The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Updated At Long Last

Our long national nightmare is over! The sock monkey who types this blog finally got around to bringing the Katie-Bar-the-Door Awards up to date — we now have nominees and winners for the entire Oscar era, from 1927 all the way through 2024 ... and one big winner for 2025.

And what are the Katie-Bar-the-Door Awards? Not so much alternate Oscars as alternate Golden Globe awards, I have chosen movies, actors, directors and writers I think Hollywood should have honored over the years in the categories of drama, comedy/musical (broadly defined) and (in the best picture category) foreign language.

Other than the immortal Erik Beck, who does that? Well, what can I tell you — the Monkey is a full-service old-school blog!

Check out the nominees and winners by decade:

1927-39

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

And I'll be writing again soon ... next up, three to see starring Norma Shearer!

Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)

She's remembered now, if at all, as "what's her name, the good- looking blonde who got James Cagney's grapefruit in the kisser."

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.

1928-29 Alternate Oscars

If the Academy was vaguely in the ballpark the first year it handed out Oscars, it completely blew it the next. This year the winners were chosen by a five-member panel — The Central Board of Judges — and while the previous year's smoke-filled room used the awards to settle scores and promote their own interests, at least they felt the need to pretend they were motivated by artistic concerns. This year the panel seemed interested only in handing out awards to the Academy's founders and the man who hand-picked them for the job, Louis B. Mayer.

It was not until the following year that the full membership of the Academy voted on the awards.

The Broadway Melody, an MGM production — that is to say, Louis B. Mayer's baby — is the weakest best picture winner ever, which is saying something.

Mary Pickford, a co-founder of the Academy, took home the best actress trophy for her first talkie, Coquette, and while audiences flocked to see "America's Sweetheart" talk for the first time, critics reviled her performance and only the first Oscar campaign in history secured the award.

Likewise, best director Frank Lloyd, who won for the dull and overly-long The Divine Lady, was one of the founding members of the Academy and his win raised eyebrows among the press.

As for the best actor winner, In Old Arizona's Warner Baxter, the less said, the better. I know some of my fellow bloggers like his performance as the Cisco Kid, but let's just say I don't think his hammy fake Mexican stands up next to the likes of Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks or John Gilbert, all of whom were eligible for the big prize that year.

Hopefully, this round of Katie awards will improve on the Academy's choices. At least I don't owe Louis B. Mayer anything.

Finally, I'll note that two of the Academy's choices, best screenplay winner, Ernst Lubitsch's The Patriot, and The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, which earned MGM set designer Cedric Gibbons the first of eleven Oscars (he was nominated thirty-nine times), have both been lost. That is, unfortunately, an all too common story when it comes to the early history of motion pictures — Hollywood took no care when it came to preserving these early films and let thousands of movies deteriorate or vanish altogether.

As national tragedies go, it's not exactly the Vietnam War. But it is a definite shame, like allowing the Louvre to go up in smoke because you can't be bothered not to play with matches.

1928-29
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Wind (prod. Victor Sjöström)
nominees: Blackmail (prod. John Maxwell); The Docks Of New York (prod. J.G. Bachmann); The Iron Mask (prod. Douglas Fairbanks); The Wedding March (prod. Pat Powers and Erich von Stroheim)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Steamboat Willie (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: The Broadway Melody (prod. Irving Thalberg, Harry Rapf and Lawrence Weingarten); The Cameraman (prod. Buster Keaton); Show People (prod. Marion Davies and King Vidor); Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck);

