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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)
I was chatting this last weekend with Thingy over at Pondering Life—she says she's hit a bit of a dry spell recently, blog-wise (not so's you'd notice, but I'll take her word for it), and she got to wondering what other bloggers do, whether they bank up a supply of future posts to dip into or just ride out the storm.
Me, I type up notes on movies as I think of them, but I never polish anything in advance, which is why I tend to break those long essays into six parts—otherwise, I'd wind up posting once a month. The problem for me is I have some 50,000 words worth of notes (more than a hundred typed pages) that I'm unlikely ever to get to, fragments about Hitchcock, Capra, Cary Grant, etc.
So Thingy suggested that once a week I post one of these random, unpolished fragments. Okay, I will. We'll call it "That's Typing Tuesday," from Truman Capote's famous quote—"That's not writing, that's typing"—about the novel On The Road. Which may not have been a fair reading of Jack Kerouac but is certainly a fair description of what I'll be offering up—not only future movie posts, but poems, fiction, grocery lists, what have you.
I tend to think in phrases and ellipses, which I later fill in with something we like to call grammar. Grammar will not be much in evidence here on Tuesdays. Neither will tact, which I insert along with the grammar. These are unedited thoughts transferred directly from my frontal lobes to my word processor and now to my blog. Don't choke on it.
To give you a taste of what's to come, here are the four fragments I shared with Thingy on her blog:
Cary Grant (North By Northwest)
ad man ... expedient lie—thinks it's amusing ... floats above life, untouched by it ... "rot" ... Roger O. Thornhill— "O" for "nothing" ... the CIA (or is it the FBI? "We're all part of the same alphabet soup.") teaches him the hard way the real consequences of the "expedient" lie ... and thus underneath all the movement and brilliant action sequences is the story of a man discovering he actually gives a damn ...
The Apartment
... I've read some complaints that the happy ending is contrived and tacked on, to which I say if you want to see a man sell his soul for a career in mid-level management, don't bother buying a theater ticket, just go to the office on Monday. There are millions of those guys walking around, and some of them are selling their souls for a whole lot less than a corner office with three windows. Movies—the ones we remember beyond a single award season—get made about the one in a million guy, whoever he is, and that's as it should be.
Psycho And The Problem Of Endings
I think Hitchcock was reacting to the critical and commercial drubbing Vertigo took ... "You want me to spell it out for you?" he seems to be saying, "I'll spell it out until you're begging me to stop" ... and he just keeps going and going, belaboring the issue long past the point where we care, and then he goes some more, just so Alfred Hitchcock can give his audience the finger.
It's the one significant flaw in an otherwise perfect movie ...
Psycho
Norman has mother issues. Well, don't we all. At least he can keep his in the fruit cellar.
In the future, you'll get one fragment. One fragment only, Vasili.
Next Tuesday: The Sound of Music
Postscript: I finished the final part of my essay about the films of 1915 last night, but too late to post it. I guess I could have posted it this morning, but you can't very well start a series called "That's Typing Tuesday" on Wednesday. So the 1915 essay gets pushed back, to either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
The results are in on the latest, inelegantly-worded Monkey poll: "Of the four biggest Oscar snubs in history as chosen by EW.com, which overlooked performance most deserved a nomination?"
22 of you agreed that of these choices, Anthony Perkins's performance in Psycho was the most deserving of a nomination—after all, it's probably the best in a horror film ever, one that influenced everything that came after it and still resonates with viewers.
15 went with EW.com's choice of Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's classic Vertigo, 11 with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and 9 with Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story. I suspect many of us agree that Grant deserved an Oscar at some point in his career, but that maybe there were better choices—The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and Notorious, for example.
Let's face it, more often than not, the Academy blows it come Oscar time. But that's why we have the Monkey and his Katie-Bar-The-Door awards, to correct these mistakes, and make new ones in the process.
Postscript: Don't forget to vote in the March Madness best actress tournament over at All Good Things. Today is the final of the 1940 bracket, with Ingrid Bergman squaring off against Vivien Leigh. And tomorrow, it's the 1950s bracket, featuring stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly.
Lots of housekeeping to do today, blog-wise, so let's get to it:
1) The semi-final matches of the Silent Era/1930s bracket in All Good Things' best actress March Madness tournament is underway. Match-ups are number six seed Claudette Colbert versus ten seed Irene Dunne and four seed Carole Lombard versus nine seed Myrna Loy. Remember, democracy only works if you vote—and rarely even then—so click on over and do your part.
2) As for my own trivial pursuits, during Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days of Oscar marathon I passed along questions about Oscar history from TCM's monthly Now Playing magazine, 66 questions in all. No surprise, MovieNut14 answered the most questions correctly and wins the first annual Movie Nut Trivia Award, which consists of nothing more than worldwide recognition and a pat on the back. MovieNut14 is a self-described "Female teen living in upstate New York who's obsessed with movies and books." She also writes the blog Defiant Success. Check it out.
The final totals, quiz-wise:
MovieNut14—28
Erik Beck—9
Zoe—8
The Mythical Monkey himself—6
Beelzabub—3
Katie-Bar-The-Door—3
Dave—2
Jason Marshall—2
WhistlingGypsy—2
Ginger Ingenue—1
Mister Muleboy—1
Uncle Tom—1
Not to mention, the questions generated lots of comments, even from those who weren't answering the trivia, which is always fun. Thanks to everyone who participated—and, for that matter, to all those who didn't.
3) The results are in from the latest Monkey poll, "Of the top five songs in movie history, as chosen in 2004 by the American Film Institute, which is your favorite?" The results very nearly mirrored the AFI's list: "Over The Rainbow" (The Wizard Of Oz) was your favorite with 26 votes. "As Time Goes By" (Casablanca), which jumped out to an early 6-0 lead, wound up second with 16 votes. "Singin' In The Rain" (Singin' In The Rain), which was third on the AFI list, finished fourth here with 5 votes. "Moon River" (Breakfast At Tiffany's) tallied 6 votes and "White Christmas" (Holiday Inn) scored but a single vote.
You can listen to all five songs again here.
In case you're interested, Barack Obama, president of these here United States of America, mentioned earlier in the week that his favorite song from a movie is "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca. So said the Washington Post. Perhaps he's a secret reader of the Mythical Monkey. If so, welcome, Mr. President! It's a big tent we pitch here and whatever brings you to the party, here's hoping you stick around.
4) And how about a new poll? Of the four biggest Oscar snubs in history as chosen by EW.com, which overlooked performance most deserved a nomination?
Your choices are:
James Stewart (Vertigo)
Anthony Perkins (Psycho)
Cary Grant (The Philadelphia Story)
Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
As usual, cast your vote in the poll at the right hand side of the page.
Have fun.
Norman has mother issues. Well, don't we all. At least he can keep his in the fruit cellar.
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