The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1937)

Stage Door is a perfect example of what the so-called "chick flick" used to be before they devolved into soulless paeans to crass consumerism—sharp, biting vehicles for great actresses playing characters who dream big and succeed or fail on a large scale, all while shedding men like ducks shed water. Maybe the fantasy in the 1930s, when real-life opportunities for women were limited, was the possibility of taking charge and doing anything. Now when opportunities are approaching something like unlimited, maybe the fantasy is to buy lots of crap and do nothing.

Or maybe it's just that Stage Door had Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers and Eve Arden and Gail Patrick, and Sex and the City had, well, the cast of Sex and the City. But I don't think so.

Anyway, I treated Stage Door—which is as full of funny lines as any movie of the era—as a drama because underneath its snarky wit is an undercurrent of desperation that motivates nearly every character in it, including the one played by Andrea Leeds whose personal tragedy is the engine that drives the plot.

As for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I wouldn't say it's Walt Disney's best animated feature, but it was the first—not just his first but anybody's first—a risk so bold it was known as "Disney's Folly" until it made a sackful of money and changed the future of animation forever. In its field, it was as influential as Citizen Kane—and the songs are just so damn catchy.

And by the way, while we're being chatty, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw Grand Illusion for the first time in a ratty mall three-plex in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is a little like saying you ate Beluga caviar for the first time in a Cracker Barrel off the side of the interstate. We figured it must have been either a mistake or a practical joke, and we were the only two people in the theater, but, boy, what a good movie.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Stage Door (prod. Pandro S. Berman)
nominees: Make Way For Tomorrow (prod. Leo McCarey and Adolph Zukor); The Prisoner Of Zenda (prod. David O. Selznick); A Star Is Born (prod. David O. Selznick); You Only Live Once (prod. Walter Wanger)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: The Awful Truth (prod. Leo McCarey); Easy Living (prod. Arthur Hornblow Jr.); A Day At The Races (prod. Sam Wood); Nothing Sacred (prod. David O. Selznick); Shall We Dance (prod. Pandro S. Berman)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Grand Illusion (prod. Albert Pinkovitch and Frank Rollmer)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Jean Gabin (Pepe Le Moko and Grand Illusion)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Lost Horizon and The Prisoner Of Zenda); Henry Fonda (You Only Live Once); Fredric March (A Star Is Born); Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Cary Grant (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Shall We Dance); Will Hay (Oh, Mr. Porter); Leslie Howard (It's Love I'm After); Fredric March (Nothing Sacred); The Marx Brothers (A Day At The Races)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Shirley Temple (Wee Willie Winkie and Heidi)
nominees: Beulah Bondi (Make Way For Tomorrow); Janet Gaynor (A Star is Born); Katharine Hepburn (Stage Door); Ginger Rogers (Stage Door); Sylvia Sidney (You Only Live Once); Barbara Stanwyck (Stella Dallas)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Arthur (Easy Living)
nominees: Constance Bennett (Topper); Irene Dunne (The Awful Truth); Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred); Ginger Rogers (Shall We Dance)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion)
nominees: Gregory La Cava (Stage Door); Fritz Lang (You Only Live Once); Leo McCarey (Make Way For Tomorrow); William A. Wellman (A Star Is Born)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Sam Wood (A Day At The Races)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Ralph Bellamy (The Awful Truth)
nominees: Edward Arnold (Easy Living); Walter Connolly (Nothing Sacred); Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (The Prisoner Of Zenda); Adolphe Menjou (Stage Door and A Star Is Born); Erich von Stroheim (Grand Illusion); Roland Young (Topper)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Eve Arden (Stage Door)
nominees: Constance Collier (Stage Door); Margaret Dumont (A Day At The Races); Andrea Leeds (Stage Door); Claire Trevor (Dead End); Dame May Whitty (Night Must Fall)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Morris Ryskind and Anthony Veiller, from the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman (Stage Door)
nominees: Preston Sturges, from a story by Vera Caspary (Easy Living); Charles Spaak and Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion); Viña Delmar, from a play by Helen and Nolan Leary, and a novel by Josephine Lawrence (Make Way For Tomorrow); Ben Hecht, from a story by James H. Street (Nothing Sacred)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline and Paul J. Smith (Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs) (Score)

The Mouse Turns 83 Today

Today is the 83rd anniversary of Steamboat Willie, the Walt Disney cartoon that introduced Mickey Mouse to the world. Here's what I previously wrote about it.

