1930-31 Alternate Oscars

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)

Marie Dressler — Not Just Another Pretty Face

She had a face like a bulldog, with a lantern jaw, bulbous nose, and heavy bags under deep-set eyes. Her pear-shaped body sagged, her voice growled, and the characters she played often wore their clothes as if a field of potatoes crawled into a burlap sack and was too tired to climb out again.

But she was a gifted actress — Buster Keaton often called her "the greatest character comedienne I ever saw" — and for a brief time, from 1931 until her death in 1934, Marie Dressler was the most popular actress in America.

Dressler got her start as part of Mack Sennett's stable of comic actors that included Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Gloria Swanson and the Keystone Kops.

In 1914, she starred in history's first feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance, which also starred Chaplin in one of his earliest roles.

By the end of World War I, though, Dressler had pretty much disappeared from the movies.

Reduced to working as a maid, Dressler later admitted she found the fall from stardom so devastating, she seriously considered suicide.

But back when she was still a star, Dressler had befriended a young, struggling writer from San Francisco named Frances Marion, and when their roles were reversed and Marion was the top writer in Hollywood and Dressler was out of pictures altogether, Marion remembered her old friend and began including parts for her in various comedies.

When Marion was adapting the Eugene O'Neill play Anna Christie as the vehicle for Greta Garbo's sound debut, she expanded the part of an over-the-hill hooker specifically with Dressler in mind.

It was a pivotal opportunity for Dressler and proved to be her comeback role.

In the film, Dressler steals every scene she shares with the more-celebrated Garbo. To be sure Dressler possessed a theatrical talent that straddled the divide between the silent and modern eras, but I distinguish in my mind between an actor who chews scenery (Garbo, still relying on exaggerated, silent film techniques) and a character who chews scenery (Dressler's self-described "wharf rat" who hides her pain beneath a swaggering pose of indifference).

Garbo eventually shed the exaggerated techniques that had served her well during the silent era and mastered the subtleties of the new sound medium. But not before Dressler had bested her in their one head-to-head outing.

Dressler starred in a dozen movies over the next three years, including Min and Bill (another Frances Marion screenplay) which won her an Oscar.

In Min and Bill, a comedy-drama also starring Wallace Beery and Marjorie Rambeau, Dressler plays a dockside innkeeper who is raising the daughter of a prostitute as her own. As the girl grows up, Min (Dressler) does everything she can to protect the girl, eventually sacrificing herself for the girl's happiness.

The final shot of a deeply-conflicted Min — I'll let you discover the movie's plot twists on your own time — is the best acting of Dressler's career.

The film was a huge hit, and at a time when Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford were plying their trade, Dressler became the biggest star in Hollywood.

Emma secured her a second Oscar nomination, and the classic dramedy Dinner at Eight gave Dressler her best-known role, that of an aging stage actress reduced to begging favors of her closest friends.

Even people who don't know Dressler's name remember her in that film's last scene with up-and-coming Jean Harlow.

"I was reading a book the other day," says Harlow as the unforgettable social-climbing vamp, Kitty Packard.

"Reading a book?" says Dressler after the greatest double take in movie history.

"Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?"

Dressler looks Harlow up and down and then says, "Oh, my dear, that's something you need never worry about."

A year later, Dressler was dead of cancer. She was 66.

What A Character Blogathon, Part Three: Silent Supporting Players Who Were Better In The Sound Era

Eugene Pallette—best known for his froggy bass voice, this veteran of such films as My Man Godfrey and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington made his first movie in 1913 and had an important role in D.W. Griffith's classic Intolerance.

Adolphe Menjou—debuting in 1914, he was already great in such silent films as A Woman of Paris and The Marriage Circle, but sound added another layer of smarm and good humor. See, e.g., Morocco, The Front Page, A Farewell to Arms, Stage Door, Paths of Glory, etc.

Wallace Beery—a ham in any age, he played supporting roles in the The Last of the Mohicans (1920), the Douglas Fairbanks version of Robin Hood (1922), Buster Keaton's Three Ages (1923), and The Lost World (1925), but he won an Oscar in the sound era.

Mary Astor—made her film debut in 1920, but did her best work in Dodsworth and The Maltese Falcon, and won an Oscar for The Great Lie in 1941.

Lionel Barrymore—debuted in 1908 and was excellent in the Gloria Swanson version of Sadie Thompson but is best known for such sound work as It's A Wonderful Life, Key Largo, Grand Hotel and his Oscar-winning role in A Free Soul.

Marie Dressler—she starred across from Chaplin in the first feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance in 1914, became a supporting player, then virtually disappeared before becoming Hollywood's top leading lady (no, seriously!) in the sound era, winning an Oscar for Min and Bill and providing the best double take in film history opposite Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight.

Carole Lombard—debuting in 1921, she made multiple brief appearances as eye candy until Howard Hawks had the good sense to cast this irreverent, salty-tongued goddess in a comedy, 1934's Twentieth Century. After that, we got such classics as My Man Godfrey, Nothing Sacred and To Be or Not to Be before her untimely death in 1942.

Myrna Loy—played dozens of largely-forgotten vamps and exotics between 1925 and 1934 until cast opposite William Powell in the classic comedy whodunit, The Thin Man. After that, she was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, a leading lady to the likes of Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Fredric March and, of course, Powell with whom she made fourteen films.

William Powell—Roger Ebert once wrote that Powell was to dialogue what Fred Astaire was to dance, and with the coming of the sound era, his career blossomed. But you can see him in thirty-five silent films, mostly as the stock heavy (including a brilliant turn as a Russian revolutionary in Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command.)

Funny Ladies Of The Silent Era: A Baker's Dozen

My purely idiosyncratic list designed to promote the Funny Lady Blogathon now up and running at Movies, Silently. "A baker's dozen" implies pies will be thrown and some of these funny ladies, particularly Mabel Normand, threw a mean one. Things might get messy so dress appropriately—you've been forewarned.

13. Daphne Pollard—standing 4' 9", this diminutive comedienne was a star in Mack Sennett's stable in the mid-1920s.

12. Bebe Daniels—co-starred in the early Harold Lloyd shorts then jumped to Cecil B. DeMille's sex comedies.

11. Jobyna Ralston—the "girl" in most of Harold Lloyd's latter-day features, including Girl Shy, The Freshman and The Kid Brother

10. Constance Talmadge—remembered now for her turn as the "Mountain Girl" in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, in her day she was beloved for her comedy.

9. Edna Purviance—made more movies with Charlie Chaplin than any other actress.

8. Ossi Oswalda—maybe the least known to American audiences, she was Ernst Lubitsch's go-to girl before he moved to Hollywood.

7. Colleen Moore—this fresh-faced girl-next-door had a knack for finding trouble.

6. Gloria Swanson—long before Norma Desmond, she was playing second fiddle to superstar Teddy the dog for Mack Sennett then graduated to DeMille's groundbreaking sex comedies.

5. Marion Davies—Orson Welles owes somebody an apology: this woman was talented and funny.

4. Clara Bow—the original "It" girl: beautiful, tender, funny and ultimately doomed.

3. Marie Dressler—the star of the first feature-length comedy, 1914's Tillie's Punctured Romance, she made a comeback in 1928 and eventually won an Oscar. (Dressler's the one on the right.)

2. Mary Pickford—number one at the box office, number one in our hearts, number two on this list.

1. Mabel Normand—sometimes credited with throwing the first pie in movie history, she was the beauty who starred with such beasts as Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

That's it. Have at it.

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