The 1931 western Cimarron is on a short list of Oscar's most obscure best picture winners, and in a year that included such award-eligible features as Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, breakout gangster dramas starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, and Bela Lugosi's horror classic Dracula, also one of its most undeserving.
But if you like your American history uncomplicated and your movies pleasantly forgettable, Cimarron is not half bad.
The story begins in 1889 with the Oklahoma Land Rush — where 50,000 people lined up at the border and raced to claim the two million acres the U.S. government had opened up for settlement, a perfectly insane way to parcel out land — and ends in 1930 with the descendants of these settlers marinating in oil wealth.
Cimarron stars Richard Dix as a hard-luck rancher turned newspaper publisher, and Irene Dunne as his long-suffering wife. Dix kills an outlaw and flees the territory, leaving his wife to run the paper, winning her fame and social status, and eventually a term in Congress.
Cimarron's audience would have been old enough to remember the events depicted — which were roughly as distant in time to them as Ronald Reagan is to us — and the movie was a critical hit even though it lost money at the box office.
Dunne was nominated for the first of five Oscars (she never won) and she carries the movie. Dix, on the other hand, was on the fast track to oblivion, drinking his way to B-picture has-been status within a couple of years.
Based on Edna Ferber's best-selling novel, Cimarron is more about the myth of the American West than the reality — plucky settlers make good against the odds, and the right people find a fortune in the ground.
That the oil originally belonged to the Osage Nation is largely glossed over except to suggest that the previous owners were grateful that civilized white men had relieved them of the burden of managing all that money.
If you've got six hours to kill, might I suggest watching Cimarron as a double feature with Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon? The story of corporate theft and murder in the Osage Nation after oil is discovered on their land, Flower Moon's locale and time line overlaps with Cimarron's and provides a radically different perspective on the same moment in history.
Sure, after watching the two, you'll suffer a serious case of mental whiplash — what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance" (which I've written about here) — but you're a smart crew, you can take it.
As hard as it is to believe — given that the intervening years would see the premieres of Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, Red River, Shane, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Magnificent Seven, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Wild Bunch and many, many more — Cimarron was the last western to win the Oscar for best picture until Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves sixty years later.
If you ever wonder what motivates otherwise seemingly sane people like me to start handing out alternate Oscars, there's a good part of your answer right there.
Other possibilities included Ruth Chatterton (Dodsworth), Bette Davis (The Petrified Forest), Myrna Loy (After The Thin Man and Libeled Lady), Ginger Rogers (Swing Time) and Sylvia Sidney (Fury and Sabotage).
You can find and vote in previous polls by clicking here.
Why the picture of Lady Gaga in a lobster hat? Aside from the obvious reason (that it's Lady Gaga in a lobster hat), because the Monkey has won another of the coveted Liebster Blog Awards. Liebster being German for "one who loves lobsters."
Natalie of In The Mood explains: "Well, too bad you already got [The Liebster Blog Award]. But I wanted to award you too."
And I'm glad she did. You think when Jack Nicholson won his third Oscar he said, "Oh, I already have two." Heck, no, he said, "Amen and Hallelujah!" Or something to that effect. I like awards.
I won't tell you eleven more things about myself—although if there's something you particularly want to know, feel free to ask (I'll feel free to answer or not as the mood strikes me)—but I will answer the eleven questions Natalie asks on her blog. You should feel free to answer as well:
1. In film do you prefer black&white or color? It depends, actually. I'd never want to see Citizen Kane in color, but I can't imagine Singin' in the Rain in black and white.
2. In photographs do you prefer black&white or color? with some notable exceptions, B&W
3. Your favorite era in music? Each decade is special in its own way and I love them all, I love the Beatles, I love Sinatra, I love the Who and Liz Phair, but I went to college in the '80s so that era is more likely to evoke particular moods and memories.
4. Do you have a tumblr? I confess, I don't even know how to have a tumblr, but I do have a pair of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad dining car tumblers.
5. Your second favorite actress? Can't say I've ranked them in my head. I have a copy of practically everything Jane Greer ever made, but I can't honestly say she's my favorite—she only made two good movies after all. Actresses I'm most likely to stop and watch if they're on: Myrna Loy, Irene Dunne, Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Mary Pickford, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, in roughly that order.