In the summer of 1928, around the time Buster Keaton's latest comedy, Steamboat Bill, Jr., hit theaters, a young animator named Walt Disney was looking for a vehicle to launch his struggling studio's latest creation, a cartoon mouse by the name of Mickey. On November 18, 1928, the animated short Steamboat Willie premiered at New York's 79th Street Theater.

The rest, as they say, is history. Mickey Mouse soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the movies' most popular cartoon character, appearing in hundreds of shorts, feature-length films and television shows over the next eighty years, as well as serving as the corporate symbol of the largest media conglomerate in the world. But if Disney had had his way, the famous mouse would have been a rabbit and history's most beloved pants-wearing rodent might never have made it off the drawing board.

Disney had only just launched his own studio when he and his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, created a series of animated cartoons centered around a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The series was a smash hit but unfortunately for Disney, distributor Universal Studios wound up owning the character. Universal hired away most of Disney's animators (all but the loyal Iwerks), wrested control of Oswald from Disney and left his fledgling studio on the verge of bankruptcy.

Desperate for a new franchise to fill the gap, Disney and Iwerks quickly came up with an animated mouse they dubbed Mortimer—soon changed to Mickey at the insistence of Disney's wife, Lillian. After two silent Mickey Mouse shorts, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, failed to find a buyer, Disney produced a short with sound, a loose parody of Keaton's latest film.

Steamboat Willie was an immediate hit and is still considered one of the most important cartoons ever produced. In 1994, a group of one thousand animators chose it as the thirteenth greatest cartoon of all time and four years later, the National Film Registry selected Steamboat Willie for preservation in the Library of Congress.

Walt Disney, by the way, was nominated for fifty-nine Oscars, winning twenty-six of them, including four in one year, all records. Ironically, though, he didn't win for Steamboat Willie, one of the most important works of his career—there simply was no category of "cartoon short" at that time.

We'll correct that oversight now. For creating Mickey Mouse in 1928, I'm giving Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks honorary Katie Awards.

Make a little more room on the mantlepiece, fellas.



Trivia: Maybe you knew this, but I didn't: Walt Disney himself provided the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1946.

A Pola Negri Double Feature: The Eyes Of The Mummy And Carmen

Before Marlene Dietrich, before Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren or even Greta Garbo, Polish film star Pola Negri made the journey from Europe to Hollywood and found fame in America, the first European film actress to succeed on both sides of the Atlantic.

She was born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec in what is now Poland in 1897, fashioning the name "Pola Negri" for herself (after Italian poet Ada Negri) during her confinement to a sanitarium for tuberculosis. After Russian authorities sent Negri's father to Siberia as a revolutionary, Negri and her mother moved to Warsaw where Negri studied ballet and eventually found success on the stage and screen.

During World War I, she moved to Berlin where she caught the attention of Ernst Lubitsch who signed her to a movie contract at Universum Film AG ("UFA"), Germany's best studio and, until the Nazis took power in 1933, one of the most influential in the world. After a half dozen low-budget films with other directors, Lubitsch in 1918 cast Negri as the lead in Die Augen der Mumie Ma—"The Eyes of the Mummy."

We remember Lubitsch now for his witty, sophisticated comedies, but during his early career in Germany, he alternated between broad farces and serious dramas. The former usually starred Ossi Oswalda, the latter, Negri. Despite its lurid title, The Eyes of the Mummy wasn't a horror picture but a tragic romance, the story of a young woman (Negri) rescued from the Egyptian tombs where her captor (Emil Jannings) has held her for years only to find him stalking her anew through the posh capitals of Europe.

The Eyes of the Mummy is a minor entry in the Lubitsch canon, and Negri is still a raw young actress (she was just twenty-one when filming began), but somebody connected with the film—the screenwriters, Lubitsch, Negri—knew something about the psychology of stalking from the point of view of both the stalker and the victim, and Negri is effective as a lusty child-woman slavishly devoted to whichever man possesses her at any given moment.

Better is Lubitsch's next collaboration with Negri, a film version of Prosper Mérimée's novel, Carmen. Adapted to film as early as 1907, the story of a soldier who throws over his family, his fiancee and his honor for a beautiful gypsy smuggler with tragic results has spawned dozens of versions over the years and was familiar enough to audiences that Charlie Chaplin could film a spoof of it, A Burlesque on Carmen, in 1915. Stripped of its Spanish setting, Carmen is essentially a retelling of Eve and the apple, and while I agree with Nero Wolfe's sidekick Archie Goodwin that "[n]o man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables," that doesn't mean this oft-repeated formula doesn't work; indeed, it forms the basis of much of literature, film noir and some of the more brutal aspects of many of the world's cultures.

