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A list of silent movies on Turner Classic Movies this July. This is why God created the DVR. (All times Eastern Daylight Savings Time).
July 8
12:00 AM
The Thief Of Bagdad (1924)
An Arabian thief sets out on a magical adventure to win a beautiful princess.
Dir: Raoul Walsh Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher. BW-140 mins
July 10
6:30 AM
Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
A notorious womanizer falls for the woman he has bet he can trick into marriage.
Dir: King Vidor Cast: John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman, Roy D'Arcy . BW-90 mins
July 10
8:15 AM
The Show (1927)
In this silent film, a sideshow dancer secretly loves the show's amoral barker.
Dir: Tod Browning Cast: John Gilbert, Rene Adore, Lionel Barrymore. BW-76 mins
July 10-
9:45 AM
A Woman of Affairs (1928)
Prejudice keeps a free spirit from the man she loves, triggering a series of tragedies.
Dir: Clarence Brown Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lewis Stone. BW-91 mins
July 10
11:30 AM
Desert Nights (1929)
In this silent film, diamond robbers get caught in a violent sandstorm.
Dir: William Nigh Cast: John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, Mary Nolan. BW-62 mins
July 15
12:00 AM
Seven Years Bad Luck (1921)
In this silent film, a man's attempts to avoid bad luck after he breaks a mirror lead straight to it.
Dir: Max Linder Cast: Max Linder, Thelma Percy, Alta Allen. BW-62 mins
July 15
1:15 AM
Seven Chances (1925)
To inherit a fortune, a man races to find a bride by 7 p.m.
Dir: Buster Keaton Cast: Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes, Snitz Edwards. BW-56 mins
July 21
10:00 PM
Modern Times (1936)
The Tramp struggles to live in a modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.
Dir: Charlie Chaplin Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman. BW-87 min.
July 22
12:00 AM
Mickey (1918)
An orphan brought up in a mining settlement is sent to New York to live with her aunt.
Dir: Richard Jones Cast: Mabel Normand, George Nichols, Wheeler Oakman. BW-74 mins
July 29
12:00 AM
Phantom (1922)
In this silent film, a store clerk risks his future to pursue his obsession with a beautiful, ghostly woman.
Dir: F. W. Murnau Cast: Alfred Abel, Lil Dagover, Aud Egede Nissen. BW-119 mins
That's films from such Monkey favorites as Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Max Linder, Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and F.W. Murnau. Mark your calendars!
In lieu of actual content.
Which one of his own films was Harold Lloyd's professed favorite?
A. A Sailor-Made Man (1921)
B. Girl Shy (1924)
C. Grandma's Boy (1922)
D. The Kid Brother (1927)
Beginning at 3:45 a.m. (EDT) this evening/tomorrow morning, Turner Classic Movies is showing three of my favorite silent movies. From the TCM website:
3:45 AM The Thief Of Bagdad (1924)
An Arabian thief sets out on a magical adventure to win a beautiful princess.
Dir: Raoul Walsh Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher. BW-140 mins,
6:15 AM The Sheik (1921)
An Arabian sheik kidnaps a beautiful Englishwoman to win her heart.
Dir: George Melford Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres, Ruth Miller. BW-86 mins
7:45 AM Our Modern Maidens (1929)
In this silent film, a flapper offers herself to a diplomat to advance her fiance's career.
Dir: Jack Conway Cast: Joan Crawford, Rod La Rocque, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. BW-76 mins
By the way, the description of Our Modern Maidens neglects to mention some stellar supporting work from Anita Page. Now you're sold for sure!
Set your recorders boys and girls. Or better yet, stay up very, very late.
I worked pretty hard in July and August, not only on a series of posts about 1917 (which I am finishing up this week) but also on some unrelated posts participating in other bloggers' blogathons—"Cary Grant Has A Cold" inspired by Monty's blog All Good Things, a post for the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Dick Van Dyke blogathon, cued up and ready for the show's 50th anniversary on October 3, and a long post about Carole Lombard's silent film career for the Carole-tennial+3 celebration of that great star's 103rd birthday (October 6).
Then I got distracted for a while. We had new carpet installed, bought a new dryer and began to interview roofers. And I sprained my left ankle, and as soon as that was healed, sprained my right foot. Seems like there were other things as well.
