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So since for the 1932-33 awards year I'm using the expanded "Golden Globes" format (splitting up awards for picture, actor and actress between drama and comedy/musical), I'm sure most have you have been wondering who would have won for the previous five years if I'd been doing the Golden Globes thing all along.
Good question, thanks for asking.
It's kind of a mixed bag, as it turns out, which is why I didn't use this format in the first place. For every inspired choice, such as Marion Davies (comedy, Show People) or Edward G. Robinson (drama, Little Caesar), you get somebody like Maurice Chevalier (comedy/musical, The Love Parade) who'd have readers running for the exits. And then you start wondering whether I would really have given Marie Dressler the best supporting actress award of 1929-30 knowing I'd also give her an award for 1930-31. And on and on.
Clearly, I have too much time on my hands.
Anyway, here they are. Make of them what you will. At least Al Jolson dressed for the occasion.
1927-28
Picture (Comedy): The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin)
Actor (Comedy or Musical): Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer)
Actress (Drama): Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven and Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
1928-29
Picture (Comedy): Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck)
Actor (Drama): Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)
Actress (Comedy): Marion Davies (Show People)
1929-30
Picture (Comedy or Musical): Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor)
Actor (Comedy/Musical): Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade)
Actress (Comedy/Musical): Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade)
1930-31
Picture (Drama): M (prod. Seymour Hebenzal)
Actor (Drama): Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar)
Actress (Comedy): Marie Dressler (Min and Bill)
1931-32
Picture (Comedy/Musical): À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford)
Actor (Comedy/Musical): Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box)
Actress (Drama): Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)
You know it's a great year in movies when these are the people who didn't get a Katie Award nomination ...
Clark Gable (actor) and Mary Astor (actress) (Red Dust)
Gary Cooper (actor, A Farewell To Arms and Design For Living)
Marlene Dietrich (actress, Blonde Venus)
Dick Powell (supporting actor) and Ruby Keeler (supporting actress) (42nd Street, Gold Diggers Of 1933 and Footlight Parade)
Boris Karloff (actor, The Mummy)
Marion Davies (actress, Peg O' My Heart)
Ginger Rogers (supporting actress, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers Of 1933 and Flying Down To Rio)
William Powell (actor, Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage)
Joan Crawford (actress, Rain)
Clara Bow (actress, Call Her Savage)
Jeanette MacDonald (actress) and Maurice Chevalier (actor) (Love Me Tonight)
Irene Dunne (actress, Back Street)
Ben Hecht (writer) (Design For Living)
Glenda Farrell (actress, The Mystery Of The Wax Museum)
Charlie Ruggles (supporting actor, Love Me Tonight and Trouble In Paradise)
Ann Dvorak (supporting actress, Three On A Match)
In an uncanny repeat of 1932's Oscar award ceremony, no sooner had John Barrymore been named "the greatest ham in movie history" at this year's Katie-Bar-the-Door Awards than Wallace Beery jumped on stage and insisted that it was he, not his Grand Hotel co-star, who was the greatest ham actor of all time.
"You are not a ham," Beery growled as he beat Barrymore about the head and neck with—inexplicably—a rotary dial telephone, "you are a drunk! There's a difference!"
"Dear boy," said Barrymore, " I most certainly am too a ham! You've never heard of a bourbon-glazed ham?"
"Glazed?!" spluttered Beery. "Try soaked, you rumhead!"
Some measure of order was restored when Academy president Conrad Nagel announced that Barrymore and Beery had in fact tied for the honor. "There's plenty of chewable scenery in Hollywood to go around."
Panic set in, however, when it was learned William Shatner was in the house.
"Gangway!" yelled Beery as he muscled his way into the wings where the Emmy-winning star of Boston Legal was chowing down on the last of the set and starting in on the costumes.
"Cripes!" said Barrymore. "I better hurry—there won't be a morsel left!"
Sulking in the front row of the theater was a stunned Al Pacino. "Ham?" he muttered. "What am I? Chopped liver?"
I hope you guys have stopped off at Nic Cage As Everyone. Uncle Willie is doing some weird and wonderful things in the kitchen.
I don't have the technical chops to take part—I'd love to see Nic Cage as Louise Brooks or Joan Blondell. Ah well, something to think about ...
Well, Who Am Us admits to being crushed (crushed, I tells ya) that I got "this close" to giving him a coveted kreativ blogger award, only to snatch it from his fingers and hand it to a bunch of dead people instead. He suggests we create a new award, the "Missed It By That Much Award," with a little gold statue of Maxwell Smart as the prize.
