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August 1, 1930-to-July 31, 1931, was one of those movie years where the list of the Academy's nominees and winners would give you a completely distorted idea of what was actually going on in movie history.
1931 was a pivotal year. James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Clark Gable all went from bit players to stars within the space of twelve months and in so doing, they gave the cinema a distinctly American feel for the first time. Instead of actors aping polished stage performers with British or faux-British accents, audiences heard the inflections and rhythms of urban wise guys like Cagney and Gable, or in the case of Robinson — who was born in Romania and raised in New York's Lower East Side — the voice of the American immigrant experience.
Gangster pictures starring Cagney and Robinson — The Public Enemy and Little Caesar, respectively — proved to be big, if controversial, hits with both critics and audiences. Censors were not so thrilled, however, contending that the films (and Howard Hawks's Scarface the following year) glamorized crime.
Hollywood, as usual, proved to be of two minds on the subject, happy to bank the money that was rolling in while paying lip service at Oscar time to the notion that gangster pictures were bad for us.
It was the same story with Universal's cycle of great horror pictures, which began in 1931 with Dracula, and continued in November of that year (too late for an Oscar nomination) with Frankenstein. Their stars, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, would dominate the genre and box office for years to come without either ever receiving any recognition from the Academy.
There was also the groundbreaking western The Big Trail, starring an impossibly young John Wayne and featuring the first widescreen movie in history.
And, of course, Groucho Marx gave us what was perhaps the most famous monologue of his career, confessing to audiences, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."
If, however, you look at the list of winners and nominees from the Academy Award ceremony held on November 10, 1931, you won't see any of these films or performers:
Picture: Cimarron
Actor: Lionel Barrymore (A Free Soul)
Actress: Marie Dressler (Min and Bill)
Director: Norman Taurog (Skippy)
Admittedly, although the Academy failed to recognize the revolution in their midst, Cimarron makes sense in the context of the times — it was based on a best-selling novel, critics loved it, and helped sell the notion that movies were high art. Not to mention the opening sequence is spectacular.
As for Marie Dressler and Lionel Barrymore, they were big stars and turned in good performances in solid films.
The only truly inexplicable award went to Norman Taurog for his direction of the comedy Skippy.
Skippy is pleasant enough, with a fine performance from child star Jackie Cooper, but in terms of what went on in the director's chair, it isn't much unless you count Taurog's threat to shoot Cooper's dog if the kid didn't cry on cue (he cried buckets and earned an Oscar nomination).
Nothing compared to the accomplishments of Charlie Chaplin and René Clair, who were eligible for the award, or Josef von Sternberg and Lewis Milestone, who were actually nominated.
Not to mention Taurog might be the worst director to ever win the award — aside from nabbing the Oscar itself, Taurog is mostly remembered now for directing nine Elvis Presley movies (and not the good ones either).
Well, okay, he directed Boys Town, I'll give him that. But that hardly makes up for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.
Anyway, these are my picks:
1930-31
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Public Enemy (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck)
nominees: The Big Trail (prod. Winfield R. Sheehan); The Dawn Patrol (prod. Robert North); Dracula (prod. Tod Browning and Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Morocco (prod. Hector Turnbull)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: City Lights (prod. Charles Chaplin)
nominees: Animal Crackers (prod. Adolph Zukor); Bimbo's Initiation (prod. Max Fleischer); The Front Page (prod. Lewis Milestone); Min And Bill (prod. George W. Hill)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: M (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
nominees: L'Âge d'Or (prod. Le Vicomte de Noailles); Le Million (prod. Frank Clifford); Prix de Beauté (prod. Romain Pinès); The Threepenny Opera (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar)
nominees: James Cagney (The Public Enemy); Gary Cooper (Morocco); Walter Huston (The Criminal Code); Bela Lugosi (Dracula)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Marx Brothers (Animal Crackers)
nominees: Eddie Cantor (Whoopee!); Charles Chaplin (City Lights); Jackie Cooper (Skippy); René Lefèvre (Le Million)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Marlene Dietrich (Morocco)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Dance, Fools, Dance); Irene Dunne (Cimarron); Norma Shearer (A Free Soul); Barbara Stanwyck (Night Nurse)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marie Dressler (Min And Bill)
