With the conclusion of Round Three, all four number one seeds have advanced to the semi-finals of the 1950s bracket. As last year's winner of the 1950s bracket, Doris Day gets to choose her opponent, takes one look at Oscar-winners Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, and opts for Deborah Kerr.
Monty, who is the creator and primary host of the Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament, tells me that this is the third time in four years that Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly have squared off against each other, with Ms. Kelly winning the first two—perhaps three's the charm for Ms. Hepburn.
He also tells me that Grace Kelly's win over Lana Turner was her 20th in tourney competition, more than any other actress. And yet the top prize has continued to elude her. Is this the year?
The match-ups (vote below):
Doris Day
Birth Name: Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff
Born: April 3, 1924
Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio
Height: 5' 7"
Film Debut: Romance on the High Seas (1948)
Final Film: The Doris Day Show (1968-1973) (TV series)
Oscars: 1 nominations, 0 wins
Three To See: Love Me or Leave Me; Pillow Talk; Lover Come Back
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Deborah Kerr
Birth Name: Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer
Birth Date: September 30, 1921
Birthplace: Helensburgh, Scotland
Height: 5' 6"
Film Debut: Major Barbara (1941)
Final Film: Hold That Dream (1986) (TV movie)
Academy Awards: 6 nominations, 0 wins
Three To See: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; From Here To Eternity; Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
Audrey Hepburn
Birth Name: Audrey Kathleen Ruston
Birth Date: May 4, 1929
Birthplace: Ixelles, Belgium
Height: 5' 7"
Film Debut: One Wild Oat (1951)
Final Film: Always (1989)
Academy Awards: 5 nominations, 1 win (Roman Holiday)
Three To See: Sabrina; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Charade
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Grace Kelly
Birth Name: Grace Patricia Kelly
Birth Date: November 13, 1929
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Height: 5' 6½"
Film Debut: Believe It Or Not (1950) (TV series)
Final Film: High Society
Academy Awards: 2 nominations, 1 win (The Country Girl)
Three To See: Rear Window; To Catch A Thief; High Society
Voting continues until Friday evening.
As always, follow the links to vote in the other brackets:
Learned something interesting today. What do you get when you combine the forehead of Myrna Loy ... the eyes of Bette Davis ... the nose of Grace Kelly ... and the mouth of Julie Andrews?
The Phantom of the Opera. Oh, well, we do our best ...
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)
One of my favorite fellow bloggers, Rachel at The Girl with the White Parasol, has come up with a New Years "meme"—12 questions, including a New Years resolution. Since I'm back in town after a long Christmas trip, perhaps this will help me edge back into the blogging habit.
1. What is your all-time favorite Grace Kelly costume? Whatever she was wearing as she makes her first appearance in Rear Window. Red lips, wetly parted, mostly. Humina. 2. What classic film would you nominate for a remake? To me there are two kinds of movies that should be remade: one with a good idea not fully realized (i.e., the first two versions of The Maltese Falcon before John Huston and Humphrey Bogart got hold of it and finally did it right), or a hardy perennial every generation should leave its stamp on—Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare.
Perchance that will suggest something to you. 3. Name your favorite femme fatale. That's easy, Jane Greer, the only femme fatale in movie history I'd let shoot me. 4. Name the best movie with the word "heaven" in its title. Best? Can't say. Favorite? Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, which I wrote about here. 5. Describe the worst performance by a child actor that you’ve ever seen (since Laura gave me the idea). Whoever the kids were in the Cary Grant-Sophia Loren comedy Houseboat. Utterly charmless, throughly annoying. And I like kids. 6. Who gets your vote for most tragic movie monster? Frankenstein's monster, who I wrote about here. 7. What is the one Western that you would recommend to anybody? Rio Bravo, I think. If you don't like Westerns and you see this one and don't like it either, you can safely skip all the rest. Right, Stumpy? 8. Who is your ideal movie-viewing partner? Why, Katie-Bar-The-Door, of course. But let's face it—she's my favorite everything partner. 9. Has a film ever made you want to change your life? If so, what was the film? There are definitely films that have changed my life, which isn't quite the same as saying they made me want to change my life. Here is the story of one of them. 10. Think of one performer that you truly love. Now think of one scene/movie/performance of theirs that is too uncomfortable for you to watch. Every great star makes at least one true stinker—Cary Grant in The Pride and the Passion, for example—and lots of them hung on long after they should have hung it up (think of Joan Crawford in Trog).
But uncomfortable?
I'm sure I'm forgetting something obvious. Katie-Bar-The-Door will read this and immediately chime in with "What about ...?" When she does, I'll post an addendum. 11. On the flip side, think of one really good scene/performance/movie from a performer that you truly loathe. Well, I was never particularly a fan of Norma Shearer, but I wound up giving her a Katie-Bar-The-Door award for the comedy Private Lives. Because, frankly, she deserved it. 12. And finally, since it will be New Year's soon, do you have any movie or blogging-related resolutions for 2012? To keep my eyes on the prize, i.e., finishing the "Silent Oscars" series.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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