1970 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: 1970 (Re-Do)

A great year for actors, a lousy one for actresses, at least in the lead categories.

I don't know about you, but for me, the best actor trophy comes down to Jack Nicholson or George C. Scott. Here's a refresher course, in case you've forgotten:



I go back and forth. Who you got?

By the way, I did not nominate Don Rickles for best supporting actor this time around. That's the sort of thing you do when you're battling cancer and you need a lift before your next round of chemo and radiation. That was then, this is now. Although the late, great Don Rickles was my favorite stand-up comedian — my pals Bellotoot, Mister Muleboy and I saw him something like twelve times, and he once devoted a solid ten minutes in the middle of one of those shows to insulting me personally (carve that on my tombstone) — and though he brings me joy whenever I see him on the screen, especially in Kelly's Heroes, he was not really an Oscar-caliber actor. Sorry, Mr. Rickles.

Anyway, have at it.

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 ✱.

1970 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.

The crop of actresses was so bad in 1970, Ali MacGraw got an Oscar nomination for Love Story — and you can't even say for sure that somebody better got snubbed as a result. Probably the worst year for actresses ever.

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

The Beatles Black Album Meme — Part 1: 1970

A year or so ago, Ethan Hawke put out what he called "The Black Album" — his ultimate play list of Beatles solo music, combining the work of John Lennon, the Plastic Ono Band, Paul McCartney, Wings, George Harrison and Ringo Starr into a three-disc set — which I first read about on one of my everyday go-to blogs, Hey Dullblog.

Me being me, not only a huge movie and baseball fan, but also a Beatles fan, went to work on my own Black Album, too. But unlike Mr. Hawke, I didn't see it in terms of a fan in the present looking back on everything the solo Beatles ever did but as an exercise in alternate reality science fiction, which is to say John, Paul, George and Ringo would show up in the studio at the end of every calendar year between 1970 and 1975 and say "whatcha got?" and then they'd assemble a double album out of it in time for the Christmas rush.

Originally, I had figured I'd listen to the end product of this exercise in my own car, a 21+ year old Honda Civic so old it only has a cassette player. Thus, 90-minute tapes, 45-minutes to a side. But then I discovered the tape deck on my living room stereo is broken — no new tapes for me! — and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay to fix technology only a little less out of date than papyrus and a goose quill pen.

So now the exercise is for my little brother who is coming down for Thanksgiving dinner and needs some Beatles solo stuff to go with his Beatles mono box set. He has a cd player in his car so, viola, 80-minute cd's.

My self-imposed rules:

(1) Each 80-minute cd has to be divided into four "sides," if only in my head, as if the Beatles were putting this out back in the day on vinyl.

(2) At the end of the exercise (five cd's total), the number of Lennon songs have to equal the number of McCartney songs, and Harrison has to contribute at least 50% as much as either of the other two, e.g., if there are 20 John songs, there have to be 20 Paul songs and at least 10 George songs. That's total, not per cd.

(3) At least one Ringo song per cd.

(4) Nobody gets three songs in a row anywhere, John or Paul can have as many as two songs in a row, George and Ringo never get two in a row. Pretty much a holdover from the real Beatle records.

(5) As much as possible, I try to avoid what Hey Dullblog guru Michael Gerber calls "sonic whiplash," the sort of juxtaposition that would make anyone listening to the radio change the station — for example, the Sex Pistols "Anarchy in the UK" followed by a Michael Bolton record. This gets particularly tough right in the middle when I'm trying to fit McCartney's lush and sweetly sentimental "My Love" on a cd with Lennon's Some Time in New York City radical leftist agitprop.

(6) All songs are commercially available — no bootlegs — so you can play along at home.

(7) Anything else? Probably. My universe if filled with a complex set of rules (no pewter forks, as few left turns as possible, etc.), too many to mention here. I'll comment as I go along.

The Beatles Solo: 1970
SIDE ONE
● Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) – John (3:23) (Written and recorded in one day, and released the following week, this was the first solo Beatle single to sell a million copies.)

● Another Day – Paul (3:43) (Recorded in 1970, released in 1971, McCartney's first solo single, about a sad, lonely woman and a series of one-night stands, works better on this cd, I think. Fits the overall indigo mood of the collection.)

● I'd Have You Anytime – George (2:59) (Harrison put out his magnificent triple album All Things Must Pass at the end of 1970 and then didn't release another studio album until 1973. Rather than use up all his songs here and then have nothing on the next two cd's, I split his work up over three cd's. That'd probably piss him off, but working with Lennon & McCartney, he was used to it, so there.)

● Teddy Boy – Paul (2:25) (From McCartney, this was originally intended for what became the Let It Be album. On the third volume of the Beatles Anthology you can hear Lennon singing a savage parody of it even as Paul is trying to record it. Maybe the subject matter — about a clingy, rock n roll mama's boy — hit a little too close to home.)

