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Real Men Many Best Actor nominations have come from playing real-life characters. Kirk Douglas was nominated as Best Actor for playing which famous artist in Lust for Life (1956)?
Retired Categories Not all Oscar categories have lasted—several have been retired over the years. At the very first Academy Awards, held in 1929, what film starring Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien became the only one to win an Oscar in the category of Best Unique and Artistic Quality of Production?
While not as well known as some other actors of his generation, we here at the Monkey nevertheless pause to note the birthday of Ronald Reagan, who would be 100 today.
Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911. After earning a bachelor of arts degree at Eureka College, he got his start in radio covering Iowa Hawkeye football games, then later "recreating" Chicago Cubs baseball games for WHO radio in Des Moines. In 1937, while traveling in California with the Cubs, he took a screen test and signed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers.
Born a month before Jean Harlow, Reagan made his film debut in Love Is On The Air four months after her death.
He gave what is generally regarded as his best performance in 1942's Kings Row in which his perfectly healthy legs are amputated by a sadistic surgeon. Reagan's line "Where's the rest of me?!" became the title of his 1965 autobiography.
Aside from Kings Row and the notorious Bedtime For Bonzo, in which Reagan played second fiddle to a chimpanzee (hey, wait a minute—we like chimps here at the Monkey!), his best remembered role was as George Gipp, the dying football star in Knute Rockne, All American. "Sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper."
The nickname stuck with him for the rest of his life.
Personally, my favorite Reagan film role was his last. In the 1964 film The Killers, Reagan played a particularly nasty heavy who orchestrates a robbery, double crosses John Cassavettes and slaps Angie Dickinson around. It was the only "bad guy" role of Reagan's career and he didn't much care for it, but it was the best acting he had done in years and it makes me wonder how his career might have played out if he had taken on more roles like it.
A staunch supporter of New Deal president Franklin Roosevelt, Reagan got involved in politics early and in 1947 he was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, serving five years in that post during the tumultuous anti-communist McCarthy era. 
(He was again elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1959, serving a total of seven years in that position.) Ironically, Reagan's acting career sagged as his political career took off and he was mostly relegated to B-Westerns in the 1950s.
As the decade wore on, Reagan's politics became more conservative and in 1962 he formally joined the Republican Party. "I didn't leave the Democratic Party," he claimed at the time, "The party left me."
Reagan was never nominated for an Oscar and retired from acting in 1965. Oh, and then he went on to other things—governor of California, president of the United States, that sort of thing. An assessment of those years, I leave to you.
Reagan was married twice, to Jane Wyman from 1940 to 1948, then to Nancy Davis from 1952 until his death in 2004. In his latter years, Reagan suffered from Alzheimers and died at the age of 93.
An All-Knighter Several Brits have been both knighted and nominated as actors by the Academy (some prior to their knighting, some afterwards). Sir Michael Redgrave, knighted in 1959, received his only nomination for which 1947 film?
The Good Luck Charm While actress and frequent extra Bess Flowers was never nominated for an Oscar herself, she holds the record for most appearances in Best Picture nominees (22). What 1937 Deanna Durbin musical, with Flowers in an uncredited bit, was an unlikely nominee as Best Picture?
By the way, when Katie-Bar-The-Door and I live in Britain, it was generally considered bad manners for an American to use the term "Brit," but I use it here because TCM did. Take it up with Bob Osborne the next time you see him.
[To read part one of this essay, click here.]
Documentaries and Animation
● In the years between The Great Train Robbery (1903) and D.W. Griffith's first film in 1908, the most interesting films were documentaries. Although in form, they more resemble "newsreels" than what we now think of as documentaries, these short films provided audiences of the time a window into people and places they might otherwise have never seen and continue to offer an insight into the era for historians.
● The first great documentarians were the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who I wrote about at some length in a previous post. Their forays into documentary film making were more in the nature of experiments with their newly-invented camera, mostly recording scenes from the world around them although they did occasionally film newsworthy events, such as the arrival of delegates to a conference on photography in 1895. The Lumière brothers abandoned movies altogether in 1900, famously declaring "the cinema is an invention without any future."
