A Mythical Monkey writes about the movies

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1949)

2012-01-27T06:32:00.014-05:00

Usually billed as a film noir, The Big Steal—the story of a guy chasing a guy chasing a girl chasing a guy who stole some money, with Jane Greer as the girl and Robert Mitchum as the man in the middle—is actually a screwball road picture, romantic comedy and wry commentary on the Ugly American (this time in Mexico), all rolled into 71 taut minutes.

Known at the time as the first film Mitchum made after his infamous marijuana bust (filming was interrupted for two months while he served his prison sentence), The Big Steal is really Jane Greer's picture. She's funny, she's smart, she's tender, she's tough, and she and Mitchum are very, very good together. Out of the Past made Greer a film noir legend, deservedly so, but The Big Steal is actually a better showcase for her talent.

That she also flew down to Mexico on forty-eight hours notice out of loyalty to Mitchum when no other actress would work with him only deepens my affection for this underrated actress.

She and Mitchum crack wise with each other throughout the film and the chemistry between them is palpable. Greer's best scene, though, is across from the foreman of a road repair crew (Pascual García Peña) as she tries to talk him into letting them pass. She tells him that she and Mitchum are eloping, and that her father, chasing them with a shotgun (really William Bendix, the first "guy" in the equation), wants her to marry a short, ugly man. She prefers the big, pretty one—"¿Verdad que es grande y hermoso, no?"

And the foreman looks at Mitchum, shrugs and says with a laugh, "Grande, sí. ¿Pero hermoso?"—which is to say, "Big, yes, but pretty?"

The film was directed by Don Siegel, who had cut his teeth putting together the Paris montage sequence in Casablanca, and who would later direct such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. His biggest achievement here, aside from some great car chases, was working around Mitchum's absence. Because co-star William Bendix had a prior commitment, he and Mitchum appear in only one scene together, the film's first. Thereafter, Siegel had to make due with stunt doubles, rear screen projection and careful editing.

That Bendix and Mitchum stage a convincing fist fight later in the movie without being in the same room together is a minor miracle.

Also look for Ramon Novarro as the Mexican police inspector. Fans of silent film may remember him as the title character in the 1925 verison of Ben-Hur. Like so many, his star fell when the talkies came in.

Despite the commercial and critical success of The Big Steal, there was no follow-up film for Greer. Indeed, it's a measure of the studio's desperation that she'd been cast at all. RKO owner Howard Hughes had vowed to wreck Greer's career after she refused to sleep with him, and wreck it he did. It took Greer three years to get out of her contract with the studio, by which time the public had largely forgotten her.

Finally free of RKO, she made a handful of films in the early 1950s, including Man of a Thousand Faces and a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda. After she nearly died from an infection suffered while filming Run for the Sun in the jungles of Mexico, Greer went into semi-retirement, playing occasional supporting roles, most memorably in Against All Odds, a loose remake of Out of the Past.

[SPOILERS]

The ending of The Big Steal underscores for me the degree to which we watch movies rather than listen to them. If you watch the last scene, letting it flow over you, and with the expectations of the genre firmly established in your mind, you assume that Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are going to pair off permanently at the end, get married, have ten kids. Nice.

On the other hand, if you listen to the words they are speaking, it's clear he's leaving town in the morning and she's staying put. And that makes sense. He's a lieutenant in the army, she has an important job in Mexico. If you read the scene on the printed page, you'd see it as a lament for the life they aren't going to have together.

But if you put the images together with the words they are speaking, it becomes clear that they are negotiating a one-night stand. Which is exactly as it should be—they are attractive, single people who have just finished a life-and-death adventure together, but who, let's face it, have little else in common. Why not?

That director Don Siegel contrived to say this in a way that passed muster with the censors during the era of the Production Code is a tribute to his ingenuity and his craft. He let your eyes tell you one thing, your ears another, and if you're really paying attention, you can decode his intentions. It's subtle, something the censors never were. It's one of those times when the lament "they don't make 'em like they used to" is fully justified.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Third Man (prod. Carol Reed)
nominees: All The King's Men (prod. Robert Rossen); Battleground (prod. Dore Schary); The Heiress (prod. William Wyler); A Letter to Three Wives (prod. Sol C. Siegel); The Set-Up (prod. Richard Goldstone); She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); They Live By Night (prod. John Houseman); Twelve O'Clock High (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); White Heat (prod. Louis F. Edelman)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Kind Hearts and Coronets (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Adam's Rib (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); I Was A Male War Bride (prod. Sol C. Siegel); On The Town (prod. Arthur Freed); Whisky Galore! (prod. Michael Balcon)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Banshun (Late Spring) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Jour de fête (prod. Fred Orain and André Paulvé); Nora inu (Stray Dog) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki); Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) (prod. Dino De Laurentiis)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kirk Douglas (Champion)
nominees: James Cagney (White Heat); Joseph Cotten (The Third Man); Broderick Crawford (All The King's Men); Toshiro Mifune (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Gregory Peck (Twelve O'Clock High); Robert Ryan (The Set-Up); Chishu Ryu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); John Wayne (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Sands Of Iwo Jima)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gene Kelly (On The Town)
nominees: Cary Grant (I Was A Male War Bride); Danny Kaye (The Inspector General); Robert Mitchum (The Big Steal and Holiday Affair); Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets); Basil Radford (Whisky Galore!); Jacques Tati (Jour de fête); Spencer Tracy (Adam's Rib)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress)
nominees: Jeanne Crain (Pinky); Joan Crawford (Flamingo Road); Linda Darnell (A Letter To Three Wives); Setsuko Hara (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Alida Valli (The Third Man)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jane Greer (The Big Steal)
nominees: Joan Greenwood (Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whisky Galore!); Katharine Hepburn (Adam's Rib); Ann Sheridan (I Was A Male War Bride)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Carol Reed (The Third Man)
nominees: John Ford (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Akira Kurosawa (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Yasujiro Ozu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Raoul Walsh (White Heat); William Wyler (The Heiress)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: George Cukor (Adam's Rib); Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (On The Town); Howard Hawks (I Was A Male War Bride); Alexander Mackendrick (Whisky Galore!)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: Paul Douglas (A Letter to Three Wives); Juano Hernandez (Intruder in the Dust); Trevor Howard (The Third Man); Victor McLaglen (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Ramon Novarro (The Big Steal); Ralph Richardson (The Heiress); David Wayne (Adam's Rib); Orson Welles (The Third Man); James Whitmore (Battleground)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Mercedes McCambridge (All The King's Men)
nominees: Judy Holliday (Adam's Rib); Ann Miller (On the Town); Elizabeth Patterson (Intruder in the Dust); Margaret Wycherly (White Heat)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Graham Greene (The Third Man)
nominees: Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (Adam's Rib); Robert Rossen, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren (All The King's Men); Robert Pirosh (Battleground); Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, from their play suggested by the novel Washington Square by Henry James (The Heiress); Robert Hamer and John Dighton, from the novel by Roy Horniman (Kind Hearts and Coronets)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Ray Harryhausen, Linwood G. Dunn, Willis H. O'Brien, Harold E. Stein, Herb Willis and Bert Willis (Mighty Joe Young) (Special Effects); Anton Karas (The Third Man) (Score); Robert Krasker (The Third Man) (Cinematography)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1948)

2012-01-26T07:16:00.005-05:00

A long, long time ago, I promised myself that if anyone ever came up to me and said, "Can you stake a fellow American to a meal," I'd give him twenty bucks. But no one ever has, and anyway, $20 doesn't go nearly as far as it used to.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (prod. Henry Blanke)
nominees: The Fallen Idol (prod. Carol Reed); Force Of Evil (prod. Bob Roberts); Fort Apache (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); Key Largo (prod. Jerry Wald); The Lady From Shanghai (prod. Orson Welles); Letter From An Unknown Woman (prod. John Houseman); The Naked City (prod. Mark Hellinger); Red River (prod. Howard Hawks)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Red Shoes (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
nominees: Easter Parade (prod. Arthur Freed); A Foreign Affair (prod. Charles Brackett); Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (prod. Melvin Frank and Norman Panama); Unfaithfully Yours (prod. Preston Sturges)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Vittorio De Sica)
nominees: Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero) (prod. Roberto Rossellini and Salvo D'Angelo); La terra trema (The Earth Trembles) (prod. Salvo D'Angelo); Xiao cheng zhi chun (Spring in a Small Town) (prod. Wenhua Film Company); Yoidore tenshi (Drunken Angel) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Montgomery Clift (The Search and Red River); John Garfield (Force of Evil); Alec Guinness (Oliver Twist); Laurence Olivier (Hamlet); Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo); Takashi Shimura (Yoidore tenshi a.k.a. Drunken Angel); James Stewart (Call Northside 777); John Wayne (Red River)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rex Harrison (Unfaithfully Yours)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Easter Parade); Cary Grant (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Bob Hope (The Paleface); Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes); Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)
nominees: Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama); Joan Fontaine (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Rita Hayworth (The Lady From Shanghai); Jennifer Jones (Portrait Of Jennie); Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number); Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marlene Dietrich (A Foreign Affair)
nominees: Linda Darnell (Unfaithfully Yours); Judy Garland (Easter Parade); Myrna Loy (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Moira Shearer (The Red Shoes)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Huston (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Vittorio De Sica (Ladri di biciclette a.k.a. Bicycle Thieves); John Ford (Fort Apache); Howard Hawks (Red River); Akira Kurosawa (Yoidore tenshi a.k.a. Drunken Angel); Max Ophüls (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Orson Welles (The Lady From Shanghai)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes)
nominees: Preston Sturges (Unfaithfully Yours); Billy Wilder (A Foreign Affair)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Walter Huston (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Key Largo); Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda); Melvyn Douglas (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Thomas Gomez (Key Largo and Force Of Evil); Tim Holt (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre); Everett Sloane (The Lady From Shanghai)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Claire Trevor (Key Largo)
nominees: Ethel Barrymore (Portrait Of Jennie); Agnes Moorhead (Johnny Belinda); Jean Simmons (Hamlet); Marie Windsor (Force Of Evil)

SCREENPLAY
winner: John Huston, based on the novel by B. Traven (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Graham Greene, from his short story "The Basement Room" (The Fallen Idol); Howard Koch, from the novel by Stefan Zweig (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Borden Chase and Charles Schnee, from the short story by Borden Chase (Red River); Preston Sturges (Unfaithfully Yours)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Charles Lawton, Jr. (The Lady From Shanghai) (Cinematography)

Dick Tufeld, Voice Of The Lost In Space Robot, Dead At 85

2012-01-25T22:49:00.001-05:00

"Danger, Will Robinson!" Even though we didn't know his face, for those of us of a certain age, Dick Tufeld—better known as the voice of the Lost in Space robot was a boon companion, and as a kid, before I discovered redheads, what I most wanted in life was a robot sidekick.

Dick Tufeld, you will be missed.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1947)

2012-01-25T07:10:00.001-05:00

"The high-priced actors like Cary Grant back at the studios got all the lights. So ours was lit with cigarettes."—Robert Mitchum on film noir

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Out of the Past (prod. Warren Duff)
nominees: Black Narcissus (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); Body and Soul (prod. Bob Roberts); Brighton Rock (prod. Roy Boulting); Crossfire (prod. Adrian Scott); Gentleman's Agreement (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); Nightmare Alley (prod. George Jessel); Odd Man Out (prod. Carol Reed)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Miracle On 34th Street (prod. William Perlberg)
nominees: The Bishop's Wife (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); The Ghost And Mrs. Muir (prod. Fred Kohlmar); Monsieur Verdoux (prod. Charles Chaplin)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Quai des Orfèvres (prod. Roger De Venloo and Louis Wipf)
nominees: Nagaya shinshiroku (The Record Of A Tenement Gentleman) (prod. Shochiku Films); La Perla (prod. Óscar Dancigers)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Robert Mitchum (Out of the Past)
nominees: John Garfield (Body and Soul); Robert Montgomery (Ride the Pink Horse); James Mason (Odd Man Out); Gregory Peck (Gentleman's Agreement); Tyrone Power (Nightmare Alley)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Edmund Gwenn (Miracle On 34th Street)
nominees: James Baskett (Song of the South); Charles Chaplin (Monsieur Verdoux); Cary Grant (The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer and The Bishop's Wife); Rex Harrison (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir); Harold Lloyd (The Sin of Harold Diddlebock); William Powell (Life With Father and The Senator Was Indiscreet)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Possessed and Daisy Kenyon); Jane Greer (Out of the Past); Susan Hayward (Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman); Dorothy McGuire (Gentleman's Agreement)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gene Tierney (The Ghost And Mrs. Muir)
nominees: Irene Dunne (Life With Father); Gale Storm (It Happened On 5th Avenue); Loretta Young (The Bishop's Wife)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past)
nominees: Henri-Georges Clouzot (Quai des Orfèvres); Edward Dmytryk (Crossfire); Edmund Goulding (Nightmare Alley); Yasujirô Ozu (Nagaya shinshiroku a.k.a. The Record Of A Tenement Gentleman); Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Black Narcissus); Carol Reed (Odd Man Out)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Seaton (Miracle On 34th Street)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (Monsieur Verdoux); Joseph L. Mankiewicz (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death)
nominees: Kirk Douglas (Out of the Past); William Frawley (Miracle On 34th Street); James Gleason (The Bishop's Wife); Porter Hall (Miracle On 34th Street); Gene Lockhart (Miracle On 34th Street); Robert Ryan (Crossfire); Monty Woolley (The Bishop's Wife)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Kathleen Byron (Black Narcissus)
nominees: Gloria Grahame (Crossfire); Celeste Holm (Gentleman’s Agreement); Martha Raye (Monsieur Verdoux); Anne Revere (Body and Soul)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes) from his novel Build My Gallows High (Out of the Past)
nominees: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, from the novel by Rumer Godden (Black Narcissus); George Seaton, from a story by Valentine Davies (Miracle on 34th Street); Charles Chaplin, from an idea by Orson Welles (Monsieur Verdoux)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus) (Cinematography)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1946)

2012-01-24T06:42:00.006-05:00

If Jimmy Stewart had died in the war while flying bomber missions over Germany, I think we would have said some nice things about him, but I don't think it would have occurred to anyone to carve his face onto acting's Mount Rushmore. After the war, Stewart either had within him an undercurrent of rage and melancholy that he fought to control or during the war he perfectly observed rage and melancholy and could draw on that understanding like the truest method actor. Either way, after World War II, I think he was just about the finest actor around.

By nearly universal acclaim, mine included, Jimmy Stewart's performance in It's A Wonderful Life was his best. It was his (and Frank Capra's) first movie after a five year absence and he had serious doubts about his ability to revive his career. The scene where George Bailey is praying in Martini's bar and the tears begin to flow, Stewart said that was real. He started thinking about himself and the war and his fears about his career, and the tears just came.

There are two scenes in It's A Wonderful Life you should especially watch for, bits with no dialogue, just concentrating on Stewart's face. The first is when's he's leaving to go to college and the guy says "but they'll vote with Potter otherwise." The second is a later when his brother comes home on the train with Ruth Dakin (Ruth Dakin Bailey!). In both, you see realization, then despair, then the conscious rearranging of his face so that no one else will see—the whole set-up of the movie in a pair of five second bits. Damn fine acting, in my layman's opinion.

In other scenes, Stewart is able to hit notes of despair and self-pity and anger that are scary, and he's not afraid to take it out on his wife and children. For an actor who has a reputation as a nice guy, in many scenes in this movie and others in the post-war era, he's a completely unredeemed jerk.