● I Found Out – John (3:38) (From Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's best solo album in my opinion, and certainly my favorite.)

● What is Life – George (4:20) (A top ten hit. If there's a theme to side one it's "baiting the commercial hook." I mean, I want to sell some records here, you know?)

SIDE TWO
● Mother – John (5:37) (Released as a single from Plastic Ono Band, "Mother" topped out at #43. I read on Wikipedia that Barbra Streisand covered it in 1971, but mercifully, I've never heard it.)

● That Would Be Something – Paul (2:43) (From McCartney. Also appears on the 1991 live c.d. Unplugged. One of his best solo songs, in my humble opinion.)

● Love – John (2:32) (This is the version from the Acoustic cd, not because I prefer it but because the Plastic Ono Band version has that long, long, long fade in and fade out that works fine when you're listening to it with headphones but not so much in the car.)

● Maybe I'm Amazed – Paul (3:54) (One of McCartney's best with or without the Beatles, the live version of this from 1976's Wings Over America was a top 10 hit in the U.S. Paul himself tucked this away as the next-to-last song on McCartney between "Singalong Junk" and "Kreen-Akrore." Talk about burying the lede!)

● Hold On – John (1:53) (With Ringo on drums and Klaus Voormann — the guy who designed the cover of Revolver — on bass.)

● All Things Must Pass – George (3:50) (I went back and forth on whether to end side two with this or "My Sweet Lord," thinking the latter would fit a side full of songs reflecting on what love means, but listening to them one more time, I decided these are really songs about hanging on by your fingernails. I mean, even "That Would Be Something" is in the conditional tense. Anyway, Harrison recorded a demo of this in 1969 — see the Beatles Anthology Vol. 3 — and introduced it to the other Beatles during the Get Back sessions, but like most of his work, it fell on deaf ears. Billy Preston recorded it next and released it in the Fall of 1970. Wound up as the title tune to what many consider the best Beatles solo album ever.)

SIDE THREE
● Remember – John (4:36) (An angry tub thumper that makes the personal, political, and vice versa. Like everything else on side three.)

● Every Night – Paul (2:40) (Another song McCartney first introduced during the Get Back sessions. Sex, sloth and apathy is a political philosophy of sorts, isn't it? Else I've wasted a good portion of my life.)

● Working Class Hero – John (3:51) (Judging by the t-shirts at the time, people took this as a populist statement extolling the virtues of the blue collar worker, but it's clearly a criticism of the values that so emotionally damaged Lennon. "If you want to be a basket case, too," he says in so many words, "just follow me.")

● Isn't It a Pity (Version One) – George (7:11) (The flip side to "My Sweet Lord," there are actually two versions of "Isn't It a Pity" on All Things Must Pass. This is the long one. Reminds me of "Within You, Without You.")

SIDE FOUR
● Man We Was Lonely – Paul (3:00) (A common knock against McCartney is that he's unknowable, the perfect buttoned-down corporate rocker. Nonsense. When people say that, it just means they aren't listening. Granted, he never claimed to reveal himself through his art the way Lennon did but if you listen to the subject matter of Paul's songs, they clearly indicate his state of mind. His first solo album, McCartney, is chock full of lyrics about fear, loneliness, torpor and wanting to hump his wife Linda, which from what I have read, pretty accurately reflects his mood in the wake of the Beatles' breakup.)

● Behind That Locked Door – George (3:08) (Written in 1969 to buck up pal Bob Dylan who was contemplating performing live for the first time since his motorcycle accident.)

● Junk – Paul (1:57) (First demo'ed in George's house in 1968 prior to the "White Album" sessions.)

● My Sweet Lord – George (4:41) (A #1 hit, later the subject of a plagiarism suit. Not sandwiched here between "Junk" and "God" as a half-witted joke but as part of a four-song run reflecting on what the "ex" in ex-Beatle might mean with each man groping for his own way forward. At least that's the way I hear it.)

● God – John (4:11) (Not sure how you square the sentiment "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me" with the fiction that the Beatles stayed together, but it's one of the strongest tracks of Lennon's career, so here it is.)

● It Don't Come Easy – Ringo (3:03) (recorded in 1970, released in early 1971, this single hit #4 on the Billboard charts. Ringo put out a couple of albums in 1970 — a collection of standards, Sentimental Journey, and a country album, Beaucoups of Blues — and I could have chosen something from one of them but let's just say I feel they don't represent my all-time favorite rock n roll drummer at his best and leave it at that.)

Total running time: 79:17.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's 8 Lennon songs, 7 McCartney's, 6 Harrison's and 1 Ringo.

Next, Part 2: The Beatles Solo 1971.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1970)

The editor of my other internet gig, Sharpologist, has asked for a new post so I'll be working on that. Which means this is the last of the Katie Award posts for a while.

