages Theater again this year on March 20th 1952. They were hosted by Danny Kaye - and from the clips I've seen he was a great choice!

I've found a great picture of ticket, pass and programme from the year - but I've not got a great deal more information about the night itself!








Other Notable Winners That Night:

Bogie - enjoying the ceremony, despite spoiling the fun for the
Streetcar party

The awards were pretty much split three ways. Freed and Kelly got the big prize. George Stevens took Best Director for A Place In The Sun. And A Streetcar Named Desire looked set to do something that has still never been done - take all the Acting Awards!

However, the previous year Bogie had missed out on a nomination and everyone was up in arms. Possibly because of this, he beat Brando to Best Actor and spoilt the potential clean sweep. (Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter all won in their categories!)


Edith Head was right in the middle of her big run of eight Oscars for Costume Design, the most ever won by a single person. (She was nominated 35 times!) This year she won for A Place In The Sun. To most people older than me she is best remembered for dressing Audrey Hepburn - to most people younger than me she is best remembered for being immortalised as Edna Mode in The Incredibles!


Best Song:

"In The Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" from "Here Comes The Groom". Because everything in American in Paris was an old Gershwin song, none of it was eligible. And so we get Bing singing with Jane Wyman - from a late-era Capra film which I've never seen but now really want to......

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Stella!!!! Gene Kelly stole our Oscar!!!!

Out of the five nominations, there were three films that shared honours on the night. Quo Vadis and Decision Before Dawn were never really contenders. But consensus among people who hold opinions on such things still holds that both A Place In The Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire should have won Best Picture.

I'm really not sure on this one. I've seen them both and they are both fine dramas - well filmed, well acted etc. But I do think there was something new and different going on with An American In Paris that needed to be recognised, to see in the 50s properly and show that film-making was changing. It's actually quite bizarre that it is only the second winner in colour - twelve years after Gone With The Wind. And, whilst a well-acted and well-directed piece of character-based drama or comedy makes for the sort of film I love (Grand Hotel, Casablanca, All About Eve etc) film was starting to show that it was much more than that.

Maybe Streetcar was a better film in many of the traditional measures of such things - it's certainly dated less than AAIP - I'm going to stick with Gene and Leslie here. And not just for my own nostalgic and sentimental reasons. It is a great example of something different and new that was happening with film - and it's something that the public loved! (And Marlon Brando just needs to wait a few years, and he'll be fine!)

Our Verdict:

Adam knows something they don't.....

So it beat classic Tennessee Williams - what is all the fuss about?

The story (such as it is) - Gene Kelly is Jerry, an American artist scratching a meagre living in Paris. He lives in a typical Parisian apartment opposite Adam (Oscar Levant) who is a struggling would-be concert pianist. A bored and wealthy American woman takes a shine to Jerry and/or his art and becomes his benefactor, at around the same time as he meets and falls for Lise (Leslie Caron) who just happens to be the reluctant fiancee of Henri (Georges Guetary), a musician friend of Adam's.

I got!!!

All of which is not quite as incidental a plot as it should be, or far more incidental than it could be, depending on your point of view. It's convoluted and intriguing enough to be the plot of a good romantic comedy, or even a potentially fairly dark melodrama. But this film is all about the music, so it never really does either. It sometimes drives the film, but more often than not gets in the way of it.

Old school glamour (with a hint of irony)

Looked at another way, this film is showcasing three great things - the fabulous music of Gershwin, the wonderful choreography of Kelly and the musical/dance talents of its lead players. All in glorious technicolor with no expense spared. 

And it does all those things really well. There are some wonderful songs, most of them delivered along with some of Gene Kelly's best dancing (I've Got Rhythm is fab - and dancing on the piano to Tra La La is great!). There is a brilliant sequence with Oscar Levant conducting an orchestra of Oscar Levants (think Being John Malkovich with music!). And a great version of Stairway to Paradise which wonderfully parodies all that old Ziegfeld nonsense.

A fine bromance - although I bet Padorewski wouldn't
let anyone dance on his piano!