● One of the first American docum- entarians was G.W. "Billy" Bitzer. Better known now as D.W. Griffith's cinematographer, Bitzer began his career making film shorts, first collaborating with W.K.L. Dickson after the latter left Thomas Edison's lab, then later at the American Mutoscope Company, the forerunner of Biograph. Bitzer filmed hundreds of shorts, such as Film Registry title Westinghouse Works and Arrival of Immigrants at Ellis Island. In 2003, the International Cinematographers Guild named Bitzer one of the ten most influential cinematographers of all time.
● Footage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake proved once and for all the power of the new film medium. Perhaps the most interesting of the many shorts emerging from the disaster is A Trip Down Market Street Before The Fire, which by happenstance was filmed four days before the San Francisco earthquake. Coupled with footage shot at the same locations immediately after the earthquake, the devastation is still shocking. Imagine what it must have been like to see this footage in 1906, the first time in history the public could bear witness to a catastrophe that had happened a world away. (I encourage you to click the fullscreen function when you watch this.)
● A pair of feature-length documentaries from 1914 show the diverging approaches to the form. In the Land of the War Canoes, Edwin S. Curtis used staged re-enactments and fictional events to show the life of an aboriginal tribe in British Columbia, aiming more for entertainment than veracity. That same year Vilhjálmur Stefánsson brought back actual footage of his own disastrous expedition to the Arctic. (I'd tell you that the latter style of documentary eventually won out, but the fact is documentarians such as Michael Moore stage events for the camera to this day.)
● The fields of animation and stop-action photography also made significant strides during the pre-Griffith film era.
● Émile Cohl was a well-known caricaturist working in Paris who got into the motion picture business when he spotted a movie poster design obviously stolen from one of his drawings. To placate Cohl, the management of the Gaumont Film Company (the oldest studio in the world) offered him a job on the spot, mostly turning out short animation sequences for insertion into live-action films. In 1908, Cohl drew and directed a two-minute film, Fantasmagorie, believed to be the first all-animated film in history. [But see the discussion in the comments section where Matthew Blanchette and I agree that the distinction should go to Charles-Émile Reynaud's Pauvre Pierrot. ]
● In America, J. Stuart Blackton took an early stab at animation with such shorts as The Enchanted Drawing and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, a series of faces chalked up on a canvas and a blackboard, respectively, but it was Winsor McCay who earned the title as America's first great animator. Already a successful newspaper cartoonist, McCay was inspired by his son's cartoon "flip" book to turn four thousand ink drawings based on his comic strip "Little Nemo" into a film cartoon.
After the success of Little Nemo, McCay signed with the William Randolph Hearst newspaper chain where he continued with his work in the field of animation. In 1914, he produced his most famous character, Gertie The Dinosaur, often credited as the first anthropomorphic cartoon character. McCay toured with the country with the film, "interacting" with Gertie in front of the audience, using a whip to coax her out from behind an outcropping of rock and even feeding her an apple.
● Known as the "Spanish Méliès," Segundo de Chomón special- ized in surreal optical effects films. Working in France for Pathé, Chomón successfully combined miniatures and live-action, pioneered hand-tinted film and invented the "film dolly" which allowed complex tracking shots. As a director, he was known for his trick photography—for example, building one short (The Electric Hotel around a suitcase that unpacked itself, and another (Les Kiriki) around a troupe of Japanese acrobats who perform impossible stunts. Later he provided the special effects work in important feature-length films such as Cabiria (1914) and Abel Gance's Napoleon.
● For my money, though, the best of these early animation pioneers was Wladyslaw Starewicz (he later changed his name to Ladislas Starevich when he moved to France). Born in Moscow to Polish parents, Starewicz was the director of the Museum of Natural History in Lithuania when he inadvertently embarked on a film career. Attempting to document on film a fight between two male stag beetles, Starewicz was frustrated by the insect's nocturnal nature—whenever the camera's lights were turned on for filming, the bugs invariably rolled over and went to sleep—but rather than give up, Starewicz made two models of the beetles with wax and wire, and staged the fight using stop-motion photography.