The key to Carmen is, of course, the actress playing the title role. You have to believe that an honorable man would throw away his good name, a promising career and a faithful fiancee for a romp with a treacherous tramp. Although the print of Carmen has deteriorated beyond repair in places, it's still possible to see what both Don José and movie audiences saw in Pola Negri's Carmen—she's ripe and sensual, with large eyes full of promises she has no intention of keeping.

Better men than Don José have given up a whole lot more for a whole lot less.

"Love is disgusting," Negri herself later opined, "when you no longer possess yourself."

Negri and Lubitsch made a total of eight movies together, each better than the one before it. In addition to The Eyes of the Mummy and Carmen, they made Madame DuBarry (a.k.a Passion) and Rausch (both 1919), Sumurun (a.ka. One Arabian Night) (1920), Die Bergkatze ("The Wildcat") (1921), Die Flamme (1923) and Forbidden Paradise (made in Hollywood in 1924 for Paramount).

Negri's collaboration with Lubitsch made her an international star, and so great was her reputation that the U.S. finally dropped its embargo of German films (instituted during the war) just to satisfy popular curiosity. After the success of Carmen (released in the United States in 1921 as Gypsy Blood), Negri signed with Paramount and arrived in New York in September 1922.

She quickly supplanted Theda Bara as silent film's top sex symbol and while (thanks to the vagaries of film preservation) I can't compare Negri to Bara's most famous role, Cleopatra, if Bara's surviving film A Fool There Was is any indicator, Negri was lightyears beyond her in terms of projecting sexuality on the screen. Was Negri a great actress? I'm not sure. But judging from the reaction of audiences when her European films finally made their way to America, she was revolutionary.

The films with Lubitsch also represented Negri at the top of her popularity. Despite begging her to come to Hollywood, Paramount didn't really know what to do with Negri and as her star faded, she became even more theatrical and haughty, which poisoned her relationship to both the studio and her audience.

When in 1926, the press decided her engagement to the recently deceased Rudolph Valentino was a fabrication, the public was done with her. To her dying day, Negri insisted that the engagement was real and told the Los Angeles Times shortly before her death, "Rudy was the great love of my life. I remember him with great regret. Somehow, the fates changed what wasn't to be. You can't rage with anger against it, and even though you love someone, you like to be with them and want to marry them and hope that it will all work out this time ... but he died, just when we were engaged to be married."

She was also briefly engaged to Charlie Chaplin who jilted her soon after giving her a $15,000 engagement ring. Negri's revenge? She gave the ring to her Forbidden Paradise co-star, Rod La Rocque.

She later married a Georgian prince, Serge Mdivani, who left her for an opera singer after Negri lost her fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. After their divorce, Negri lived with Margaret West, a Texas oil heiress, until the latter's death in 1963.

"No one could believe that we were closest friends, that nothing sexual was involved," she wrote in her autobiography. "Yet it is true. She was as close a friend as I've ever had."

When talkies came in, Negri's thick accent relegated her to supporting roles. Despite a measure of success in such films as A Woman Commands—she had a hit with the song "Paradise"—she retreated to Europe and retired in 1943, making one last picture in 1964, The Moon-Spinners, at Walt Disney's personal behest. Her London press conference promoting the film was a sensation—she showed up with a live cheetah on a chain leash.

Negri died on August 1, 1987, in San Antonio, Texas. She was 90 years old.

Latest Quiz From Sergio Leone And The Infield Fly Rule

Blog about movies long enough and eventually you discover Dennis Cozzalio's fabulous website, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, and his justly-famous film quizzes, which have become something of a semi-annual rite of passage.

As Beveridge D. Spencer so eloquently put it, "You know those dreams you have where you're in school with no pants on and there's a test that you didn't study for because you don't go to school any more, you're a grown up darn it? Well, that dream just came true! Unless you're wearing pants. Or still in school."

Seriously, these are wickedly hard tests.

It's been a while since Dennis posted one, but this month we get Professor Ed Avery's Cortizone-Fueled, Bigger-Than-Life, Super Big Gulp-Sized Summer Movie Quiz.

Here are my answers ...

1) Depending on your mood, your favorite or least-loved movie cliché
Least loved movie-making cliche would be the hand-held, barf-inducing shaky cam, coupled with frenetic editing and poorly-composed, poorly-thought-out action sequences. See, e.g., every summer action movie made in the last ten years.

Least loved story-telling cliche—admittedly more a problem with series television than movies—is where a central character does something that in the real world would land them in jail, the brig or at the very least, the unemployment line, but which the authority figure ultimately excuses because, dammit, the character is so good at their job. In the real world, nobody is that good at their job. See, e.g., MASH, House, Battlestar Galactica.