Anyway, I started a number of blog posts that I never finished and likely never will, much to my chagrin. Here they are, all bundled up with no place to go.
Many Many Thanks
Sophie of Waitin' On A Sunny Day has awarded me the Liebster Blogger Award.
"MM's blog was one of the first I ever followed and it's thanks to him that I've watched many silent films that I might not have otherwise - thank you! :D You should all go over there and follow him immediately!"
Wow. Thanks Sophie! That's pretty much the ultimate compliment for a film blogger ...
By the way, she's hosting the "Darling Deborah Blogathon" on September 30 in honor of Deborah Kerr's 90th birthday. If I can get my act together, I'll try to post something, Deborah Kerr being one of my favorite actresses. Maybe "Deborah Kerr Has A Cold" ...
Where Do All The Bloggers Go
I was cleaning up links on my blog last week, deleting the ones that no longer go anywhere, and I got to wondering what had become of some of the people who used to stop by and now have disappeared—not just from the comments section of this blog, which considering the erratic content here is understandable, but from their own blogs, and apparently from face of the earth ...
Note: there were two in particular I was thinking of, Gordon Pasha of Lazlo's on Lex, a great blog about growing up in New York City, and Ginger Ingenue of Asleep in New York, a blog dedicated to movies and insomnia.
Gordon, I was sad to learn recently, passed away in August. He will be missed.
As for Ginger Ingenue, one hopes she's still out there somewhere, not sleeping through the night. If you read this, Ginger, drop us a line.
Gravity
"Being big and thus prone to falling hard, my relationship with gravity has always been, at best, adversarial."
Something I tell Katie-Bar-The-Door all the time, but she's small and continues to court disaster.
Krazy Kat
(By the way, Paul J. Marasa of The Constant Viewer offers an explanation for why Dressler and Chaplin hit each other with bricks early in Tillie's Punctured Romance—the comic strip Krazy Kat had debuted a year earlier, and if you know your hundred year old comic strips, you know Ignatz the mouse frequently brained the lovestruck Kat with a brick.) (Me, I read Jay Cantor's novel based on the strip some twenty-plus years ago.)
Actor-Proof Parts
I have to confess that the other day, when I passed on the TCM trivia question about Maggie McNamara and her Oscar-nominated first role, not only had I never seen The Moon Is Blue, I'd never even heard of Maggie McNamara. But fortunately, TCM was showing it that very afternoon and I watched it, which I suppose was the point of the question, to lure in the curious.
Directed by Otto Preminger, The Moon Is Blue was a romantic comedy starring William Holden, David Niven and the aforementioned McNamara. ... It was stage-bound and although cutting-edge for its day—they used words like "seduction" and "virgin" right out loud in open defiance of the Production Code—it's hopelessly dated now, and while Maggie McNamara in a brunette pony-tail kind of reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, she brings none of Hepburn's spark to the role. All-in-all, pleasant but forgettable.
Still, McNamara wound up with an Oscar nomination for best actress, in a year when Gloria Grahame (The Big Heat), Jean Arthur (Shane), and Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe (both for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) received none. And I had to wonder why. The Moon Is Blue was McNamara's first movie, and she only made four more—her career hit the skids almost immediately afterwards, I imagine when people discovered she couldn't act, not really. (She wound up making ends meet as a typist and committed suicide in 1978 at the age of forty-eight.)
Here's A Blog I Should Follow
I was looking for photos of Roscoe Arbuckle the other day when I stumbled across a really good one on the internet, which I promptly downloaded, and then I thought "this is a good blog, I should follow it," so I scrolled up to the top of the page to find its name:
"A Mythical Monkey Writes About The Movies"
Turns out I had posted the photo back in June. Wah wah wah. Still, it's good to know that if I weren't already a raging narcissist, I would find something to like about myself.
As part of this month's feature series, "Hollywood and Race: Arab Images On Film," Turner Classic Movies is showing three silent films tonight, The Sea Hawk (1924), The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Sheik (1921).
I've never seen the silent version of The Sea Hawk, but The Thief of Bagdad and The Sheik are must-see movies if you want to understand the silent era. The former is the best Douglas Fairbanks movie ever made, the latter established Rudolph Valentino as the greatest sex symbol of his generation.
I highly recommend both movies.