The result, Lucanus Cervus, was a sensation and Starewicz became a full-time director. In 1912 he made his best film, The Cameraman's Revenge, in which an adulterous insect is captured on film by her cuckolded husband then invited with her unwitting lover to the film's premiere at the local cinema:
Starewicz was decorated by the czar and won the Gold Medal at an international film festival in Milan in 1914, but fled Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. He continued to make films for the rest of his life, dying in 1965 while working on the film Like Dog and Cat.
[To continue to Part Three, click here.]
Kerr Trouble Deborah Kerr holds the record for most Best Actress nominations (six) without ever winning. Her first came for what 1949 drama costarring Spencer Tracy?
Like Kissing Your Sister Only twice in the history of the Oscars have acting awards ended in a tie, once for Best Actor and once for Best Actress. Who tied with Katharine Hepburn {The Lion in Winter) for Best Actress in 1968?
As usual, no prizes for getting it right, other than a free plug for your blog or favorite charity in the comments section.
Stolen from TCM's Now Playing magazine:
Four In One Thirteen times a single film has been nominated in all four acting categories. For which 1951 drama were the honors shared by Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden?
1929-1930 On November 5, 1930, the Academy held the third Oscar ceremony, covering the years 1929 and 1930, with sound films dominating for the first time. Which 1929 Best Picture nominee was a musical starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald?
I cannot tell a lie: The questions are ripped off straight from TCM's Now Playing magazine.
As was the case yesterday, no prizes for being smart. Just like in real life.
Love At First Sight Several women have been nominated for acting Oscars in their film debuts. What 1953 comedy did the trick for Maggie McNamara?
Most Nominated Actor Who is the most nominated actor in Academy history, with 12 nominations that included three wins?
Husbands And Wives Three times husband and wife have been nominated as actors in the same film. For what 1957 mystery did Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester win their nominations?
... straight from TCM's Now Playing:
The Right Direction W.S. Van Dyke II set a record by having four of his films nominated for Oscars in various categories in the same year. One of the nominations was for Van Dyke himself as Best Director for The Thin Man. What was the year?
Self-Made Men A handful of men directed themselves to nominations for Best Actor. With which 1941 classic did Orson Welles accomplish this?
What A Character Only once has the same character in three different films, played by three different people, led to three acting nominations. What is the name of that character? [Hint: The actors were Charles Laughton, Robert Shaw and Richard Burton.]
Three easy ones. Leave your guesses in the comment section. No prizes for answering correctly—virtue is its own reward, dammit!
Clark Gable, who be 110 today ...
... and John Ford, who would be 117.
If I live long enough, I'll write a full biography of each of them, in Gable's case in connection with either It Happened One Night or Gone With The Wind, in Ford's either Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath or The Searchers, maybe all three.
Just one more reason not to have a heart attack while shoveling snow.
Turner Classic Movies' annual "31 Days Of Oscar" marathon starts tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Here's the schedule:
All Times Eastern
The Right Direction
1 Tuesday
6:00 AM Eskimo (1933)
8:00 AM Hide-Out (1934)
9:30 AM Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
11:15 AM Thin Man, The (1934)
Self-Made Men
1:00 PM Citizen Kane (1941)
3:00 PM Great Dictator, The (1940)
5:15 PM Richard III (1955)
What A Character!
