The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1951)

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that American lives have no second act, but Alec Guinness, being British, had three—first, as a comedic actor, then as a dramatic one, then as Obi Wan Kenobi.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The African Queen (prod. Sam Spiegel)
nominees: Ace In The Hole (prod. Billy Wilder); The Day The Earth Stood Still (prod. Julian Blaustein); Detective Story (prod. William Wyler); A Place In The Sun (prod. George Stevens); The River (prod. Jean Renoir and Kenneth McEldowney); Scrooge (prod. Brian Desmond Hurst); Strangers on a Train (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); A Streetcar Named Desire (prod. Charles K. Feldman); The Thing From Another World (prod. Howard Hawks)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Lavender Hill Mob (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Alice In Wonderland (prod. Walt Disney); An American In Paris (prod. Arthur Freed); The Man In The White Suit (prod. Michael Balcon)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary Of A Country Priest) (prod. Union Générale Cinématographique)
nominees: Bakushû (Early Summer) (prod. Takeshi Yamamoto)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (The African Queen); Montgomery Clift (A Place In The Sun); Kirk Douglas (Ace In The Hole and Detective Story); Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still); Alastair Sim (Scrooge)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alec Guinness (The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man In The White Suit)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Royal Wedding); Cary Grant (People Will Talk); Gene Kelly (An American In Paris); Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (That's My Boy)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Vivien Leigh (A Streetcar Named Desire)
nominees: Anita Björk (Fröken Julie a.k.a. Miss Julie); Katharine Hepburn (The African Queen); Patricia Neal (The Day The Earth Stood Still); Eleanor Parker (Detective Story); Jan Sterling (Ace In The Hole)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Joan Greenwood (The Man in the White Suit)
nominees: Jeanne Crain (People Will Talk); Kathryn Grayson (Show Boat); Jane Powell (Royal Wedding)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire)
nominees: Robert Bresson (Journal d'un curé de campagne a.k.a. Diary Of A Country Priest); Alfred Hitchcock (Strangers on a Train); John Huston (The African Queen); George Stevens (A Place in The Sun); Billy Wilder (Ace In The Hole); Robert Wise (The Day The Earth Stood Still)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob)
nominees: Alexander Mackendrick (The Man In The White Suit); Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Robert Walker (Strangers on a Train)
nominees: Porter Hall (Ace In The Hole); Oscar Levant (An American In Paris); Karl Malden (A Streetcar Named Desire); Vincent Price (His Kind of Woman); Peter Ustinov (Quo Vadis)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Kim Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire)
nominees: Lee Grant (Detective Story); Thelma Ritter (The Mating Season); Elizabeth Taylor (A Place In The Sun); Shelley Winters (A Place In The Sun)

SCREENPLAY
winner: James Agee and John Huston, from the novel by C.S. Forester (The African Queen)
nominees: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman (Ace In The Hole); Edmund H. North, from the story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates (The Day The Earth Stood Still); T.E.B. Clarke (The Lavender Hill Mob); Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde, adaptation by Whitfield Cook, from the novel by Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train); Tennessee Williams, adaptation by Oscar Saul, from the play by Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire); Charles Lederer, from the short story "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell, Jr. (The Thing From Another World)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Russell Harlan (The Thing From Another World) (Cinematography); Phil Brigandi and Clem Portman (The Thing From Another World) (Sound); Bernard Herrmann (The Day The Earth Stood Still) (Score)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1948)