From TCM's website:
8:00 PM The Sea Hawk (1924)
In this silent film, an English noble sold into slavery escapes and turns himself into a pirate king. Dir: Frank Lloyd Cast: Milton Sills, Enid Bennett, Lloyd Hughes. BW-124 mins, TV-G
10:30 PM The Thief Of Bagdad (1924)
An Arabian thief sets out on a magical adventure to win a beautiful princess. Dir: Raoul Walsh Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher. BW-140 mins, TV-PG
1:00 AM The Sheik (1921)
An Arabian sheik kidnaps a beautiful Englishwoman to win her heart. Dir: George Melford Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres, Ruth Miller. BW-86 mins
It's Jane Greer night on Turner Classic Movies, starting with Out of the Past at 8 p.m., the quintessential film noir also starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. If you've never seen it, well good god, man, why not? When I say Jane Greer is the only femme fatale in movie history I'd let shoot me, this is the film I'm referring to.
At 10 p.m. is the second of Greer's two movies with Robert Mitchum, The Big Steal, a romantic-comedy noir directed by Don Siegel who went on to direct the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Clint Eastwood classic Dirty Harry. The Big Steal was Mitchum's first movie after the infamous marijuana bust and the actress orginially cast, Lizabeth Scott, backed out at the last minute, fearing the publicity might damage her career. Greer, on the other hand, jumped at the chance and the result is one of the most underrated films of its era.
The complete line-up, from TCM's website:
8:00 PM Out of the Past (1947) A private eye becomes the dupe of a homicidal moll. Dir: Jacques Tourneur Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. BW-97 mins
10:00 PM The Big Steal (1949) Seduction and murder follow the theft of an Army payroll. Dir: Don Siegel Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix. BW-71 mins
11:30 PM The Company She Keeps (1951) A lady con artist sets out to steal her parole officer's fiance. Dir: John Cromwell Cast: Lizabeth Scott, Jane Greer, Dennis O'Keefe. BW-83 mins
1:00 AM Station West (1948) A federal agent takes on a gang of gold thieves. Dir: Sidney Lanfield Cast: Dick Powell, Jane Greer, Agnes Moorehead. BW-80 mins
2:30 AM Run for the Sun (1956) A British traitor hunts humans in the jungles of Mexico. Dir: Roy Boulting Cast: Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard, Jane Greer. BW-99 mins
4:15 AM Desperate Search (1953) A man fights to find his children after their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Dir: Joseph Lewis Cast: Howard Keel, Jane Greer, Patricia Medina. BW-71 mins
Remember, all times are Eastern Daylight Savings Time.
No rest for the weary tonight, huh.
This weekend's edition of "Silent Sundays" on Turner Classic Movies features Max Linder, one of my very favorite silent film comedians. (Read about him here.)
From TCM's website:
Seven Years Bad Luck (1921)
In this silent film, a man's attempts to avoid bad luck after he breaks a mirror lead straight to it. Dir: Max Linder Cast: Max Linder, Thelma Percy, Alta Allen. BW-62 mins, TV-G
This was one of a handful of films Linder made in America. Although he had been a huge success in Europe before World War I, he wasn't able to crack the American market and he soon after returned to France where he and his wife committed suicide.
I haven't seen Seven Years Bad Luck but I plan to set the recorder.
And if you don't feel like sitting up to midnight Sunday, you can still get your silent comedy fix at 8 p.m. when TCM shows Buster Keaton's classic The General. If you've never seen a silent film, this is the one I would start with.
Be sure to look for a Joan Blondell double feature on Turner Classic Movies early Thursday, June 9, 2011, with Night Nurse at 6 a.m. EDT, followed by Other Men's Women at 7:15.
I cited both of these movies when I chose Blondell as the best supporting actress of 1930-31. This is what I had to say, in part:
If any one person has come to personify in my mind the glorious excesses of Hollywood's pre-Code era, it's Joan Blondell. She was sexy, she was sassy, and stripped down to her skivvies as she invariably was, she was always on the make. She had big blue eyes that rivaled those of Bette Davis, but unlike Bette's eyes, which always promised a knee to the groin if you got too close, Blondell's eyes promised a good time—if you measured up. And with very few predecessors to point the way, she had a gift for projecting moral ambiguity on the screen that set her work apart from the black-and-white caricatures her peers presented. Her very real talent was too often taken for granted but it really shone during the Early Sound Era when the brakes of censorship were off and if you want to know what film historians mean when they talk about "pre-Code" movies, you need look no further than Joan Blondell.