8:00 PM Private Life Of Henry VIII, The (1933)
10:00 PM Man for All Seasons, A (1966)
12:15 AM Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969)
Love At First Sight
2:45 AM Last Summer (1969)
4:30 AM Anthony Adverse (1936)
2 Wednesday
7:00 AM Great Waltz, The (1938)
8:45 AM Little Foxes, The (1941)
11:00 AM Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
2:15 PM Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, The (1968)
4:30 PM Lonelyhearts (1958)
6:15 PM Moon Is Blue, The (1953)
Most Nominated Actor
8:00 PM Five Easy Pieces (1970)
10:00 PM Terms of Endearment (1983)
12:30 AM Easy Rider (1969)
2:15 AM Last Detail, The (1973)
Husbands And Wives
4:15 AM Guardsman, The (1931)
3 Thursday
6:00 AM Witness For The Prosecution (1957)
8:00 AM Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Four In One
10:30 AM Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
12:30 PM Johnny Belinda (1948)
2:30 PM For Whom The Bell Tolls (1943)
5:30 PM Streetcar Named Desire, A (1951)
1929-1930
8:00 PM Love Parade, The (1929)
10:00 PM All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
12:30 AM Big House, The (1930)
2:00 AM Divorcee, The (1930)
3:30 AM Disraeli (1929)
Kerr Trouble
5:00 AM Edward, My Son (1949)
4 Friday
7:00 AM Separate Tables (1958)
9:00 AM Sundowners, The (1960)
Like Kissing Your Sister
11:30 AM Champ, The (1931)
1:00 PM Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1932)
2:45 PM Lion In Winter, The (1968)
5:15 PM Funny Girl (1968)
An All-Knighter
8:00 PM Heiress, The (1949)
10:00 PM Bridge On The River Kwai, The (1957)
1:00 AM Ryan's Daughter (1970)
4:30 AM Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
5 Saturday
7:15 AM Othello (1965)
10:15 AM Becket (1964)
The Good Luck Charm
1:00 PM Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
3:00 PM One Hour With You (1932)
4:30 PM Awful Truth, The (1937)
6:15 PM Father Of The Bride (1950)
Real Men
8:00 PM Stand And Deliver (1988)
10:00 PM Gandhi (1982)
1:30 AM Ali (2001)
4:30 AM Lust For Life (1956)
6 Sunday
7:00 AM Conquest (1937)
9:00 AM Abe Lincoln In Illinois (1940)
11:00 AM Jolson Story, The (1946)
1:15 PM Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962)
3:45 PM Viva Zapata! (1952)
5:45 PM Pride Of The Yankees, The (1942)
Retired Categories
8:00 PM Sunrise (1927)
10:00 PM Wings (1927)
12:30 AM House on 92nd Street, The (1945)
2:15 AM Viva Villa! (1934)
4:15 AM Damsel In Distress, A (1937)
All Or Nothing
7 Monday
6:00 AM Here Comes the Navy (1934)
7:30 AM Trader Horn (1931)
10:00 AM House of Rothschild, The (1934)
12:00 PM Libeled Lady (1936)
Picture Perfect
1:45 PM Black Swan, The (1942)
3:15 PM Snows Of Kilimanjaro, The (1952)
5:15 PM South Pacific (1958)
Playing Out The String
8:00 PM Blossoms In The Dust (1941)
10:00 PM Mrs. Miniver (1942)
12:30 AM Madame Curie (1943)
2:45 AM Mrs. Parkington (1944)
5:00 AM Valley Of Decision, The (1945)
The Most Nominations ... Without Winning
8 Tuesday
7:00 AM Shoes of the Fisherman, The (1968)
9:45 AM Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954)
11:30 AM 2010 (1984)
1:30 PM Hanging Tree, The (1959)
3:30 PM On the Beach (1959)
5:45 PM Caine Mutiny, The (1954)
Winners In Both Leading And Supporting Roles
8:00 PM Gaslight (1944)
10:00 PM Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
12:00 AM Glory (1989)
2:30 AM Sin Of Madelon Claudet, The (1931)
Alien Invasions
4:30 AM Red (1994)
9 Wednesday
6:30 AM Woman In The Dunes (1964)
8:45 AM Battaglia di Algieri, La (1967)
11:00 AM Z (1969)
The Write Stuff
1:30 PM Ball Of Fire (1941)
3:30 PM Foreign Affair, A (1948)
5:30 PM Fortune Cookie, The (1966)
Memorable Oscar Moments
8:00 PM Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
10:00 PM Cavalcade (1933)
12:00 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Sweet Music
2:30 AM Some Came Running (1958)
5:00 AM Robin And The 7 Hoods (1964)
10 Thursday
7:15 AM Rich, Young And Pretty (1951)
9:00 AM Because You're Mine (1952)
11:00 AM Tonight and Every Night (1945)
12:45 PM Romance On The High Seas (1948)
2:30 PM Anchors Aweigh (1945)
5:00 PM Star! (1968)
The Most Decorated Decorator
8:00 PM Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
10:00 PM American in Paris, An (1951)
12:00 AM Too Young To Kiss (1951)
2:00 AM Picture of Dorian Gray, The (1945)
4:00 AM Thousands Cheer (1943)
11 Friday
6:15 AM National Velvet (1944)
8:30 AM Yearling, The (1946)
10:45 AM Random Harvest (1942)
1:00 PM Quo Vadis (1951)
4:00 PM Executive Suite (1954)
5:45 PM Little Women (1949)
Any Regrets?
