1963 Alternate Oscars

Tonight at 8 PM Eastern, Turner Classic Movies is showing Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of ornithological horror, The Birds — an apocalyptic tale of mother nature's revenge on the human race. Or as we refer to it in the 21st century, "Thursday."

If you haven't seen it, well good God man, what are you waiting for?

Richard Brody, film critic for the New Yorker magazine, had this to say about the film's star, Tippi Hedren:

[The Birds and Marnie] feature the performances of Tippi Hedren, which are not only the ultimate Hitchcock performances but—and especially that of “Marnie”—among the very best in the history of cinema. Nobody would mistake Hedren for Bette Davis in theatrical craft, but, of course, the cinema isn’t theatre, and the measure of performance is, rather, an aura, an expressive radiance which is sometimes even more present in varieties of inexpressivity, repression, opacity, which is exactly what Hedren delivers.

I completely agree with the sentiment that "cinema isn't theatre" — it's why I prefer Bogart to Olivier, and just about anybody to Meryl Streep, even the much undervalued Tippi Hedren.

I rewatched The Birds (and Marnie) the other day and while I think the growing cult of Marnie has overrated that picture (too much pop psychology, not enough story), the assessment of Tippi Hedren as an actress, especially in The Birds (reversing Brody's verdict), is spot on. Instead of playful and flirty in the opening scenes of The Birds — which is apparently how some critics want her to have played it — Hedren comes across as self-involved and maybe just mean enough to make you think the birds are reacting to her. I mean what kind of jerk uses innocent birds as props in an adolescent prank? No wonder the birds are miffed — she's the straw that broke the proverbial camel bird's back.

It's as if Majorie Taylor Greene showed up in Bodega Bay full of performative tomfoolery and flocks of left-wing birds (flying in left-hand circles, no doubt) launched a counterattack on humanity in retaliation. They've stood all they can stand and, like Popeye the Sailor, they can't stands no more. I'm cheering for the birds!

Of course, the person the birds really should have been attacking was Alfred Hitchcock. I love me some Hitchcock as you well know, but what he subjected Tippi Hedren to should have ended his career (never mind the sexual assault allegation which should have landed him in jail.) I guess you can argue a good director does whatever is necessary to get the performance he wants but a better one wouldn't have to. I think actors succeeded in Hitchcock's films not because of his antics but in spite of them, and when the star of a great motion picture almost gets her eyes pecked out to satisfy the sadistic whims of a warped, frustrated old man (no matter how great a director), she deserves some sort of medal.



But that's neither here nor there. Ultimately, the only thing that counts is what ended up on the screen, and I think what ended up on the screen in the case of Tippi Hedren is great — or anyway, unforgettable which is pretty much the same thing. She earns my vote for best actress of the year.

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 ✱.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1960)