Movie audiences wouldn't see this much explicit behavior on screen again until Hollywood abandoned the Code altogether in 1968 and suffice it to say the Joan Blondell movies I've cited here—Sinners' Holiday, Other Men's Women and Night Nurse—violated just about every aspect of its prohibitions, showing murder, revenge, the use of liquor, undressing scenes, scenes in bedrooms, adultery, impure love, semi-nudity, transparent clothing and God knows what else in ways that made all of those things seem like pretty good ideas. Throw in the cruelty to children and surgical operations that were central to the plot of Night Nurse and you've pretty much covered every aspect of the Code except venereal disease and the ridicule of religion.
No wonder these movies were so much fun to watch.
The first movie on my list, Sinners' Holiday, is typical of Blondell's pre-Code work, showing off both her no-nonsense sex appeal and talent for playing working class women. Set on the Coney Island boardwalk, Blondell here plays a photographer's model who gets mixed up with James Cagney and his penny ante bootleg liquor operation with tragic results. Although playing what are clearly supporting roles, Blondell and Cagney provided the movie's energy, blowing their higher-billed, better-paid co-stars off the screen, and drawing the attention of critics and moviegoers alike. Maybe it was their talent for making stock characters seem like real people—the eye is drawn to that on the screen that reminds you of something real, and both Blondell and Cagney imbue their characters with a reality otherwise sorely lacking in this pedestrian tale.
Sinners' Holiday was based on a stage play, Penny Arcade, that featured both Blondell and Cagney. The play only ran three weeks, but in the audience was Al Jolson (of The Jazz Singer) who was so impressed with the supporting work Blondell and Cagney turned in, he bought the film rights to the play for $20,000 and sold them to Jack Warner on the condition that he cast Blondell and Cagney in their original roles. Jolson had never met either performer, but he had an eye for talent. Sinners' Holiday was Blondell's fifth movie, co-star James Cagney's film debut, and for both performers it proved to be a promise of great things to come.
Blondell and Cagney teamed up again just three months later for Other Men's Women, the story of a love triangle involving a married couple and the husband's best friend. That neither Blondell nor Cagney, again relegated to supporting roles, figure into the affair should tell you all you need to know about the production's chief weakness. But the movie still works as a showcase of both stars' talents and is a prime example of the sort of things a pre-Code movie could get away with that movie audiences wouldn't see again for thirty years.
Blondell is slinging hash behind the counter at a railroad diner in this one, and with her eyes and with her voice, she draws a convincing portrait of a tired, jaded working woman, a real tough cookie. When she asks the customers "Anything else you guys want?" you can feel the slap in her voice and when one of them eyes her as she bends over and answers "Yeah, gimme a big slice of you on toast" she tells him with a look that let's him know she's heard it all before and is immune to his nonsense, "Listen, baby, I'm A.P.O.—Ain't Puttin' Out!"
Blondell's pining for the railroad engineer who's forgotten he's promised to marry her when he gets back into town—pining, that is, without love and without feeling any need to be particularly chaste while she's waiting. She blows him the raspberry and when he later rips her her dress, she gives him a slap he no doubt felt down to his heels; if Blondell pulled her punch, it was the most convincing pulled punch in movie history.
The star of Other Men's Women is a young and beautiful Mary Astor, who just as in Red Dust, can make you believe a guy would throw over a Joan Blondell or a Jean Harlow for her. But Blondell is the most convincing performer in the movie, and that includes Cagney in his last role before he became a star (by the way, what a swell movie this might have been if director Wellman had thought to cast Cagney as the lead). Blondell could play saucy in her sleep and hers is the performance you'll remember from this one.
After the January premiere of Other Men's Women, Blondell made nine more movies in 1931 (she made ten in 1932 and eight the year after that), her best roles coming in Night Nurse and Blonde Crazy, two of the best Code-busting movies ever made. The latter, with Blondell's famous bathtub scene, came out too late in 1931 to be eligible for a Katie here, but Night Nurse and its parade of lingerie just squeezed in with a July premiere in New York.