I will also concede that Leslie Caron is great in this as well. This was her first film and she had only just learnt to speak English. Apparently she was hired purely for her dance skills and her Frenchness. Watching the film again after some time, I think she acts really well and plays some good comedy moments - and she doesn't annoy me anywhere near as much as she did when I was younger (whether the same is true in a few films' time remains to be seen!)

It's still not one of my favourite musicals. I'd have much rather seen Singin In The Rain win the following year. But I'm glad that one of the big MGM Freed-Kelly films won Best Picture. And I really enjoyed watching it again.

The main attraction with this film, particularly in terms of its status as an American Classic, is the last 20 minutes of the film. No dialogue (sung or spoken) just Gershwin and dancing. Whatever anyone else thinks of the film as a whole, it is a great thing indeed that this visual interpretation of one of Gershwin's best pieces has been captured on film in colour, at this time, with these dancers. Here's one of the best bits. As Gershwin once said - S'Wonderful!

All About Eve 1950

The Film:

I've been looking forward to this one. It's one of my favourites but I haven't seen it for a while so it's going to be great!

As is possibly the case for other 40-something Brits, I first came across this film because one of my favourite 80s bands named themselves after it. My first associations with All About Eve were all long hair and dresses, folk goth in clouds and forests etc. The band members clearly had great taste in movies, but the film itself bares no resemblance to the band's image! (On a similar note, I really should watch Hue and Cry one of these days....)

There is so much to love about All About Eve - and I'm sure I'll discover much more to ramble on about in my review. I love George Sanders' character (as I think I said ten films ago about Rebecca!), but other than that this is all about the women. There are five of them that are quite magnificent (I include young Marilyn in that line up because she's fabulous in a relatively short space of time!) and this is almost unheard of even in films today. Forty years later people raved about the two strong female leads in Thelma and Louise and how they didn't take any nonsense from their men. And sixty-six years later a similar fuss was made about the three women in Hidden Figures because it was still so unusual. And yet here we are in 1950 with the women completely in charge - and the men not really seeming to mind too much!

The Ceremony:

The stage is set.....

The ceremony was held on March 29th 1951 at the Pantages Theater and was hosted by Fred Astaire. It was filmed in colour and there are loads of clips of it on Youtube. Now that the 50s are kicking in things are starting to look more and more like the more modern Oscar ceremonies I've grown up with.

The nominations were dominated by two films - All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard - that had 25 nominations between them, including nine acting nominations across the four categories. Both of these films, like the previous few years' winners, were very much led by the script and the acting rather than any other spectacle (unlike our next two films!). And both were directed by their scriptwriters (both of whom are multiple Oscar winners). It's a bit of a shame that they were up against each other.

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Gloria Swanson being gracious in defeat, with Jose Ferrer
and Judy Holliday

The acting nominations were dominated by the big two films. SB had one nomination in each category. AAE had two in each Actress category and Supporting Actor for George Sanders. Out of all of those, Sanders was the only one who took the Oscar home.

Judy Holliday won Best Actress for Born Yesterday. Some people claim that Anne Baxter's insistence that she was nominated as a lead rather than in Supporting lost both her and Bette Davis an Oscar as they split the vote. But I can't for the life of me work out why Gloria Swanson didn't get it! (I haven't seen Judy's performance - but I've ordered the DVD so maybe I'll edit this after I've watched it!)

Jose Ferrer took Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac and 73 year old Josephine Hull trumped Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter to take Best Supporting Actress for Harvey (I love that film - she's great in it, so fair enough....) Joseph L Mankiewicz took writing and directing awards for the second year running - interestingly, both times these were for films with strong female leads (- and Celeste Holm!)

The animation award this year went to a classic that I remember from my childhood (so it, and its followups, must have been shown a lot in the 70s!) and it's all here on Youtube. The great Gerald McBoing-Boing:

Best Song:

This year it's Mona Lisa from the film Captain Carey USA. Again, I know the song well but not the film. The film was an Alan Ladd post-war drama. The song was a big chart hit of the year for Nat King Cole and became a classic for him - but it was sung in the film by Charlie Spivak and I've found a clip of it in its original setting!:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

"I'm ready for my Oscar Mr de Mille!"