A long, long time ago, I promised myself that if anyone ever came up to me and said, "Can you stake a fellow American to a meal," I'd give him twenty bucks. But no one ever has, and anyway, $20 doesn't go nearly as far as it used to.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (prod. Henry Blanke)
nominees: The Fallen Idol (prod. Carol Reed); Force Of Evil (prod. Bob Roberts); Fort Apache (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); Key Largo (prod. Jerry Wald); The Lady From Shanghai (prod. Orson Welles); Letter From An Unknown Woman (prod. John Houseman); The Naked City (prod. Mark Hellinger); Red River (prod. Howard Hawks)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Red Shoes (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
nominees: Easter Parade (prod. Arthur Freed); A Foreign Affair (prod. Charles Brackett); Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (prod. Melvin Frank and Norman Panama); Unfaithfully Yours (prod. Preston Sturges)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Vittorio De Sica)
nominees: Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero) (prod. Roberto Rossellini and Salvo D'Angelo); La terra trema (The Earth Trembles) (prod. Salvo D'Angelo); Xiao cheng zhi chun (Spring in a Small Town) (prod. Wenhua Film Company); Yoidore tenshi (Drunken Angel) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Montgomery Clift (The Search and Red River); John Garfield (Force of Evil); Alec Guinness (Oliver Twist); Laurence Olivier (Hamlet); Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo); Takashi Shimura (Yoidore tenshi a.k.a. Drunken Angel); James Stewart (Call Northside 777); John Wayne (Red River)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rex Harrison (Unfaithfully Yours)
nominees: Fred Astaire (Easter Parade); Cary Grant (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Bob Hope (The Paleface); Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes); Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)
nominees: Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama); Joan Fontaine (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Rita Hayworth (The Lady From Shanghai); Jennifer Jones (Portrait Of Jennie); Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number); Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marlene Dietrich (A Foreign Affair)
nominees: Linda Darnell (Unfaithfully Yours); Judy Garland (Easter Parade); Myrna Loy (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Moira Shearer (The Red Shoes)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Huston (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Vittorio De Sica (Ladri di biciclette a.k.a. Bicycle Thieves); John Ford (Fort Apache); Howard Hawks (Red River); Akira Kurosawa (Yoidore tenshi a.k.a. Drunken Angel); Max Ophüls (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Orson Welles (The Lady From Shanghai)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes)
nominees: Preston Sturges (Unfaithfully Yours); Billy Wilder (A Foreign Affair)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Walter Huston (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Key Largo); Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda); Melvyn Douglas (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House); Thomas Gomez (Key Largo and Force Of Evil); Tim Holt (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre); Everett Sloane (The Lady From Shanghai)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Claire Trevor (Key Largo)
nominees: Ethel Barrymore (Portrait Of Jennie); Agnes Moorhead (Johnny Belinda); Jean Simmons (Hamlet); Marie Windsor (Force Of Evil)

SCREENPLAY
winner: John Huston, based on the novel by B. Traven (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre)
nominees: Graham Greene, from his short story "The Basement Room" (The Fallen Idol); Howard Koch, from the novel by Stefan Zweig (Letter From An Unknown Woman); Borden Chase and Charles Schnee, from the short story by Borden Chase (Red River); Preston Sturges (Unfaithfully Yours)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Charles Lawton, Jr. (The Lady From Shanghai) (Cinematography)

The Darling Deborah Blogathon: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

In honor of Deborah Kerr's 90th birthday, Sophie of Waitin' On A Sunny Day is hosting the "Darling Deborah Blogathon." This is my contribution ...

John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a decidedly odd entry in that seemingly endless parade of World War II movies to come out of Hollywood in the last seventy years. More Brief Encounter than Saving Private Ryan, this low-key, tender would-be romance between a marine and a nun is as talky as a Woody Allen movie, and chaste even by Production Code standards, but it's also as good as anything its stars ever did and is one of my favorite movies of the era.

The Allison of Mr. Allison is Robert Mitchum as a marine who's separated from his unit during a naval battle and washes up on the shore of a remote South Pacific island. With no means of communication or escape, and very little chance that anyone will ever find him, he may be there for years.

And then to his shock he discovers that marooned on the island with him is a nun, Sister Angela, played by the disconcertingly beautiful Deborah Kerr.

"That's my luck," he complains. "If ya gotta be a nun, why ain't ya old and ugly? Why do ya gotta have big blue eyes, and a beautiful smile—and freckles?"

Despite the fact that they are both already in committed relationships—him to the Marines, her to Jesus Christ—Allison asks Sister Angela to marry him. She turns him down, of course, but, her protestations to the contrary, it's a close run thing.

And then the Japanese army shows up.