Anyway, if you've never seen It's A Wonderful Life and you've convinced yourself in advance that it's pure treacle, trust me, you couldn't be more wrong.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: It's A Wonderful Life (prod. Frank Capra)
nominees: The Best Years of Our Lives (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); The Big Sleep (prod. Howard Hawks); Gilda (prod. Virginia Van Upp); Great Expectations (prod. Ronald Neame); The Killers (prod. Mark Hellinger); A Matter Of Life And Death (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); My Darling Clementine (prod. Samuel J. Engel); Notorious (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); The Postman Always Rings Twice (prod. Carey Wilson)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Make Mine Music (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: Cluny Brown (prod. Ernst Lubitch); The Harvey Girls (prod. Arthur Freed); A Night in Casablanca (prod. David L. Loew); Road To Utopia (prod. Paul Jones)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: La belle et la bête (Beauty And The Beast) (prod. André Paulvé)
nominees: Paisà (Paisan) (prod. Rod E. Geiger and Roberto Rossellini); Sciuscià (Shoeshine) (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Paolo William Tamburella)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Stewart (It's A Wonderful Life)
nominees: Dana Andrews (The Best Years Of Our Lives); Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep); Henry Fonda (My Darling Clementine); John Garfield (The Postman Always Rings Twice); Cary Grant (Notorious); Fredric March (The Best Years Of Our Lives)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (Road To Utopia)
nominees: Ray Bolger (The Harvey Girls); Charles Boyer (Cluny Brown)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Rita Hayworth (Gilda)
nominees: Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep); Ingrid Bergman (Notorious); Joan Crawford (Humoresque); Irene Dunne (Anna and the King of Siam); Deborah Kerr (I See A Dark Stranger); Donna Reed (It's A Wonderful Life); Lana Turner (The Postman Always Rings Twice)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jennifer Jones (Cluny Brown)
nominees: Judy Garland (The Harvey Girls); Dorothy Lamour (Road To Utopia)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Frank Capra (It's A Wonderful Life)
nominees: Vittorio de Sica (Sciuscià a.k.a. Shoeshine); John Ford (My Darling Clementine); Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice); Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep); Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious); David Lean (Great Expectations); William Wyler (The Best Years Of Our Lives)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Cocteau (La belle et la bête a.k.a. Beauty And The Beast)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (Cluny Brown)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Claude Rains (Notorious)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (It's A Wonderful Life); Walter Brennan (My Darling Clementine); Oscar Levant (Humoresque); Thomas Mitchell (It's A Wonderful Life); Harold Russell (The Best Years Of Our Lives); Henry Travers (It's A Wonderful Life); Clifton Webb (The Razor's Edge)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Myrna Loy (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
nominees: Ethel Barrymore (The Spiral Staircase); Anne Baxter (The Razor's Edge); Ava Gardner (The Killers); Leopoldine Konstantin (Notorious); Jean Simmons (Great Expectations); Teresa Wright (The Best Years Of Our Lives)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Robert E. Sherwood, from the novella Glory For Me by MacKinlay Kantor based on a Time magazine article (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
nominees: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, from the novel by Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep); David Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan (Great Expectations); Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, from a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern (It's A Wonderful Life); Ben Hecht (Notorious)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Christian Berard, Lucien Carre and Rene Moulaert (La belle et la bête a.k.a. Beauty And The Beast) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1945)

2012-01-23T06:47:00.005-05:00

Joan Crawford was a complicated woman—which is to say that like all of us, she had her good points and her bad points. She was catty and cruel, she was uneducated and insecure about it, she had the morals of an alley cat and her failures as a mother are legendary. But she also had a tremendous work ethic, always tried to improve herself, and as far as I can tell, she never phoned in a performance, not even in the execrable sci-fi horror flick, Trog, which proved to be her last.

And she was always willing to take a shot at Norma Shearer, which is a plus all by itself.

A lot has been written over the years about Joan Crawford's private life, particularly with regard to her sexuality and her parenting skills, so much so that the scandals have completely obscured her work as an actress. But if I were handing out awards based on people's private lives, we'd wind up with a roster full of nice people and very few good movies. Only to the extent that I can discern a clear relationship between a person's off-screen life and their on-screen work will I tend to dwell on the former. Beyond that, celebrity gossip bores me. In fact, as far as I can tell, when they're not working, most celebrities are actually pretty dull people.

Besides, in his biography Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford, Donald Spoto states flatly that the infamous "No wire hangers!" incident never happened. But then a lot of famous incidents never happened—J. Edgar Hoover didn't wear dresses, Walt Disney wasn't cryogenically frozen, and the military-industrial complex didn't assassinate John F. Kennedy.

Fans of the novel might be tempted to complain that Hollywood sanitized and simplified James M. Cain's original vision. But let's face it, no novel ending with the line "Let's get stinko" was going to make it to the big screen intact in 1945. Besides, the final product is plenty violent for all but the most bloodthirsty among us and as cynical about human behavior as the darkest film noir. Mildred Pierce isn't a perfect movie, just a great one and Crawford gave her best performance in it.

What else do you need to know. Anchors Aweigh is the one where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse, The Naughty Nineties is the one with the most complete (and best) version of Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First?" routine. And Children of Paradise is considered by many to be the best movie France has ever produced.

Have at it.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Brief Encounter (prod. Noel Coward)
nominees: And Then There Were None (prod. René Clair); Detour (prod. Leon Fromkess); The Lost Weekend (prod. Charles Brackett); Mildred Pierce (prod. Jerry Wald); The Southerner (prod. Robert Hakim and David L. Loew); They Were Expendable (prod. John Ford); A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (prod. Louis D. Lighton)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Anchors Aweigh (prod. Joe Pasternak)
nominees: Blithe Spirit (prod. Noel Coward); I Know Where I'm Going! (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Les enfants du paradis (Children Of Paradise) (prod.Raymond Borderie and Fred Orain)
nominees: Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City) (prod. Giuseppe Amato, Ferruccio De Martino and Roberto Rossellini)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend)
nominees: Jean-Louis Barrault (Les enfants du paradis a.k.a. Children Of Paradise); Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter); James Mason (The Seventh Veil); Robert Montgomery (They Were Expendable); Edward G. Robinson (Scarlet Street)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (The Naughty Nineties)
nominees: Rex Harrison (Blithe Spirit); Gene Kelly (Anchors Aweigh); Roger Livesey (I Know Where I'm Going!)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce)
nominees: Arletty (Les enfants du paradis a.k.a. Children Of Paradise); Joan Bennett (Scarlet Street); Peggy Anne Garner (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn); Celia Johnson (Brief Encounter); Anna Magnani (Roma, città aperta a.ka. Rome, Open City); Gene Tierney (Leave Her To Heaven)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Wendy Hiller (I Know Where I'm Going!)
nominees: Kay Hammond (Blithe Spirit); Barbara Stanwyck (Christmas In Connecticut)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Marcel Carné (Les enfants du paradis a.k.a. Children Of Paradise)
nominees: René Clair (And Then There Were None); Michael Curtiz (Mildred Pierce); John Ford (They Were Expendable); Elia Kazan (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn); Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street); David Lean (Brief Encounter); Jean Renoir (The Southerner); Billy Wilder (The Lost Weekend)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Sidney (Anchors Aweigh)
nominees: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (I Know Where I'm Going!)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Boris Karloff (The Body Snatcher)
nominees: Jack Carson (Mildred Pierce); James Dunn (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn); Dan Duryea (Scarlet Street); Robert Mitchum (The Story Of G.I. Joe)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Margaret Rutherford (Blithe Spirit)
nominees: Eve Arden (Mildred Pierce); Joan Blondell (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn); Ann Blyth (Mildred Pierce); Maria Casares (Les enfants du paradis a.k.a. Children of Paradise)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Ted Slesinger and Frank Davis, from the novel by Betty Smith (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn)
nominees: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean and Ronald Neame; from a play by Noel Coward (Brief Encounter); Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, from the novel by Charles R. Jackson (The Lost Weekend); Ranald MacDougall, from the novel by James M. Cain (Mildred Pierce); Frank Wead from a book by William L.White (They Were Expendable)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Joseph H. August (They Were Expendable) (Cinematography); Val Lewton (Career Achievement Award)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1944)

2012-01-22T06:46:00.005-05:00

When in 1946 the French, who thanks to the war hadn't seen an American movie in five years, finally caught up with the backlog, they noticed something that Hollywood had apparently missed—that such movies as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Laura and Murder, My Sweet, were shot through with an anxiety and pessimism wholly uncharacteristic of the screwball comedies and glossy MGM musicals they had seen in the 1930s.

The French dubbed these dark movies "film noir"—and a genre was unwittingly born.

Which film you would crown as the best film noir of all time depends in part on what you think of as film noir. The French didn't really define the term and Hollywood's studios never thought of themselves as producing something called film noir—they were just making movies that they hoped would sell tickets.

For me, the essence of noir is not about lighting or femme fatales or crime gone wrong, but simply a guy who ought to know better heading down a moral rathole anyway with the worst possible consequences. You see that over and over again in these movies—guys who think they're smarter than everybody else or who think they're luckier than everybody else or who, like Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, just don't care. Watching film noir is a little like watching a train wreck—you can see it coming a mile away but you can't stop the train and you can't steer away, all you can do is brace yourself for the impact.

In that sense, Double Indemnity might be the best of the noirs. Fred MacMurray commits murder, ostensibly for money and a woman, but in fact simply to see if he can get away with it. Boredom is a lousy reason for doing anything, but I'll bet you as many harebrained schemes have been hatched out of boredom as for any of the more conventional reasons.

In any event, Double Indemnity is a great movie featuring career performances from MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.

(And before you ask—yes, I think the wig plays. It's just the sort of thing a half-smart floozy like Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson would think looks good. That and that "honey" of an anklet. It's the sort of thing women did in the 1940s in lieu of a tramp stamp.)

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Double Indemnity (prod. Joseph Sistrom)
nominees: The Curse Of The Cat People (prod. Val Lewton); Gaslight (prod. Arthur Hornblower, Jr.); Laura (prod. Otto Preminger); To Have And Have Not (prod. Howard Hawks)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Meet Me In St. Louis (prod. Arthur Freed)
nominees: Arsenic and Old Lace (prod. Jack L. Warner); Going My Way (prod. Leo McCarey); Hail The Conquering Hero (prod. Preston Sturges); The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek (prod. Preston Sturges and Buddy G. DeSylva)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ivan Groznyy (Ivan The Terrible, Part I) (prod. Sergei Eisenstein)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Charles Boyer (Gaslight)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (To Have And Have Not); Charles Laughton (The Suspect); Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity); Laurence Olivier (Henry V); Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet); Orson Welles (Jane Eyre)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Eddie Bracken (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek and Hail The Conquering Hero)
nominees: Bing Crosby (Going My Way); Cary Grant (Arsenic and Old Lace); Bob Hope (The Princess and the Pirate)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity)
nominees: Lauren Bacall (To Have And Have Not); Joan Bennett (The Woman In The Window); Ingrid Bergman (Gaslight); Claudette Colbert (Since You Went Away); Joan Fontaine (Jane Eyre); Elizabeth Taylor (National Velvet); Gene Tierney (Laura)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Betty Hutton (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek)
nominees: Judy Garland (Meet Me In St. Louis); Priscilla Lane (Arsenic and Old Lace)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity)
nominees: George Cukor (Gaslight); Sergei Eisenstein (Ivan Groznyy a.k.a. Ivan The Terrible, Part I); Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not); Otto Preminger (Laura); Robert Wise (The Curse of the Cat People)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Vincente Minnelli (Meet Me In St. Louis)
nominees: Frank Capra (Arsenic and Old Lace); Leo McCarey (Going My Way); Preston Sturges (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek and Hail The Conquering Hero)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Edward G. Robinson (Double Indemnity)
nominees: Walter Brennan (To Have And Have Not); William Demarest (The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail The Conquering Hero); Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way); Clifton Webb (Laura)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Margaret O'Brien (Meet Me In St. Louis)
nominees: Josephine Hull (Arsenic and Old Lace); Angela Lansbury (Gaslight); Diana Lynn (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek); Anne Revere (National Velvet)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Preston Sturges (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek and Hail The Conquering Hero)
nominees: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, from the novel by James M. Cain (Double Indemnity); Jules Furthman and William Faulkner, from the novel by Ernest Hemingway (To Have And Have Not)

SPECIAL AWARDS
John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity) (Cinematography); "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Meet Me In St. Louis) music and lyrics by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin (Song); David Raksin (Laura) (Score)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1943)

2012-01-21T07:17:00.005-05:00

The best film of 1943 was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a brilliant comedy of manners from England's Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that gently and wittily took Britain's military leaders to task—pretty daring considering that Britain was at the time still locked in a death struggle with Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill responded by trying (unsuccessfully) to suppress the film and it was a big hit in its home country. When it arrived in America two years later, Hollywood showed the prime minister how it's done—straightening out the film's flashback chronology and so chopping it up as to render it an incomprehensible mess and a box office flop, promptly forgotten.

Fortunately, it has been restored to its full glory, and features Deborah Kerr in not one but three star-making roles.

Over here, Hollywood produced a trio of outstanding films—The Ox-Bow Incident, Wild Bill Wellman's tense story of a mob determined to mete out its own brand of justice; Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant tale of a serial killer come home to visit his family; and I Walked With A Zombie, a voodoo-infused retelling of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre from the master of atmospheric horror, Val Lewton.

I tried on all three of them for the top prize in drama, finally opting for The Ox-Bow Incident. Not only is it a gripping story with terrific performances all around, it's also a prime example of America grappling (albeit indirectly) with the question of why we were fighting the war—merely to survive at any cost or to preserve our higher ideals as well? It's an uncompromising film from beginning to end, a real achievement with a war on and the Production Code in effect. It's also entertaining, a tribute to Wellman, actors Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews, and author-producer Lamar Trotti. A real must-see.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Ox-Bow Incident (prod. Lamar Trotti)
nominees: I Walked With A Zombie (prod. Val Lewton); Sahara (prod. Harry Joe Brown); Shadow Of A Doubt (prod. Jack H. Skirball); So Proudly We Hail! (prod. Mark Sandrich); The Song of Bernadette (prod. William Perlberg)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
nominees: Cabin In The Sky (prod. Arthur Freed); Heaven Can Wait (prod. Ernst Lubitsch); The More The Merrier (George Stevens)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Vredens dag (Day of Wrath) (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Tage Nielsen)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Joseph Cotten (Shadow Of A Doubt)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (Sahara); Henry Fonda (The Ox-Bow Incident); Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine); Mickey Rooney (The Human Comedy)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Joel McCrea (The More The Merrier)
nominees: Don Ameche (Heaven Can Wait); Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson (Cabin in the Sky); Roger Livesey (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Teresa Wright (Shadow Of A Doubt)
nominees: Anne Baxter (Five Graves To Cairo); Ingrid Bergman (For Whom The Bell Tolls); Jennifer Jones (The Song Of Bernadette); Ida Lupino (The Hard Way)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Deborah Kerr (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The More The Merrier); Gene Tierney (Heaven Can Wait); Ethel Waters (Cabin In The Sky)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: William A. Wellman (The Ox-Bow Incident)
nominees: Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vredens dag a.k.a. Day of Wrath); Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow Of A Doubt); Jacques Tourneur (I Walked With A Zombie)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (Heaven Can Wait); Vincente Minnelli (Cabin in the Sky); George Stevens (The More The Merrier)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Charles Coburn (The More The Merrier)
nominees: Dana Andrews (The Ox-Bow Incident); Rex Ingram (Cabin in the Sky and Sahara); Erich von Stroheim (Five Graves to Cairo); Anton Walbrook (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Lena Horne (Cabin In The Sky and Stormy Weather)
nominees: Jean Brooks (The Seventh Victim); Jane Darwell (The Ox-Bow Incident); Veronica Lake (So Proudly We Hail!); Katina Paxinou (For Whom The Bell Tolls)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Lamar Trotti, from the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (The Ox-Bow Incident); Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville, from a story by Gordon McDonell (Shadow of a Doubt)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" (Cabin in the Sky) music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by E.Y. Harburg (Song)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1942)

2012-01-20T06:48:00.007-05:00

By 1942, war had been raging in Europe for more than two years, and in Asia for more than ten, but you'd never know it from the movies of the era. As far as Hollywood was concerned, the war started when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and not one minute before. Not that Hollywood's myopia was anything unique—their indifference was very much in step with the rest of America's.