In Night Nurse, Blondell again has a supporting role, this time to Barbara Stanwyck who plays a nurse trainee paired with a more experienced nurse (Blondell) who specializes primarily in ways to skirt the strict rules against men, booze and late nights boozing with men.
"I'm sure in your heart you love it," says the eager Stanwyck.
"Sez you," sneers Blondell.
The movie is not eight minutes old before the actresses are out of their clothes. Blondell picks out a uniform for Stanwyck then watches as she undresses, sizing up the competition. William A. Wellman—this is the same guy who gave us a quick glimpse of Clara Bow's bare breasts in Wings—directs the scene in his typically leering style. "Oh, don't be embarrassed," says Dr. Smooth-Weasel when he saunters in. "You can't show me a thing. I just came from the delivery room."
Then Stanwyck plants her foot in Blondell's lap so Blondell can help Stanwyck off with her stockings. To their credit, the two actresses handle the scene so casually it almost doesn't occur to you to wonder what director Wellman thought he was up to. Almost. Stanwyck and Blondell spend an awful lot of the movie dressing and undressing, and in the case of Stanwyck, who at this point in her acting career was as green as wet wood, it helps disguise the fact that she didn't quite know what she was doing. In Blondell's case, it just seems a natural aspect of her gum-chewing, hip-swiveling character.
The plot is pure gangster melo- drama. In a part originally written for James Cagney (who, with the unexpected success of The Public Enemy, was now too big for supporting roles) (and yes, Blondell was in that Cagney effort, too; in the first five years of their careers, they made seven movies together), Clark Gable starves the children of his rich society lover so he can get his hands on their trust fund. Stanwyck and Blondell stumble across the scheme when they sign on as night nurses at the rich woman's estate and the rest of the plot concerns the plucky Stanwyck's attempts to thwart Gable, a charismatic brute who doesn't mind knocking a woman cold with a right cross.
Despite the role's size, the best performance in the movie once again belongs to Blondell. What I like most about her, in this movie and elsewhere, is you can't easily read her character. Does she have a heart of gold or a heart of brass? Usually, it's both, with the mix, depending on the role, sliding along the continuum toward one end or the other but never fully arriving—as with most people. This is her strength as a character actress, I think, and maybe her weakness as a lead: Hollywood typically likes its stars to be all one thing, a hero or a villain you can root for or against. With Blondell, well, you're never quite sure.
Take Night Nurse, for example. For Stanwyck, nursing is a calling and she's ready to risk her career to stop Gable. For Blondell—"I don't know a thing, I just work here"—nursing is a job and sticking her neck out is no way to keep the paychecks coming. In other words, Blondell is us the way we really are, Stanwyck as we like to pretend we are, and we go to the movies to pretend.
Joan Blondell worked very hard for a very long time but with a few exceptions—most notably in 1945's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn—she flew under the radar. Like Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Arthur, she excelled at playing working class women. Like Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich, she was genuinely sexy. But after a couple of successful starring roles, she was largely relegated to supporting status.
Between film, stage and television, Blondell worked steadily from 1930 to her death in 1979, receiving a Tony nomination in 1958 for The Rope Dancers and two Emmy nominations for the television series Here Come The Brides. She received her only Oscar nomination, a supporting actress nod, for the 1951 movie The Blue Veil, and won the National Board of Review's award for the best supporting actress of 1965 for her performance as Lady Fingers in The Cincinnati Kid.
"I don't know what the secret to longevity as an actress is," she once said. "It's more than talent and beauty. Maybe it's the audience seeing itself in you."
Gone But Not Forgotten Dozens of times, actors and filmmakers have been nominated for Oscars posthumously. James Dean, the only actor to be nominated twice after his death, received his second nomination for Giant (1956). What 1955 film marked his first?
One And Done Only three times has a film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and no other Oscars. One was a 1932 drama set in Berlin with an all-star cast headed by Greta Garbo and John Barrymore. Name it.
Nominated For Playing A Nominee Several actors and actresses have been nominated for playing Oscar nominees. For what 1978 comedy did Maggie Smith win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing an actress who loses an Oscar?
And with that, TCM's 31 Days of Oscar comes to a close, and with it, the 31 Days of Oscar Trivia. Tomorrow, I'll do the math and let you know who answered the most questions correctly. The smart money is on MovieNut14 ...