Favorite movie cliche is no doubt the traditional rom-com story arc ...

2) Regardless of whether or not you eventually caught up with it, which film classic have you lied about seeing in the past?
Maybe because I'm a lawyer, one of my pet peeves is people who insist on lying and then do a lousy job of it, spinning elaborate yarns filled with ridiculous exaggerations or easily-disputed alibis. If you must lie, remember: keep it simple, stick as closely to the facts as you can and then either omit the offending information or feign a misunderstanding of the situation.

In the long run, honesty is definitely the best policy, if only to establish your credibility down the road for the really big lie. As a matter of fact, the best lie of all is the truth. Master that paradox and you can rule the world.

3) Roland Young or Edward Everett Horton?
Love them both, but got to go with Edward Everett Horton, from pre-Code Lubitsch and Astaire-Rogers comedies, all the way to the narration of "Fractured Fairytales" on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

4) Second favorite Frank Tashlin movie
Son of Paleface? Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? One of his Porky Pig cartoons from the 1930s? Truth is, Susan Slept Here is the only Frank Tashlin movie I really like.

5) Clockwork Orange-- yes or no?
I have seen A Clockwork Orange many times ...

6) Best/favorite use of gender dysphoria in a horror film (Ariel Schudson)
Does Norman Bates count? It's a stretch, admittedly. As a general rule, using gender dysphoria as a horror device isn't really my cup o' tea.

7) Melanie Laurent or Blake Lively?
Mélanie Laurent, based on her work in Inglorious Basterds. I confess, I have no idea who Blake Lively is. Does that make me old?

8) Best movie of 2011 (so far…)
Couldn't tell you. The best feature film I saw for the first time in 2011 (so far) is Stella Maris, the 1918 Mary Pickford movie.

9) Favorite screen performer with a noticeable facial deformity (Peg Aloi)
Huh?

10) Lars von Trier: shithead or misunderstood comic savant? (Dean Treadway)
The first one.

11) Timothy Carey or Henry Silva?
Henry Silva for his work as the Korean interpreter in The Manchurian Candidate.

12) Low-profile writer who deserves more attention from critics and /or audiences
The Mythical Monkey

13) Movie most recently viewed theatrically, and on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming
Theatrically? Maybe North By Northwest at the AFI.
DVD/Blu-Ray or streaming? The Heart of Texas Ryan a.k.a. Single Shot Parker, a 1917 western starring Tom Mix.

14) Favorite film noir villain
Jane Greer's Kathy Moffitt from Out of the Past.

15) Best thing about streaming movies?
Cheap, plentiful and immediate. Which is three things ...

16) Fay Spain or France Nuyen? (Peter Nellhaus)
I'm a fan of both countries, but have never heard of either actress.

17) Favorite Kirk Douglas that isn’t called Spartacus (Peter Nellhaus)
Chuck Tatum in Ace in the Hole. But I could name ten Kirk Douglas movies off the top of my head I like better than Spartacus.

18) Favorite movie about cars
Used Cars


19) Audrey Totter or Marie Windsor?
Marie Windsor, one of the greatest noir B-actresses ever.

20) Existing Stephen King movie adaptation that could use an remake/reboot/overhaul
Re-boot this, pal.

21) Low-profile director who deserves more attention from critics and/or audiences
If he's alive and I've heard of him, he can't be all that low profile.

22) What actor that you previously enjoyed has become distracting or a self-parody? (Adam Ross)
Ronald Reagan. If the real Reagan were alive today, Republicans would drum him out of the party as a left-wing RINO. Which tells you everything you need to know about the current state of the Republican Party.

23) Best place in the world to see a movie
Lying on my couch with Katie-Bar-The-Door and our dog.

24) Charles McGraw or Sterling Hayden?
Is this a trick question? Sterling Hayden, of course, protector of our precious bodily fluids.

25) Second favorite Yasujiro Ozu film
I Was Born, But ..., behind only Tokyo Story.

26) Most memorable horror movie father figure
Do they have fathers in horror movies?

27) Name a non-action-oriented movie that would be fun to see in Sensurround (Sal Gomez)
I'm actually old enough to remember Sensurround first hand. The correct answer is: None.

28) Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds?
Ryan Reynolds looked vaguely familiar when I googled him, so Ryan Reynolds.

29) Favorite relatively unknown supporting player, from either or both the classic and the modern era
Eugene Pallette, Edward Arnold, James Gleason, Jack Carson ... the list goes on and on.