Once they discovered the war, though, they discovered it with a vengeance.

Hollywood's war fell into three overlapping phases—the rally-the-troops phase as the country's leaders coaxed Americans from their deeply-ingrained isolationism; the middle phase when films began to examine exactly what we were fighting for; and the final phase, when Hollywood was already anticipating the shape of the post-war world.

Casablanca, the classic romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was very much part of the first phase, which is why I have included it here, rather than in 1943 where I usually think of it belonging (it did, after all, win the Oscar for best picture that year). But in fact, Casablanca actually premiered in November 1942, and more to the point it is the story of one man's journey from personal isolationism to fully-committed patriotism—the essence of a first phase film. As such, it belongs with such titles as Mrs. Miniver, To Be Or Not To Be and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Still, seeing it here makes my head spin a bit.

For those of you playing along at home, Casablanca would have swept the same Katie awards whether I had placed it in 1942 or 1943. But in case you're wondering, if I had put it in 1943, the winners in 1942 would have been Cat People (picture/drama), Alan Ladd (actor/drama), Greer Garson (actress/drama), Orson Welles (director/drama), Van Heflin (supporting actor) and To Be Or Not To Be (screenplay).

The other awards would, of course, have stayed the same.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Casablanca (prod. Hal B. Wallis)
nominees: Cat People (prod. Val Lewton); In Which We Serve (prod. Noel Coward); The Magnificent Ambersons (prod. Orson Welles); Now, Voyager (prod. Hal B. Wallis); Random Harvest (prod. Sidney Franklin)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: To Be Or Not To Be (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
nominees: Bambi (prod. Walt Disney); The Palm Beach Story (prod. Buddy G. DeSylva and Paul Jones); Woman of the Year (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Yankee Doodle Dandy (prod. Hal B. Wallis and Jack B. Warner)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Aniki Bóbó (prod. António Lopes Ribeiro); L’Assassin Habite… au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (prod. Alfred Greven)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Random Harvest); Gary Cooper (The Pride Of The Yankees); Joseph Cotten (The Magnificent Ambersons); Alan Ladd (This Gun For Hire and The Glass Key)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy)
nominees: Jack Benny (To Be Or Not To Be); Joel McCrea (The Palm Beach Story); Spencer Tracy (Woman Of The Year); Monty Woolley (The Man Who Came To Dinner)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
nominees: Bette Davis (Now, Voyager); Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest); Simone Simon (Cat People)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Carole Lombard (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The Talk of the Town); Claudette Colbert (The Palm Beach Story); Katharine Hepburn (Woman Of The Year); Veronica Lake (I Married A Witch); Ginger Rogers (The Major And The Minor)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Michael Curtiz (Casablanca)
nominees: Mervyn LeRoy (Random Harvest); Irving Rapper (Now, Voyager); Jacques Tourneur (Cat People); Orson Welles (The Magnificent Ambersons); William Wyler (Mrs. Miniver)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernst Lubitsch (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Michael Curtiz (Yankee Doodle Dandy); George Stevens (Woman of the Year and The Talk of the Town); Preston Sturges (The Palm Beach Story); Billy Wilder (The Major and the Minor)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Claude Rains (Casablanca)
nominees: Van Heflin (Johnny Eager); Walter Huston (Yankee Doodle Dandy); Ronald Reagan (Kings Row); Sig Ruman (To Be Or Not To Be); S.Z. Sakall (Casablanca); Henry Travers (Mrs. Miniver); Dooley Wilson (Casablanca); Conrad Veidt (Casablanca)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons)
nominees: Mary Astor (The Palm Beach Story); Gladys Cooper (Now, Voyager); Susan Peters (Random Harvest); Mary Wickes (The Man Who Came To Dinner)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the play "Everybody Comes To Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison (Casablanca)
nominees: Noel Coward (In Which We Serve); Orson Welles, from the novel by Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons); Edwin Justus Mayer, story by Melchior Lengyel (To Be Or Not To Be)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People) (Cinematography); Albert S. D'Agostino; Al Fields and Darrell Silvera (The Magnificent Ambersons) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1941)

2012-01-19T07:03:00.006-05:00

I won a major award last November for my thoughts on Citizen Kane which you can read here. I won't rehash any of that now except to say that despite its revered status as the classic to end all classics, Citizen Kane is a terrifically entertaining and satisfying movie.

Or to put it another way, just because your 10th grade English teacher made you read Silas Marner and called it a "classic"—because that's what this is all about, isn't it—that's no reason to avoid Citizen Kane.

My other thought (SPOILERS AHEAD) is about Mary Astor, whose performance in The Maltese Falcon is surprisingly divisive among classic movie fans. Many think she is not nearly enough of a "knockout" to justify Sam Spade's interest in her.

Me, I think the thirty-five year old Astor was perfectly cast.

We've grown inured to the notion that in movies, forty-two year old actors should hook up with twenty-four year old actresses, but the fact is, if Bogart's Sam Spade had flipped for a young hottie, we the audience would have concluded that he was thinking with his libido and she was playing him for a sap.

Very noirish, but rendering the twist ending emotionally hollow, in my opinion.

As it stands, they come to each other as equals: he's found his soul mate, someone as smart, amoral and reptilian as he is; and she, after a decade of knocking around places like Istanbul and Hong Kong with a collection of tough, dim pretty boys, has at last met a man with whom she feels truly safe.

Ironic how it works out.

That they are both also rapidly approaching their sell-by date makes the ending all the more poignant.

But maybe that's just the romantic in me.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Citizen Kane (prod. Orson Welles)
nominees: High Sierra (prod. Hal B. Wallis); How Green Was My Valley (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); The Little Foxes (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); The Maltese Falcon (prod. Hal B. Wallis)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Sullivan's Travels (prod. Preston Sturges)
nominees: The Devil And Miss Jones (prod. Frank Ross); Fantasia (prod. Walt Disney); Here Comes Mr. Jordan (prod. Everett Riskin); The Lady Eve (prod. Paul Jones)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Genroku Chûshingura (The 47 Ronin) (prod. Shintarô Shirai)
nominees: Todake no kyodai (The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family) (prod. Shôchiku Film)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon); Walter Huston (The Devil and Daniel Webster); Herbert Marshall (The Little Foxes); Tyrone Power (Blood and Sand)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gary Cooper (Meet John Doe and Ball Of Fire)
nominees: Charles Coburn (The Devil And Miss Jones); W.C. Fields (Never Give A Sucker An Even Break); Henry Fonda (The Lady Eve); Joel McCrea (Sullivan's Travels); Robert Montgomery (Here Comes Mr. Jordan); William Powell (Love Crazy and Shadow of the Thin Man)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Bette Davis (The Little Foxes)
nominees: Joan Crawford (A Woman's Face); Olivia de Havilland (Hold Back The Dawn); Irene Dunne (Penny Serenade); Joan Fontaine (Suspicion); Vivien Leigh (That Hamilton Woman)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Barbara Stanwyck (Ball Of Fire and The Lady Eve)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The Devil And Miss Jones); Deanna Durbin (It Started With Eve); Wendy Hiller (Major Barbara); Dorothy Lamour (Road to Zanzibar); Myrna Loy (Love Crazy and Shadow of the Thin Man)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
nominees: John Ford (How Green Was My Valley); John Huston (The Maltese Falcon); Raoul Walsh (High Sierra); William Wyler (The Little Foxes)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels)
nominees: Frank Capra (Meet John Doe); Alexander Hall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan); Howard Hawks (Ball of Fire); Sam Wood (The Devil and Miss Jones)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Sidney Greenstreet (The Maltese Falcon)
nominees: Donald Crisp (How Green Was My Valley); William Demarest (The Lady Eve); James Gleason (Here Comes Mr. Jordan); Peter Lorre (The Maltese Falcon); Claude Rains (Here Comes Mr. Jordan)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Mary Astor (The Great Lie and The Maltese Falcon)
nominees: Sara Allgood (How Green Was My Valley); Spring Byington (The Devil And Miss Jones); Patricia Collinge (The Little Foxes); Veronica Lake (Sullivan's Travels); Teresa Wright (The Little Foxes)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane)
nominees: John Huston (The Maltese Falcon); Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) (Cinematography); Perry Ferguson and Van Nest Polglase; Al Fields and Darrell Silvera (Citizen Kane) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane) (Score); Robert Wise (Citizen Kane) (Film Editing)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1940)

2012-01-18T06:59:00.003-05:00

That pop-pop-popping sound you've been hearing all morning is people's heads exploding as they scroll down the page and see that the Three Stooges have won an award for best actor in a comedy.

The Three Stooges?! What the what?!

And yet the fact is, the Stooges are the best known comedy team in the history of film, still popular (or passionately unpopular) after all these years and I think they are long overdue for some critical recognition.

Did you know they once got an Oscar nomination? They did—or their work did anyway—for the 1934 two-reeler Men in Black. And in 2002, Punch Drunks was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry. 1940 represents the team at their peak, with arguably the two finest shorts of their career, You Nazty Spy!—a pointed satire of Hitler that beat Chaplin's The Great Dictator into theaters by ten months—and A Plumbing We Will Go, with Curly's attempts to fix a leaky shower serving as the funniest demonstration of the worthlessness of good intentions ever committed to film.

As for Joan Fontaine, the first (I think) living recipient of a Katie-Bar-The-Door Award and my pick for the year's best actress in a drama, she might be the most one-note actress ever to create an indelible screen image. She played submissive, cringing doormats better than anybody—in not only Rebecca, but also Suspicion, Letter From An Unknown Woman, and in a supporting role in The Women—but she couldn't do much else, and I often wonder whether her primary talent was for getting cast in parts perfectly suited to her limited gifts. If so, she's still ahead of me, and I imagine she'll be around feuding with her sister long after I'm gone.

Speaking of her ongoing feud with Olivia de Havilland, I don't know about you, but I find it strangely comforting that they're still at it, like knowing that the sun will come up in the morning. They've been fighting longer than the Cleveland Indians have gone without a World Series title, if that means anything to you, since Franklin Roosevelt was president and there were 48 stars on the flag. Think of all the people who were born, lived, grew old and died during the time that Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland haven't been speaking to each other. That's constancy, man, a strange sort of fidelity more enduring than most marriages.

Just because you're related to somebody doesn't mean you have to like them, I guess.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Grapes Of Wrath (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck)
nominees: Foreign Correspondent (prod. Walter Wanger); The Letter (prod. William Wyler); Rebecca (prod. David O. Selznick); The Thief Of Bagdad (prod. Alexander Korda)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Philadelphia Story (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
nominees: The Great Dictator (prod. Charles Chaplin); His Girl Friday (prod. Howard Hawks); Pinocchio (prod. Walt Disney); The Shop Around The Corner (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ahí está el detalle (You're Missing The Point) (prod. Jesús Grovas)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Henry Fonda (The Grapes Of Wrath)
nominees: Gary Cooper (The Westerner); Errol Flynn (The Sea Hawk); Raymond Massey (Abe Lincoln In Illinois); Laurence Olivier (Rebecca); Conrad Veidt (The Thief Of Bagdad)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Three Stooges (You Nazty Spy!; A Plumbing We Will Go; Nutty But Nice; How High Is Up?; From Nurse To Worse; No Census, No Feeling; Cookoo Cavaliers; and Boobs In Arms)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Brian Donlevy (The Great McGinty); W.C. Fields (The Bank Dick); Cary Grant (His Girl Friday and My Favorite Wife); William Powell (I Love You Again); James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story and The Shop Around The Corner)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Joan Fontaine (Rebecca)
nominees: Bette Davis (All This, And Heaven Too and The Letter); Vivien Leigh (Waterloo Bridge)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday)
nominees: Irene Dunne (My Favorite Wife); Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story); Ann Sheridan (Torrid Zone); Margaret Sullavan (The Shop Around The Corner)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)
nominees: Michael Curtiz (The Sea Hawk); Alfred Hitchcock (Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent); William Wyler (The Westerner and The Letter)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday); Ernst Lubitsch (The Shop Around The Corner); Preston Sturges (The Great McGinty and Christmas in July)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Cary Grant (The Philadelphia Story)
nominees: Ralph Bellamy (His Girl Friday); Walter Brennan (The Westerner); Jack Oakie (The Great Dictator); George Sanders (Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent); John Carradine (The Grapes of Wrath)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Judith Anderson (Rebecca)
nominees: Jane Dorwell (The Grapes Of Wrath); Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story); Gail Patrick (My Favorite Wife); Virginia Weidler (The Philadelphia Story)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Nunnally Johnson, from the novel by John Steinbeck (The Grapes Of Wrath)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator); Donald Ogden Stewart, from the play by Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story); Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison (screenplay), Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan (adaptation), from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca); Samuel Raphelson, from a play by Miklós László (The Shop Around The Corner)

SPECIAL AWARDS
George Barnes (Rebecca) (Cinematography); Lodge Cunningham (His Girl Friday) (Sound); "When You Wish Upon A Star" (Pinocchio) music by Leigh Harline; lyrics by Ned Washington (Song)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1939)

2012-01-17T07:05:00.001-05:00

A great year in film history that needs no introduction—which is a good thing because I haven't written one.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Gone With The Wind (prod. David O. Selznick)
nominees: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (prod. Victor Saville); Gunga Din (prod. George Stevens); The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (prod. Pandro S. Berman); Only Angels Have Wings (prod. Howard Hawks); The Roaring Twenties (prod. Hal B. Wallis); Stagecoach (prod. John Ford); Wuthering Heights (prod. Samuel Goldwyn)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Wizard Of Oz (prod. Mervyn LeRoy)
nominees: Destry Rides Again (prod. Joe Pasternak); Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (prod. Frank Capra); Ninotchka (prod. Ernst Lubitsch); The Women (prod. Hunt Stromberg)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: La règle du jeu (The Rules Of The Game) (prod. Claude Renoir, Sr.)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Clark Gable (Gone With The Wind)
nominees: James Cagney (The Roaring Twenties); Robert Donat (Goodbye, Mr. Chips); Henry Fonda (Young Mr. Lincoln); Cary Grant (Gunga Din and Only Angels Have Wings); Laurence Olivier (Wuthering Heights); Basil Rathbone (The Hound Of The Baskervilles and The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Stewart (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Destry Rides Again)
nominees: Don Ameche (Midnight); Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka); W.C. Fields (You Can't Cheat An Honest Man)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Vivien Leigh (Gone With The Wind)
nominees: Ingrid Bergman (Intermezzo: A Love Story); Bette Davis (Dark Victory and The Old Maid); Irene Dunne (Love Affair); Merle Oberon (Wuthering Heights); Barbara Stanwyck (Union Pacific)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Judy Garland (The Wizard Of Oz)
nominees: Jean Arthur (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington); Claudette Colbert (Midnight); Joan Crawford (The Women); Marlene Dietrich (Destry Rides Again); Greta Garbo (Ninotchka)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Ford (Stagecoach)
nominees: Victor Fleming (Gone With The Wind); Howard Hawks (Only Angels Have Wings); William Wyler (Wuthering Heights)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Victor Fleming (The Wizard Of Oz)
nominees: Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington); Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka); Jean Renoir (La règle du jeu a.k.a. The Rules Of The Game)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach, Only Angels Have Wings, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Gone With The Wind and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
nominees: Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr (The Wizard Of Oz); Frank Morgan (The Wizard Of Oz); Robert Preston (Union Pacific); Claude Rains (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Hattie McDaniel (Gone With The Wind)
nominees: Olivia de Havilland (Gone With The Wind); Geraldine Fitzgerald (Wuthering Heights); Kay Francis (In Name Only); Margaret Hamilton (The Wizard Of Oz); Butterfly McQueen (Gone With The Wind)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, from the play by Clare Boothe (The Women)
nominees: Jean Renoir and Carl Koch (La règle du jeu a.k.a. The Rules Of The Game); Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Billy Wilder; story by Melchior Lengyel (Ninotchka); Sidney Buchman; story by Lewis R. Foster (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Over The Rainbow" (The Wizard Of Oz) music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by E.Y. Harburg (Song); Max Steiner (Gone With The Wind) (Score)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1938)