6. Your favorite movie starring your second favorite actress? If it's Irene Dunne, it must be Theodora Goes Wild, with The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife running second and third.
7. Your second favorite actor? If Cary Grant is my favorite, then either Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne or James Stewart is my second favorite. Lately, I'm much more likely to be watching John Wayne, so I'll say the Duke.
8. Your favorite movie starring your second favorite actor?Rio Bravo first, The Quiet Man second, The Searchers third.
9. Favorite foreign film? There are so many good ones, but Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru is probably my favorite. If you ask me tomorrow, I'll tell you something different.
10. Ice cream or French fries? Don't get much of either lately, but I'd have to say ice cream. As much as I like French fries, I can often eat them as mere filler, whereas ice cream is always a treat.
11. If you could see your favorite actress in any movie role [real or imagined] what would it be? Hollywood doesn't really make Irene Dunne movies anymore, i.e., musicals, sophisticated comedies and/or straight romances starring smart girls-next-door in their mid-to-late 30s.
Well, screw it, I'll just go with Irene Dunne and a gaggle of Golden Age actresses in Bridesmaids. I actually saw that one in a theater!
Oh, wait, I just re-read the question and saw that it says favorite actress not second favorite actress—why did I have that in my head? Oh, so that's a different question entirely. What would I like to see Myrna Loy in? How about a crime comedy where she solves the mystery for once?
A look ahead at the Monty's March Madness Favorite Actress Tournament, part of which we'll be hosting here at the Monkey.
Voting begins March 5.
Irene Dunne Birth Name: Irene Marie Dunn Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "Singers and Dancers" #1 Birth Date: December 20, 1898 Birthplace: Louisville, Kentucky Height: 5' 5" Film Debut:Leathernecking (1930) Academy Awards: 5 nominations, 0 wins Katie Awards: Best Actress (Comedy/Musical) (1936) (Show Boat and Theodora Goes Wild) Three More To See:The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, I Remember Mama
versus
Luise Rainer Birth Name: Luise Rainer Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "Singers and Dancers" #8 Birth Date: January 12, 1910 Birthplace: Düsseldorf, Germany Height: 5' 4" Film Debut:Sehnsucht 202 (1932) Academy Awards: 2 wins, Best Actress (1936) (The Great Ziegfeld), Best Actress (1937) (The Good Earth) Three More To See:The Emperor's Candlesticks, The Great Waltz, The Gambler
The winner of this match-up will face the winner of:
Jeanette MacDonald Birth Name: Jeannette Anna McDonald Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "Singers and Dancers" #4 Birth Date: June 18, 1903 Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Height: 5' 4" Film Debut:The Love Parade (1929) Academy Awards: none Katie Awards: Best Actress (Comedy/Musical) (1930-31) (Monte Carlo) Three More To See:One Hour With You, Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow
versus
Mae West Birth Name: Mary Jane West Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "Singers and Dancers" #5 Birth Date: August 17, 1893 Birthplace: Woodhaven, New York Height: 5' 1" Film Debut:Night After Night (1932) Academy Awards: none Three To See:She Done Him Wrong, I'm No Angel, My Little Chickadee
To me, the key component of screwball comedy is frivolous people behaving as if their actions have no consequences—that is to say, as if they'll live forever—which, as God himself would tell you, is always funny. In that sense, William Powell's Godfrey is the opposite of a screwball character. His back is so bent with the weight of his own mortality that he's something of a tragic figure, and while his story features all the attributes of comedy, it reveals something much darker about the human condition—and why for my money this is the best of the classic screwballs.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus asks a central question: if life has no point, then what's the point of living? For an existentialist, his answer is surprisingly upbeat (figure out what you enjoy doing, even if it's just rolling a rock up a hill, and stop worrying so much), but you need not have wondered whether existence is pointless to occasionally ask yourself whether the empty materialism at the heart of the American Dream is a worthwhile purpose, especially if, like Godfrey—and millions of other men in 1936—the American Dream has turned into your personal nightmare.