Norman has mother issues. Well, don't we all. At least he can keep his in the fruit cellar.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Psycho (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: Inherit The Wind (prod. Stanley Kramer); The Magnificent Seven (prod. John Sturges); Peeping Tom (prod. Michael Powell); Spartacus (prod. Edward Lewis)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Apartment (prod. Billy Wilder)
nominees: The Little Shop of Horrors (prod. Roger Corman); Ocean's Eleven (prod. Lewis Milestone); Where The Boys Are (prod. Joe Pasternak)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: À bout de souffle (Breathless) (prod. Georges de Beauregard)
nominees: L’Avventura (prod. Amato Pennasilico); La Dolce Vita (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Angelo Rizzoli); Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) (prod. Ingmar Bergman and Allan Ekelund); Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (prod. Goffredo Lombardo); Le Trou (prod. Serge Silberman); Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without A Face) (prod. Jules Borkon)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Anthony Perkins (Psycho)
nominees: Ralph Bellamy (Sunrise at Campobello); Jean-Paul Belmondo (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); Yul Brenner (The Magnificent Seven); Kirk Douglas (Spartacus); Albert Finney (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning); Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry); Steve McQueen (The Magnificent Seven); Spencer Tracy (Inherit the Wind)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jack Lemmon (The Apartment)
nominees: Jerry Lewis (The Bellboy and Cinderfella); Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Jean Simmons (Elmer Gantry)
nominees: Marie Dubois (Tirez sur le pianiste a.k.a. Shoot The Piano Player); Greer Garson (Sunrise at Campobello); Wendy Hiller (Sons and Lovers); Deborah Kerr (The Sundowners); Sophia Loren (La ciociara a.k.a. Two Women); Jean Seberg (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); Monica Vitti (L’Avventura)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shirley MacLaine (The Apartment)
nominees: Doris Day (Please Don't Eat The Daisies); Melina Mercouri (Pote tin Kyriaki a.k.a. Never On Sunday); Paula Prentiss (Where The Boys Are)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)
nominees: Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura); Ingmar Bergman (Jungfrukällan a.k.a. The Virgin Spring); Jean-Luc Godard (À bout de souffle a.k.a. Breathless); John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Billy Wilder (The Apartment)
nominees: Jules Dassin (Pote tin Kyriaki a.k.a. Never On Sunday); Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Laurence Olivier (Spartacus)
nominees: Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven); James Coburn (The Magnificent Seven); Jack Kruschen (The Apartment); Charles Laughton (Spartacus); Fred MacMurray (The Apartment); Peter Ustinov (Spartacus); Renato Salvatori (Rocco e i suoi fratelli a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Shirley Jones (Elmer Gantry)
nominees: Anouk Aimée (La Dolce Vita); Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita); Annie Girardot (Rocco e i suoi fratelli a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers); Glynis Johns (The Sundowners); Janet Leigh (Psycho)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (The Apartment)
nominees: Joseph Stephano, from the novel by Robert Bloch (Psycho); Dalton Trumbo, from the novel by Howard Fast (Spartacus)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven) (Score); Alexandre Trauner and Edward G. Boyle (The Apartment) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); George Tomasini (Psycho) (Film Editing)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1958)

"If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me? All right. All right then, I'll do it. I don't care about me anymore."

That's Vertigo in a nutshell. Ostensibly, it's a murder mystery, but it's really a stalker movie with the viewer thrust into an uncomfortable complicity with a control freak. You could legitimately complain that Hitchcock's normally-reliable suspense angle doesn't work, but that's beside the point. What you're watching is an abusive relationship from the inside out with a sugar coating of murder on top.

Vertigo isn't North By Northwest; Vertigo is Sleeping With the Enemy.

It's an old Hollywood trick. Bible movies were often about sex, Westerns about racism, noir about the emptiness of the American Dream, but served up in a palatable popcorn genre, the studios were able to skirt both Production Code censorship and audience reluctance to talk about anything serious. In the process, they made some of the best movies of the period.

Here, James Stewart plays an ex-cop, Scottie Ferguson, retired from the force after a bout of vertigo during a rooftop chase left a fellow officer dead. [SPOILERS] An old school chum hires Scottie to follow his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) who believes herself to be possessed by the spirit of a long-dead woman, Carlotta Valdes, who committed suicide during San Francisco's golden age.

Scottie's acrophobia masks a deeper psychological problem—personally, I think the evidence obliquely suggests his mother killed herself when he was young, but that's just my surmise—and he chases Kim Novak around, not for a second believing she's possessed by a ghost but convinced that if he can keep her from toppling over into insanity, he can avoid falling himself. When she instead falls to her death, largely (he believes) because of his own weakness, it pushes him all the way over the edge.

And then after a year, he gets out of the sanitarium, bumps into a Madeleine look-alike (Kim Novak again) and tries to relive the past, this time fixing it. Instead, in the fashion of a classic Greek tragedy, he ensures the very end he was trying to avoid.

It's not a thriller, it's not a mystery, it's not a noir. Maybe it's just a perverse love story dressed up in Hitchcock clothing. I didn't much care for it the first couple of times I saw it, including at the Uptown in Washington, D.C., after its restoration—I found it slow, the spiritual possession angle preposterous (although I imagine Val Lewton could have made you believe every second of it) and the mystery, well, once Kim Novak reveals the plot mid-way through, there is no mystery. But somewhere along the line, Vertigo put its hooks into me and it's my choice as the best movie of 1958.