8:00 PM Graduate, The (1967)
10:00 PM Forrest Gump (1994)
12:30 AM Pretty Woman (1990)
2:45 AM Cat Ballou (1965)
Brother And Sister Acts
4:30 AM Free Soul, A (1931)
12 Saturday
6:15 AM None but the Lonely Heart (1944)
The Best Of The Best
8:15 AM Dark Victory (1939)
10:00 AM Of Mice and Men (1939)
12:00 PM Ninotchka (1939)
2:00 PM Wuthering Heights (1939)
4:00 PM Stagecoach (1939)
5:45 PM Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
8:00 PM Wizard Of Oz, The (1939)
10:00 PM Gone With the Wind (1939)
2:00 AM Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
4:00 AM Love Affair (1939)
They Shoot, He Scores
13 Sunday
6:00 AM Cowboy And The Lady, The (1938)
8:00 AM Keys of the Kingdom, The (1945)
10:30 AM Camelot (1967)
1:45 PM Daddy Long Legs (1955)
4:00 PM Coney Island (1943)
6:00 PM Mother Wore Tights (1947)
It Takes Two
8:00 PM Miracle On 34th Street (1947)
10:00 PM Going My Way (1944)
12:30 AM Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
2:15 AM Story of Louis Pasteur, The (1935)
Oscar Falls In Love
4:00 AM Room With a View, A (1985)
14 Monday
6:00 AM Alice Adams (1935)
8:00 AM Flirtation Walk (1934)
10:00 AM More the Merrier, The (1943)
12:00 PM Talk Of The Town, The (1942)
2:00 PM Bishop's Wife, The (1947)
4:00 PM Philadelphia Story, The (1940)
6:00 PM Goodbye Girl, The (1977)
All In The Family
8:00 PM Rachel, Rachel (1968)
10:00 PM Casablanca (1942)
12:00 AM Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
2:15 AM Victor/Victoria (1982)
French Kisses
4:45 AM Cousin, Cousine (1975)
15 Tuesday
6:30 AM Au Revoir, Les Enfants (1987)
8:15 AM Last Metro, The (1980)
10:30 AM Black Orpheus (1959)
12:30 PM Mon Oncle (1958)
The Most Writing Nominations
2:30 PM Alice (1990)
4:30 PM Radio Days (1987)
6:00 PM Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Oscar Firsts
8:00 PM My Man Godfrey (1936)
10:00 PM Cimarron (1931)
12:15 AM Lilies of the Field (1963)
2:00 AM Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
4:15 AM Two Women (1960)
16 Wednesday
6:00 AM Grand Illusion (1937)
8:00 AM Chang (1927)
9:30 AM Lady For A Day (1933)
11:15 AM Life Of Emile Zola, The (1937)
1:15 PM Since You Went Away (1944)
4:15 PM Sounder (1972)
6:15 PM Swing Time (1936)
It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated
8:00 PM My Favorite Year (1982)
10:00 PM Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2:00 AM Stunt Man, The (1980)
4:15 AM Ruling Class, The (1972)
17 Thursday
7:00 AM Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
How To Earn An Oscar Nomination?