nominees: Virginia Cherrill (City Lights); Ina Claire (The Royal Family Of Broadway); Lya Lys (L'Âge d'Or); Jeanette MacDonald (Monte Carlo)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Fritz Lang (M)
nominees: Tod Browning (Dracula); Howard Hawks (The Dawn Patrol and The Criminal Code); Josef von Sternberg (Morocco); Raoul Walsh (The Big Trail); William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
nominees: Luis Buñuel (L'Âge d'Or); René Clair (Le Million); Lewis Milestone (The Front Page); G.W. Pabst (The Threepenny Opera)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Peter Lorre (M)
nominees: Dwight Frye (Dracula); Clark Gable (A Free Soul); Fredric March (The Barkleys of Broadway)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Harry Myers (City Lights)
nominees: Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Joan Blondell (Sinners' Holiday, Other Men's Women and Night Nurse)
nominees: Sylvia Sidney (An American Tragedy)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Lotte Lenya (The Threepenny Opera)
nominees: Mae Clarke (The Front Page); Margaret Dumont (Animal Crackers); Marjorie Rambeau (Min And Bill)
SCREENPLAY
winner: René Clair; from a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemaud (Le Million)
nominees: Morrie Ryskind; from a play by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Burt Kalmar and Harry Ruby (Animal Crackers); Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
SPECIAL AWARDS
René Clair (Le Million) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Makin' Whoopee" (Whoopee!) (Best Song); Fritz Arno Wagner (M) (Cinematography)
But for a couple of years in 1930 and 1931, Mae Clarke was on a real roll. In fact, no actress in 1931 appeared in more must-see movies than Mae Clarke.
In addition to her acquaintance with Cagney's breakfast in The Public Enemy, she also played (1) Molly Malloy, a hooker with a heart of gold who befriends a death row inmate in the comedy The Front Page (later re-made as His Girl Friday); (2) the mad scientist's much put-upon fiancee in Frankenstein; and in one of the few lead roles of her career, an American chorus girl-turned-prostitute in the first and best version of the tragic romance Waterloo Bridge.
In that last one, Clarke meets a naive soldier boy on the London bridge where she plies her trade. This being wartime, he falls in love quickly and asks her to marry him.
For a prostitute, she has enough integrity not to jump at the offer, but she likes the boy enough to go with him to his family's country estate. There, she confesses all to the boy's mother.
If you've ever read the novel Camille by Alexandre Dumas fils, you'll have a pretty good idea where this is going. Hollywood, for all its posturing, has always had some pretty reactionary ideas about love, marriage and the moneyed classes.
Directed by James Whale — mostly known now for the early Universal horror movies — Waterloo Bridge clocks in at a brisk 81 minutes and Clarke is compelling enough to sweep you along with what is, to be honest, a load of romantic hokum. But I like romantic hokum and I like Mae Clarke, so I can unreservedly recommend Waterloo Bridge.
An undercurrent of melancholy runs below the surface of Clarke's performance so that even her happiest moments foreshadow her doom.
Clarke later chalked up her onscreen soulfullness to offscreen self-doubt that at times threatened to consume her.
Based on a play by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert E. Sherwood, there is no villain in this piece other than cold, hard reality. It's the sort of movie that critics of the day dismissed as a "woman's picture" — and dismiss now as a "chick flick" — and if you're tempted to give this one a miss because it features tears and romance, well, you're a dope.
Like Katie-Bar-The-Door, Clarke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Unlike Katie, she started her career as a dancer, signed a contract with Universal Studios.
After the triumph of 1931, though, Clarke was in an automobile accident that broke her jaw and scarred her face — and just that quickly, her time as a star was over.
She was in and out of a sanitarium over the next couple of years and Universal canceled her contract.
After that, Clarke was reduced to playing supporting roles in movies, often trading on her infamy with the grapefruit to get work. She eventually moved on to television, appearing on the likes of Dragnet and Perry Mason.
She worked steadily until her retirement in 1970.
Clarke died of cancer in 1992 at the age of eighty-one.
By the way, her ex-husband Lewis Brice (Fanny's brother) enjoyed the grapefruit scene so much, he would frequently buy a ticket for the Times Square theater where The Public Enemy played twenty-four hours a day, ducking in just long enough to see his ex-wife get smacked with a grapefruit.
