1969 Alternate Oscars

I wrote this when I was fifty, the same age as William Holden when he filmed The Wild Bunch:

I don't know anybody over the age of fifty who isn't a little startled, dismayed and embarrassed to realize that the upward trajectory of the life that they so took for granted in their youth has nosed over and is now on a permanent downward spiral toward the grave. For Pike Bishop (William Holden), the aging leader of a gang of Old West desperados, it's not just that he no longer understands the world that has changed around him; it's the realization that even if he did understand it, he no longer has the energy, stamina or reflexes to do anything about it.

But as Dylan Thomas pointed out, there's more than one way to grow old: you can go quietly into the night, or you can rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pike chooses to rage. And oh how he rages.

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: 1969 (Re-Do)

If you like cowboys — whether of the midnight or home-on-the-range variety — 1969 is the year for you ...

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 ✱.

1969 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ.

Four Western heroes and a couple of midnight cowpokes up for best actor this year. I nominated Redford and Newman as a pair because (1) they were so often mentioned together in the same breath, and because (2) it's my blog and there's nothing you can do about it.

In the supporting category, Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda against type in Once Upon a Time in the West and the result was one of the greatest villains in movie history. But I've already handed Fonda an alternate Oscar for The Grapes of Wrath, the best performance of his career, so I opted instead for Jason Robards' wonderful comedic bandit, Cheyenne, in the same movie.

Lot of juggling in the alternate Oscar business.

1969 was maybe the last great year for Westerns. Some really good Westerns still to come, for sure, most of them starring Clint Eastwood, but as a whole the genre crests the hill in 1969. Or maybe when you have a year with The Wild Bunch, Once Upon a Time in the West, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, Support Your Local Sheriff! and literally a hundred more, it only seems that way.

The Beatles Black Album Meme — Part 3: 1972, Sort Of

Previous posts: Part 1; Part 2.

1972 was not a good year for ex-Beatles. John and Yoko's double album, Some Time in New York City, was a commercial and critical disaster. Paul had bottomed out following the disappointment of late-1971's hastily written and recorded Wild Life LP. Ringo had a hit with a single recorded the previous year but was otherwise silent. And George didn't record anything at all.

Altogether, about ten solid minutes of music.

But instead of skipping the year altogether, I swept up all the uncollected singles, B-sides and songs leftover from other albums, and with a handful of songs that appeared in 1973 but were written earlier, cobbled together a sort of Odds and Sods/Anthology. I mean, you gotta put "Cold Turkey" somewhere.

The Beatles Solo: 1972, sort of
SIDE ONE
● New York City – John (4:29) (From Some Time in New York City. The lyrics are lazy and the production values are sloppy, but otherwise this is a pretty good rocker. John and Yoko actually opened their double album with "Woman is the N***** of the World" — I can't bring myself to post its full name — which was something Yoko muttered to herself when first confronted with the misogyny of the London art world. I know Lennon thought he was making a point when he wrote a song around the sentiment and he doubled down by releasing it as a single, but it turns out it was the same point Ben Carson made when he compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery, i.e., that he's an idiot. I figure that by 1972 John was so accustomed to success that without someone of the stature of Paul, George or Ringo to say "no," he had grown to believe he could blow his nose and find 24-carat gold nuggets in the handkerchief. John was shattered when the critics and record-buying public apprised him otherwise. You know, there's nothing wrong with devoting yourself to a cause — thank God somebody does — John's problem was investing so much of his self-image in the assumption people would open their wallets and celebrate the effort because his name was "I Used To Be A Beatle.")

● John Sinclair – John (3:29) (Upon arriving in New York, Lennon's new-found pals requested a song in support of a local poet jailed for possession of marijuana. John later dismissed this effort as uninspired craftsmanship, but it's actually the best thing on Some Time in New York City. You can put your politics in a song — you can put anything in a song — as long as it's a good song. See, e.g., "Revolution" "Imagine" "Working Class Hero." Hell, even "Come Together" started as a political song.)

● C Moon – Paul (4:35) (The flip side of the single "Hi Hi Hi," released in time for Christmas 1972.)

● Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) – George (3:54) (From All Things Must Pass. For an explanation of why it's on this cd, see Part 1 of this series.)