"If you'll permit the Siren a bit of life advice, barbed clothing critiques from a straight man are a 100% surefire sign of a control freak to be avoided at all costs."—Self-Styled Siren

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Vertigo (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: The Big Country (prod. Gregory Peck and William Wyler); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); The Defiant Ones (prod. Stanley Kramer); Horror of Dracula (prod. Anthony Hinds); A Night To Remember (prod. William MacQuitty); Separate Tables (prod. Harold Hecht); The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (prod. Charles H. Schneer); Touch of Evil (prod. Albert Zugsmith)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Horse's Mouth (prod. John Bryan and Ronald Neame)
nominees: Auntie Mame (prod. Morton DaCosta); Bell Book and Candle (prod. Julian Blaustein); Gigi (prod. Arthur Freed); Indiscreet (prod. Stanley Donen)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Mon Oncle (prod. Jacques Tati)
nominees: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) (prod. Jean Thuillier); I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (prod. Franco Cristaldi); Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (prod. Satyajit Ray); Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (The Hidden Fortess) (prod. Sanezumi Fujimoto and Akira Kurosawa); Popiól i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) (prod. Zespól Filmowy "Kadr")

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Stewart (Vertigo)
nominees: Tony Curtis (The Defiant Ones); Peter Cushing (Horror of Dracula); Charlton Heston (Touch of Evil and The Big Country); Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula); Paul Newman (The Long, Hot Summer and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof); David Niven (Separate Tables); Sidney Poitier (The Defiant Ones); Vincent Price (The Fly); Frank Sinatra (Some Came Running); Spencer Tracy (The Last Hurrah)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alec Guinness (The Horse's Mouth)
nominees: Cary Grant (Indiscreet and Houseboat); Andy Griffith (No Time For Sergeants); Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Susan Hayward (I Want To Live!)
nominees: Ingrid Bergman (The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness); Rita Hayworth (Separate Tables); Shirley MacLaine (Some Came Running); Jeanne Moreau (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud a.k.a. Elevator to the Gallows); Kim Novak (Vertigo); Jean Simmons (The Big Country); Elizabeth Taylor (Cat On A Hot Tin Roof)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame)
nominees: Ingrid Bergman (Indiscreet); Doris Day (Teacher's Pet); Kim Novak (Bell Book And Candle)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)
nominees: Richard Brooks (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones); Akira Kurosawa (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin a.k.a. The Hidden Fortess); Satyajit Ray (Jalsaghar a.k.a. The Music Room); Andrzej Wajda (Popiól i diament a.k.a. Ashes and Diamonds); Orson Welles (Touch Of Evil); William Wyler (The Big Country)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle)
nominees: Vincente Minnelli (Gigi); Mario Monicelli (I soliti ignoti a.k.a. Big Deal On Madonna Street); Ronald Neame (The Horse's Mouth); Richard Quine (Bell Book and Candle)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Burl Ives (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Big Country)
nominees: Joseph Calleia (Touch of Evil); Ernie Kovacs (Bell Book and Candle); Eli Wallach (The Lineup); Orson Welles (Touch Of Evil)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Hermione Gingold (Gigi and Bell Book and Candle)
nominees: Marlene Dietrich (Touch of Evil); Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo); Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables); Deborah Kerr (Bonjour tristesse); Hope Lange (The Young Lions); Angela Lansbury (The Long, Hot Summer); Tina Louise (God's Little Acre); Lee Remick (The Long, Hot Summer); Gwen Verdon (Damn Yankees!); Kay Walsh (The Horse's Mouth); Cara Williams (The Defiant Ones)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Orson Welles, from the novel Badge Of Evil by Whit Masterson (Touch of Evil)
nominees: Alec Guinness, from the novel by Joyce Cary (The Horse's Mouth); Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Suso Cecchi d’Amico and Mario Monicelli (I soliti ignoti a.k.a. Big Deal On Madonna Street); Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin a.k.a. The Hidden Fortress); Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, from the novel D'entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Vertigo)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Bernard Herrmann (Vertigo) (Score); Robert Burks (Vertigo) (Cinematography); Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad) (Special Effects)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1954)

It's an interesting thing about Hitchcock—where other directors saw light, he saw darkness. And I don't mean in terms of the stories he told, I mean in terms of the actors he chose.

When Americans looked at, say, Ingrid Bergman, they saw virginal purity, but Hitchcock saw a deeply conflicted woman, the one who would eventually run off with Roberto Rossellini. That he liked to tear the wings off Cary Grant and reveal the tortured Cockney kid underneath is a matter of record. Anthony Perkins was the all-American boy prior to Psycho. Why, even in Grace Kelly, an actress so beautiful a better looking one would make you go blind, he saw mostly spoiled petulance.

