1946 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

Alternate Oscars: More Supporting Actors

While we're on the subject ...

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.

1946 Alternate Oscars

A truncated version of my long-delayed essay on It's A Wonderful Life. Full of SPOILERS.

Those who think Frank Capra made only family-oriented treacle haven't been paying attention.

During the course of his career, Capra became increasingly concerned with the question "Can one man alone make a difference in this cockeyed world?" Following a progression starting with Mr. Deeds Goes To Town in 1936, moving through You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941) and culminating with his postwar classic It's A Wonderful Life (1946), the answer increasingly was "no."

"No" is not where Capra planned to go — or even where he thought he was headed. His first great success, It Happened One Night, was actually part of the same theme — the individual fighting to remain an individual — and by the end of that movie, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert have shown us that as long as you're willing to literally jump overboard, turn your back on your family, lose your job and sleep in a field, staying true to yourself is a piece of cake.

As a wise man once said, you have to lose your life in order to save it — sell all your possessions and follow, well, love in this case.

It Happened One Night being a screwball comedy, it was a snap, really.

After that, things got complicated.

It's A Wonderful Life is the story of George Bailey (James Stewart), a small-town banker who sacrifices his own dreams to keep the family business afloat. Along the way, he marries, makes friends and keeps the rapacious Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) at bay.

For his troubles, George is rewarded with the looming threat of bankruptcy, scandal and prison. At the raggedy end of his emotional rope, he opts for suicide only to meet his guardian angel (Henry Travers) who shows him what a crapsack the world would have been without him.

Happy ending.

Or is it? When George wakes up tomorrow, he'll still have sacrificed his dreams for the happiness of others, which may be worth it in a Judeo-Christian Buddhist sense, but Bedford Falls isn't and never will be Paris, France.

And sometimes nothing else will do except April in Paris.

Those who talk about the good ol' days have either forgotten them, never lived through them, or are selling you something. For Frank Capra's generation, the good ol' days included World War I, the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and after that, the white-knuckle uncertainty of the atomic age, and hard-fought battles for racial and sexual equality.

During the years Capra was making his best movies (1934-1946), tens of millions died a violent death and hundreds of millions more lived on the hardscrabble edge of oblivion. For a while it looked like the fascists would win and extinguish the light of civilization forever. Even after fascism's defeat, some must have looked back and realized what a close-run thing it had really been.

Which makes me wonder whether the troubling end of It's A Wonderful Life — stranding George Bailey in a reality where none of his dreams will ever come true — was Capra selling himself on the notion that after the near-disaster of World War II, all our victories were likely to be tiny ones. We'd be lucky if we could hold a job, marry a spouse who wasn't ashamed of us, hold back the tide of crap for a little while and not hurt anybody else in the process.

As Ernest Hemingway concluded at the end of his novel To Have and Have Not (in the fevered words of Harry Morgan), "No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."

Or as Zuzu put it, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."

That's right, Zuzu, that's right.

It's a small-ball vision, but maybe a realistic one.

Capra later didn't see it — in his dotage, he wound up spouting a rather simplistic reading of his own movies — but I'm convinced that no artist who is working with honesty and conviction is ever as in control of his message as he thinks he is. If he has a clear eye and is committed to putting on film (or paper or canvas) what he actually sees as opposed to what he thinks he's supposed to see, he winds up telling truths that don't necessarily square with his own convictions.

And Capra, the conservative, rugged individualist, knew on some level that we either swim together or we sink alone.

Amen, brother.

Anyway, my choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.

Alternate Oscars: Vote For The Best Picture Of 1946

Orson Welles: What To See (And What Not To See)

I'm currently writing a glowing review of My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles which will be up in a day or two. In the meantime, if you don't know Welles as well as you should, here are some recommendations:

Indispensable

Citizen Kane (1941)—love it or hate it (I love it), you can no more call yourself a film buff without seeing Kane than you can call yourself literate without knowing the alphabet. As Jean-Luc Godard said of Welles, "Everyone will always owe him everything."