● Hi Hi Hi – Paul (3:09) (This McCartney single, like "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," was banned by the BBC, here because of overt drug and sexual references. In protest, he recorded and released "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which in retrospect was the most offensive of the three.)

SIDE TWO
● Live and Let Die – Paul (3:13) (The theme song from the 1973 James Bond film, this was recorded in 1972. A #2 hit in the U.S., I can say from personal observation, it makes for a fantastic live performance.)

● Gimme Some Truth – John (3:17) (A leftover from Imagine, it fits right in with the rest of the agitprop.)

● Tomorrow – Paul (3:27) (In an overreaction to the critical beating the highly-polished Ram album took, McCartney taped Wild Life in one week, with five of the eight tracks recorded in a single take. John used to complain that Paul would work his songs to death in the studio trying to refine the sound he heard in his head, but while Lennon's songs often drifted farther and farther from his original vision with each take, McCartney's benefitted from the effort. Not everybody works the same way.)

● Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple) – John (4:12) (This was recorded in 1973 and released that year on Mind Games. But Lennon first recorded a demo of this in 1971 and, again, it fits with the political nature of his other 1972 releases.)

● Smile Away – Paul (3:53) (From Ram.)

SIDE THREE
● Power to the People – John (3:19) (Recorded in October 1970, released as a single in March 1971, it hit #11 on the U.S. charts. I have to agree, though, with Hunter S. Thompson's savage assessment of the song which appears in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "John Lennon's political song, ten years too late. 'That poor fool should have stayed where he was,' said my attorney. 'Punks like that just get in the way when they try to be serious.'" Of course, this was long before John's canonization as a secular saint. No doubt the good doctor's opinion mellowed over the years. You know, like the good doctor himself.)

● Oo You – Paul (2:50) (From McCartney.)

● My Love – Paul (4:09) (After the critical failures of Ram and Wild Life, McCartney really had no idea what to do next. He spent most of 1972 recording what was going to be a double album called Red Rose Speedway, but in the end he cut it down to a single LP and even that only had two good songs on it, this and "Big Barn Bed." He released "My Love" as a single and it was a #1 hit in the U.S. It's polished enough to appear on Abbey Road while everything else on this c.d. sounds like it was recorded in my garage ...)

● If Not For You – George (3:33) (... well, except for George's numbers. He definitely did not record this in anybody's garage.)

● Isolation – John (2:53) (From Plastic Ono Band, this would have concluded "side one" of my 1970 collection if it had been a 90-minute cassette tape as originally envisioned.)

● Big Barn Bed – Paul (3:50) (From Red Rose Speedway, "Big Barn Bed" is perhaps the most obscure of McCartney's classic songs.)

SIDE FOUR
● Give Peace a Chance – John (4:54) (A single recorded in 1969 during John and Yoko's Bed-In Peace protest, it hit #14 in America, #2 in Britain.)

● Beware of Darkness – George (3:49) (The last of the songs I've raided from All Things Must Pass, fourteen in all. It's only now I realize that all fourteen are from disc one of the double cd, with none of disc two — four studio numbers and a live jam session — making the cut.)

● Bip Bop/Hey Diddle – Paul (3:37) ("Bip Bop" was the sort-of highlight of Wild Life, with this very off-the-cuff rendition appearing on Wingspan.)

● Early 1970 – Ringo (2:21) (The flip side of "It Don't Come Easy," Ringo made it clear with this open letter to his former band mates that he really, really, really wanted the Beatles to get back together.)

● Cold Turkey – John (5:01) (Part of me would like to think Paul made a big mistake turning down John's suggestion in the Fall of 1969 that "Cold Turkey" be the next Beatles single. Lennon's response was to quit the band and put the song out under his own name. How might have things played out if McCartney had said yes? But the fact is, at least three of the Beatles had been chaffing under the band's yoke since even before India. Lennon had wanted to put out "Across the Universe" "Revolution No. 1" and "Cold Turkey" as singles, Paul wanted to start playing live again which was a non-starter for his bandmates, and George offered up about half of All Things Must Pass only to have all those songs thumbed down. The Beatles were the most inventive, creative band in music history but the moment they started saying, no, we can't do that, they were done, put a fork in it. And put a fork in it, they did. The rest, as they say, is non-Beatles history.)