Godfrey has had plenty of time to ponder this question, and as he's turned it over and over in his mind, he's drifted—down, down, gently down, until he's finally come to rest in a cardboard shack in a garbage dump on the banks of the East River. It's a journey many men took as the Depression sent them reeling to live life on the bum. As the film opens, Godfrey has found no answers to his questions, and logic dictates that he has but one more move to make—to load up his pockets with stones and move permanently into the river itself.
And then into his life comes the Bullock family, a collection of upper class twits who—like the cast of a modern-dress production of The Cherry Orchard—live their lives oblivious to their impending ruin. Through the twisted logic typical of the genre, Godfrey becomes the butler to the Bullocks and in a mere 94 minutes, effortlessly and hilariously butles them—and himself—back into shape.
I guess as the title character in Eugene O'Neill's Lazarus Laughed discovered, once you've been dead, everything thereafter is a bit of a breeze.
I have one quibble with the movie—and it's the sort of quibble they used to burn people at the stake for—and that's Carole Lombard as Irene Bullock, her most famous and beloved role. She's the one character who never learns anything and the ending that puts her together with Godfrey feels to me more like the result of the genre's Rube Goldberg-like plot requirements than any deep connection between their characters.
Still, I always at least try to read a movie on its own terms, and maybe Irene and Godfrey do belong together. Maybe Godfrey loves her, deep down, because it was her nuttiness that breathed life back into the empty sack of his existence. Or maybe their union tells us that true happiness can only be found through a marriage of cool reason and inspired insanity. Or maybe when you look like Carole Lombard, all the other reasons go out the window.
And maybe I just talked myself out of my one quibble with the film.
Even so, I'm not sure—after all, Irene is awfully noisy—but after years on the banks of the East River with nothing to listen to but the sound of dump trucks, passing ships and his own fading heartbeat, maybe noisy is exactly what Godfrey is looking for.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Dodsworth (prod. Samuel Goldwyn) nominees:Camille (prod. Bernard H. Hyman and Irving Thalberg); Flash Gordon (prod. Henry MacRae); Fury (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz); The Petrified Forest (prod. Hal B. Wallis)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:My Man Godfrey (prod. Gregory La Cava) nominees:Libeled Lady (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (prod. Frank Capra); Modern Times (prod. Charles Chaplin); Swing Time (prod. Pandro S. Berman); Theodora Goes Wild (prod. Everett Riskin)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Le crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (prod. André Halley des Fontaines)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Walter Huston (Dodsworth) nominees: Errol Flynn (The Charge Of The Light Brigade); Leslie Howard (The Petrified Forest); Spencer Tracy (Fury)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Fred Astaire (Swing Time) nominees: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times); Gary Cooper (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); William Powell (The Great Ziegfeld, The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, My Man Godfrey, Libeled Lady and After The Thin Man)
ACTRESS (Drama) winner: Greta Garbo (Camille) nominees: Ruth Chatterton (Dodsworth); Bette Davis (The Petrified Forest); Sylvia Sidney (Fury and Sabotage)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Irene Dunne (Show Boat and Theodora Goes Wild) nominees: Jean Arthur (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); Jean Harlow (Libeled Lady); Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey); Myrna Loy (After The Thin Man and Libeled Lady); Ginger Rogers (Swing Time)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner: William Wyler (Dodsworth) nominees: George Cukor (Camille); Fritz Lang (Fury)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times) nominees: Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town); Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey); George Stevens (Swing Time)
SUPPORTING ACTOR winner: Paul Robeson (Show Boat) nominees: Humphrey Bogart (The Petrified Forest); Walter Brennan (Come and Get It); Eugene Pallette (My Man Godfrey); Akim Tamiroff (The General Died at Dawn)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS winner: Gail Patrick (My Man Godfrey) nominees: Mary Astor (Dodsworth); Alice Brady (My Man Godfrey); Helen Morgan (Showboat); Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld)
SCREENPLAY winner: Sidney Howard (Dodsworth) nominees: Charles Chaplin (Modern Times); Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, from a novel by Eric Hatch (My Man Godfrey)
SPECIAL AWARDS Charles Chaplin (Modern Times) (Score); James Basevi, Russell A. Cully, A. Arnold Gillespie, Max Fabian and Loyal Griggs (San Francisco) (Special Effects/Visual Effects)
Postscript:
Has anybody ever owned a song the way Paul Robeson owned "Ol' Man River"? Lots of people have sung it, but I doubt anybody has ever felt it the way Robeson felt "Ol' Man River."