10:00 AM Never On Sunday (1960)
12:00 PM Butterfield 8 (1960)
2:00 PM Street Angel (1928)
4:00 PM Anna Christie (1930)
5:30 PM Irma La Douce (1963)
Auspicious Debuts
8:00 PM 12 Angry Men (1957)
10:00 PM Chariots Of Fire (1981)
12:15 AM Room at the Top (1959)
2:15 AM American Beauty (1999)
Oscar ♥ New York
4:15 AM Do the Right Thing (1989)
18 Friday
6:30 AM Naked City (1948)
8:15 AM Dead End (1937)
10:00 AM Five Star Final (1931)
11:45 AM On the Town (1949)
1:30 PM It's Always Fair Weather (1955)
3:15 PM My Sister Eileen (1942)
5:00 PM Producers, The (1968)
6:30 PM It Should Happen To You (1954)
The Most Writing Wins
8:00 PM Hospital, The (1971)
10:00 PM Marty (1955)
12:00 AM Network (1976)
2:15 AM Goddess, The (1958)
The Most Best Actor Nominations
4:15 AM San Francisco (1936)
19 Saturday
6:15 AM Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)
7:45 AM Old Man and the Sea, The (1958)
9:15 AM Inherit The Wind (1960)
11:30 AM Captains Courageous (1937)
The Most Supporting Actor
1:30 PM Come And Get It (1936)
3:30 PM Westerner, The (1940)
5:30 PM Sergeant York (1941)
Clean Sweeps
8:00 PM Gigi (1958)
10:00 PM Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
1:30 AM Last Emperor, The (1987)
Nominated For Best Director, Not Best Picture
4:15 AM Blow-Up (1966)
20 Sunday
6:15 AM 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
9:00 AM Summertime (1955)
11:00 AM Morocco (1930)
12:45 PM In Cold Blood (1967)
3:15 PM Third Man, The (1949)
5:15 PM Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The (1958)
From Stage To Screen
8:00 PM Born Yesterday (1950)
10:00 PM My Fair Lady (1964)
1:00 AM Auntie Mame (1958)
3:30 AM Hasty Heart, The (1950)
5:30 AM Night Must Fall (1937)
21 Monday
7:30 AM Subject Was Roses, The (1968)
9:30 AM Sweet Bird Of Youth (1962)
12:00 PM Watch On The Rhine (1943)
2:00 PM Magnificent Yankee, The (1950)
3:30 PM Bad Seed, The (1956)
6:00 PM Member of the Wedding, The (1952)
Oscar Onlys
8:00 PM State Fair (1945)
10:00 PM Best Years Of Our Lives, The (1946)
1:00 AM Pygmalion (1938)
2:45 AM Two Arabian Knights (1927)
4:30 AM Midsummer Night's Dream, A (1935)
22 Tuesday
7:00 AM Divine Lady, The (1929)
8:45 AM Limelight (1952)
11:15 AM Day At The Races, A (1937)
1:15 PM Ship of Fools (1965)
3:45 PM Devil and Daniel Webster, The (1941)
5:45 PM Skippy (1931)
7:15 PM Red Balloon,The (1956)
Two In One
8:00 PM Defiant Ones, The (1958)
10:00 PM Amadeus (1984)
1:00 AM Thelma & Louise (1991)
3:15 AM Giant (1956)
23 Wednesday
6:45 AM Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
Sound Bites
8:45 AM Too Many Husbands (1940)
10:15 AM Lost Horizon (1937)
12:30 PM You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
2:15 PM Sahara (1943)
4:00 PM Cover Girl (1944)
6:00 PM Song to Remember, A (1945)
Best Picture, But Not Most Academy Awards
8:00 PM All the King's Men (1949)
10:00 PM You Can't Take It With You (1938)
12:15 AM Great Ziegfeld, The (1936)
Most Honored Foreign Director
3:30 AM Amarcord (1973)
24 Thursday
6:00 AM 8 1/2 (1963)
8:30 AM La Strada (1954)
Awards By Association
10:30 AM Lavender Hill Mob, The (1951)
12:00 PM Great Expectations (1946)
2:00 PM Cromwell (1970)
4:30 PM Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Most Directing Nominations
8:00 PM Dodsworth (1936)
10:00 PM Ben-Hur (1959)
2:00 AM Friendly Persuasion (1956)
4:30 AM Collector, The (1965)
Sister Acts
25 Friday
7:00 AM Suspicion (1941)
9:00 AM To Each His Own (1946)
Rookies Of The Year
11:15 AM Marie Antoinette (1938)
2:00 PM Corn Is Green, The (1945)
4:00 PM Search, The (1948)
6:00 PM Bus Stop (1956)
Five For Four