2012-01-16T06:54:00.002-05:00

If you don't like Katharine Hepburn and you see Holiday and you still don't like her, you officially have my permission to give up.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Adventures Of Robin Hood (prod. Jack L. Warner and Hal B. Wallis)
nominees: Angels With Dirty Faces (prod. Samuel Bischoff); The Lady Vanishes (prod. Edward Black)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Bringing Up Baby (prod. Howard Hawks)
nominees: Holiday (prod. Everett Riskin); Pygmalion (prod. Gabriel Pascal); You Can't Take It With You (prod. Frank Capra)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Alexander Nevsky (prod. Igor Vakar)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Errol Flynn (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
nominees: Charles Boyer (Algiers); James Cagney (Angels With Dirty Faces); Robert Donat (The Citadel); Jean Gabin (La Bête Humaine)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Leslie Howard (Pygmalion)
nominees: Cary Grant (Bringing Up Baby and Holiday); Tyrone Power (Alexander's Ragtime Band); Mickey Rooney (Love Finds Andy Hardy); The Three Stooges (The Columbia Pictures Short Comedies)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Margaret Sullavan (Three Comrades)
nominees: Bette Davis (Jezebel); Margaret Lockwood (The Lady Vanishes)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby and Holiday)
nominees: Constance Bennett (Merrily We Live); Wendy Hiller (Pygmalion)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (The Lady Vanishes)
nominees: Michael Curtiz and William Keighley (The Adventures Of Robin Hood); Michael Curtiz (Angels With Dirty Faces); Sergei M. Eisenstein (Alexander Nevsky)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby)
nominees: Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard (Pygmalion); Frank Capra (You Can't Take It With You); George Cukor (Holiday)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Basil Rathbone (The Adventures Of Robin Hood)
nominees: Lew Ayres (Holiday); Lionel Barrymore (You Can't Take It With You); Claude Rains (The Adventures Of Robin Hood); Ralph Richardson (The Citadel)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Billie Burke (Merrily We Live)
nominees: Fay Bainter (Jezebel); Spring Byington (You Can't Take It With You); Hattie McDaniel (Saratoga); Dame May Whitty (The Lady Vanishes)

SCREENPLAY
winner: George Bernard Shaw (scenario and dialogue), Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb (scenario), from the play by George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion)
nominees: Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. Miller (The Adventures Of Robin Hood); Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, from the story by Hagar Wilde (Bringing Up Baby); Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, from the play by Philip Barry (Holiday); Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (The Lady Vanishes)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Sol Polito and Tony Gaudio (The Adventures Of Robin Hood) (Cinematography); Carl Jules Weyl (The Adventures Of Robin Hood) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); C.A. Riggs (The Adventures Of Robin Hood) (Sound); Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures Of Robin Hood) (Score); Milo Anderson (The Adventures Of Robin Hood) (Costumes); George Hively (Bringing Up Baby) (Film Editing)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1937)

2012-01-15T06:53:00.003-05:00

Stage Door is a perfect example of what the so-called "chick flick" used to be before they devolved into soulless paeans to crass consumerism—sharp, biting vehicles for great actresses playing characters who dream big and succeed or fail on a large scale, all while shedding men like ducks shed water. Maybe the fantasy in the 1930s, when real-life opportunities for women were limited, was the possibility of taking charge and doing anything. Now when opportunities are approaching something like unlimited, maybe the fantasy is to buy lots of crap and do nothing.

Or maybe it's just that Stage Door had Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers and Eve Arden and Gail Patrick, and Sex and the City had, well, the cast of Sex and the City. But I don't think so.

Anyway, I treated Stage Door—which is as full of funny lines as any movie of the era—as a drama because underneath its snarky wit is an undercurrent of desperation that motivates nearly every character in it, including the one played by Andrea Leeds whose personal tragedy is the engine that drives the plot.

As for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I wouldn't say it's Walt Disney's best animated feature, but it was the first—not just his first but anybody's first—a risk so bold it was known as "Disney's Folly" until it made a sackful of money and changed the future of animation forever. In its field, it was as influential as Citizen Kane—and the songs are just so damn catchy.

And by the way, while we're being chatty, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw Grand Illusion for the first time in a ratty mall three-plex in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is a little like saying you ate Beluga caviar for the first time in a Cracker Barrel off the side of the interstate. We figured it must have been either a mistake or a practical joke, and we were the only two people in the theater, but, boy, what a good movie.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Stage Door (prod. Pandro S. Berman)
nominees: Make Way For Tomorrow (prod. Leo McCarey and Adolph Zukor); The Prisoner Of Zenda (prod. David O. Selznick); A Star Is Born (prod. David O. Selznick); You Only Live Once (prod. Walter Wanger)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: The Awful Truth (prod. Leo McCarey); Easy Living (prod. Arthur Hornblow Jr.); A Day At The Races (prod. Sam Wood); Nothing Sacred (prod. David O. Selznick); Shall We Dance (prod. Pandro S. Berman)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Grand Illusion (prod. Albert Pinkovitch and Frank Rollmer)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Jean Gabin (Pepe Le Moko and Grand Illusion)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Lost Horizon and The Prisoner Of Zenda); Henry Fonda (You Only Live Once); Fredric March (A Star Is Born); Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Cary Grant (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Shall We Dance); Will Hay (Oh, Mr. Porter); Leslie Howard (It's Love I'm After); Fredric March (Nothing Sacred); The Marx Brothers (A Day At The Races)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Shirley Temple (Wee Willie Winkie and Heidi)
nominees: Beulah Bondi (Make Way For Tomorrow); Janet Gaynor (A Star is Born); Katharine Hepburn (Stage Door); Ginger Rogers (Stage Door); Sylvia Sidney (You Only Live Once); Barbara Stanwyck (Stella Dallas)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Arthur (Easy Living)
nominees: Constance Bennett (Topper); Irene Dunne (The Awful Truth); Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred); Ginger Rogers (Shall We Dance)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion)
nominees: Gregory La Cava (Stage Door); Fritz Lang (You Only Live Once); Leo McCarey (Make Way For Tomorrow); William A. Wellman (A Star Is Born)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Sam Wood (A Day At The Races)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Ralph Bellamy (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Edward Arnold (Easy Living); Walter Connolly (Nothing Sacred); Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (The Prisoner Of Zenda); Adolphe Menjou (Stage Door and A Star Is Born); Erich von Stroheim (Grand Illusion); Roland Young (Topper)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Eve Arden (Stage Door)
nominees: Constance Collier (Stage Door); Margaret Dumont (A Day At The Races); Andrea Leeds (Stage Door); Claire Trevor (Dead End); Dame May Whitty (Night Must Fall)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Morris Ryskind and Anthony Veiller, from the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman (Stage Door)
nominees: Preston Sturges, from a story by Vera Caspary (Easy Living); Charles Spaak and Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion); Viña Delmar, from a play by Helen and Nolan Leary, and a novel by Josephine Lawrence (Make Way For Tomorrow); Ben Hecht, from a story by James H. Street (Nothing Sacred)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline and Paul J. Smith (Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs) (Score)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1936)

2012-01-14T07:00:00.010-05:00

Notes from my future essay about My Man Godfrey.

To me, the key component of screwball comedy is frivolous people behaving as if their actions have no consequences—that is to say, as if they'll live forever—which, as God himself would tell you, is always funny. In that sense, William Powell's Godfrey is the opposite of a screwball character. His back is so bent with the weight of his own mortality that he's something of a tragic figure, and while his story features all the attributes of comedy, it reveals something much darker about the human condition—and why for my money this is the best of the classic screwballs.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus asks a central question: if life has no point, then what's the point of living? For an existentialist, his answer is surprisingly upbeat (figure out what you enjoy doing, even if it's just rolling a rock up a hill, and stop worrying so much), but you need not have wondered whether existence is pointless to occasionally ask yourself whether the empty materialism at the heart of the American Dream is a worthwhile purpose, especially if, like Godfrey—and millions of other men in 1936—the American Dream has turned into your personal nightmare.

Godfrey has had plenty of time to ponder this question, and as he's turned it over and over in his mind, he's drifted—down, down, gently down, until he's finally come to rest in a cardboard shack in a garbage dump on the banks of the East River, a journey many men took after the Depression sent them reeling to live life on the bum. As the film opens, Godfrey has found no answers to his questions, and logic dictates that he has but one more move to make—to load up his pockets with stones and move permanently into the river itself.

And then into his life comes the Bullock family, a collection of upper class twits who—like the cast of a modern-dress production of The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov's classic screwball comedy that English teachers everywhere mistakenly bill as a tragedy—live their lives oblivious to their impending ruin. Through the twisted logic typical of the genre, Godfrey becomes the butler to the Bullocks and in a mere 94 minutes, effortlessly and hilariously butles them—and himself—back into shape.

I guess as the title character in Eugene O'Neill's Lazarus Laughed discovered, once you've been dead, everything thereafter is a bit of a breeze.

I have one quibble with the movie—and it's the sort of quibble they used to burn people at the stake for—and that's Carole Lombard as Irene Bullock, her most famous and beloved role. She's the one character who never learns anything and the ending that puts her together with Godfrey feels to me more like the result of the genre's Rube Goldberg-like plot requirements than any deep connection between their characters.

Still, I always at least try to read a movie on its own terms, and maybe Irene and Godfrey do belong together. Maybe Godfrey loves her, deep down, because it was her nuttiness that breathed life back into the empty sack of his existence. Or maybe their union tells us that true happiness can only be found through a marriage of cool reason and inspired insanity. Or maybe when you look like Carole Lombard, all the other reasons go out the window.

And maybe I just talked myself out of my one quibble with the film.

Even so, I'm not sure—after all, Irene is awfully noisy—but after years on the banks of the East River with nothing to listen to but the sound of dump trucks, passing ships and his own fading heartbeat, maybe noisy is exactly what Godfrey is looking for.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Dodsworth (prod. Samuel Goldwyn)
nominees: Camille (prod. Bernard H. Hyman and Irving Thalberg); Flash Gordon (prod. Henry MacRae); Fury (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz); The Petrified Forest (prod. Hal B. Wallis)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: My Man Godfrey (prod. Gregory La Cava)
nominees: Libeled Lady (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (prod. Frank Capra); Modern Times (prod. Charles Chaplin); Swing Time (prod. Pandro S. Berman); Theodora Goes Wild (prod. Everett Riskin)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Le crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (prod. André Halley des Fontaines)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Walter Huston (Dodsworth)
nominees: Errol Flynn (The Charge Of The Light Brigade); Leslie Howard (The Petrified Forest); Spencer Tracy (Fury)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Fred Astaire (Swing Time)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times); Gary Cooper (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); William Powell (The Great Ziegfeld, The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, My Man Godfrey, Libeled Lady and After The Thin Man)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Greta Garbo (Camille)
nominees: Ruth Chatterton (Dodsworth); Bette Davis (The Petrified Forest); Sylvia Sidney (Fury and Sabotage)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Irene Dunne (Show Boat and Theodora Goes Wild)
nominees: Jean Arthur (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); Jean Harlow (Libeled Lady); Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey); Myrna Loy (After The Thin Man and Libeled Lady); Ginger Rogers (Swing Time)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: William Wyler (Dodsworth)
nominees: George Cukor (Camille); Fritz Lang (Fury)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times)
nominees: Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey); George Stevens (Swing Time)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Paul Robeson (Show Boat)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (The Petrified Forest); Walter Brennan (Come and Get It); Eugene Pallette (My Man Godfrey); Akim Tamiroff (The General Died at Dawn)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Gail Patrick (My Man Godfrey)
nominees: Mary Astor (Dodsworth); Alice Brady (My Man Godfrey); Helen Morgan (Showboat); Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Sidney Howard (Dodsworth)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times); Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, from a novel by Eric Hatch (My Man Godfrey)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Charles Chaplin (Modern Times) (Score); James Basevi, Russell A. Cully, A. Arnold Gillespie, Max Fabian and Loyal Griggs (San Francisco) (Special Effects/Visual Effects)

Postscript:

Has anybody ever owned a song the way Paul Robeson owned "Ol' Man River"? Lots of people have sung it, but I doubt anybody has ever felt it the way Robeson felt "Ol' Man River."

Later in his career, Robeson turned this song of despair into an anthem of defiance, but here he embodies the weariness and desperation central to, first, his character, then the African-American experience in a Jim Crow society, and finally, the human condition itself—because let's face it, you haven't really lived life as most people live it until you've reached a point where you feel the line "I'm tired of living and scared of dying" right down in the queasy pit of your stomach.

Hopefully, if you've ever sojourned in that dark place, you've managed to climb back out again. After all, we'll be dead soon enough, and for a long, long time, so there's no point in getting a head start on it. But rest assured, triumph or fail, or something in between, eventually we all get plowed under just the same.

And Ol' Man River? He just keeps rolling along.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1935)

2012-01-13T07:04:00.002-05:00

You know, every once in a while you're faced with something so perfect—the Sistine Chapel, Secretariat at the Belmont, John Lennon's vocal on "Twist and Shout"—you can actually hear the music of the spheres as they move through the eternal ether.