There are some good films on the list this year. King Solomon's Mines is a big sweeping epic, Father Of The Bride is a great comedy (that has since been remade, with a sequel!) and Born Yesterday, though not one I've seen, sounds good and I will check it out.

As an avid fan of All About Eve there is no doubt in my mind that the right film won - but this is one year where I really wish they had given two Best Picture awards, because the other nominee was Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson should have at least won the Best Actress award - and in almost any other year, Billy Wilder should have got Director as well as screenplay (thankfully there are two screenplay awards - so Wilder and Mankiewicz got one each!). It's a wonderful film and I watched it again last week anyway, just because!

Our Verdict:

One of my favourite scenes in the film - the writing, the acting,
the timing all brilliant.

This film is all about the characters. They are written brilliantly and they are played superbly. And that is what makes it such a good film.

The basic plot - Bette Davis plays Margot, an aging actress who is still playing leading roles but is starting to get bitter at the fact that she's growing older. Thelma Ritter is her dresser/assistant Birdie (who weirdly disappears for the last third of the film, which is a real shame.)

Margot and Birdie - and dialogue that could cut diamonds!

Anne Baxter is the titular Eve, a young fan who works her way into Margot's world ready to take over. Celeste Holm is Karen, the wife of a playwright who is a close friend of Margot's and first introduces her to Eve. George Sanders is theater columnist Addison deWitt who basically serves as, for want of a better word, the catalytic s**t-stirrer that encourages events to unfold a certain way. There are other male characters - Lloyd the aforementioned playwright, Margot's boyfriend Bill who is a Director and Producer Max. They play their parts well and serve their purpose (I particularly like Bill!) but they are all there to support the main point of the story, which is all about the relationships between the women in the cast. And the whole thing is wonderfully refreshing because of it!

George and Marilyn - the not-as-clever-as-he-thinks leading
the not-as-dumb-as-she-seems.

There's also Marilyn Monroe in an early role as a young starlet that Addison brings to Margot's party. She provides a lovely glimpse at what she did best - play a so-called "dumb" blonde in a subtly comic and incredibly intelligent way. (My favourite Monroe films are Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - and her performance here almost serves as an audition for Sugar and Lorelei!).

Another example of the corruption that goes along with power?

The pacing of the film is great, with the gradual revelation and unravelling of their lives, attitudes and motives. Margot gets gradually more bitter and paranoid, Karen gradually realizes how much her kindness is being taken advantage of - and Eve gradually reveals her true nature. With everything watched by the (almost) all-seeing eye of Addison - who generally enjoys the whole drama of it, definitely enjoys trying to play Eve at her own game, yet is ever so slightly appalled by the whole thing (although I'm guessing some people would disagree with that last point?).

And the ending is great! Just as with All The King's Men last time, it would be wrong for me to give anything away. But it is very satisfying indeed and serves as a great big cherry on the top of a deliciously tasty treat of a cake.

This is one of my favourite films of all time - if you haven't seen it, please give it a go. If you have, then it's probably worth watching again soon. The internet is full of people arguing about the relative merits of All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard. I love Billy Wilder (and I still think that dodgy insurance man put on a better show than those priests in 1944!) but, in this debate, I'm definitely All About Eve!

Review of the 40s

The 40s - The War Years and Beyond

We have really enjoyed watching the 40s! So much so that I don't really want to move on - I keep watching other 40s films and could happy stay here for a while longer. With this decade there were five films I'd already seen (two of which are favourites - and still sit in first and second on my chart) and five films that I'd not seen before. Of those five I can recommend four wholeheartedly. I loved them and will definitely watch them again. But, although friends of mine love it, I couldn't get my head round How Green Was My Valley. Maybe I'm not as Welsh as I claim to be, or maybe I am and that's the problem!