30) Real-life movie location you most recently visited or saw
Well, I see Washington, D.C., practically every day.

31) Second favorite Budd Boetticher movie
So far as I can tell, when it came to motion pictures, Budd Boetticher directed pure crap, but he was the assistant director on The More the Merrier, starring Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, so I'll say that. Oh, wait, that would be my favorite Boetticher movie. So, um, one of the episodes of Maverick he directed.

32) Mara Corday or Julie Adams?
Julie Adams, for all her television work.

33) Favorite Universal-International western
Amazing what you can find out with the advanced search function at Imdb.com. Probably Winchester '73.

34) Favorite actress of the silent era
Musidora. This week.

35) Best Eugene Pallette performance (Larry Aydlette)
My Man Godfrey

36) Best/worst remake of the 21st century so far? (Dan Aloi)
Haven't seen a lot of remakes. The Manchurian Candidate, which I saw on cable, wasn't good, though.

37) What could multiplex owners do right now to improve the theatrical viewing experience for moviegoers? What could moviegoers do?
Slash ticket prices and turn off their electronic devices, respectively.

Postscript: Some time between when I cut-and-pasted the questions from Sergio Leone and when I posted my answer, Dennis added a question, which was number 34 on his list: What's the biggest "gimmick" that's drawn you out to see a movie? (Sal Gomez)

Presumably that means ever, because no mere gimmick has drawn me out to the theater in years. But within my lifetime, I would have to say the "dinner-and-a-movie date" concept has drawn me out to more movies than any other gimmick.

A Recap Of The Katie Award Winners For 1932-33 And The Year's Must-See And Recommended Movies

Okay, so we're done with the award year 1932-33. It was the longest "year" in Oscar history, covering the seventeen months running from August 1, 1932 to the end of 1933. Starting with 1934, the Academy and I will both be handing out awards for a single calendar year.

But we'll get to that later.

In the meantime, in case you've forgotten, these are the winners of the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards for 1932-33:

Picture (Drama): King Kong (prod. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
Picture (Comedy/Musical): Duck Soup (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz)
Picture (Foreign Language): Zero For Conduct (prod. Jean Vigo)
Actor (Drama): Paul Muni (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang)
Actor (Comedy/Musical): The Marx Brothers (Horse Feathers and Duck Soup)
Actress (Drama): Greta Garbo (Queen Christina)
Actress (Comedy/Musical): Jean Harlow (Red Dust, Dinner At Eight and Bombshell)
Director (Drama): James Whale (The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man)
Director (Comedy/Musical): Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living)
Supporting Actor: John Barrymore (Dinner At Eight)
Supporting Actress: Margaret Dumont (Duck Soup)
Screenplay: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin (Duck Soup)
Best Song: "The Gold Diggers Song (We're In The Money)" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933)

Special Awards: Busby Berkeley (Career Achievement); Three Little Pigs (prod. Walt Disney) (Short Subject/Animated); Murray Spivak (King Kong) (Sound); Max Steiner (King Kong) (Score); Willis O'Brien, Marcel Delgado and E.B. Gibson (King Kong) (Special Effects); Willis O'Brien, Sydney Saunders and Linwood Dunn (King Kong) (Visual Effects); Carroll Clark and Alfred Herman (King Kong) (Art Direction/Set Decoration); Ted Cheesman (King Kong) (Film Editing); Rudolph Maté (Vampyr) (Cinematography); John Armstrong (The Private Life Of Henry VIII) (Costumes); Jack P. Pierce (The Mummy) (Makeup)

Must-See and Recommended Films: Baby Face; The Bitter Tea Of General Yen; Blonde Venus; Boudu Saved From Drowning; Counsellor At Law; Design For Living; Dinner At Eight; Downstairs; Duck Soup; Fanny; Footlight Parade; 42nd Street; Gold Diggers Of 1933; Horse Feathers; I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang; I'm No Angel; The Invisible Man; Island Of Lost Souls; King Kong; Liebelei; Little Women; Love Me Tonight; The Most Dangerous Game; The Mummy; The Old Dark House; One Way Passage; Peg O' My Heart; The Private Life of Henry VIII; Queen Christina; Red Dust; She Done Him Wrong; Sons Of The Desert; The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse; Three Little Pigs; Trouble In Paradise; Vampyr; Zero For Conduct

Which brings the Early Sound Era to a close. Normally I write a summary about the year's winners, must-see movies, disappointments, etc. But I just spent seven months and eighty thousand words on the topic; I've got nothing left.

Up next: The Silent Oscars.