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (prod. Société générale des films)
nominees: Un Chien Andalou (prod. Luis Buñuel); The Fall Of The House Of Usher (prod. Jean Epstein); Man With The Movie Camera (prod. VUFKU)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Douglas Fairbanks (The Iron Mask)
nominees: George Bancroft (The Docks Of New York); Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona); John Gilbert (A Woman Of Affairs and Desert Nights); Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Buster Keaton (Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman)
nominees: William Haines (Show People); Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Two Tars)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Maria Falconetti (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
nominees: Betty Amann (Asphalt); Louise Brooks (Beggars Of Life); Betty Compson (The Docks Of New York); Greta Garbo (The Mysterious Lady, A Woman Of Affairs and Wild Orchids); Lillian Gish (The Wind)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marion Davies (Show People)
nominees: Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
nominees: Victor Sjöström (The Wind); Josef von Sternberg (The Docks Of New York); Dziga Vertov (Man With The Movie Camera); Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou)
nominees: Ub Iwerks (Steamboat Willie); Edward Sedgwick (The Cameraman); King Vidor (Show People)

SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Wallace Beery (Beggars Of Life)
nominees: Donald Calthrop (Blackmail); Lewis Stone (A Woman Of Affairs); Gustav von Seyffertitz (The Mysterious Lady and The Docks Of New York)

SUPPORTING ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernest Torrence (Steamboat Bill, Jr. and Desert Nights)
nominees:

SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Anna May Wong (Piccadilly)
nominees: Olga Baclanova (The Docks Of New York); Marie Glory (L'Argent); Mary Nolan (West Of Zanzibar); Anita Page (Our Dancing Daughters); Zasu Pitts (The Wedding March)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marceline Day (The Cameraman)
nominees:

SCREENPLAY
winner: Frances Marion; from a novel by Dorothy Scarborough (The Wind)
nominees: Jules Furthman; story by John Monk Saunders; titles by Julian Johnson (The Docks Of New York); Joseph Delteil and Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks (the creation and marketing of Mickey Mouse); Douglas Shearer (The Broadway Melody) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "The Broadway Melody" (The Broadway Melody) (Best Song); Un Chien Andalou (prod. Luis Buñuel) (Best Short Subject); John Arnold (The Wind) (Cinematography)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1999)

I had the advantage of living in England when The Sixth Sense came out. Katie-Bar-The-Door and I had never heard of it when we came back to the U.S. for a visit; all we knew was that it starred Bruce Willis and that Katie's mom had seen it—twice! That notion was so incongruous to us that we raced right out and saw it, too, with no idea of what it was about—no hype, no trailers, no spoilers, no nothing, not even a knowledge of what genre it fit into. We might have been the only two people in history who were throughly surprised by its twists and turns: we didn't even know that it had twists and turns.

We've since seen it a number of times. For us, anyway, it still holds up.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Sixth Sense (prod. Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Barry Mendel)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Three Kings (prod. Paul Junger Witt, Edward L. McDonnell and Charles Roven)
Must-See Comedy/Musical:

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) (prod. Agustín Almodóvar and Michel Ruben)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kevin Spacey (American Beauty)
nominees:

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Reese Witherspoon (Election)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Pedro Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre a.k.a. All About My Mother)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: David O. Russell (Three Kings)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Tom Cruise (Magnolia)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1998)

Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw The Big Lebowski in Paris during a freakishly unseasonable heat wave in 1998. Along with the Cinema Astro in Florence, Italy, any theater in Paris is the best venue for watching a movie anywhere in the world.

By the way, the French call all those ads and previews before the feature film starts the "séance"—a term Katie and I still use. They are (or at least were) also adverse to translating heavy-duty swearing into the French subtitles, preferring the all-purpose "merde," the explanation being that to see anything stronger in print on the screen would be too shocking for the audience. Which may or may not be true, but certainly it meant that the non-English speakers in the audience missed out on the rather delightful tapestry of profanity that made The Big Lebowski such a great film.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Saving Private Ryan (prod. Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shakespeare in Love (prod. David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman)
Must-See Comedy/Musical:

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Central do Brasil (Central Station) (prod. Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn, Robert Redford and Walter Salles)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jane Horrocks (Little Voice)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Bill Murray (Rushmore)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Kathy Bates (Primary Colors)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love)