Boy, you have to wonder what that marriage was like.
Back in January, I posted a list of my favorite performances by an actress in the 1960s, and a couple of weeks ago, Mary Field challenged me to come up with a similar list of actors. Ms. Field has posted her own list of the top ten greatest acting performances here. Nothing so ambitious for me — I can barely narrow down the top ten performances of any given year — but here is a short chronological list of my personal faves from between 1960 and 1969.
Jack Lemmon (The Apartment) — his finest non-drag performance, maybe his finest, period. And in one of my all-time favorite movies, too.
"Mrs. MacDougall, I think it is only fair to warn you that you are now alone with a notorious sexpot."
James Cagney (One, Two, Three) — not one of Billy Wilder's better-known comedies, but Cagney's performance is finger-snapping good and Katie-Bar-The-Door quotes him every time we go to a baseball game.
"You know what the first thing is I'm going to do? I'm going to lead the workers down there in revolt!
"Put your pants on, Spartacus!"
Tony Randall (Lover Come Back) — My favorite Tony Randall performance, here playing a millionaire CEO living in the shadow of his late father.
"You don't realize how completely he dominated me ever since I was a little boy. Just once I spoke back to him. He cut a switch from a tree and gave me such a whipping, in front of this girl. It was a shattering experience."
"Pete, all kids get whippings."
"But I was twenty five! The girl was my fiancée!"
Robert Preston (The Music Man) — True story: in law school, my pals and I learned all the words to "Marian the Librarian" and sang it to a girl. Named Marian. Who was an undergraduate librarian. Sometimes life just serves it up to you on a platter.
"Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays."
Steve McQueen (The Great Escape) — technically, my favorite performance here is by Steve McQueen's motorcycle, but he's the one riding it, so ...
"Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
"Yeah, about 99 percent."
The entire cast of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb — you know, a friend once confessed she watched this movie and didn't understand why it was supposed to be a comedy. We're not friends anymore.
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."
The Beatles (A Hard Day's Night) — if you have to ask, I can't tell you.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, yeah. The lads frequently sit around the telly and watch her for a giggle. One time, we actually sat down and wrote these letters saying how gear she was and all that rubbish."
"She's a trendsetter. It's her profession."
"She's a drag. A well known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things."
Michael Dunn (TV's The Wild, Wild West) — maybe the greatest television villain ever. My favorite, anyway.
"I thought you were dead."
"Oh, no, Mr. West! I'm afraid I shall never die. Death is too ordinary. The humiliation would kill me."
Charlie Brown (TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas) — reaching deep for pathos, comedy and blistering insight into the emptiness of our consumer-driven culture, this round-headed kid really brought it.
"How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia."
"Well, sort of, but I'm not sure."
Paul Newman (Harper) — I like Paul Newman. I like his movies, I like his pizza, I like his salad dressing. I like everything there is to like about Paul Newman. Except Paul Newman. How do you account for that? I kid. But I do like Paul Newman.
"What do you do this kind of crummy work for, anyway?"
"What, are you trying to be funny? I do it because I believe in the United Nations and Southeast Asia, and — you think it's funny if your life depends on what goes through the Panama Canal? What about the English pound? I'll tell you something — as long as there's a Siberia, you'll find Lew Harper on the job."
"Are you putting me on?"
"Jeez, I don't think so. "
Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen) — Katie-Bar-The-Door once gave me this movie as a Valentine's Day present. No wonder I love her!
"I owe you an apology, colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight-lipped officer. But you're really quite emotional, aren't you?"
Zero Mostel (The Producers) — probably one of the three most quoted movies when my pals Muleboy and Bellotoot get together.
"Oh my God!"
"You mean 'oops,' don't you? Just say 'oops' and get out! "
Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) — saw this in the theater as a kid in 1968, and I say, while a lot of computers turned in fine work in the 1960s, particularly the Robot on Lost in Space, the Hal 9000 topped them all.
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid."
By 1942, war had been raging in Europe for more than two years, and in Asia for more than ten, but you'd never know it from the movies of the era. As far as Hollywood was concerned, the war started when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and not one minute before. Not that Hollywood's myopia was anything unique—their indifference was very much in step with the rest of America's.