When I watch Astaire and Rogers dance, I reconsider the possibility that maybe there is a heaven after all.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The 39 Steps (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Bride Of Frankenstein (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr. and James Whale); The Informer (prod. John Ford); Mutiny On The Bounty (prod. Frank Lloyd and Irving Thalberg)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Top Hat (prod. Pandro S. Berman)
nominees: A Night At The Opera (prod. Irving Thalberg); Ruggles of Red Gap (Arthur Hornblow, Jr.)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: La kermesse héroïque (Carnival In Flanders) (prod. Pierre Guerlais)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Charles Laughton (Mutiny On The Bounty)
nominees: Ronald Colman (A Tale Of Two Cities); Robert Donat (The 39 Steps); Errol Flynn (Captain Blood); Boris Karloff (Bride Of Frankenstein)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Marx Brothers (A Night At The Opera)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Top Hat); W.C. Fields (The Man on the Flying Trapeze); Charles Laughton (Ruggles Of Red Gap)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Katharine Hepburn (Alice Adams and Sylvia Scarlet)
nominees: Greta Garbo (Anna Karenina)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ginger Rogers (Top Hat)
nominees: Margaret Sullavan (The Good Fairy); Shirley Temple (The Little Colonel, Our Little Girl, Curly Top and The Littlest Rebel)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (The 39 Steps)
nominees: John Ford (The Informer); James Whale (Bride Of Frankenstein)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Sam Wood (A Night At The Opera)
nominees: Leo McCarey (Ruggles Of Red Gap); Mark Sandrich (Top Hat); William Wyler (The Good Fairy)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Edward Everett Horton (Top Hat)
nominees: W.C. Fields (David Copperfield); Charles Laughton (Les Miserables); Charlie Ruggles (Ruggles Of Red Gap); Franchot Tone (The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer and Mutiny On The Bounty); Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Elsa Lanchester (Bride Of Frankenstein)
nominees: Peggy Ashcroft (The 39 Steps); Mary Boland (Ruggles Of Red Gap); Una O'Connor (Bride Of Frankenstein and The Informer); Edna May Oliver (David Copperfield and A Tale Of Two Cities)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Dudley Nichols, from a story by Liam O'Flaherty (The Informer)
nominees: William Hurlbut (screenplay), adaptation by William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston (Bride Of Frankenstein); W.P. Lipscomb, from the novel by Victor Hugo (Les Misérables); George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, story by James Kevin McGuinness (A Night At The Opera); Charles Bennett (adaptation), Ian Hay (dialogue) and Alma Reville (continuity) (The 39 Steps)

SPECIAL AWARDS
John J. Mescall (Bride of Frankenstein) (Cinematography); Charles D. Hall (Bride of Frankenstein) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Gilbert Kurland (Bride of Frankenstein) (Sound); Herbert Stothart (Mutiny on the Bounty) (Score); "Cheek To Cheek" (Top Hat) Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin (Song); Derek Twist (The 39 Steps) (Film Editing)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1934)

2012-01-12T07:16:00.012-05:00

What time frame constitutes the so-called "Golden Age" of Hollywood movies is open to debate, but to my mind, 1934 is a good starting point. It was the year that studios began enforcing the Production Code; Clark Gable grew his trademark pencil-thin moustache and won an Oscar; William Powell and Myrna Loy teamed up for the first time; Astaire and Rogers danced their way to stardom; Frank Capra and Howard Hawks invented the screwball comedy; and Bette Davis gave a blistering performance in Of Human Bondage that pretty much finished the job James Cagney started in The Public Enemy, putting a fork in the genteel British stage style that had dominated the early sound era. Not to mention that, on a technical level, sound recording had improved to the point that it's no longer an issue for a modern viewer.

When the Golden Age ended is a bit murkier. The artistic and commercial quality of Hollywood movies continued unabated at least into the post-war era, and then came the challenges of television, the Supreme Court's 1948 antitrust decision, foreign competition and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. The studio system cracked up, the Production Code fell by the wayside and nothing was ever quite the same again.

Not that Hollywood wouldn't continue to make great movies in the 1960s and beyond (I'm no Luddite, nor am I a prude), but the economic model Hollywood studios followed changed radically and with it, so did the look, content and feel of the movies. In some ways, that's a welcome development. But we'll get to that when we get to that.

By the way, this is the first of what we might refer to as the "future" Katie Awards—which is to say, I haven't written about any of these movies yet. So a little context is in order.

As always I've picked three "best" picture awards in three different categories, but don't kid yourself, all winners are not created equal. The fact is every comedy/musical nominee of 1934 and nearly every foreign language nominee is better than the winner of best drama, The Scarlet Empress, at least in my book. Frankly, I have less affection for The Scarlet Empress than just about any picture I foresee handing an award to. My appreciation of it is purely intellectual as perhaps the ultimate example of the concept of "auteur theory" and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge it. Doesn't mean I much like it, though.

The fact is that during the course of his celebrated collaboration with Marlene Dietrich, director Josef von Sternberg behaved less and less like a professional storyteller and more and more like a neurotic voyeur trying to possess what had already eluded him, and the movies he made with her became a peephole through which he watched as she paraded before him a progression of imaginary and not so imaginary lovers.

I'll give Sternberg this: his films are not the chilly, disinterested exercises of a theoretician—they are the fevered dreams of a director increasingly no longer in control of himself or his passions, the celluloid confessions of a man obsessed with a woman who no longer loves him, needs him or even thinks much about him except in moments of contemptuous bemusement.

In later years, Sternberg liked to imply that Dietrich was a no-talent hack who existed only in the lens of his camera. That to me sounds like the ranting of a rejected suitor—Don José in Bizet's Carmen killing his ex-lover rather than letting anyone else have her—because what I see and what he evidently failed to see is the amused smile playing on Dietrich's lips as she toys with her director, allowing him to photograph her but never truly possess her. It's why she survived Sternberg's fetishistic excesses unscathed while he was destroyed—she was sharing a private joke with her audience at his expense. "Watch me make him jump through another hoop," she seems to be saying, even as she emerged from, say, the gorilla costume in Blonde Venus. The harder he tried to possess her with his camera, the more ridiculous the effort looked. Nobody was ever going to pin Dietrich down.

The other award I should mention is that for Louise Beavers in Imitation of Life. Modern viewers often have trouble wrapping their heads around what to our eyes looks like condescending noblesse oblige racism on the one hand, and passive "Uncle Tom-ism" on the other. What can I tell you. That which was subversive in 1934—a black woman as the secret brains of a lucrative business empire—is puzzlingly dated and racist now.

I think there are two ways of dealing with racism in the movies of the past: You can judge it by the standards of today and shun every performance by a black actor before, say, Sidney Poitier in 1967's In The Heat Of The Night, leaving your viewing habits even more lily-white than the lily-white Hollywood of the time; or you can watch these roles in context and judge them by how much the actor was able to do given the crippling limitations they worked under. Since option one would require me to ignore Louise Beavers, Nina Mae McKinney, Paul Robeson, Hattie McDaniel, Eddie Anderson, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Dooley Wilson, Rex Ingram, and many, many others, I'm going with option two.

Mind you, I'm not grading the performance on a curve—I think Louise Beaver's gentle portrayal of a mother who sacrifices everything for an ungrateful daughter is the best supporting performance of the year regardless of the historical context—but I am cutting the role some slack.

If your conscience leads you to weigh these issues differently, though, I can't say you're wrong.

The rest of these movies you've probably heard of.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Scarlet Empress (prod. Josef von Sternberg)
nominees: The Black Cat (prod. E.M. Asher and Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Imitation Of Life (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.); The Man Who Knew Too Much (prod. Michael Balcon)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Thin Man (prod. Hunt Stromberg)
nominees: The Gay Divorcee (prod. Pandro S. Berman); It Happened One Night (prod. Frank Capra); It's A Gift (prod. William LeBaron); The Merry Widow (prod. Ernst Lubitsch and Irving Thalberg); Twentieth Century (prod. Howard Hawks)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: L'Atalante (prod. Jacques-Louis Nounez)
nominees: Les misérables (prod. Raymond Borderie); Mauvaise Graine (prod. Georges Bernier); Shen nu (The Goddess) (prod. Minwei Tian); Ukikusa monogatari (A Story Of Floating Weeds) (prod. Shochiku Company)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Robert Donat (The Count Of Monte Cristo)
nominees: Harry Baur (Les misérables); Leslie Howard (Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel); Bela Lugosi (The Black Cat)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: William Powell (The Thin Man)
nominees: Fred Astaire (The Gay Divorcee); John Barrymore (Twentieth Century); W.C. Fields (It's A Gift); Clark Gable (It Happened One Night); The Three Stooges (Punch Drunks, Men In Black and Three Little Pigskins)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Bette Davis (Of Human Bondage)
nominees: Marlene Dietrich (The Scarlet Empress); Dita Parlo (L'Atalante); Margaret Sullavan (Little Man, What Now)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Myrna Loy (The Thin Man)
nominees: Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night); Carole Lombard (Twentieth Century); Jeanette MacDonald (The Merry Widow); Ginger Rogers (The Gay Divorcee)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Josef von Sternberg (The Scarlet Empress)
nominees: Raymond Bernard (Les misérables); Robert J. Flaherty (Man Of Aran); Yasujiro Ozu (Ukikusa monogatari (A Story Of Floating Weeds)); Jean Vigo (L'Atalante)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Frank Capra (It Happened One Night)
nominees: Howard Hawks (Twentieth Century); Ernst Lubitsch (The Merry Widow); Norman McLeod (It's A Gift); W.S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Michel Simon (L'Atalante)
nominees: Edward Everett Horton (The Merry Widow and The Gay Divorcee); Sam Jaffe (The Scarlet Empress); Charles Laughton (The Barretts Of Wimpole Street); Peter Lorre (The Man Who Knew Too Much); Frank Morgan (Affairs of Cellini)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Louise Beavers (Imitation Of Life)
nominees: Alice Brady (The Gay Divorcee); Louise Dresser (The Scarlet Empress); Una Merkel (The Merry Widow); Merle Oberon (The Private Life Of Don Juan and The Scarlet Pimpernel)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, from the novel by Dashiell Hammett (The Thin Man)
nominees: Robert Riskin, from a short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams (It Happened One Night); Jean Vigo and Albert Riéra (adaptation and dialogue), Jean Guinée (scenario) (L'Atalante); Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, from a play by Charles Bruce Millholland (Twentieth Century)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Man Of Aran (Documentary Feature); Joseph Walker (It Happened One Night) (Cinematography); Sergei Prokofiev (Poruchik Kizhe a.k.a. Lieutenant Kije) (Score)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1932-1933)

2012-01-11T07:31:00.002-05:00

In 1933, the Academy finally got wise to itself and decided to stop with the silly split-award year business. Starting with 1934, the film eligibility year would run from January 1 to December 31, just like you'd expect.

But in order to pull that off, the Oscar season in 1932-33 ran for a record length of time, from August 1, 1932 to December 31, 1933—seventeen months, a record unlikely to be broken. The result was potentially one of the best Oscar years in history, in terms of what was actually eligible: Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight, Design For Living, Red Dust, Boudu Saved From Drowning, The Invisible Man, Queen Christina, Sons of the Desert, Baby Face, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. And on top of that, Fritz Lang's classic M arrived in the United States in 1933, making it eligible for an award come Oscar time. Boy, what a year!

And how many of those films won an Oscar or were even nominated? None. Not a one. The actual winner that year was a high-toned snoozer, Cavalcade, from the usually reliable Noel Coward. It's not a terrible movie, but for my money it's the worst one ever to win the top prize. Which is saying something.

No wonder people like me start alternate Oscar blogs.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: King Kong (prod. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
nominees: The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (prod. Frank Capra); I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (prod. Hal B. Wallis); The Invisible Man (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Red Dust (prod. Hunt Stromberg and Irving Thalberg)
Must-See Drama: Baby Face; The Bitter Tea Of General Yen; Blonde Venus; Counsellor At Law; Downstairs; I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang; The Invisible Man; Island Of Lost Souls; King Kong; Little Women; The Most Dangerous Game; The Mummy; The Old Dark House; One Way Passage; Peg O' My Heart; Queen Christina; Red Dust

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Duck Soup (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz)
nominees: Dinner At Eight (prod. David O. Selznick); 42nd Street (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); Gold Diggers Of 1933 (prod. Jack L. Warner and Robert Lord); Trouble In Paradise (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: Design For Living; Dinner At Eight; Duck Soup; Footlight Parade; 42nd Street; Gold Diggers Of 1933; Horse Feathers; I'm No Angel; Love Me Tonight; The Private Life of Henry VIII; She Done Him Wrong; Sons Of The Desert; Three Little Pigs; Trouble In Paradise

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Zero For Conduct (prod. Jean Vigo)
nominees: Boudu Saved From Drowning (prod. Michel Simon); Liebelei (prod. Herman Millakowsky); The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (prod. Fritz Lang and Seymour Nebenzal); Vampyr (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Julian West)
Must-See Foreign Language: Boudu Saved From Drowning; Fanny; Liebelei; The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse; Vampyr; Zero For Conduct

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Paul Muni (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang)
nominees: Nils Asther (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen); Claude Rains (The Invisible Man); Paul Robeson (The Emperor Jones)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Marx Brothers (Horse Feathers and Duck Soup)
nominees: James Cagney (Footlight Parade); Charles Laughton (The Private Life Of Henry VIII); Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Sons Of The Desert); Herbert Marshall (Trouble In Paradise); Michel Simon (Boudu Saved From Drowning)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Greta Garbo (Queen Christina)
nominees: Kay Francis (Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage); Katharine Hepburn (Little Women); Barbara Stanwyck (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen and Baby Face); Fay Wray (The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Harlow (Red Dust, Dinner At Eight and Bombshell)
nominees: Joan Blondell (The Gold Diggers Of 1933); Miriam Hopkins (Trouble in Paradise and Design For Living); May Robson (Lady For A Day); Mae West (I'm No Angel)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: James Whale (The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man)
nominees: Frank Capra (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen); Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (King Kong); Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr); Fritz Lang (The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse); Mervyn LeRoy (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang); Rouben Mamoulian (Queen Christina)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living)
nominees: Lloyd Bacon (42nd Street and Footlight Parade); George Cukor (Dinner At Eight); Victor Fleming (Red Dust and Bombshell); Leo McCarey (Duck Soup); Jean Renoir (Boudu Saved From Drowning); Jean Vigo (Zero For Conduct)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner:John Barrymore (Dinner At Eight)
nominees: Edward Everett Horton (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living); Edgar Kennedy (Duck Soup); Guy Kibbee (Gold Diggers of 1933, Lady For A Day and Footlight Parade); Adolphe Menjou (A Farewell To Arms)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Margaret Dumont (Duck Soup)
nominees: Billie Burke (Dinner At Eight); Marie Dressler (Dinner At Eight); Elsa Lanchester (The Private Life of Henry VIII); Una O'Connor (The Invisible Man)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin (Duck Soup)
nominees: Jean Renoir and Albert Valentin; from a play by René Fauchois (Boudu Saved From Drowning); Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz; additional dialogue Donald Ogden Stewart; from a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber (Dinner At Eight); Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes, from the autobiography by Robert E. Burns (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang); Grover Jones and Samson Raphelson; from a play by Aladar Laszlo (Trouble In Paradise)

BEST SONG (Reader Voted)
winner: "The Gold Diggers Song (We're In The Money)" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933)
nominees: "Forty-Second Street" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (42nd Street); "Isn't It Romantic" music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart (Love Me Tonight); "Remember My Forgotten Man" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933); "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf" music and lyrics by Frank Church and Ted Sears (Three Little Pigs)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Busby Berkeley (Career Achievement); Three Little Pigs (prod. Walt Disney) (Short Subject/Animated); Murray Spivak (King Kong) (Sound); Max Steiner (King Kong) (Score); Willis O'Brien, Marcel Delgado and E.B. Gibson (King Kong) (Special Effects); Willis O'Brien, Sydney Saunders and Linwood Dunn (King Kong) (Visual Effects); Carroll Clark and Alfred Herman (King Kong) (Art Direction/Set Decoration); Ted Cheesman (King Kong) (Film Editing); Rudolph Maté (Vampyr) (Cinematography); John Armstrong (The Private Life Of Henry VIII) (Costumes); Jack P. Pierce (The Mummy) (Makeup)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1931-1932)

2012-01-10T06:54:00.000-05:00

Universal Studio's cycle of classic horror movies officially began in early 1931 with Bela Lugosi's Dracula, but for me, it's Frankenstein that really kicked it off. Boris Karloff and James Whale only made three movies together—Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein—but it feels like more than that, maybe because this trio of movies established so many of the conventions of the genre. Or maybe because they're just that good.