Although the plot of Mr. Allison is simple, the material is delicate, and in the hands of different actors could easily have turned into something comical, something cynical, or something hopelessly sentimental. In fact, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison sounds like the set-up for some kind of joke: "A marine and a nun are stranded on an island together—"

But far from turning into a romantic comedy or a traditional war movie, Mr. Allison instead becomes a meditation on the war between the spirit and the flesh, between the darkness and the light, or, if you will, between man's natural depravity and the better angels of our nature. Rather than favoring one over the other, though, the film suggests that we can only reach our true potential when we are well acquainted with and comfortable with both.

Here, Kerr's Sister Angela begins the movie wholly ignorant of what human beings are capable of—lust, fear, anger, hatred, murder—while Mitchum's Allison has known little else. Before the movie is over, both end up with an appreciation of the full range of human behavior to their immediate salvation and their lasting benefit.

This wasn't the first nun Kerr played. Her performance in Black Narcissus in 1947 is a classic and paved the way for her move to Hollywood. It also serves as a counterpoint to her performance in Mr. Allison. In Black Narcissus, her Sister Clodagh is all too acquainted with the human heart and its complications, and in fleeing from that terrible knowledge, she becomes, if not a bad nun, then a tragically ineffective one. Here, she learns to look reality straight-on, and just as Allison's acquaintance with the spiritual makes him a better Marine, so, too, I suspect will Angela's acquaintance with human frailty make her a better nun.

To get a sense of the different direction this set-up could have gone in, look at Huston's take on a similar story, The African Queen. His Oscar-winning tale of a drunken riverboat captain and a starchy New England missionary who sail down a river together is essentially the same odd couple set-up as Mr. Allison—only there, the film's stars, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, played the material for laughs, with the loutish Bogart bumping up against the patrician Hepburn to great effect. The result was one of the best romantic comedies of the decade.

But Bogart and Hepburn were playing over-the-top, larger-than-life characters—Hepburn said later that director Huston told her to imitate Eleanor Roosevelt—and much of the pure pleasure of watching The African Queen comes from knowing that they're never in danger, not really. War is a lark and the threat of death by drowning, disease or a hangman's noose is simply foreplay—what fun! I mean, it was either this, Kate and Bogie seem to be saying, or dinner and dancing and maybe a nightcap up in her apartment.

At least they get an A for originality.

In Mr. Allison, though, Kerr and Mitchum play their roles absolutely straight, with a sincerity and vulnerability that's actually pretty rare for a star vehicle. If you're at all familiar with Deborah Kerr's work, that should come as no surprise—she was the gentlest, most guileless actress ever to grace the big screen, and I can't imagine her ever holding any part she played at arm's length.

That Robert Mitchum also leads with his chin comes as a surprise only if you've bought into the laconic, insolent facade he presented on screen and in interviews. The fact is, under those heavy, drooping eyelids and that weary, disinterested demeanor, there beat the heart of an artist, and in his best work—Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and this one—Mitchum was exposed, vulnerable and completely authentic.

Of all his great performances, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison was Mitchum's personal favorite.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison was the first of four movies Mitchum and Kerr made together. In 1960, they made both The Sundowners (for which Kerr received her final Oscar nomination) and The Grass Is Greener (co-starring Cary Grant and Jean Simmons). In 1985, they starred in Reunion at Fairborough, a made-for-television movie about a veteran who returns to England and rekindles a wartime romance.

Of his co-star, Mitchum said, "The best, my favorite—life would be kind if I could live it with Deborah around."

For her performance in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Kerr was nominated for an Oscar, but she lost, of course, this time to Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve. It was the story of Kerr's life. In all, she was nominated for six Oscars and lost every time, still a record in the best actress category. I think more than anything, she was a victim of bad timing. A list of those she lost to is a veritable Mount Rushmore of actresses from the post-war era: Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Joanne Woodward, Susan Hayward and Elizabeth Taylor.

And maybe also she was too unassuming and what she did on screen looked too effortless. The Academy has always tended to reserve its top prizes for those who remind us what a terribly difficult and lonely job acting is—even when it isn't.

In fact, maybe that's Mr. Allison in a nutshell: you expect fireworks and instead get something as quiet as a whisper. Don't make the same mistake the Academy did and fail to listen closely.