It was not until the following year that the full membership of the Academy voted on the awards.
The Broadway Melody is one of the weakest best picture winners ever, and that's saying something. It's the story of two sisters who go to New York and fall for the same guy. As musicals go, it did feature the classic title tune, but the story is trite and the acting, especially among the supporting cast, is too awful to be believed.At least the Board of Judges made Mayer happy—it was his studio, MGM, that produced The Broadway Melody.
Another two of the top awards went to co-founders of the Academy. Mary Pickford, who won the Katie as best actress in 1927-28, took home the best actress trophy for her first talkie, Coquette. Audiences flocked to see "America's Sweetheart" talk for the first time but critics reviled her performance and only the first Oscar campaign in history secured the award.
Likewise, best director Frank Lloyd, who won for the dull and overly-long The Divine Lady, was one of the founding members of the Academy and his win raised eyebrows among the press.
As for the best actor winner, I encourage you to go to Turner Classic Movies and watch some clips of Warner Baxter's performance as the Cisco Kid from In Old Arizona. If your head doesn't explode, you're made of sterner stuff than I am. Check out the clip entitled "Ham and Eggs." Ostensibly, the ham refers to the Kid's breakfast, but don't you believe it.
Two of the Academy's choices, best screenplay winner, The Patriot, an Ernst Lubitsch movie which also provided a best actor nominee, and The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, which earned MGM set designer Cedric Gibbons the first of eleven Oscars (he was nominated thirty-nine times), have both been lost. That is, unfortunately, an all too common story when it comes to the early history of motion pictures—Hollywood took no care when it came to preserving these early films and let thousands of movies deteriorate or vanish altogether. Aside from losing irreplaceable works of art, Hollywood's negligence makes my task of handing out coveted Katie awards all the more difficult. They have a lot to answer for.Hopefully, this round of Katie awards will improve on the Academy's choices. At least I don't owe Louis B. Mayer anything.
The nominees for the 1928-29 Katie Awards are:
PICTURE:
The Cameraman (prod. Buster Keaton)
The Docks Of New York (prod. J.G. Bachmann)
The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (prod. Société générale des films)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck)
The Wind (prod. Victor Sjöström)
ACTOR: George Bancroft (The Docks Of New York)
Douglas Fairbanks (The Iron Mask)
Buster Keaton (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)
Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)
ACTRESS:
Marion Davies (Show People)
Maria Falconetti (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Lillian Gish (The Wind)
Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)
DIRECTOR:
Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou)
Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Victor Sjöström (The Wind)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Wallace Beery (Beggars Of Life)
Lewis Stone (A Woman Of Affairs)
Ernest Torrence (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Olga Baclanova (The Docks Of New York)
Mary Nolan (West Of Zanzibar)
Anita Page (Our Dancing Daughters)
SCREENPLAY:
Jules Furthman; story by John Monk Saunders (The Docks Of New York)
Joseph Delteil and Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Frances Marion (The Wind)
I'll start handing out Katies a couple of days from now, beginning with Best Screenplay ...
You just HAD to put up a picture of that fucking Lon Chaney, didn't you? . . . .
ReplyDeleteDid the Warner Baxter version of Cisco Kid have that great "Oh, CEES-co," "Oh, PAN-cho," exchange like the TV series? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteI actually remember seeing a photo of Warner Baxter in that role -- prob'ly in my mom's wonderful old tattered "The Talkies" book -- as a kid, and thinking, "What's with the curls?" Or something along those lines.
If you've never seen "The Talkies" book, it's a classic -- all fantabulous B/W photos up to the early 70s, I guess (believe there was a slightly later printing). And it did include photos of the Silents as well, as it was a sort of photographic history of popular film up to that point. Don't know if it's still out there . . . haven't seen it in any bookstores. It's where I learned a lot of who was who in the oldies but goodies. I highly recommend it if you've not seen it (or don't already own it).
P.S. "A Pictorial History of the Talkies," by Daniel Blum. First published in 1958.
ReplyDeleteHey, lupner, how are you doing. So you remember those old Cisco Kid movies from your childhood, too, huh. I watched this right after they showed it on TCM about three weeks ago and was surprised that this was pre-Pancho. Now I'm curious when they introduced the character because all the Cisco Kids I remember had Pancho.
ReplyDeleteThis was also a somewhat more adult Cisco Kid. He was clearly sleeping with Tonia Maria (played by Dorothy Burgess). The ending was a real shocker too ...
SPOILER ALERT
Tonia betrays the Cisco Kid, taking up with an American soldier played by Edmund Lowe. She arranges for the soldier to kill the Kid and claim a $5000 reward. The Kid intercepts her message however and changes it so that the soldier believes the Kid will be trying to escape wearing women's clothes. So the soldier ends up killing Tonia Maria instead as the Cisco Kid rides away, sadder but wiser I guess.
The ending was almost enough to make me consider forgiving the movie's many faults. Almost, but not quite. It was an early sound picture and really suffers with all the problems of those early ones -- static, slow-paced, lots of talk and very little action, and just the worst acting you've ever seen. Maybe Warner Baxter won an Oscar because he was light years better than everybody else in the movie.
And he wasn't good ...
As for the Daniel Blum book, I don't have it, but clearly I should. I found some used copies on Amazon for around $5 so I think I'll order a copy.
ReplyDeleteI just had good luck ordering an out-of-print movie through Amazon just so I could review it for my blog. Glad I did, too. It was Ronald Colman's first talkie, Bulldog Drummond, for which he received a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Everybody else seemed to struggle with sound -- he arrived fully formed at the top of his game from the very first scene. After watching a lot of painfully bad early sound movies, he was a revelation.
Do you like Ronald Colman?
I do very much like Ronald Colman, though I've only seen a couple of his performances -- 'Lost Horizon' and 'Random Harvest'. Classy and powerful in a most understated way. And -- as fate would have it! -- long before I ever saw him in a film, I knew OF him b/c I saw a photo from "Bulldog Drummond" in the Talkies book. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteThink you will be happy with your $5 investment -- let me know how you enjoy your copy. My mom had a hardback version from which the cover was literally detaching from use. We got her a new paperback version in the 70s or 80s, but I always preferred looking at the original . . .