1932 also saw the release of Scarface, the best gangster movie made before The Godfather despite starring Paul Muni rather than James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson. But Howard Hawks directed it and given that he makes a serious claim to the title of best American director ever, maybe I shouldn't be surprised after all.

As for the actress awards, I was tempted when I expanded the Katies to the "Golden Globe" format to bump Joan Crawford up from supporting to lead and give her the award for drama. But I like Mae Clarke, the girl who got the grapefruit in the face in The Public Enemy, and I've got a later award in mind for Joan. Feel free to argue with me. My mind is subject to change.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Frankenstein (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
nominees: Freaks (prod. Tod Browning); Grand Hotel (prod. Irving Thalberg); Scarface (prod. Howard Hughes); Waterloo Bridge (prod. Carl Laemmle Jr.)
Must-See: The Champ; Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde; Emma; Five Star Final; Frankenstein; Freaks; Grand Hotel; Scarface; Shanghai Express; Skyscraper Souls; Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas; Waterloo Bridge; What Price Hollywood?

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Music Box (prod. Hal Roach)
nominees: Monkey Business (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz); Private Lives (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Smiling Lieutenant (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Guardsman; Monkey Business; The Music Box; One Hour With You; Private Lives; Red-Headed Woman; The Smiling Lieutenant

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford)
nominees: La Chienne (prod. Pierre Braunberger and Roger Richebé); I Was Born, But ... (prod. Shochiku Film); Mädchen in Uniform (prod. Carl Froelich and Friedrich Pflughaupt); Marius (prod. Robert Kane and Marcel Pagnol)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: À Nous La Liberté; La Chienne; I Was Born, But ...; Mädchen In Uniform; Marius

ACTOR (Drama)
<winner: Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Wallace Beery (The Champ); Paul Muni (Scarface); Edward G. Robinson (Five Star Final); Warren William (Skyscraper Souls)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box)
nominees: James Cagney (Blonde Crazy); Maurice Chevalier (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); The Marx Brothers (Monkey Business); Robert Montgomery (Private Lives)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)
nominees: Constance Bennett (What Price Hollywood?); Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express); Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman); Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen in Uniform)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Norma Shearer (Private Lives)
nominees: Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy); Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant); Lynn Fontanne (The Guardsman); Jean Harlow (Platinum Blonde and Red-Headed Woman)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Howard Hawks (Scarface)
nominees: Tod Browning (Freaks); Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel); Rouben Mamoulian (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde); James Whale (Frankenstein and Waterloo Bridge)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté)
nominees: Sidney Franklin (The Guardsman and Private Lives); Ernst Lubitsch (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); Yasujirô Ozu (I Was Born, But ...); James Parrott (The Music Box)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Lionel Barrymore (Grand Hotel)
nominees: John Barrymore (Grand Hotel); Boris Karloff (Frankenstein); Raimu (Marius); Roland Young (The Guardsman and One Hour With You)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Miriam Hopkins (The Smiling Lieutenant and Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Grand Hotel); Ann Dvorak (Scarface); Aline MacMahon (Five Star Final); Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Ben Hecht; continuity and dialogue by Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin and W.R. Burnett; from a novel by Armitage Trail (Scarface)
nominees: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté); Frances Marion (story), Leonard Praskins (dialogue continuity) and Wanda Tuchock (additional dialogue) (The Champ); Christa Winsloe and Friedrich Dammann (as F.D. Andam); from the play by Christa Winsloe (Mädchen in Uniform); S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone (screenplay); Arthur Sheekman (additional dialogue) (Monkey Business)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Lee Garmes (Shanghai Express and Scarface) (Cinematography); C. Roy Hunter (Frankenstein) (Sound); Charles D. Hall and Kenneth Strickfaden (Frankenstein) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Jack Pierce and Pauline Eells (Frankenstein) (Makeup); Wally Westmore (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) (Special Effects)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1930-1931)

2012-01-09T07:29:00.003-05:00

You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that James Cagney's performance in The Public Enemy was some sort of line in the sand as far as acting in the sound era was concerned. Before it, actors were clearly influenced by the British stage actor model—reserved, refined and decidedly upper crust. Cagney was purely American—tough, urban, fast-talking, working class. He paved the way for Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, and even Gary Cooper in his slow-talking, Western, but just as purely American way.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Public Enemy (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck)
nominees: The Big Trail (prod. Winfield R. Sheehan); The Dawn Patrol (prod. Robert North); Dracula (prod. Tod Browning and Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Morocco (prod. Hector Turnbull)
Must-See Drama: The Big Trail; The Dawn Patrol; Dracula; A Free Soul; Little Caesar; The Miracle Woman; Morocco; Night Nurse

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: City Lights (prod. Charles Chaplin)
nominees: Animal Crackers (prod. Adolph Zukor); Bimbo's Initiation (prod. Max Fleischer); The Front Page (prod. Lewis Milestone); Min And Bill (prod. George W. Hill)
Must-See: Animal Crackers; City Lights; The Front Page

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: M (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
nominees: L'Âge d'Or (prod. Le Vicomte de Noailles); Le Million (prod. Frank Clifford); Prix de Beauté (prod. Romain Pinès); The Threepenny Opera (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: L'Âge d'Or; M; Le Million

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Cagney (The Public Enemy)
nominees: Gary Cooper (Morocco); Walter Huston (The Criminal Code); Bela Lugosi (Dracula); Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
nominees: Eddie Cantor (Whoopee!); Jackie Cooper (Skippy); René Lefèvre (Le Million); The Marx Brothers (Animal Crackers)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Marlene Dietrich (Morocco)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Dance, Fools, Dance); Irene Dunne (Cimarron); Norma Shearer (A Free Soul); Barbara Stanwyck (Night Nurse)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jeanette MacDonald (Monte Carlo)
nominees: Virginia Cherrill (City Lights); Ina Claire (The Royal Family Of Broadway); Marie Dressler (Min And Bill); Lya Lys (L'Âge d'Or)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Fritz Lang (M)
nominees: Tod Browning (Dracula); Howard Hawks (The Dawn Patrol and The Criminal Code); Raoul Walsh (The Big Trail); William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
nominees: Luis Buñuel (L'Âge d'Or); René Clair (Le Million); Lewis Milestone (The Front Page); G.W. Pabst (The Threepenny Opera)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Peter Lorre (M)
nominees: Dwight Frye (Dracula); Clark Gable (A Free Soul); Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page); Harry Myers (City Lights)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Joan Blondell (Sinners' Holiday, Other Men's Women and Night Nurse)
nominees: Margaret Dumont (Animal Crackers); Lotte Lenya (The Threepenny Opera); Marjorie Rambeau (Min And Bill); Sylvia Sidney (An American Tragedy)

SCREENPLAY
winner: René Clair; from a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemaud (Le Million)
nominees: Morrie Ryskind; from a play by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Burt Kalmar and Harry Ruby (Animal Crackers); Charles Chaplin (City Lights)

SPECIAL AWARDS
René Clair (Le Million) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Makin' Whoopee" (Whoopee!) (Best Song); Fritz Arno Wagner (M) (Cinematography)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1929-1930)

2012-01-08T04:20:00.000-05:00

The Academy did us amateur film historians a real disservice by using their wacky split-year eligibility scheme (August 1 through July 31 of the following year) for the first few years of the Oscars. Not only was it confusing and completely unnecessary, it also disguised just how much the quality of American movies suffered as Hollywood made the transition from the silent era to sound.

As you can see from yesterday's post, the tail-end of 1928 was chockful of some of the best silent movies in history. (Peter Bogdanovich says 1928 was the best year for movies ever. Who am I to disagree?) And this year's winner, All Quiet On The Western Front from 1930, is one of the best movies of the entire era.

But in between? Well ...

Let's put it this way. My list of the five best movies of 1929 would probably include Un Chien Andalou, Man With A Movie Camera, Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl and maybe The Iron Mask, the first four being foreign films and the fifth being Douglas Fairbanks's last silent movie. The best talkie of the year? Not sure. The Cocoanuts? Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail? The Skeleton Dance from Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks?

Fortunately, things got better.

PICTURE
winner: All Quiet On The Western Front (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
nominees: Anna Christie (prod. Clarence Brown); The Big House (prod. Irving Thalberg); Bulldog Drummond (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); City Girl (prod. William Fox)
Must-See Drama: All Quiet On The Western Front; Anna Christie; The Big House; Bulldog Drummond; City Girl; Our Modern Maidens; Raffles; The Virginian

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Cocoanuts (prod. Monta Bella)
nominees: Applause (prod. Monta Bell); Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor) The Love Parade (prod. Ernst Lubitsch); The Skeleton Dance (prod. Walt Disney)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Cocoanuts; Hallelujah!; The Love Parade

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: The Blue Angel (prod. Erich Pommer)
nominees: The Blood Of A Poet (prod. Le Vicomte de Noailles); Diary Of A Lost Girl (prod. Georg Wilhelm Pabst); Earth (prod. VUFKU); Pandora's Box (prod. Heinz Landsmann); Under the Roofs Of Paris (prod. Films Sonores Tobis)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: The Blood Of A Poet; The Blue Angel; Diary Of A Lost Girl; Earth; Menschen am Sonntag; Pandora's Box; Under The Roofs Of Paris

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Ronald Colman (Bulldog Drummond)
nominees: George Arliss (Disraeli); Lew Ayres (All Quiet On The Western Front); Emil Jannings (The Blue Angel)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade)
nominees: The Marx Brothers (The Cocoanuts); Albert Préjean (Under The Roofs Of Paris)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl)
nominees: Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel); Greta Garbo (Anna Christie)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Nina Mae McKinney (Hallelujah!)
nominees: Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade); Helen Morgan (Applause)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front)
nominees: Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Earth); F.W. Murnau (City Girl); G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl); Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: King Vidor (Hallelujah!)
nominees: René Clair (Under The Roofs Of Paris); Ernst Lubitsch (The Love Parade); Rouben Mamoulian (Applause)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Wallace Beery (The Big House)
nominees: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (Our Modern Maidens); Lupino Lane (The Love Parade); Francis Lederer (Pandora's Box); Louis Wolheim (All Quiet On The Western Front)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Marie Dressler (Anna Christie)
nominees: Leila Hyams (The Big House); Seena Owen (Queen Kelly); Anita Page (Our Modern Maidens); Lilyan Tashman (Bulldog Drummond)

SCREENPLAY
winner: George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson and Del Andrews; from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet On The Western Front)
nominees: Elliott Lester; adaptation and scenario by Marion Orth and Gerthold Viertel; titles by H.H. Caldwell and Katherine Hilliker (City Girl); Frances Marion; additional dialogue by Joseph Farnham and Martin Flavin (The Big House)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Swanee Shuffle" (Hallelujah!) (Best Song); Arthur Edeson (All Quiet On The Western Front) (Cinematography); Rouben Mamoulian (Applause) and C. Roy Hunter and Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1928-1929)

2012-01-07T07:32:00.001-05:00

I've chosen a best picture in three different categories (drama, comedy/musical and foreign language) but make no mistake, The Passion of Joan of Arc is the best picture of the year. It's not only the most modern looking movie of the silent era, it's the most modern looking movie of any era, and its subject matter—torture, capital punishment, political corruption and religious fanaticism of every stripe—is probably more relevant today than when Dreyer made it.

Not to mention it's the most gripping courtroom drama ever made—better than Perry Mason, better than Law and Order, better than Witness for the Prosecution, Twelve Angry Men and A Few Good Men put together. It really is that good.

As for my choice of the year's best comedy, I'll grant you that Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman are funnier. But Steamboat Willie had a much bigger impact. Not only did it give us Mickey Mouse, in practical terms, it gave us Walt Disney, too, because without this desperately needed hit, his fledgling studio would likely have gone under.

In any event, if The Simpsons can spoof it (as "Steamboat Itchy") without needing to explain the source, you know it is deeply embedded in the cultural conscience.

But Buster Keaton takes home the acting honors, as well he should. As thespians go, I'd stack him against a cartoon rodent any day.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Wind (prod. Victor Sjöström)
nominees: Blackmail (prod. John Maxwell); The Docks Of New York (prod. J.G. Bachmann); The Iron Mask (prod. Douglas Fairbanks); The Wedding March (prod. Pat Powers and Erich von Stroheim)
Must-See Drama: Beggars Of Life; Blackmail; The Docks Of New York; The Iron Mask; Our Dancing Daughters; Piccadilly; The Wedding March; The Wind

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Steamboat Willie (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: The Broadway Melody (prod. Irving Thalberg, Harry Rapf and Lawrence Weingarten); The Cameraman (prod. Buster Keaton); Show People (prod. Marion Davies and King Vidor); Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck);
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Broadway Melody; The Cameraman; Show People; Steamboat Bill, Jr.; Steamboat Willie; Two Tars

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (prod. Société générale des films)
nominees: Un Chien Andalou (prod. Luis Buñuel); The Fall Of The House Of Usher (prod. Jean Epstein); Man With The Movie Camera (prod. VUFKU)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: Un Chien Andalou; The Fall Of The House Of Usher; Man With The Movie Camera; The Passion Of Joan Of Arc

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: George Bancroft (The Docks Of New York)
nominees: Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona); Douglas Fairbanks (The Iron Mask); John Gilbert (A Woman Of Affairs and Desert Nights); Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Buster Keaton (Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman)
nominees: William Haines (Show People); Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Two Tars)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Lillian Gish (The Wind)
nominees: Louise Brooks (Beggars Of Life); Betty Compson (The Docks Of New York); Maria Falconetti (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc); Greta Garbo (The Mysterious Lady, A Woman Of Affairs and Wild Orchids)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marion Davies (Show People)
nominees: Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
nominees: Victor Sjöström (The Wind); Josef von Sternberg (The Docks Of New York); Dziga Vertov (Man With The Movie Camera); Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner:Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou)
nominees: Ub Iwerks (Steamboat Willie); Edward Sedgwick (The Cameraman); King Vidor (Show People)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Ernest Torrence (Steamboat Bill, Jr. and Desert Nights)
nominees: Wallace Beery (Beggars Of Life); Donald Calthrop (Blackmail); Lewis Stone (A Woman Of Affairs); Gustav von Seyffertitz (The Mysterious Lady and The Docks Of New York)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Anita Page (Our Dancing Daughters)
nominees: Olga Baclanova (The Docks Of New York); Mary Nolan (West Of Zanzibar); Zasu Pitts (The Wedding March); Anna May Wong (Piccadilly)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Frances Marion; from a novel by Dorothy Scarborough (The Wind)
nominees: Jules Furthman; story by John Monk Saunders; titles by Julian Johnson (The Docks Of New York); Joseph Delteil and Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks (the creation and marketing of Mickey Mouse); Douglas Shearer (The Broadway Melody) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "The Broadway Melody" (The Broadway Melody) (Best Song); Un Chien Andalou (prod. Luis Buñuel) (Best Short Subject); John Arnold (The Wind) (Cinematography)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1927-1928)

2012-01-06T10:53:00.004-05:00

Some of you are probably too young to remember, but I originally started this blog to peddle (in a non-remunerative way) something I like to call the "Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards"—alternate Oscars (who should have been nominated, who should have won) but which as you know are really just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.

Then I got distracted by silent movies and will continue to be distracted for the foreseeable future.

But what about the Katie Awards?