Later in his career, Robeson turned this song of despair into an anthem of defiance, but here he embodies the weariness and desperation central to, first, his character, then the African-American experience in a Jim Crow society, and finally, the human condition itself—because let's face it, you haven't really lived life as most people live it until you've reached a point where you feel the line "I'm tired of living and scared of dying" right down in the queasy pit of your stomach.
Hopefully, if you've ever sojourned in that dark place, you've managed to climb back out again. After all, we'll be dead soon enough, and for a long, long time, so there's no point in getting a head start on it. But rest assured, triumph or fail, or something in between, eventually we all get plowed under just the same.
"Do I look heavyish to you?" asked Cary Grant as the Hudson River valley rushed past the train's window. "I feel heavyish." A Gibson with three pearl onions sat untouched at his manicured fingertips. "I should leave myself a note in the morning: 'Think thin.'"
As a favor to Monty at All Good Things, I had agreed to interview Cary Grant on the Twentieth Century Limited which makes trips between the left and right hemispheres of my brain on a daily basis. History's greatest movie star and I had been sitting in the dining car unmolested by a waiter for twenty minutes and we were both hungry, the difference being that when Cary Grant's stomach growls, it sounds like a murmuring brook on a summer day, while mine sounds like the score of Forbidden Planet.
"Everyone tells me I've had such an interesting life," he said, "but sometimes I think it's been nothing but stomach disturbances and self-concern."
The man born as Archie Leach had seemed oddly unsure of himself ever since we'd met up in New York's Grand Central Terminal shortly before our train's departure. Cary Grant had a cold and for the sixth time in as many minutes, he blew his nose into a monogrammed handkerchief—mine, unfortunately. Grant had left his in a suitcase in his stateroom and hadn't wanted to make the long trek back to get it.
"Pardon me," he said, blowing his nose again, and he snapped at a waiter, "Either hurry up, or get me a snorkel!"
I recognized several faces at the surrounding tables—John Barrymore and Carole Lombard; Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave; and all four of the Three Stooges. Janet Leigh was lighting cigarettes for a heavily-sweating Frank Sinatra, and at a corner table Nick and Nora Charles were working on the six martinis they had lined up between them. On Nora's lap was an over-sized purse with a suspiciously wagging tail (no baggage car for Asta, no sir).
Everyone was polite about pretending not to pay any attention to us, but I could see their eyes shift away whenever I looked up.
"I'm not shy," Grant said, letting their glances roll off his shoulders. "I've been looked at before. Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," he asserted, but then his voice softened and he added with a wry smile, "even I would like to be Cary Grant."
At last a white-coated porter came to the table for our order.
"I recommend the brook trout," Grant said, frowning at the menu card. "It's a bit trouty, but quite good." Then he looked up and shrugged. "Actually, I have no idea whether it's good or not. It's just something Eva Marie Saint said to me once. It didn't make a lick of sense to me, then or now. But she was so beautiful, she could have told me monks taste like monkeys and I would have nodded and said, 'Yes, dear.'" He eyed the Gibson, but still didn't drink. "You know she never makes love on an empty stomach? Which tends to explain why her husband is so fat. No wonder they've been married sixty years. Judas Priest!"
That got us on the subject of leading ladies and at last Grant reached for the untouched drink. "Irene Dunne was the sweetest smelling actress I ever worked with," he said, "with lips that tasted of spiced cider and gingerbread—like kissing Christmas morning right on the teeth. Katharine Hepburn, on the other hand, smelled like old money—sort of dank and musty, but in a way a man could get used to, especially if he grew up as poor as I did." He swallowed the Gibson in one gulp and contemplated the onions at the bottom of the empty glass. "Deborah Kerr never let me get close enough to sniff her, but I imagine she smelled pretty good."
After the waiter brought out our dinners—the trout was indeed "trouty"—Grant continued cataloging the scents of various actresses. Jean Arthur smelled of "elderberries," he said, Myrna Loy of "patchouli," Ann Sheridan of "brown soap and beer."
