Louise Brooks left a comment this morning suggesting she's impatient for my post revealing the best picture of 1929-30, and I am working on it. In the meantime, take a look at some of the performers I considered for nominations before I decided to go in a different direction:
The Marx Brothers ...
... and Margaret Dumont (The Cocoanuts)
Gary Cooper (The Virginian)
Helen Morgan (Applause)
Anita Page (Our Modern Maidens)
Lilyan Tashman (Bulldog Drummond)
Leila Hyams (The Big House)
I encourage you search each of them out (some, I'm sure you have already). They are well worth the effort.
Oblivious or not, can you imagine the brothers without her as a maypole? They could grab any comedic rope that they want, swing as wildly as they could, and get pulled back to center.
Only to spin away again, bouncing their legs off her ample torso. . . .
I'm eventually going to write about Margaret Dumont at some length. To my mind, she rather than Zeppo was the true fourth Marx Brother.
In fact, I've already written an entire essay about her. I'm just saving it up for the appropriate moment. I promise to post it by Christmas 2010 for sure!
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
2 comments:
Gahd Bless Margaret Dumont.
Oblivious or not, can you imagine the brothers without her as a maypole? They could grab any comedic rope that they want, swing as wildly as they could, and get pulled back to center.
Only to spin away again, bouncing their legs off her ample torso. . . .
I'm eventually going to write about Margaret Dumont at some length. To my mind, she rather than Zeppo was the true fourth Marx Brother.
In fact, I've already written an entire essay about her. I'm just saving it up for the appropriate moment. I promise to post it by Christmas 2010 for sure!
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