8:00 PM On The Waterfront (1954)
10:00 PM From Here To Eternity (1953)
12:15 AM Tom Jones (1963)
2:30 AM Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
On Second Thought
4:30 AM Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
26 Saturday
7:45 AM Ivanhoe (1952)
9:45 AM King Solomon's Mines (1950)
11:45 AM Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
1:45 PM Letter, The (1940)
3:30 PM Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
5:30 PM Fanny (1961)
The Big Five
8:00 PM It Happened One Night (1934)
10:00 PM One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
12:30 AM Silence Of The Lambs, The (1991)
Real Women
2:45 AM Frances (1982)
5:15 AM Silkwood (1983)
27 Sunday
8:00 AM Sister Kenny (1946)
10:30 AM I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
12:45 PM I Want To Live! (1958)
3:00 PM Sunrise At Campobello (1960)
5:30 PM Joan Of Arc (1948)
Notable No-Shows
8:00 PM Mildred Pierce (1945)
10:00 PM Annie Hall (1977)
12:00 AM Informer, The (1935)
2:00 AM Morning Glory (1933)
The Lion Roars
3:30 AM Smilin' Through (1932)
5:30 AM Broadway Melody Of 1936 (1935)
28 Monday
7:30 AM David Copperfield (1935)
9:45 AM Tale Of Two Cities, A (1935)
12:00 PM Citadel, The (1938)
2:00 PM Human Comedy, The (1943)
4:00 PM Test Pilot (1938)
6:00 PM Battleground (1949)
Nominations In A Bottle?
8:00 PM Arthur (1981)
10:00 PM Lost Weekend, The (1945)
12:00 AM Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
2:00 AM Under the Volcano (1984)
4:00 AM Dresser, The (1983)
1 Tuesday
6:15 AM Johnny Eager (1942)
8:15 AM Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Two By Four
10:30 AM Star Is Born, A (1937)
12:30 PM Star Is Born, A (1954)
3:30 PM Cyrano De Bergerac (1950)
5:30 PM Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
Oscar Mosts
8:00 PM Emperor Waltz, The (1948)
10:00 PM All About Eve (1950)
12:30 AM Cabaret (1972)
2:45 AM Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
4:45 AM Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)
The Most Honored Producer
2 Wednesday
6:45 AM Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
9:00 AM Jezebel (1938)
11:00 AM All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
1:30 PM Captain Blood (1935)
3:45 PM Kings Row (1942)
6:15 PM Four Daughters (1938)
Gone But Not Forgotten
8:00 PM East Of Eden (1955)
10:00 PM Around The World In 80 Days (1956)
1:30 AM Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
4:00 AM Obsession (1976)
3 Thursday
6:00 AM Great Caruso, The (1951)
8:00 AM Merry Widow, The (1952)
10:00 AM Way We Were, The (1973)
12:30 PM North By Northwest (1959)
3:00 PM Kind Lady (1951)
4:30 PM Strip, The (1951)
6:00 PM Shall We Dance (1937)
One And Done
8:00 PM Grand Hotel (1932)
10:00 PM Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
12:30 AM Broadway Melody, The (1929)
Nominated For Playing A Nominee
2:15 AM Star, The (1952)
4:00 AM California Suite (1978)
Real Men Many Best Actor nominations have come from playing real-life characters. Kirk Douglas was nominated as Best Actor for playing which famous artist in Lust for Life (1956)?
While not as well known as some other actors of his generation, we here at the Monkey nevertheless pause to note the birthday of Ronald Reagan, who would be 100 today.
Aside from Kings Row and the notorious Bedtime For Bonzo, in which Reagan played second fiddle to a chimpanzee (hey, wait a minute—we like chimps here at the Monkey!), his best remembered role was as George Gipp, the dying football star in Knute Rockne, All American. "Sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper."