"Ingrid Bergman had no particular scent," he said, "but she had very sensitive hands and an exceedingly light touch," then added, "She strangled a German general once—just for kicks!"
Grace Kelly's name came up ("a curious combination of Creed Fleurissimo and Philly cheesesteak"), and I mentioned that my late father-in-law had met her while working as a stringer for the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin—he took photographs for the paper because he ran in the same circles with the society editor, owned his own tuxedo and could handle a camera.
Grant nodded and smiled wistfully. "Gracie and I would picnic in the hills around Monaco while we were filming To Catch A Thief," he told me. "Every day at lunch, she would say, 'Leg or a breast, leg or a breast?' and I would let her choose, but still, it bothered me. Finally I said, 'Why all the protein, Graciebird? Why not a vegetable or a nice spring salad once in a while?' That's when she explained she wasn't talking about food." He looked out the window and shook his head. "The years I wasted eating chicken."
Grant stated flatly he was a man who loved women, no matter what the tabloids had reported. "In the spring," he said, "a young man's fancy lightly turns to what he's been thinking about all winter." He wagged a finger at me. "I tell you, women are not the sensitive sex. That's one of the grand delusions of literature. Men are the true romanticists."
He professed to have loved all his wives dearly, even though he divorced four of them. "I still claim I was tight the night I proposed," he said, blowing his nose again. "If they had been gentlemen, they would have forgotten all about it."
Perhaps worried about to whom he might propose next, Grant stayed resolutely sober, nursing a second Gibson through the long summer evening. As the shadows lengthened in the dining car, the other passengers drifted out, singly or in pairs, and but for Nick Charles who was demonstrating the proper rhythm for shaking a cocktail to a yawning porter, we were alone. Grant lighted upon a number of subjects—travel ("You can always drive over to Tulsa for the weekend"), time management ("When a man is wrestling a leopard in the middle of a pond, he's in no position to run"), and even his male co-star in His Girl Friday ("He looked like that fellow in the movies, you know, Ralph Bellamy")—but eventually the conversation wound down and I knew the interview was over. He blew his nose one last time and stood up.
"I'm going to bed soon," he said, as he returned my now irretrievably soiled handkerchief, "and I plan to lock my door. There are mad killers and dangerous assassins on the loose, and I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me. I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed." Then he cocked his head and added, "Say, you wouldn't happen to have an extra pair of pajamas, would you? How about olive oil? I want to be packed in olive oil if I'm to be a sardine."
I said, no, I had neither pajamas nor olive oil, and wondered to myself what the bartender had put in those drinks.
Grant made his way forward to his stateroom and I made my way to the observation car at the rear of the train where I put myself to sleep with a bottle of cheap blended whiskey, which is all a struggling movie blogger can afford, even in his own head. I spotted no famous passengers back there, just a few who hadn't bothered to shower before getting on the train in New York.
I opened a book and daydreamed about Irene Dunne and kisses that tasted like Christmas morning.
We didn't pull into Chicago's LaSalle Street Station until after nine. As I stepped off the train, I bumped into Grant on the platform. I had expected him to be long gone, whisked away in a limo perhaps, and was surprised to see him carrying luggage while dressed in a redcap's uniform.
"You look terrible," he said sympathetically. "Me, I slept like a baby." There was none of yesterday's hesitation in his voice, and his eyes sparkled with the familiar, easy mischief of the dozen best movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. "I see you've noticed the uniform," he said, grinning. "What can I tell you—whenever I come to Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited, I bribe a redcap to strip down to his boxer shorts while I fondle strangers' luggage. Later I'll change clothes in Marshall Field's window then take a Greyhound bus to Highway 41 where I'll blow up a tanker truck with a cropduster."
My face must have revealed more than I intended because he said, "My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can." Then his eyes lit up and he paused to sniff the air. "Rosewater and sandalwood," he said. "Smells like Joan Fontaine!" And with a cheery wave, he was suddenly off, chasing a large woman with a carry-on bag. "Come here, you!"
As he disappeared into the crowd, I reflected that Cary Grant was a very sick man, indeed. But at least he was over his cold.
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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