The Most Honored Producer Hal B. Wallis holds the record for the producer with the most Best Picture nominations (19, although the award was not officially given to a film's producer before 1951). What nominated Wallis film was a 1942 musical biopic starring James Cagney?
And don't forget to click on over to All Good Things for round two of the March Madness/Best Actress tournament. Some tough match-ups today: Garbo v. Loy, Lombard v. Dietrich, Stanwyck v. Dunne and Shearer v. Colbert. Don't get left out of the action.
Two By Four Many times in Academy Award history, the same character has led to more than one Best Actor nomination. Who was nominated for playing the self-destructive actor in the 1937 version of A Star Is Born before James Mason turned the same trick in the 1954 version?
Oscar Mosts Which movie, a 1972 musical set in Berlin, won the most Oscars (eight) without winning Best Picture?
The Oscars are over for another year, but Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days Of Oscar marathon continues. So does the trivia.
The Lion Roars Before 1951, the Best Picture Academy Award was officially a competition among the studios, rather than individual producers. MGM was the studio with the most nominations (41). Among them was a nod to a gritty 1949 World War II drama starring Van Johnson. Name it.
Nomination In A Bottle? Doezens of times actors have been nominated for portraying alcoholics. Name the actor who took home a Best Actor Oscar for his harrowing performance in The Lost Weekend (1945).
Real Women Like men, women who play real people are often nominated for an Academy Award in the leading category. Which actress was nominated for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960)?
Notable No-Shows Joan Crawford may or may not have actually been ill when she stayed home in bed on the night she won her only Oscar as Best Actress for a 1945 film. What was it?
On Second Thought Sometimes remakes of classic films turn out fine, as in this redoing of a 1931 crime drama, first remade under the title Satan Met A Lady in 1936. Name the definitive, Oscar-nominated 1941 version starring Humphrey Bogart.
The Big Five Only three times in the history of the Academy Awards has a film won in each of the five major categories—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay. Name the 1934 comedy with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable that was the first to accomplish this.
Sister Acts Only two sisters have both won Academy Awards as Best Actress. One is Olivia de Havilland, who is the other? (Hint: Her award came for the 1941 Suspicion.)
Rookies Of The Year Among those who received acting nominations in their film debuts was this smoldering new star, nominated as Best Actor for The Search (1948). Name him.
Five For Four Nine times a movie has had five nominations for acting awards. One such occasion came when Albert Finney, Hugh Griffith, Diane Cilento, Edith Evans and Joyce Redman were all nominated for the same classic 1963 comedy. Name it.
Most Honored Foreign Director Federico Fellini's movies have won the most Oscars (four) for Best Foreign Language Film. Name the landmark 1963 film starring Marcello Mastroianni that took the prize.
Awards By Association Alec Guinness' films have won more Oscars (35) in various categories than those of any other performer. What 1951 crime comedy starring Guinness and directed by Charles Crichton won for Best Story and Screenplay?
Most Directing Nominations Which filmmaker leads the pack with 12 nominations for Best Director? (Hint: He directed the 1959 Ben-Hur.)
Sound Bites As head of the Columbia sound department, John Livadary holds the record for consecutive nominations in the Best Sound category—13 times for 1934 to 1946 releases. One of his nominations came for the musical biopic A Song to Remember (1945), featuring the compositions of what famous composer?
Best Picture, But Not Most Academy Awards The winner of the best Best Picture Oscar usually wins more awards than any other film that year. But 14 times the Best Picture winner didn't at least tie for the most wins. What political drama named Best Picture of 1949 won three Academy Awards while competitor The Heiress won four?
Two In One Seventeen times in Academy Award history the same film has produced two Best Actor or Best Actress nominations. Name the women nominated for the title roles in Thelma & Louise
Oscar Onlys Who is the only Oscar to win an Oscar? (Hint: He actually won two, one of them for the lyrics to the song "It Might As We Be Spring" in the 1945 musical State Fair.)
Nominated For Best Director, Not Best Picture While the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars are often closely tied, often at least one film is nominated in one category but not the other. What celebrated 1949 espionage thriller brought Carol Reed a nomination as Best Director while not scoring one as Best Picture?
From Stage To Screen Many times a performer has taken an acclaimed stage role and turned it into an Oscar nomination or win. For what 1964 film did Rex Harrison win a Best Actor Oscar to go along with his Tony for playing the same role on stage?
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