Total running time: 77:57.

Eight by Lennon, nine by McCartney, three by Harrison and one by Starr. In total now, Paul finally catches John at 23, George has 14 and Ringo 3.

Next, Part 4: The Beatles Solo 1973

One Small Step For A Monkey

One day I'll tell you the story about how in July 1969, my parents went on vacation in Hawaii and left their space nut son (i.e., me, the Monkey, your faithful correspondent) and his brother at the house of the least-imaginative woman on the planet, and how after begrudging us five minutes of all that nonsense on the moon, she put us to bed and I missed the rest of what I still consider the most transcendent historical event of my lifetime.

Forty-five years to the day, I'm still bitter and twisted. But I won't go into it now.

Castle Keep (1969) (A Mini-Review): You Can Keep It

On this the seventieth anniversary of our forefather's supreme sacrifice on the beaches of Normandy, my good friend Mister Muleboy and I drove down to the AFI-Silver to see Castle Keep, a 1969-vintage war movie starring Burt Lancaster, Peter Falk and Bruce Dern, directed by Sydney Pollack.

With a pedigree like that, what could go wrong? Well, as it turns out, everything.

The story: During the Battle of the Bulge, Burt Lancaster and his eyepatch defend a Belgian castle that sits on a road leading through a beautiful countess's underpants to Bastogne. The problem is, Lancaster can't defend said underpants without risking a priceless collection of art.

In various subplots, Falk makes a separate peace with a baker's wife, Dern gathers twelve disciples and preaches the gospel, and the rest of Lancaster's platoon takes up a strategic position in the world's most chaste brothel.

Told straight, Castle Keep might have been The Train (also starring Lancaster) or at the very least, last year's Monuments Men. Instead, we get a half-assed knock-off of the French New Wave—soft-core porn with no nudity, black comedy with no jokes and more religious allegories than you can shake a stick at.

Throw in lots of 14-century lute music, random editing and one man's unconsummated romance with a Volkswagen, and you have the worst war movie I've ever seen, and probably one of the ten worst movies I've ever seen in a theater. And I've seen Brooke Shields in Endless Love!

I won't presume to say what my father or Mister Muleboy's believed they were fighting to protect when they served in World War II (both in the Pacific), but I'm pretty sure Castle Keep wasn't it.

My rating: 1 star (out of 5).

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1969)

Some stray thoughts for future essays about a few of the Katie winners of 1969:

The Wild Bunch
I don't know anybody over the age of fifty who isn't a little startled, dismayed and embarrassed to realize that the upward trajectory of the life that they so took for granted in their youth has nosed over and is now on a permanent downward spiral toward the grave. For Pike Bishop (William Holden), the aging leader of a gang of Old West desperados, it's not just that he no longer understands the world that has changed around him; it's the realization that even if he did understand it, he no longer has the energy, stamina or reflexes to do anything about it.

But as Dylan Thomas pointed out, there's more than one way to grow old: you can go quietly into the night, or you can rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pike chooses to rage. And oh how he rages.

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie
Just because someone is bright and pretty and charismatic doesn't mean she's not also an idiot. Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith in an Oscar-winning turn) is a beloved teacher in the Dead Poets Society mold, but what to me often seems lost in reviews and recollections of the part is that Miss Brodie is also a self-righteous nincompoop, prone to pronouncements such as "Whoever has opened the window has opened it too wide. Six inches is perfectly adequate—more is vulgar."

She no doubt makes similar pronouncements to her married lover.

For Miss Jean Brodie, teaching isn't so much about preparing her students for the world as it is about creating a classroom full of Jean Brodie clones, little girls who demand nothing of her but to worship the ground she walks on. As for Brodie, she worships Italian poets and Italian painters—and Italian fascists, too—and even if those arrayed against her are a stiff-necked and detestable lot, it seems unlikely to me that anyone could (or would) write a story in the 1960s about a character who tells you how admirable Mussolini is without assuming that you understand the character is more than a bit cracked. That's something to remember—the enemy of your enemy is just as likely to turn out to be your enemy as your friend, so don't assume that just because you don't like the headmistress (Celia Johnson) that Miss Brodie isn't also (if differently) wrong-headed.