The Third Man (1949)—Welles didn't direct this suspense classic (Carol Reed did), but his supporting performance as the charming arch-criminal Harry Lime is one of the most memorable in movie history.

Highly Recommended

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)—the studio re-shot the ending and the film flopped at the box office, but this story of a spoiled rich kid and his tragic comeuppance is a masterpiece anyway.

The Lady From Shanghai (1948)—starring his soon-to-be ex-wife Rita Hayworth, this film noir thriller boasts the legendary shoot-out in a hall of mirrors.

Touch of Evil (1958)—from the twilight of the film noir era, Welles is a cop run amok terrorizing both good guys (Charlton Heston) and bad guys (Akim Tamiroff).

Chimes at Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff (1965)—the least seen of his classic films, Welles plays Shakespeare's fat fool as a tragic-comic figure and a meta-commentary on his own career.

Recommended

The Stranger (1946)—Suspected Nazi (Welles) plays a deadly game of wits with Nazi hunter (Edward G. Robinson).

Macbeth (1948)—One of Welles's three Shakespeare films, this atmospheric interpretation made a lot more sense after it was restored in the 1990s.

Othello (1952)—personally, I think the only way for a white actor to play Othello is the way Patrick Stewart did it at the Shakespeare Theater back in 1997: with an otherwise all-black cast. Except for the matter of pigmentation, Othello was right in Welles's wheelhouse.

Mr. Arkadin a.k.a. Confidential Report (1955)—the studio messed around so much with this whodunit about a private detective hot on the trail of the mysterious Mr Arkadin, that the Criterion dvd contains three versions.

Compulsion (1959)—another acting-only movie, Welles plays a lawyer defending two killers based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb.

Meh

Journey Into Fear (1943)—director only. Joseph Cotten should have chosen a different cruise line: this one is full of Nazis and nonsense.

Jane Eyre (1944)—acting only. Welles is pretty good as Mr. Rochester, but Joan Fontaine obviously didn't read the novel about a feisty girl who marries above her station.

Tomorrow is Forever (1946)—acting only. I waited forever for this three-hanky weeper to finish. Co-starring Claudette Colbert.

Catch-22 (1970)—acting only. Alan Arkin is good, but the screenplay makes too much sense to capture the flavor of the classic Joseph Heller novel.

F for Fake (1973)—Welles's last feature-length directorial effort, this documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving who got rich off a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes is beloved by some, but I'm not some.

Burn Before Watching

The V.I.P.'s (1963)—acting only. One of those group-of-strangers-stuck-in-one-place potboilers, this time in a fog-bound airport. Worst layover ever. Glossy, high-toned stupidity starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at their worst.

Casino Royale (1967)—no, not the Daniel Craig classic. This is the swingin' 60s spoof. Incoherent, self-indulgent and painfully unfunny. Acting only.

It Happened One Christmas (1977)—made for tv remake of It's A Wonderful Life with Welles as Mr. Potter and Marlo Thomas in the Jimmy Stewart role. Saw it as a teenager and was scarred for life. Acting only.

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

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 bit 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 bastard.

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)

Variations On A Gag #1—The Comedian As Sanitarium Patient

Stealing is a time honored tradition among comedians, and God bless them, I say—thanks to their thieving ways, we can directly compare comedy acts with different styles and of different eras and get a sense of what each brings to the table.

This is especially true, I think, where as here, the players are not at the top of their games. Great work tends to transcend its source material, and even if it's still identifiably the work of its creator, largely becomes something unique. Merely good work, on the other hand, especially when done in a hurry for money, tends to reveal its creator's default tendencies.

In this case, Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle and the Three Stooges all check themselves in as patients in a sanitarium and in each case, you can see them race for the tried and true. Chaplin leans on repetition and rhythm, Arbuckle on pratfalls and cross-dressing, the Stooges on destructive ineptitude. All did better work, but none more typical.

Charles Chaplin in The Cure (1917).


Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in Good Night, Nurse (1918).


The Three Stooges in Monkey Businessmen (1946) (in two parts).