And while Jimmy Stewart had already revealed a dark side in Capra's It's A Wonderful Life and in all those Anthony Mann westerns, Hitchcock ramped it up in Rear Window to include obsession, misanthropy, voyeurism and impotence, ground they would explore again in Vertigo.

As an artist, I'd say Hitchcock was even a great judge of his own character—after all, Vertigo is largely a self-portrait of his own voyeuristic, controlling, misogynistic impulses—but as a man, he was unable to rein himself in and he eventually drove himself into the bridge abutment that was Tippi Hedren.

But then, I think an artist often see truths that the man himself doesn't.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Rear Window (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: The Caine Mutiny (prod. Stanley Kramer); Creature From The Black Lagoon (prod. William Allard); Dial 'M' For Murder (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); The Far Country (prod. Aaron Rosenberg); Johnny Guitar (prod. Republic Pictures); On The Waterfront (prod. Sam Spiegel); 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (prod. Walt Disney)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: A Star Is Born (prod. Sidney Luft)
nominees: Hobson's Choice (prod. David Lean); Sabrina (prod. Billy Wilder); Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (prod. Jack Cummings)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki)
nominees: Gojira (Godzilla) (prod. Tomoyuki Tanaka); Miyamoto Musashi (Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi) (prod. Kazuo Takimura); Sanshô dayû (Sansho The Bailff) (prod. Masaichi Nagata); Senso (prod. Lux Film); La Strada (prod. Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti); Touchez pas au grisbi (prod. Robert Dorfmann)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Marlon Brando (On The Waterfront)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (The Caine Mutiny and The Barefoot Contessa); Bing Crosby (The Country Girl); Kirk Douglas (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea); Ray Milland (Dial 'M' For Murder); Takashi Shimura (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai); James Stewart (The Far Country and Rear Window)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Mason (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Howard Keel (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers); Gene Kelly (Brigadoon); Charles Laughton (Hobson's Choice); John Mills (Hobson's Choice)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Grace Kelly (Dial 'M' For Murder, Rear Window and The Country Girl)
nominees: Shirley Booth (About Mrs. Leslie); Joan Crawford (Johnny Guitar); Ava Gardner (The Barefoot Contessa); Giulietta Masina (La Strada); Eleanor Parker (The Naked Jungle); Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Judy Garland (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's Choice); Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen Jones); Doris Day (Young At Heart); Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina); Judy Holliday (It Should Happen to You); Jennifer Jones (Beat the Devil); Debbie Reynolds (Susan Slept Here)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Akira Kurosawa (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)
nominees: Edward Dmytryk (The Caine Mutiny); Federico Fellini (La Strada); Alfred Hitchcock (Dial 'M' For Murder and Rear Window); Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront); Kenji Mizoguchi (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff); Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: George Cukor (A Star Is Born)
nominees: Stanley Donen (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers); David Lean (Hobson's Choice); Billy Wilder (Sabrina)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Toshirô Mifune (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)
nominees: Jack Carson (A Star Is Born); Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront); José Ferrer (The Caine Mutiny); Walter Hampden (Sabrina); Fred MacMurray (The Caine Mutiny); Karl Malden (On The Waterfront); Fredric March (Executive Suite); Edmond O'Brien (The Barefoot Contessa); Rod Steiger (On The Waterfront); John Williams (Dial M for Murder and Sabrina)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Eva Marie Saint (On the Waterfront)
nominees: Nina Foch (Executive Suite); Kyoko Kagawa (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff); Mercedes McCambridge (Johnny Guitar); Thelma Ritter (Rear Window); Kinuyo Tanaka (Sanshô dayû a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff)

SCREENPLAY
winner: John Michael Hayes, from the short story by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window)
nominees: Budd Schulberg (screenplay and story), suggested by articles by Malcolm Johnson (On The Waterfront); Billy Wilder, Samuel A. Taylor and Ernest Lehman, from the play "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel A. Taylor (Sabrina); Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni (Shichinin no samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"The Man That Got Away" (A Star Is Born) music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by Ira Gershwin (Song); John Meehan; Emile Kuri (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Loren L. Ryder (Rear Window) (Sound)