Once they discovered the war, though, they discovered it with a vengeance.
Hollywood's war fell into three overlapping phases—the rally-the-troops phase as the country's leaders coaxed Americans from their deeply-ingrained isolationism; the middle phase when films began to examine exactly what we were fighting for; and the final phase, when Hollywood was already anticipating the shape of the post-war world.
Casablanca, the classic romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was very much part of the first phase, which is why I have included it here, rather than in 1943 where I usually think of it belonging (it did, after all, win the Oscar for best picture that year). But in fact, Casablanca actually premiered in November 1942, and more to the point it is the story of one man's journey from personal isolationism to fully-committed patriotism—the essence of a first phase film. As such, it belongs with such titles as Mrs. Miniver, To Be Or Not To Be and Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Still, seeing it here makes my head spin a bit.
For those of you playing along at home, Casablanca would have swept the same Katie awards whether I had placed it in 1942 or 1943. But in case you're wondering, if I had put it in 1943, the winners in 1942 would have been Cat People (picture/drama), Alan Ladd (actor/drama), Greer Garson (actress/drama), Orson Welles (director/drama), Van Heflin (supporting actor) and To Be Or Not To Be (screenplay).
The other awards would, of course, have stayed the same.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Casablanca (prod. Hal B. Wallis)
nominees: Cat People (prod. Val Lewton); In Which We Serve (prod. Noel Coward); The Magnificent Ambersons (prod. Orson Welles); Now, Voyager (prod. Hal B. Wallis); Random Harvest (prod. Sidney Franklin)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: To Be Or Not To Be (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
nominees: Bambi (prod. Walt Disney); The Palm Beach Story (prod. Buddy G. DeSylva and Paul Jones); Woman of the Year (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Yankee Doodle Dandy (prod. Hal B. Wallis and Jack B. Warner)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Aniki Bóbó (prod. António Lopes Ribeiro); L’Assassin Habite… au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (prod. Alfred Greven)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Random Harvest); Gary Cooper (The Pride Of The Yankees); Joseph Cotten (The Magnificent Ambersons); Alan Ladd (This Gun For Hire and The Glass Key)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy)
nominees: Jack Benny (To Be Or Not To Be); Joel McCrea (The Palm Beach Story); Spencer Tracy (Woman Of The Year); Monty Woolley (The Man Who Came To Dinner)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
nominees: Bette Davis (Now, Voyager); Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest); Simone Simon (Cat People)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Carole Lombard (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The Talk of the Town); Claudette Colbert (The Palm Beach Story); Katharine Hepburn (Woman Of The Year); Veronica Lake (I Married A Witch); Ginger Rogers (The Major And The Minor)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Michael Curtiz (Casablanca)
nominees: Mervyn LeRoy (Random Harvest); Irving Rapper (Now, Voyager); Jacques Tourneur (Cat People); Orson Welles (The Magnificent Ambersons); William Wyler (Mrs. Miniver)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernst Lubitsch (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Michael Curtiz (Yankee Doodle Dandy); George Stevens (Woman of the Year and The Talk of the Town); Preston Sturges (The Palm Beach Story); Billy Wilder (The Major and the Minor)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Claude Rains (Casablanca)
nominees: Van Heflin (Johnny Eager); Walter Huston (Yankee Doodle Dandy); Ronald Reagan (Kings Row); Sig Ruman (To Be Or Not To Be); S.Z. Sakall (Casablanca); Henry Travers (Mrs. Miniver); Dooley Wilson (Casablanca); Conrad Veidt (Casablanca)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons)
nominees: Mary Astor (The Palm Beach Story); Gladys Cooper (Now, Voyager); Susan Peters (Random Harvest); Mary Wickes (The Man Who Came To Dinner)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the play "Everybody Comes To Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison (Casablanca)
nominees: Noel Coward (In Which We Serve); Orson Welles, from the novel by Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons); Edwin Justus Mayer, story by Melchior Lengyel (To Be Or Not To Be)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People) (Cinematography); Albert S. D'Agostino; Al Fields and Darrell Silvera (The Magnificent Ambersons) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)
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