Well, rather than let them wither on the vine, I'm going to post them, one year at a time, one post a day, until I run out of them, say sometime in February. I've been serving them up on the stand-alone pages highlighted on the right hand side of the blog, but people rarely head over there (why would they) and while some of my choices may be no better than "meh," the pictures that accompany them are, all modesty aside, dynamite.

So here, in case you've forgotten, are my first year's worth of picks, covering the Oscar year running from August 1, 1927 to July 31, 1928.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox)
nominees: The Crowd (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Last Command (prod. Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor); Laugh, Clown, Laugh (prod. Herbert Brenon); The Man Who Laughs (prod. Paul Kohner); Wings (prod. Lucien Hubbard)
Must-See Drama: The Crowd; The Last Command; Laugh, Clown, Laugh; The Man Who Laughs; Sadie Thompson; Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans; Wings

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Jazz Singer (prod. Warner Brothers)
nominees: The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin); My Best Girl (prod. Mary Pickford); Speedy (prod. Harold Lloyd); The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Circus; The Jazz Singer; My Best Girl; The Patsy; Speedy; The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Spione (Spies) (prod. Erich Pommer)
nominees: Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City (prod. Karl Freund); October (Ten Days That Shook The World) (prod. Sovkino)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Lon Chaney (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)
nominees: Emil Jannings (The Last Command); Conrad Veidt (The Man Who Laughs)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Circus); Harold Lloyd (Speedy)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven; Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans and Street Angel)
nominees: Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd); Gloria Swanson (Sadie Thompson)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Mary Pickford (My Best Girl)
nominees: Marion Davies (The Patsy); Norma Shearer (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
nominees: Paul Leni (The Cat And The Canary and The Man Who Laughs); King Vidor (The Crowd); Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command); William A. Wellman (Wings)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (The Circus)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg); Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights); Ted Wilde (Speedy)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Sadie Thompson); Gary Cooper (Wings); Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Spione); William Powell (The Last Command)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Clara Bow (Wings)
nominees: Evelyn Brent (The Last Command); Gladys Brockwell (7th Heaven); Louise Brooks (A Girl In Every Port); Mary Philbin (The Man Who Laughs)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Herman J. Mankiewicz (titles) and John F. Goodrich (writer), from a story by Lajos Biró and Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command)
nominees: King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd); Elizabeth Meehan; titles by Joseph Farnham; from a play by David Belasco and Tom Cushing (Laugh, Clown, Laugh); Raoul Walsh; titles by C. Gardner Sullivan; from a story by W. Somerset Maugham (Sadie Thompson)

SPECIAL AWARDS
George Groves (The Jazz Singer) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Toot Toot Tootsie" (The Jazz Singer) (Best Song); Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) (Cinematography); Roy Pomeroy (Wings) (Special Effects)

(Note: I'll cop to having changed one of my picks from when I originally posted them back in 2009. Originally, I went with The Crowd, King Vidor's blistering take on the American Dream, for best screenplay. At the time it struck me as edgy and unique. In fact, now that I've watched 800+ silent movies, I realize that The Crowd actually arrived at the tale end of a long series of social message pictures that dated back to D.W. Griffith's one-reel wonder A Corner in Wheat and included tales about the hot button issues of the day—immigration, white slavery, abortion, etc. Far from being cutting edge, The Crowd was in 1928 something of a cliche—a well-made cliche, perhaps, but no more brave than, say, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was in 1967.

Instead, I've gone with The Last Command, Josef von Sternberg's moving story about a Russian general reduced after the revolution of 1917 to begging bit parts as an actor in Hollywood. It won Emil Jannings a well-deserved Oscar and also starred William Powell in one of his darkest dramatic roles. A real must-see.)

My Year In Review (2011)

2011-12-31T00:04:00.013-05:00

Note: my year, not the year, which would require me to write about recent movies, politics, current events and a lot of other stuff I'm not qualified to yack about.

If you're new to the Monkey, this might serve as a good introduction to the blog. If you're a veteran, well, you can warm yourself at the glow of these twice-stirred embers.

10. Reposting
Lazy dreaming led to a lot of reposting this year and these about Georges Méliès, Louise Brooks, Buster Keaton and Clara Bow proved to be more popular—and timely—the second time around.

9. Buster Keaton's Pie Recipe
Speaking of Buster Keaton, this was the tastiest entry of the year, a recipe from the greatest silent comedian of them all for the perfect pie-throwing pie. Mrs. Smith's it ain't.

8. Major Awards
No, not a leg lamp, but almost as good—a box of DVDs from the good people at True Classics for an essay answering the age-old question, "Citizen Kane: Best Ever?" and Blog of the Month at the greatest blog of them all, If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There'd Be A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats. Not to mention the Liebster Blog Award, the Stylish Blogger Award and Katie-Bar-The-Door's unexplained but greatly appreciated willingness to let me hang around with her for twenty-two years running.

7. Sharpologist
The Monkey's other cyberspace gig, an infrequent column about shaving in Hollywood movies, starting here.

6. That's Typing Tuesday
A fairly regular feature here at the Monkey, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings (on Tuesdays), That's Typing Tuesday produced my single-most clicked upon post of the year, some random musings about The Sound of Music.

5. Accidental Substance
Every once in a while I actually manage to write about what I profess to write about—movies and people from the past that you should know about.

4. The Dick Van Dyke Show At Fifty
This one-shot foray into the world of classic television was a pure pleasure to write.

3. The On-Going Silent Oscars Series
My attempt to write the history of silent movies through a series of multi-part essays. Wish the effort were going faster.

2.Report From The Willow Manor Ball: In Cyberspace, No One Can See You Dance
Tess Kincaid of Life at Willow Manor throws a mean party and it got a whole lot meaner when the Mythical Monkey, Katie-Bar-The-Door and the cast of The Thing From Another World showed up. Some free advice: if James "Disco Inferno" Arness shows up at your New Years Eve bash tonight, keep a fire extinguisher handy.

1.Cary Grant Has A Cold
A case of writer's block meets an odd-ball celebrity quote and results in my favorite post of the year.

Happy New Year!

BCD

2011-12-30T10:46:00.003-05:00

Long-time followers of the Monkey have probably begun to suspect what I already know—that I suffer from the rarely-diagnosed and as-yet medically-unrecognized Bipolar Comment Disorder (BCD). Which means that sometimes I respond enthusiastically to every comment you leave and sometimes I don't respond at all. The latter is not a result of a waning in my affection and appreciation for your cyber-presence, but is a reflection of the dullness of my mood, the low level of my energy or, in the case of this last weekend, the geographical distance from my computer (I am one of six people in America without an iPad, iPhone or iAnythingElse—why, I'm not even on Facebook).

Such behavior is generally considered rude in the blogosphere.

So to Rachel, Thingy, Brandie, Philip Sumpter, Yvette, Bellotoot, Juliette, Who Am Us, Janice Below, VP81955, Mister Muleboy, John Baxter, Mark Bourne, and especially to you, Dawn, who chose my "Christmas Movies You May Have Forgotten Are Christmas Movies" as the post of the week last week, I most humbly apologize and say "God bless you, God bless you everyone!"

I will resolve to be more consistently responsive in the coming year.

The Silent Oscars: 1918

2011-12-29T16:20:00.003-05:00

PICTURE
winner: Stella Maris (prod. Paramount/Artcraft Films)
nominees: Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (The Outlaw And His Wife) (prod. Charles Magnusson); A Dog's Life (prod. Charles Chaplin); Old Wives For New (prod. Cecil B. DeMille); Shoulder Arms (prod. Charles Chaplin)
Must-See Movies: Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (The Outlaw And His Wife); A Dog's Life; Old Wives For New; Shoulder Arms; Stella Maris
Recommended Films: Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley; The Blue Bird; The Married Virgin; Tih Minh
Of Interest: Die Augen der Mumie Ma a.k.a. Eyes Of The Mummy; Carmen a.k.a. Gypsy Blood); Hearts of the World; Himmelskibet, a.k.a. A Trip To Mars; The Sinking Of The Lusitania; Tarzan of the Apes

ACTOR
winner: Victor Sjöström (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru a.k.a.The Outlaw And His Wife)
nominees: Roscoe Arbuckle (The Roscoe Arbuckle Comedy Shorts); Charles Chaplin (A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms); Elliott Dexter (Old Wives For New); William S. Hart (Blue Blazes Rawden); Harold Lloyd (The Harold Lloyd Short Comedies)

ACTRESS
winner: Pola Negri (Die Augen der Mumie Ma a.k.a. Eyes Of The Mummy and Carmen a.k.a. Gypsy Blood)
nominees: Mabel Normand (Mickey); Ossi Oswalda (Ich möchte kein Mann sein a.k.a. I Don't Want To Be A Man); Mary Pickford (Stella Maris and Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley); Norma Talmadge (The Forbidden City)

DIRECTOR
winner: Cecil B. DeMille (Old Wives For New)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms); Marshall A. Neilan (Stella Maris and Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley); Victor Sjöström (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru a.k.a. The Outlaw And His Wife); Maurice Tourneur (The Blue Bird)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Theodore Roberts (Old Wives For New)
nominees: Snub Pollard (The Harold Lloyd Comedy Shorts); Rudolph Valentino (The Married Virgin)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Dorothy Gish (Hearts of the World)
nominees: Sylvia Ashton (Old Wives For New); Kathleen Kirkham (The Married Virgin); Florence Vidor (Old Wives For New)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Jeanie Macpherson, from a novel by David Graham Phillips (Old Wives For New)
nominees: Frances Marion, from a novel by Belle K. Maniates (Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley); Charles Chaplin (A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms); Frances Marion, from a novel by William J. Locke (Stella Maris)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Winsor McCay (The Sinking of the Lusitania) (Animation); Walter Stradling (Stella Maris) (Cinematography)

Just to give you an idea of what I'm working on. I've already written a reviews of Pola Negri's movies and of Hearts of the World and will be writing reviews of the other winners. Eventually. I've also queued up a review of the year 2011 in purely egocentric terms. That will appear early Saturday morning. I also posted a stand-alone page with more Katie-Bar-The-Door Award winners, this time for 1940. Oh, goody. And I'll probably write something tomorrow, too—finishing the year with a florish.

I'll bet you can hardly wait.

The Screaming Meme

2011-12-28T10:48:00.013-05:00

One of my favorite fellow bloggers, Rachel at The Girl with the White Parasol, has come up with a New Years "meme"—12 questions, including a New Years resolution. Since I'm back in town after a long Christmas trip, perhaps this will help me edge back into the blogging habit.

1. What is your all-time favorite Grace Kelly costume?
Whatever she was wearing as she makes her first appearance in Rear Window. Red lips, wetly parted, mostly. Humina.

2. What classic film would you nominate for a remake?
To me there are two kinds of movies that should be remade: one with a good idea not fully realized (i.e., the first two versions of The Maltese Falcon before John Huston and Humphrey Bogart got hold of it and finally did it right), or a hardy perennial every generation should leave its stamp on—Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare.

Perchance that will suggest something to you.

3. Name your favorite femme fatale.
That's easy, Jane Greer, the only femme fatale in movie history I'd let shoot me.

4. Name the best movie with the word "heaven" in its title.
Best? Can't say. Favorite? Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, which I wrote about here.

5. Describe the worst performance by a child actor that you’ve ever seen (since Laura gave me the idea).
Whoever the kids were in the Cary Grant-Sophia Loren comedy Houseboat. Utterly charmless, throughly annoying. And I like kids.

6. Who gets your vote for most tragic movie monster?
Frankenstein's monster, who I wrote about here.

7. What is the one Western that you would recommend to anybody?
Rio Bravo, I think. If you don't like Westerns and you see this one and don't like it either, you can safely skip all the rest. Right, Stumpy?

8. Who is your ideal movie-viewing partner?
Why, Katie-Bar-The-Door, of course. But let's face it—she's my favorite everything partner.

9. Has a film ever made you want to change your life? If so, what was the film?
There are definitely films that have changed my life, which isn't quite the same as saying they made me want to change my life. Here is the story of one of them.

10. Think of one performer that you truly love. Now think of one scene/movie/performance of theirs that is too uncomfortable for you to watch.
Every great star makes at least one true stinker—Cary Grant in The Pride and the Passion, for example—and lots of them hung on long after they should have hung it up (think of Joan Crawford in Trog).

But uncomfortable?

I'm sure I'm forgetting something obvious. Katie-Bar-The-Door will read this and immediately chime in with "What about ...?" When she does, I'll post an addendum.

11. On the flip side, think of one really good scene/performance/movie from a performer that you truly loathe.
Well, I was never particularly a fan of Norma Shearer, but I wound up giving her a Katie-Bar-The-Door award for the comedy Private Lives. Because, frankly, she deserved it.

12. And finally, since it will be New Year's soon, do you have any movie or blogging-related resolutions for 2012?
To keep my eyes on the prize, i.e., finishing the "Silent Oscars" series.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

Seasons Greetings from Katie-Bar-The-Door and the Mythical Monkey

Lazy Dreamer

2011-12-23T13:58:00.001-05:00

The Monkey (i.e., me) had lunch with faithful readers and longtime pals mister muleboy and bellotoot yesterday. What with commuting with mister muleboy and the long chat with bellotoot, lunch lasted about six hours—a lot of conversation under the bridge, amongst which the topic of my recent lack of blogging came up. I have my reasons—yuletide busyness, post-award modesty, and an essay about Mary Pickford's Stella Maris that stubbornly refuses to write itself—but mostly I think it can all be boiled down to the words of this song by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Liz Phair:

I promise to wake up and get back on track after the new year. Thank you for your patience.

That's Typing Tuesday #23: Christmas Movies You May Have Forgetten Are Christmas Movies (A Baker's Dozen)

2011-12-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

To quote Liz Lemon, What the what, Monkey? Didn't I read this very post last year? Is this blog to become nothing but an endless series of reposts?

Well, no, it only seems that way. But 'tis the season to be busy and (to quote Bob Dylan) Johnny's been in the basement mixing up the medicine. I'll get back to the serious business of writing the history of silent movies one blog entry at a time after the holidays. If not before.

In the meantime ...

Me, I love Christmas movies—It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Scrooge (both the 1951 and 1970 versions), Miracle On 34th Street (1947 only), How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And I could watch little Ralphie Parker's quest for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (with a compass in the stock!) twenty-four hours a day if only some cable channel would think of it.

But a lot of people don't like Christmas or its movies, and that's okay with me. Here are some alternatives which will allow you to acknowledge the season without succumbing to it:

The Thin Man (1934)
Nick and Nora celebrate the holidays in the company of gangsters, thieves and murderers. It was either that or another Christmas at the in-laws'.

"I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune."
"I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids."
"It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."

Holiday (1938)
Most people think of this as a New Year's Eve movie, and rightly so, but if you do the math, the entire first act takes place on Christmas day. And what a Christmas it is—no tree, no egg nog, no mistletoe, no nothing. No presents, either, unless you care to unwrap a tousle-haired Cary Grant. A romantic comedy as wistful as the season itself, Holiday is my favorite Katharine Hepburn movie.

"When I find myself in a position like this, I ask myself what would General Motors do? And then I do the opposite."

Stalag 17 (1953)
Christmas 1944: Grown men in longjohns dancing with other grown men in longjohns while William Holden searches for the Nazi spy hiding out among American prisoners of war. Sounds like the one miserable semester I spent as a student at an all-boys school.

"All right then, gentlemen, we are all friends again. And with Christmas coming on I have a special treat for you—I'll have you all deloused for the holidays."

An Affair To Remember (1957)
Cary Grant is afraid Deborah Kerr is mad at him, but it turns out she's only paralyzed. Whew!