With these films we got through the War and out the other side - and we got through the Hays Code and out the other side as well. The former is very clear when you list the winners chronologically. The latter is far clearer when you look more widely at the nominees - films like Johnny Belinda, Crossfire and The Snake Pit would not have been possible ten years earlier!

My Top Ten (as they stand today!) is as follows:

1= Rebecca
1= Casablanca
3= The Best Years of Our Lives
3= The Lost Weekend
5. All The King's Men
6. Mrs Miniver
7. Hamlet
8. Going My Way
9. Gentleman's Agreement
10. How Green Was My Valley

(I'm finding those top films very difficult to split!)

Best Picture

Nominees:   

Rebecca
Casablanca
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Lost Weekend
All The King's Men

And the winner is.....

Rebecca - although all five of these are very good films indeed! Rebecca has been a favourite for a very long time and it just about pips Casablanca for me. On a different day I might have to cheat and give them both the prize!



Best Director

Nominees:   

William Wyler
Alfred Hitchcock
Billy Wilder
Michael Curtiz
Laurence Olivier

And the winner is.....


William Wyler - for topping and tailing the War so splendidly! Hitch and Wilder are personal favourites of mine, but they both miss out on this one....

Best Actor

Nominees:   

Barry Fitzgerald (How Green Was My Valley, Going My Way)
Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend)
Frederic March (The Best Years of Our Lives)
Laurence Olivier (Rebecca, Hamlet)
Broderick Crawford (All The King's Men)

And the winner is.....

Frederic March - just about stealing it from Ray Milland, because he was brilliantly comic and tragic all at the same time.



Best Actress

Nominees:   

Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver)
Joan Fontaine (Rebecca)
Myrna Loy (The Best Years of Our Lives)
Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
Mercedes McCambridge (All The King's Men)

And the winner is.....

Greer Garson - just about stealing it from Joan Fontaine. Just as long as we don't have to endure her speech again.



Best Non-Winning Picture

Nominees: 

Citizen Kane
It's A Wonderful Life
Double Indemnity
The Philadelphia Story
Brief Encounter

And the winner is.....

Citizen Kane AND It's A Wonderful Life - The first because it really really should have won, and the second because I love it!


Worst Picture

Nominees:    
How Green Was My Valley
Gentleman's Agreement


And the winner is.....

How Green Was My Valley - There really were only two mediocre films out of this lot and How Green... gets it (just about) for the bad accents and meandering plot!

All The King's Men 1949

The Film:

This is the film on the whole list of nearly ninety films that I probably knew least about. It would be my best bet for a Pointless answer as, for some reason, nobody seems to remember it.

I had to do some digging to get hold of a copy - and eventually got one from Poland. The spine of the DVD says "Gubernator" as the title - which gives a bit more of a clue as to what the film is about.

I did a bit more digging around Wikipedia and IMDB to find out a bit more. I don't really recognise the names of any of the lead players (except Mercedes McCambridge, who I know from her most famous line, which isn't quite "Your mother cooks socks in hell" - but I would never have been able to pick the voice of the demon in The Exorcist out of a visual line up!). Reviews on IMDB rate the film very highly, along with its Pulitzer Prize-winning source novel.

This left me wondering. Did I just have a random glaring gap in my movie knowledge - or is there some other reason why this film is pretty much forgotten?

The Ceremony:

Held on March 23rd 1950 at the Pantages Theater and hosted by Paul Douglas, who was one of the stars of multiple nominee A Letter To Three Wives.

I don't have any more interesting information about the ceremony - except for the fact that this is (and probably will remain) the last year that all the Best Picture nominees were in black and white - the end of the 40s definitely marked the end of a particular style of film making and the start of the domination of sweeping technicolor spectaculars!


Other Notable Winners That Night:

The Acting Awards (you can work out who is who!)

The Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress went towards the total of three awards for All The King's Men.

Olivia de Havilland won her second Oscar for The Heiress, which had been tipped to win more of the big prizes that night. Best Supporting Actor was Dean Jagger (a classic Hollywood character actor) for 12 O'Clock High.