As I said in my post about Chimes at Midnight, "A fool who is unaware he is a fool is a ripe subject for comedy." Jean Brodie is just such a fool. That she's also a sympathetic one, you can credit Maggie Smith for that.

[If you're interested in a more in-depth look at The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, FlickChick wrote a nice review of it only yesterday over at A Person in the Dark. Click here to read it.]

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
I probably don't need to tell you that Sean Connery was the definitive James Bond. The first four Bond films, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and even Thunderball are all classics, never bettered.

But the dirty little secret about Sean Connery is that by You Only Live Twice, the Bond film immediately preceding this one, he was phoning it in, and he was no better in Diamonds Are Forever, the film after this one.

And I'll tell you something else. Despite his rugged good looks, Connery really was not a very good romantic lead, not in a classic sense anyway. He was best when he was aloof, amused, snarky or, as he was in roles such as The Untouchables, wounded, brooding and angry. Romance requires a combination of hope and vulnerability, a rare quality in gods, which may explain why good-looking leading men such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt are inexplicably not great romantic leading men.

This is heresy to say, but for this one movie, where Bond genuinely falls in love, George Lazenby was probably better suited to the role than Connery.

Crikey, I can't believe I just said that out loud. True, though.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Wild Bunch (prod. Phil Feldman)
nominees: Easy Rider (prod. Peter Fonda); Medium Cool (prod. Tully Friedman, Haskell Wexler and Jerrold Wexler); Midnight Cowboy (prod. Jerome Hellman); On Her Majesty's Secret Service (prod. Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman); They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (prod. Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (prod. John Foreman)
nominees: The Italian Job (prod. Michael Deeley); Oh! What a Lovely War (prod. Richard Attenborough and Brian Duffy); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (prod. Robert Fryer); Support Your Local Sheriff! (prod. William Bowers); Take The Money and Run (prod. Charles H. Joffe)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Z (prod. Jacques Perrin and Ahmed Rachedi)
nominees: L'armée des ombres (Army of Shadows) (prod. Jacques Dorfmann); Le chagrin et la pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity) (prod. André Harris and Alain de Sedouy); Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's) (prod. Pierre Cottrell and Barbet Schroeder)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: William Holden (The Wild Bunch)
nominees: Peter Fonda (Easy Rider); Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy); Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy); John Wayne (True Grit)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Garner (Support Your Local Sheriff)
nominees: Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run); Michael Caine (The Italian Job); Dustin Hoffman (John and Mary); Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid); Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Shirley Knight (The Rain People)
nominees: Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days); Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?); Liv Ullmann (En Passion a.k.a. The Passion of Anna)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Maggie Smith (The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie)
nominees: Mia Farrow (John and Mary); Shirley MacLaine (Sweet Charity); Liza Minnelli (The Sterile Cuckoo); Katharine Ross (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid); Barbara Streisand (Hello, Dolly!)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch)
nominees: Costa-Gavras (Z); Jean-Pierre Melville (L'armée des ombres a.k.a. Army of Shadows); Marcel Ophüls (Le chagrin et la pitié a.k.a. The Sorrow and the Pity); Sydney Pollack (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?); John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy); Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
nominees: Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run); Richard Attenborough (Oh! What a Lovely War); Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Jack Nicholson (Easy Rider)
nominees: Red Buttons (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?); John Mills (Oh! What a Lovely War); Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch); Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
nominees: Bibi Andersson (En Passion a.k.a. The Passion of Anna); Dyan Cannon (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice); Pamela Franklin (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie); Celia Johnson (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie); Simone Signoret (L'armée des ombres a.k.a. Army of Shadows); Suzannah York (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah, story by Walon Green and Roy N. Sickner (The Wild Bunch)
nominees: William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid); Jorge Semprún, from a novel by Vasilis Vasilikos (Z)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Rain Drops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) music by Burt Bacharach; lyrics by Hal David (Score); Louis Lombardo (The Wild Bunch) (Film Editing); Le chagrin et la pitié a.k.a. The Sorrow and the Pity (Documentary Feature)