Personally, my favorite Reagan film role was his last. In the 1964 film The Killers, Reagan played a particularly nasty heavy who orchestrates a robbery, double crosses John Cassavettes and slaps Angie Dickinson around. It was the only "bad guy" role of Reagan's career and he didn't much care for it, but it was the best acting he had done in years and it makes me wonder how his career might have played out if he had taken on more roles like it.
(He was again elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1959, serving a total of seven years in that position.) Ironically, Reagan's acting career sagged as his political career took off and he was mostly relegated to B-Westerns in the 1950s.
Reagan was married twice, to Jane Wyman from 1940 to 1948, then to Nancy Davis from 1952 until his death in 2004. In his latter years, Reagan suffered from Alzheimers and died at the age of 93.
An All-Knighter Several Brits have been both knighted and nominated as actors by the Academy (some prior to their knighting, some afterwards). Sir Michael Redgrave, knighted in 1959, received his only nomination for which 1947 film?
● The first great documentarians were the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who I wrote about at some length in a previous post. Their forays into documentary film making were more in the nature of experiments with their newly-invented camera, mostly recording scenes from the world around them although they did occasionally film newsworthy events, such as the arrival of delegates to a conference on photography in 1895. The Lumière brothers abandoned movies altogether in 1900, famously declaring "the cinema is an invention without any future."
● One of the first American docum- entarians was G.W. "Billy" Bitzer. Better known now as D.W. Griffith's cinematographer, Bitzer began his career making film shorts, first collaborating with W.K.L. Dickson after the latter left Thomas Edison's lab, then later at the American Mutoscope Company, the forerunner of Biograph. Bitzer filmed hundreds of shorts, such as Film Registry title Westinghouse Works and Arrival of Immigrants at Ellis Island. In 2003, the International Cinematographers Guild named Bitzer one of the ten most influential cinematographers of all time.
● Émile Cohl was a well-known caricaturist working in Paris who got into the motion picture business when he spotted a movie poster design obviously stolen from one of his drawings. To placate Cohl, the management of the Gaumont Film Company (the oldest studio in the world) offered him a job on the spot, mostly turning out short animation sequences for insertion into live-action films. In 1908, Cohl drew and directed a two-minute film, Fantasmagorie, believed to be the first all-animated film in history. [But see the discussion in the comments section where Matthew Blanchette and I agree that the distinction should go to Charles-Émile Reynaud's Pauvre Pierrot. ]
● Known as the "Spanish Méliès," Segundo de Chomón special- ized in surreal optical effects films. Working in France for Pathé, Chomón successfully combined miniatures and live-action, pioneered hand-tinted film and invented the "film dolly" which allowed complex tracking shots. As a director, he was known for his trick photography—for example, building one short (The Electric Hotel around a suitcase that unpacked itself, and another (Les Kiriki) around a troupe of Japanese acrobats who perform impossible stunts. Later he provided the special effects work in important feature-length films such as Cabiria (1914) and Abel Gance's Napoleon.
● For my money, though, the best of these early animation pioneers was Wladyslaw Starewicz (he later changed his name to Ladislas Starevich when he moved to France). Born in Moscow to Polish parents, Starewicz was the director of the Museum of Natural History in Lithuania when he inadvertently embarked on a film career. Attempting to document on film a fight between two male stag beetles, Starewicz was frustrated by the insect's nocturnal nature—whenever the camera's lights were turned on for filming, the bugs invariably rolled over and went to sleep—but rather than give up, Starewicz made two models of the beetles with wax and wire, and staged the fight using stop-motion photography.
Kerr Trouble Deborah Kerr holds the record for most Best Actress nominations (six) without ever winning. Her first came for what 1949 drama costarring Spencer Tracy?
Stolen from TCM's Now Playing magazine:
I cannot tell a lie: The questions are ripped off straight from TCM's Now Playing magazine.
... straight from TCM's Now Playing:
Turner Classic Movies' annual "31 Days Of Oscar" marathon starts tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Here's the schedule:
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