Joseph L Mankiewicz won two awards - director and screenplay - for A Letter To Three Wives. And we'll come back to him again next year....)

The Honorary Awards are interesting this year. Jean Hersholt won his, six years before he had one named after him. And Ginger Rogers presented one to Fred Astaire!

Best Song:

I know this one - Baby It's Cold Outside - because it's one that hasn't really gone away and has since become a bit of a Christmas classic. (The Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews version comes to mind first). I'd never heard of the film it came from - Neptune's Daughter - a late era Esther Williams musical which is probably quite good fun (and, no doubt, wet in parts). Here's the song in its original context:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

"I'm running off with your husband - but which one?"

This is the first year for a very long time (since the early 30s) where not only had I not seen any of the other nominees, I hadn't even heard of them.

I've found out very little about "Battleground" or "Twelve O'Clock High" except that they are both war films that don't sound particularly interesting to me.

The other two sounded interesting - "The Heiress" is based on a Henry James novel and won Olivia de Havilland the Best Actress Oscar. And "A Letter To Three Wives" won Best Director and was many people's tip for the big prize. I found the whole of the latter on Youtube and watched it the day after we watched All The King's Men. I think the right film won - but I really enjoyed "...Three Wives" and I'm glad I found out about it and got chance to watch it!

Our Verdict:

An honest Politician?

It's been a week or so now since we saw the film, and I'm still thinking about it off and on. Andy is doing the same, only more so. He absolutely loved it, has it right up there with Casablanca and Rebecca on his 40s list and is now really keen to read the book (so that's one Christmas present sorted).

I really liked this film and it's left me wondering even more why it is so forgotten. Maybe it would be played more if it was in colour? Or had the name of a more enduring star or director attached to it? Or maybe it's the subject matter that put it off limits a bit too much in the politically sensitive decades that followed in America. Whatever it is, so many people are missing out by not watching it!

Josh Lynam and Sam Seaborn from another era.....

It's based on a novel of the same name which, itself, is loosely based on the story of 1930s Governor Huey Long. To say too much about what happened to Gov Long would be to give away the ending of this film, but our protagonist here, Willie Stark, has a very similar career and one which ends in the same way.

The basic plot is the story of small-town, self-educated man-of-the-people Willie Stark who runs unsuccessfully in a local election but is picked up by some lobbyists (headed by Oscar-winning McCambridge) as a fall guy in a bigger election to basically split the vote and let their guy win. All this is being followed by a journalist who lets on to Stark what the deal is and ultimately quits his job and helps him to become Governor himself.

"We want Willie!"

Despite his initial ideals, Stark becomes a living example of the truism that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". He becomes more and more driven to achieve his political ideals by whatever means, fair or (more usually) foul - and he drags his team down with him.

Men and power and women - same as ever!

I'm not going to provide any spoilers here - so I'll go on to say that this story was told brilliantly. The acting, the script, the pacing of events, the black and white cinematography. All of it is done superbly. Stark's key followers are all great characters - their various motivations, and the different points at which the penny drops for them and they try to back off are shown so well and are so believable. The various strands of the conclusion that the film comes to are woven cleverly so that watching the film becomes a very satisfying experience.

One of the most impressive things about this film is also one of the saddest and most disturbing - even though it is nearly seventy years old, it is incredibly relevant to today's world and the way power is used and abused in modern society. The weekend that we watched the film was the same weekend that the Harvey Weinstein revelations were gathering momentum - and there's Willie Stark giving us a few examples of exactly that sort of behaviour! And, of course, the current tenant of The White House is also an outsider and a "man of the people". As to whether he's as corrupt as Willie Stark or not - (to quote someone else who appears to have been abusing his power) I couldn't possibly comment!

Hamlet 1948

The Film:
The "screenplay" to this one is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest things ever written in the English language. And I know it very well indeed. After studying it for A Level and seeing it live on several occasions I can literally recite great chunks of it.