Beginning this weekend, I'll start promoting Monty's March Madness Greatest Actress Tournament. As I mentioned the other day, I'll be hosting the Silent Era/1930s bracket—32 actresses competing for a shot at the Final Four. Long-shot entrant Irene Dunne won the whole thing last year and she'll be defending her title right here at the Monkey. But she's got some tough competition, including Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow.

Voting starts March 5.

Meanwhile, enjoy this iconic scene from Five Easy Pieces:



PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Five Easy Pieces (prod. Bob Rafelson and Richard Wechsler)
nominees: Airport (prod. Ross Hunter); The Boys in the Band (prod. Mart Crowley); Colossus: The Forbin Project (prod. Stanley Chase); Little Big Man (prod. Stuart Millar); Patton (prod. Frank McCarthy); Ryan's Daughter (prod. Anthony Havelock-Allan); Tora! Tora! Tora! (prod. Richard Fleischer and Elmo Williams)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: M*A*S*H (prod. Ingo Preminger)
nominees: The Ballad of Cable Hogue (prod Sam Peckinpah); Gimme Shelter (prod. Porter Bibb and Ronald Schneider); Kelly's Heroes (prod. Sidney Beckerman and Gabriel Katzka); Let It Be (prod. Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans); Scrooge (prod Robert H. Solo); The Twelve Chairs (prod. Ronald H. Gilbert and Michael Hertzberg); Woodstock (prod. Bob Maurice)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Il conformista (The Conformist) (prod. Maurizio Lodi-Fè)
nominees: Le Cercle Rouge (prod. Robert Dorfmann); Le boucher (prod. André Génovès); Domicile conjugal (Bed & Board) (prod. Marcel Berbert and François Truffaut); L'enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) (prod. Néstor Almendros); Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) (prod. Arthur Cohn, Gianni Hecht Lucari and Artur Brauner); Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee) (prod. Pierre Cottrell and Barbet Schroeder); El topo (prod. Mick Gochanour, Juan López Moctezuma, Moshe Rosemberg and Saúl Rosemberg); Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) (prod. Marina Cicogna and Daniele Senatore); Tristana (prod. Luis Buñuel and Robert Dorfmann)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: George C. Scott (Patton)
nominees: Melvyn Douglas (I Never Sang for My Father); Ben Gazzara (Husbands); Dustin Hoffman (Little Big Man); James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope); Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces); Fernando Rey (Tristana); Jean-Louis Trintignant (Il conformista a.k.a. The Conformist)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alan Arkin (Catch-22)
nominees: Clint Eastwood (Two Mules for Sister Sara and Kelly's Heroes); Albert Finney (Scrooge); Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H); Jack Lemmon (The Out of Towners); Jason Robards (The Ballad Of Cable Hogue); Donald Sutherland (M*A*S*H); Gene Wilder (Start the Revolution Without Me)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Glenda Jackson (Women In Love)
nominees: Catherine Deneuve (Tristana); Sarah Miles (Ryan's Daughter); Tuesday Weld (I Walk The Line)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Carrie Snodgress (Diary Of A Mad Housewife)
nominees: Julie Andrews (Darling Lili); Sandy Dennis (The Out of Towners); Glenda Jackson (The Music Lovers); Shirley MacLaine (Two Mules for Sister Sara)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Bernardo Bertolucci (Il Conformista a.k.a. The Conformist)
nominees: Vittorio de Sica (Il giardino dei Finzi Contini a.k.a The Garden of the Finzi-Continis); David Lean (Ryan's Daughter); Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Cercle Rouge); Arthur Penn (Little Big Man); Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces); Eric Rohmer (Le genou de Claire a.k.a. Claire's Knee); Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Altman (M*A*S*H)
nominees: Mel Brooks (The Twelve Chairs); Ronald Neame (Scrooge); Mike Nichols (Catch-22); Sam Peckinpah (The Ballad of Cable Hogue); François Truffaut (Domicile conjugal a.k.a. Bed & Board)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Chief Dan George (Little Big Man)
nominees: Robert Duvall (M*A*S*H); Gene Hackman (I Never Sang For My Father); Frank Langella (Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Twelve Chairs); Karl Malden (Patton); Telly Savalas (Kelly's Heroes); Orson Welles (Catch-22)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces)
nominees: Helen Hayes (Airport); Sally Kellerman (M*A*S*H); Lois Smith (Five Easy Pieces); Lee Grant (The Landlord); Stella Stevens (The Ballad of Cable Hogue)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) (screenplay), from a story by Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) (Five Easy Pieces)
nominees: Bernardo Bertolucci, from the novel by Alberto Moravia (Il Conformista a.k.a. The Conformist); Ring Lardner, Jr., from the novel by Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H); Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, based on factual material by Ladislas Farago and Omar N. Bradley (Patton)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Suicide Is Painless" (M*A*S*H) music by Johnny Mandel; lyrics by Michael Altman (Song); Jerry Goldsmith (Patton) (Score); The Beatles (Let It Be) (Original Song Score); Woodstock (Documentary Feature)