"My mother told me never to enter a man's room in months ending in 'R.'"

The Apartment (1960)
Suicide, adultery, the boss from hell—what man wouldn't gladly suffer it all to spend Christmas in bed with the young Shirley MacLaine. One of the greatest movies of all time, a not-to-be-missed comedy/drama from director Billy Wilder.

"T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring ... nothin' ... no action ... Dullsville!"

The Lion In Winter (1968)
Kings and castles notwithstanding, this is what Christmas is like for millions of people—bickering, recrimination and endless disappointment. Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn at their snarling best.

"What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?"
"Give me a little peace."
"A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought."

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Sure, it stars George Lazenby as James Bond, but it also boasts Diana Rigg, the best Bond girl ever. Holiday connection? Telly Savalas doles out the all-time worst Christmas present—a bio-weapon designed to destroy the world's food supply. What, Best Buy was all out of Wii Bowling?

"This never happened to the other fellow!"

Life Of Brian (1979)
We came oh so close to celebrating Brianmas every 25th of December, until the three wise men realized Jesus was one manger over.

"He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"

Trading Places (1983)
Ah, Dan Aykroyd as a drunk, pistol-packing Santa Claus. And he's only, like, the fifth funniest guy in the movie. I don't know about you, but I get hungry for salmon and dirt-matted Santa beard every time I see this movie. Yummy.

"I'll bet you thought I'd forgotten your Christmas bonus. There you are."
"Five dollars. Maybe I'll go to the movies—by myself."

Die Hard (1988)
Man, that's some Christmas party—Bruce Willis shoots a dozen men, drops another out a 40th floor window and blows up a building. Good thing he's a cop!

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

L.A. Confidential (1997)
Ironically, the "Bloody Christmas" incident that sets this labyrinthine mystery in motion is the least bloody scene in the entire movie. My pick as the best picture of 1997.

"You're like Santa Claus with that list, Bud, except everyone on it's been naughty."

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Tom Cruise's colossal ego threatens his marriage to Nicole Kidman. Thank God it's only a movie! Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut begins at a Christmas party, ends at an orgy. Hmpf. My parties just end in a hangover.

"If you men only knew ..."

The Matador (2005)
What do you do when a hitman shows up at your door on Christmas Eve? Why, invite him in for pie and whiskey, of course! Starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis, The Matador was one of the most sadly-underrated comedies of the last decade.

"Come on! It'll be a good time!"
"Oh, so now killing people is a good time?"
"Can be."

Max Linder On His Birthday

2011-12-16T10:42:00.003-05:00

It's a busy day here at the Monkeyhouse—Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary, the dog is celebrating her fourth anniversary of being with us, and silent film comedian Max Linder is celebrating his birthday! Who was Max Linder? Why, the first international film superstar, that's who. If you've seen Martin Scorsese's recent movie Hugo, perhaps you spotted a couple of Max Linder posters in the background.

Anyway, in Max's honor, I've stitched together excerpts from three separate essays about silent film comedy into a single post focusing on his life and films.

The first international movie star was Max Linder, a French comedian not just in the style of Charlie Chaplin but the guy Chaplin was often imitating early in his career, a fact Chaplin himself freely acknowledged. Born to a family of vintners in the Bordeaux region of France, Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle joined a troupe of actors touring France. In Paris, he discovered motion pictures and signed with Pathé in 1905, changing his name at the same time. He made over two hundred movies in his career, most as the recurring character "Max," an upper class roué who is a bit baffled by practical matters.

Linder wrote and directed his own films and in the years before World War I, he was the biggest star in Europe.

Unlike most of the comics of this era, Linder largely eschewed the slapstick style of Mack Sennett's Keystone comedies in favor of gesture and reaction; and as film historian David Thomson points out, "there was little of the sentimentality that American comedians resorted to."

Thanks to the close-up, a storytelling device unique to film, an actor no longer had to play to the back row of the theater—the camera brought the back row to him. Whether intuitively or by design, Linder realized the broad gestures and inane dialogue of music hall comedy were largely devices for indicating to an audience what to pay attention to as the actors set up a gag. On film, simply lifting an eyebrow would suffice.

While situational comedy had been around since the theater of ancient Greece, until film allowed for recognizable settings, and more importantly, recognizable characters with recognizable needs and desires, film comedy was limited to the most simplistic gags. With a reel of film growing longer—around ten minutes rather than the 45-seconds of the Lumière brothers' standard offering—it became possible for filmmakers to put fully-realized characters and situations on the screen, and so far as I can tell, Linder's "Max" was the first three-dimensional character in the history of movie comedy. You can imagine "Max" existing before the cameras started rolling, continuing to exist after they stopped, and in between, behaving on screen the way a real person would, albeit at the heightened levels required of farce comedy.

With the elbow room to portray an actual character, Linder could derive laughs from the juxtaposition of this character—the dapper aristocrat—and the chaos he created around it, a welcome breakthrough, believe me, if you've suffered through more than a hundred comedy shorts featuring mischievous boys and one-note gags.

Not to mention he was just better at it than anybody else, until Charlie Chaplin came along in 1914 to raise the bar.

Because, as I mentioned before, Linder worked during a time when it was cheaper to buy a camera and steal an idea than to pay the rental fee on the original film, it's easy to compare and contrast the way different filmmakers handled the same comic idea—a laboratory experiment, if you will, in what is and isn't funny.

For example, one of the favorite props used to generate laughs in turn-of-the-century comedies was glue—apparently, a hundred years ago pots of the stuff just sat around waiting for people to fall in it. Alice Guy's La glu (The Glue) (1907) is typical of the era: a mischievous boy brushes glue on various surfaces—a staircase, a bicycle seat—much to the consternation of various adults. Basically a one-joke pony repeated over and over again to no great effect.

Linder, on the other hand, in the one-reeler Max ne se mariera pas (Max Is Stuck Up) (1910), built on the idea the way a classic comedian would. On his way to his fiancee's for dinner, Max stops at a bakery to conduct a little routine business and accidentally gets stuck to a sheet of flypaper. What begins as a minor inconvenience, shrugged off with bonhomie and good humor, becomes a minor annoyance, then becomes a potential source of embarrassment when he arrives for dinner only to find he's still stuck, and escalates into a full scale disaster as he and his future father-in-law wind up wrestling over a serving dish and destroying the entire set.

You've seen this sort of progression in a hundred comedies, from the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler, but you didn't see it before Max Linder, not in a movie anyway.

My favorite Max Linder short is Max victime du quinquina (Max Takes Tonics), and his performance in it makes him my choice as the best actor of 1911. He made it three years before Chaplin, but if I had told you Linder copied it move for move from the little Tramp, I dare say you'd believe me. The intertitles are in French (with a German translation!), but there are only a couple and the gist is easy enough to figure out—feeling rundown, Max visits a doctor who prescribes a tonic of red wine and quinine bitters. Soon roaring drunk, Max is mistaken for a big shot and helped "home" by a helpful policeman.

It's in two parts:

Part One

Part Two

Linder's career came to a virtual end during World War I after he was injured by mustard gas while serving as a dispatch driver in the French army. He never fully recovered and although he later made films at Chaplin's United Artists, he never again regained his audience. In 1925, he and his wife killed themselves as part of a suicide pact.

Postscript: And for those of you who can't get enough of Max Linder, here are two more short comedies, Max reprend sa liberté (a.k.a. Troubles of a Grasswidower) (1912) and Le hasard et l'amour (Love Surprises) (1913).

Max reprend sa liberté (1912)
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Martin Scorsese's Hugo: A Review Without Words (Or Very Few, By My Standards)

2011-12-13T15:13:00.014-05:00

What's it about? The adventures of an orphan boy, living in the walls of a Paris train station, who crosses paths with a grumpy old toymaker with a fabulous secret.

But what's it about? Finding your purpose, or maybe rediscovering it. "Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason."

But what's it really about? Martin Scorsese's ongoing love affair with silent movies and the creative genius that made them possible.

And what did I get out of it? Aside from a pleasant afternoon with Katie-Bar-The-Door? Why, the pleasure of seeing dozens of silent film references on the big screen, including but not limited to:

My imdb rating: 8/10

Silent Cinema Stocking Stuffers

2011-12-12T13:37:00.018-05:00

Is there anything more heartbreaking than the disappointed face of a child who didn't find a silent movie in his or her Christmas stocking? Probably, but why risk it? If the little shavers on your shopping list are anything like me, they hunger and thirst after a working knowledge of the silent film era. Don't let them down!

"But Monkey," I can hear you say, "I don't know where to start. What movies would you recommend to help start my son's or daughter's (or even my) silent film collection?"

Glad you asked. Here are a baker's dozen guaranteed to make you an expert in no time. (And no, I have no financial stake in my recommendations or your choices.)

Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1 [Image Entertainment]
With film pioneer Georges Méliès back in the popular consciousness thanks to Martin Scorsese's terrific new film Hugo, maybe it's time to figure out where he actually fits in the history of film. You could read about it here, but why waste valuable eyeball space on my yack and blather when you could fill your senses with the real thing? This DVD is a good way to dive into the work of film's earliest pioneers, including works by Méliès, Thomas Edison, D.W. Griffith and the Lumière brothers, among others.

(I understand there's a five-disc collection of Georges Melies's work from Flicker Alley which purports to include every Melies film in existence, 173 in all. Holy cats. But I haven't seen it and it's temporarily unavailable at Amazon.com.)

Chaplin at Keystone: An International Collaboration of 34 Original Films [Flicker Alley]
A magnificent restoration of all 34 of the films Chaplin made at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios, including the first feature-length comedy ever made, Tillie's Punctured Romance. This is not only a nice introduction to Chaplin, but also includes terrific work by Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler. Start with The Rounders, move on to Tillie, then go back and see them all.

Intolerance [Kino]
Are you a connoisseur of mind-blowing cinema? Then watch this D.W. Griffith epic and consider your mind blown. Still belonging on a short list of the most ambitious movies ever made, Intolerance (from the "Griffith Masterworks" series) weaves four storylines from different points in history together to examine and expose man's inhumanity to man. Its kaleidoscope of images influenced filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, its depiction of the fall of Babylon and a woman racing a train to save an innocent man from the electric chair are unforgettable, and Constance Talmadge is a hoot. Also includes orgies, beheadings and the life of Christ—something for everybody!

Male and Female [Image Entertainment]
What silent film collection wouldn't be complete without an entry from director Cecil B. DeMille and his favorite star, Gloria Swanson. Although DeMille would later become known for his turgid Bible epics, he really made his name with a series of sophisticated sex comedies, most starring Swanson. In this one, aristocrat Swanson winds up stranded on a desert island with her butler, and when the hired help are the only ones who know how to get things done, upstairs quickly becomes downstairs and vice versa. Norma Desmond was right—they didn't need dialogue; they had faces!

Nosferatu (The Ultimate Two-Disc Edition) [Kino]
You're going to want at least one example of German Expressionism, one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, and one film from F.W. Murnau, who directed some of the most beautiful films of the silent era. Why not kill two birds with one stone and go with the vampire classic, Nosferatu. Be careful, though—there are many versions of this film floating around, some virtually unwatchable. Me, I'd go with the two-disc edition from Kino.

The Black Pirate (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
There never was a better movie pirate than Douglas Fairbanks—not Errol Flynn, not Tyrone Power, not Johnny Depp. And this early color film (using a primitive two-strip process) might be his best. With the graceful and athletic Fairbanks at its heart, The Black Pirate is as fluid as a ballet while at the same time serving up a rip-snorting yarn filled with all the swash you'd ever care to buckle. (Don't have a Blu-Ray player? Don't despair. Try The Thief of Bagdad from Kino instead.)

The General (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
There are no wrong choices when it comes to Buster Keaton on Blu-Ray. So I'll just go with the best choice—The General. Not only is it one of the greatest comedies ever made, it's also an action film that puts most of its modern counterparts to shame. Based on an incident from the American Civil War, the story—about a lovelorn engineer who finds himself battling spies who hijack his train—features a spectacular chase involving two, then three speeding locomotives, daredevil stunts, explosions, burning bridges, comic mishaps, sight gags, split-second timing, all while Keaton woos the girl. Keaton's famously understated reaction to the chaos around him only adds to the modern feel of the production. (No Blu-Ray? No need to feel blue. It's also available from Kino in the "Ultimate Two-Disc Edition.")

The Complete Metropolis (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
If The Black Pirate is a swashbuckling ballet, Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a science fiction opera, and in this newly restored edition, as close to Lang's original vision as we're likely to get. Its story of a world divided into haves and have-nots, with a populist political movement secretly controlled by the corporation it aims to topple, feels as up-to-date as anything you're likely to see at the theater this year. Oh, and it boasts a beautiful robot played by Brigette Helm. What more do you want? (Also available as a DVD.)

TCM Archives: The Garbo Silents Collection [Warner Home Video]
Flesh and the Devil was the first pairing of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, who would soon become one of movie history's most torrid, tempestuous couples. Garbo created a sensation with her ethereal beauty, cool, exotic manner and thoroughly modern characterization of an amoral woman who slept with whomever she wanted, while Gilbert further cemented his reputation as the screen's greatest lover. The collection also includes The Temptress and The Mysterious Lady. Considering it's going for $8.99 at Amazon.com, that's an exceptional bargain.

It [Kino]
Prefer your sex symbols served hot? Then you don't want to miss It, starring the original "It" Girl, Clara Bow. This mischievous comedy catapulted Bow to superstardom—and tabloid notoriety, most of it, unfortunately, pure fiction. The disc also includes the documentary Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl, which will give you insight not only into the troubled life and times of Clara Bow, but also into the transition from silents to talkies, the most pivotal event in Hollywood history since the invention of the camera. (Note: The DVD of another Bow picture, Wings, winner of the first Oscar for best picture, finally goes on sale January 24, 2012.)

TCM Archives: The Lon Chaney Collection [Warner Home Video]
The obvious choices for an introductory Lon Chaney film would be The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Phantom of the Opera (Image Entertainment just released a Blu-Ray of the latter in November), but I'm going with this collection that includes The Ace of Hearts, Laugh, Clown, Laugh and The Unknown. Laugh, Clown, Laugh shows off Chaney's acting chops at their finest, while The Unknown (from legendary horror director Tod Browning) captures Chaney at his creepy, crazy best.

The Passion of Joan of Arc [The Criterion Collection]
The true story of the trial and execution of one of history's most famous leaders, The Passion of Joan of Arc is beautiful, engrossing and deeply moving. It's also startlingly fresh, telling truths about the self-serving, corrupting nature of power as current as today's headlines, proving once again that our forefathers were much more modern that we currently dream of being. That, I think, is one of the hallmarks of true art, an ability to speak across generations in a unique and unforgettable way. Or leaving all that aside, it's just a great, very watchable movie.

Pandora's Box [The Criterion Collection]
Virtually unknown in her day, Louise Brooks today might be the silent era's most recognizable actress. Playing the prostitute Lulu with a unique combination of wide-eyed innocence and unabashed sexual appetite, Brooks created a character so unforgettable that twenty-five years later French film historian Henri Langlois declared "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!"

What? No Mary Pickford? Well, I'll tell you. There are some good ones from The Milestone Collection, but they're all out of print and going for $50 and more through third-party sellers on Amazon.com. If you want to spring for one of her films, I'd say go for Stella Maris—it's my favorite Pickford film.

Likewise, Harold Lloyd is out of print again. I have The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3 myself—7 discs of absolutely wonderful comedy. If it ever shows up again, I'll let you know.