I've seen Mark Rylance, Alan Rickman and David Tennant perform it live and in person. I've seen Rory Kinnear and Benedict Cumberbatch perform it live via satellite. I've seen it performed interactively in the grounds of Helsinor Castle (I was even Rosencrantz at one point) And I've seen both the Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh films of it more often and more recently than I've seen this classic version.

This was the second time in three years that Laurence Olivier was nominated for producing and starring in a Shakespeare film. Last time (for Henry V) he lost out on both to Best Years of Our Lives. This time he won both (and was also nominated for Best Director - although John Huston denied him the triple)

Alas poor Oscar....

I remember watching this a long time ago, before I became such a Hamlet expert / obsessive / bore (delete as appropriate) but I don't remember a great deal about it. It runs longer than the Zeffirelli mish-mash but a good hour and a half shorter than Branagh's overblown "complete" version. I'm intrigued to find out what has and hasn't been cut (other than the famously absent Rozencrantz and Guildenstern). I'm expecting it to be very hammy and of its time. I'm hoping to be impressed though. And I'm probably going to be unsufferable throughout......

The Ceremony:

The ceremony took place at The Academy Theater on March 29th 1949 and was hosted by Robert Montgomery. It was a smaller event than the previous few years, mainly because a lot of the major studios had withdrawn financial backing - due to rumours that this financial support was effectively buying votes!

Johnny Belinda was the big film talked about in the lead up to the ceremony - with twelve nominations (although it only won one).

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was the other big favourite - although Humphrey Bogart didn't get an Actor nomination for it, which is now considered to be one of the biggest snubs in the history of the awards.




Other Notable Winners That Night:

Keeping it in the family!

To a certain extent it was Larry's night - but the Huston family also did pretty well. John won Director and Screenplay, and his dad Walter won Best Supporting Actor. John also directed Clare Trevor to her Best Supporting Actress award, for Key Largo.

Jane Wyman won Best Actress - the only award that Johnny Belinda won. She is also only the second actress to win the award without speaking a word of dialogue (the first was Janet Gaynor - and she was only silent because the film was!)



Best Song:

"Buttons and Bows" from The Paleface - which was sung by Bob Hope who, unusually, wasn't hosting that night and didn't sing it live at the ceremony (his co-star Jane Russell sang it instead).

This is another thing (alongside a dissection of Casablanca) that pops up in Series 3 of Frasier. In fact, it's the main place that I know the song from. Frasier does a stunningly bad performance of it at a pledge drive.

(Oddly, a couple of episodes later, Frasier also goes on a fruitless quest to sit quietly and watch How Green Was My Valley. Quite an obsession going on with 40s Oscar winners that series....)

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

She should have bought some Skechers - I think
they do them in red....

It's a strong list this year. Which makes the dominance of a fairly low key bit of Shakespeare quite curious (was it a case of Americans loving jolly old England, or just the feeling that it was about time they gave Larry something?)

Apart from The Snake Pit (which sounds interesting, but it's not one that I've ever heard of) the other
nominees are classics that have stood the test of time. Johnny Belinda is a really good film on an important (particularly in light of current Hollywood issues!) and previously Hays Code banned theme. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a classic Hollywood epic. Both of these got some big awards elsewhere (where they most deserved them). However, I'm going to cast my vote for the other British film on the list - The Red Shoes. It won for Score and Art Direction (which makes sense). It should have won more. Michael Powell never won an Oscar (Pressburger got a writing one for 49th Parallel) - I'm happy to give him one of Larry's!

Our Verdict:

Well it didn't look like this when we were there this summer!

Polonius -  a brilliantly bumbling bore

I was worried. I was very worried. Partly because I know that I have high standards when it comes to Hamlet, and that even the late great Alan Rickman was only passable in a pretty awful production I spent a fortune on as a student. And partly because I was dreading the stilted luvvie-ness of the whole thing. Lots of people in inappropriate tights, freezing their codpieces off in the Scandinavian weather with incredibly RP over-the-top proclamations hither and thither.

There was plenty of all of that - but I needn't have worried. After the stagey strutting of the guards in the opening scene and the ridiculously louche way in which Larry was draped over his chair at dinner, everything started to get going and it was (for the most part) the Hamlet I know and love!