Well, I don't have a gold statue handy—perhaps this photo of a paperback novel I found on the internet will work just as well. So here's to you, Who Am Us Anyway, KC at Classic Movies, Mister Muleboy at The Mouth O' The Mule, Plain Chicken, Clicks and Pops, Thingy at Pondering Life and Avalon 76 at Silent Stanzas (is that seven?) and everybody else who deserves a kreativ blogger award and just missed (is that seven billion?) who are the first recipients of the Missed It By That Much Award.
Congratulations!
There are no rules, requirements or responsibilities that go with winning. Just sleep easier tonight, knowing that you are read, respected and not alone in the howling void.
P.S. Would you like to add a name to the Missed It By That Much honor roll? Just leave a comment with a web address and then let 'em know how much we love them here at the Monkey.
If you've been following my blog for a while, you're probably aware of Zoe, who lives in New Zealand and writes the blog The Big Parade. This last weekend, Zoe was awarded the "prestigious" kreativ blogger award (the quotation marks are hers) in recognition of the creative and worthy work she has done as a blogger. If you read her work, you know she deserves it.
And then Zoe passed the award along to seven more bloggers, including me, your unworthy correspondent, the Mythical Monkey. This is my first award since the last time I got a check from a federal agency in recognition of my work as a lawyer—and I had to win a $19 million case to earn that one. All I had to do for this one was watch movies and write about them, something I'd be doing anyway. It's like stealing!
But as always, I can never leave anything alone without doing a little research first—not as an act of churlish cynicism but because curiosity is one of my defining characteristics. Here are a couple of things I think I've learned:
Originally, "kreativ blogger" was a quilt block designed by a Norwegian woman named Hulda, which because I have a personal connection to the quilting community, I find quite interesting. Somewhere along the way, though, somebody decided "kreativ blogger" would be a good name for an award, slapped some chain letter-like rules on it—like forwarding the award to seven more bloggers—and started sending it around the internet.
While drinking my coffee this morning, I did a little math, never one of my strong suits, and found that if every person receiving the kreativ blogger award passes the award along to seven more people who pass the award along to seven more (different) people, and on and on, etc., within twelve days every man, woman and child on the planet will have received the kreativ blogger award—which accounts for, what, half the blogs in existence?
Which is not in any way to suggest I didn't want to receive the kreativ blogger award. If I could have lobbied for it, I would have and I am genuinely touched that Zoe tagged me, especially since she knows me only through my writing and has no personal obligation to be nice to me whatsoever. And as for the fact that Zoe ranked me at the top of her list, well, all I can say to the other recipients of the award is Ha ha! 
Writers may be as shy and solitary as oysters, working away day after day, year after year, in the anonymity of their dark, dank offices, but they in fact crave attention, at least attention directed at their work (the work, which after all is merely another disguise designed to deflect attention from our shy and solitary selves). Every award we receive is as precious as the Pulitzer and if you don't think it is, you're probably not a writer.
Still what I am suggesting is that unless we branch out, we're going to run out of potential recipients of the kreativ blogger award in a big hurry. Thus, rather than pass the award along to Plain Chicken, The Mouth O' The Mule, Who Am Us Anyway, Clicks and Pops, Classic Movies, and all the other blogsters I read on a daily basis, 
I am forwarding the award to my favorite deceased movie critics, who despite their passing continue to influence the way we think about movies. This expands the potential list of rewardees rather substantially, and if somehow they hear about the award and write about it, imagine what a story that would be!
Some, you will note, are also known for accomplishments other than film criticism.
The seven:
James Agee
Bosley Crowther
Leslie Halliwell
Pauline Kael
Gene Siskel
Francois Truffaut
Robin Wood
Then apparently because the kreativ blogger award works in sevens, I am supposed to reveal seven personal things about myself—a real trick since I have spent my entire life concealing the personal, even from myself. Here they are, though, each fact somehow related to the one before it.
* I own 559 movies on DVD or Blu-Ray (not including television-related stuff or the 1600 or so movies on VHS tape I have floating around in the basement). I have arranged them on the shelf chronologically, from 1915's Les Vampires to last year's Up.
* We have only one working television in the house. It's in the family room.
* My "porn" name (first pet/street where I grew up) is "Snappy Landings." (Katie's is "Janie Colton.")
* Jane Greer is the only femme fatale in movie history I would let shoot me.
* My favorite movie to take a long nap to is The Thing From Another World.
* I wrote my first book when I was thirteen years old—125 handwritten pages. It remains unpublished.
* Don Rickles has insulted me personally.
That's it. Tomorrow, back to the lucrative business of blogging with Scarface, Part Two.
So since for the 1932-33 awards year I'm using the expanded "Golden Globes" format (splitting up awards for picture, actor and actress between drama and comedy/musical), I'm sure most have you have been wondering who would have won for the previous five years if I'd been doing the Golden Globes thing all along.
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