I learned to cope with the fact that Hamlet was nearly twice the age that he should have been (and clearly older than his mother!) and I got past the tights and strutting (and the anachronistic hair gel that both Horatio and Laertes seemed fond of.) And Larry's peroxide bowl-cut for that matter (they could have done with a better hair dresser!). Generally, the acting was very good, the staging was very good - and the pacing was very good.

Surprisingly, I didn't miss Rozencrantz and Guildenstern - but I did miss the "What a piece of work...." speech which was cut along with them. And I missed Fortinbras - he would have made for a better ending than just wet Horatio standing there with his hair gel!

Bona Shakespeare - here's Julian, looking for Sandy

It took a little while to get going - but from the point at which Hamlet sees his father (not just in his mind's eye) to brilliantly creepy effect, I got sucked in as usual to the whole thing. And it got better and better as it went on.

Ophelia was neither here nor there, and she did whine on a bit too much - but her father was rather splendid and delivered his bumbling waffle with a great mix of humour and pathos.

Gertrude and Claudius did the job well enough (although I would have liked more oomph from Claudius!) - but, apart from Larry itself, it's the smaller roles that made the difference.

Ey up Yorick, ows tha bin?

Stanley Holloway had a fab cameo as the Gravedigger and played the part well (basically, as Stanley Holloway!) - and the players were also great. (That whole scene worked really well).

Peter Cushing played the often-cut Osric - and put his heart and soul into a brilliantly comically camp performance. I thought he was going to irritate me, but he got away with it.

Larry showed why he was considered such a great actor by holding the whole thing together with such a great performance that the blonde-ness and the tights stopped distracting me after the first couple of scenes. I love Hamlet, and I love to pick it to pieces and be critical. Mark Rylance was my first, and he'll always be my favourite (closely followed by David Tennant) - but I really enjoyed this version, and I think I'd rather watch this one again over Gibson or Branagh. The play's the thing....and this thing is rather good!

Gentleman's Agreement 1947

The Film:

I've seen this one before, quite a while back, as it's one of the films in my "Classic Hollywood" box set (along with How Green Was My Valley).

I remember quite liking it. I remember being quite shocked at how ridiculous the US attitude to American Jews was, especially so soon after a war we fought in order to protect their families (among other things). I'm slightly less naive about such things now, and so I'm keen to see the film again and form another opinion of it.

What I hadn't realised last time I watched it is that it features one of Hollywood's best child actors - Dean Stockwell, who I am far more familiar with as the much older character of Al from Quantum Leap. It also features actress June Havoc, who is better known (at least to Musicals fans) as Baby June, younger and blonder sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. I don't think I've seen her in anything else.

The Ceremony:

$6! Times have changed......

The ceremony took place at the Shrine Auditorium on March 20th 1948 (as you can see from the ticket!). It was hosted by Agnes Moorehead and Dick Powell - the first to have a female host!

The awards were spread around more than in most years, with no movie getting more than three Oscars. It is also (at time of writing) the most recent ceremony where all the acting nominees are now deceased.



Other Notable Winners That Night:

Edmund Gwenn, Loretta Young, Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm

The acting awards were shared between four different films this year - with each of the recipients winning their only Oscar.

Edmund Gwenn became the oldest Oscar winner at the time, at the age of 71 (he's since been overtaken!). In fact, all the winners except Celeste Holm had been making films for over thirty years by the time they won their award (Celeste had only been in the business for 2 or 3 years!)

Surely one of the weirdest Oscar winners was rewarded this year for "artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium". Now, I'm a big fan of Norman Barrett and his budgies (and once shared a bus ride with them) but this is something else:

Best Song:

Not Sidney Poitier

If you really want to be an Oscar geek/bore and get one over on others in true QI-style, then it's worth remembering the name James Baskett. He's best remembered for playing Uncle Remus in Song of the South and singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, which won Best Song this year.

What people don't remember, however, is that he also won an Honorary Oscar for this role - making him (not Sidney Poitier!) the first African American man to win an acting Oscar.

So - unless the question is "Who was the first African American man to win a competitive acting Oscar?" then the answer is James Baskett. (I'm going to be extremely annoying one day with that one!)

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The real Santa Claus?

There were some pretty strong films nominated this year - which makes it surprising that Gentleman's Agreement did so well.

I've not seen Crossfire (which is apparently the first B Movie to be nominated, and also has an anti-semitic theme). The other three are all really good films - The Bishop's Wife, Miracle on 34th Street and Great Expectations. The latter should probably have won it as being the better of the films, but I've got a soft spot for Miracle on 34th Street - with Maureen O'Hara using her real accent, and a very young Natalie Wood stealing the show from everyone (except perhaps Edmund Gwenn). It's miles better than the remake that gets repeated ad nauseum these days....



Our Verdict:

Oh boy! - a very young Dead Stockwell, already a few years
into his very long (and continuing) career.

Ditch the snob Phil - Celeste Holm is fabulous!

We've had a couple of years now of "issues" films - both of which were really impressive. This one doesn't stand up well to comparisons with its predecessors. I'm not sure why, but Gentleman's Agreement comes across as preachy and dated (surprising, as the message behind it is unfortunately as relevant as ever). I get the impression that Wilder and Wyler were, first and foremost, telling a good story about interesting people. Kazan seems to have forgotten about this - and is just trying to tell the story of anti-semitism. It's hard to care about an issue when you don't really care about the people that are dealing with it.

The premise is quite a good one - Phil Green is a widowed journalist who has moved to New York with his young son Tommy to live with his mother. He is asked to write a piece on anti-semitism in modern society and he decides (after thirty fairly unnecessary minutes of the film) to pretend to be Jewish and experience the prejudice for himself. In the length of time it takes him to find his "angle" he also manages to meet, fall in love with and get engaged to a well to do New Yorker called Kathy (who was so boring I had to look up the character's name again!). She's a rich, educated and liberal young woman who initially agrees wholeheartedly with Phil's idea - but her true colours start to show when she becomes embarrassed by what her friends and family might think of her "Jewish" fiance and - in one of her better scenes in the film - tells Tommy not to worry about being bullied because "it's not true", as he's not really Jewish.

A Gentile inn, for Gentile people

Phil also has a Jewish childhood friend who comes back from the army and has trouble finding an apartment. And a Jewish secretary who changed her name and hid her background to get work - but turns out to be bigoted in her own way, by seeing "us and them" within her own community.

I liked Phil's mother and son - they made up somewhat for his lack of warmth. And I liked his colleague, Anne, a lot. She was played by Celeste Holm (who I've always really liked!) who won the Supporting Oscar for the role. But I wasn't too fussed about anyone else. And Phil started to really annoy me by the end.

There are some good scenes - including the most famous, where Phil gets turned away from a restricted hotel. Boring Kathy makes a still very apt speech about privilege, and she just about redeems herself by the end, giving hope to all NIMBY liberals in 1940s New York.

Is a middle class war hero Jew different to any other Jew?

It's sad that, seventy years later, the same issues are still relevant in the US. The western world should have come a long way further than we have. My first thought was that there are different forms of racism going on today - but I think, rather, that there are just more forms of racism.

Gentleman's Agreement may have made a difference to people's thinking at the time - and hooray for that - but I'm afraid it left me rather cold this time round.

PS. Interestingly, in a film about prejudice and inequality, there were still unnamed black servers present in one or two scenes - we've been spotting them in pretty much every film since the start of this project. Gone With The Wind and Cimarron (both considered by some as a bit too racist for modern audiences) are the only films that gave them names and personalities! (And there's only Casablanca (iirc) that gives a black man a skilled profession and a mention in a famous quote!) Which makes me wonder - obviously there was still segregation in southern states, but in the more liberal north was Anti-Semitism considered a more significant problem to address than other forms of racism, or did 1930s/40s America just not see the inequality right in front of them?