1952 Oscar Watch

Since An American In Paris won Best Picture in 1951 it would seem superfluous to give the superior Singin' In The Rain the win the following year but they could have at least given it something.  It only got 2 nominations, for supporting actress and score which it lost both.  They instead gave Best Picture to The Greatest Show On Earth which is routinely called one of the worst decisions ever.  I have never seen the film, nor have I ever seen Ivanhoe or Moulin Rouge, so I came at this year pretty fresh.  There were other factors that went into the decision.  High Noon was considered too political as it was written by someone on the blacklist.  Let's see if the "Worst Decision Ever" moniker is worthy, spoiler alert, it is.
You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. The Greatest Show On Earth is a big, long and dull movie about the circus.  Cecil B. DeMille directs this plodding epic that I really wanted to give a fair opinion to but it's nigh impossible.  It won the Oscar for Best Picture and it absolutely shouldn't have so the whole time you're watching the movie you're thinking, "How they hell did this win? Why was it even nominated?".  On top of that, it's not even that enjoyable.  It's got a lot of actors in front of green screens pretending to do circus moves.  An actual documentary about the circus would be more interesting which is what this movie feels like sometimes.  There is an extended sequence where I thought I was watching someone's home movies of the time they went to a circus.  The film is a very flimsy plot tied around circus acts with DeMille acting as an unseen narrator.  It feels more like something akin to This Is Cinerama than a movie with an actual plot.

4. Ivanhoe is like The Adventures Of Robin Hood but not as good.  It’s not a bad film but it’s also not a film that should have been nominated for Best Picture.  It’s not as good as Singin’ In The Rain or The Bad And a The Beautiful or a number of other films that could take this spot.  It’s also not as good as Robin Hood which you can tell it’s trying to emulate.  It's hard not to compare it to Robin Hood, they even have Joan Fontaine, sister of Olivia de Havilland who played Maid Marian in Robin Hood.  It's a perfectly enjoyable film though.  The only bad thing I can really say about it is that it shouldn't be in this category.  It's also missing fun supporting characters which puts all the pressure on Robert Taylor to keep the movie flowing.

3. Moulin Rouge is a big, colorful biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec.  If you’ve seen the 2001 musical that’s the John Leguizamo character.  He’s an artist who is a drunk and lives the bohemian lifestyle.  He hangs out at the Moulin Rouge, paints, drinks, befriends a prostitute and eventually dies.  He also was under 5 feet tall so Jose Ferrer walks around on his knees to play him.  The movie is directed by John Huston so it’s visually interesting and the cinematography and music are both lush and beautiful but it’s not much more than a beautifully shot biopic.

2. The Quiet Man is a big colorful, nice, fun and sweet romantic comedy starring John Wayne and directed by John Ford, those guys that gave us countless of westerns.  Wayne plays an American boxer who moves to Ireland after he kills a man in the ring.  He wants to buy some land his family once owned but so does another man in town.  Wayne ends up getting the land and falling in love with the other guy's sister.  When the guy finds out he retaliates by refusing to let his sister marry.  It's a beautiful Irish romance that just washes over you like a fairytale.  It's one of the most colorful films ever, filmed in Technicolor which was so beautiful and unique I'm surprised that it hasn't made a comeback.

1. High Noon is a western that I have never really understood the acclaim for.  It's certainly a fine movie and an enjoyable one.  It's short and told in real time which keeps it moving at a nice pace.  I like it, I just don't understand why some people love it.  I actually enjoy Rio Bravo better, which is the movie John Wayne made in retaliation because he hated High Noon so much.  Maybe that makes me uneducated or something but I think the movie is just fine.  Good, not great.  Gary Cooper stars as a Marshal who is retiring to live with his wife, a Quaker who doesn't believe in violence.  Moments after turning in his badge he finds out that some bad guys are riding into town and since there is no active law enforcement now he has to form a posse to stop them.  Nobody in town wants to help so he's left alone against an evil force that is on the horizon.  Then it ends in a shootout because that's how all westerns end.  There are supposedly political undertones to the film that have to do with the HUAC but I either don't see them or don't understand them.

Here's how The Greatest Show On Earth won Best Picture.  It was a big box office hit for one thing.  So people apparently loved it.  It also had a huge cast so if you were in this movie and in the Academy, you probably voted for it.  Chances are that if you were in the Academy you were either in this movie or had a friend who worked on it.  There's also the fact that Cecil B. DeMille was probably gonna die soon.  He was a respected director whose greatest work pre-dated the Academy so this was probably his last chance to have a film win Best Picture (turns out they could have waited and rewarded The Ten Commandments, but hindsight is 20/20).  Then there's the whole HUAC thing.  McCarthy was on the hunt for Commies and High Noon was scripted by a blacklisted writer.  Many people, including John Wayne, were protesting this film and refusing to give it any credit because they felt the film was un-American.  So all those factors came together and the worst choice ended up winning.  I'm voting for High Noon, not because it's my favorite, I like The Quiet Man better, but if it won it would be a big middle finger to the HUAC.  Nobody was ever planting Communist propaganda in Hollywood films, it was a big waste of time and cost a lot of people their jobs and their lives.  I'm voting for High Noon because it would have pissed some people off.

Oscar Winner: The Greatest Show On Earth

My Vote: High Noon

GABBY Winner: Singin’ In The Rain

Best Actor

5. Jose Ferrer just won an Oscar two years ago for playing Cyrano de Bergerac so I can't vote for him here and it's a shame because I like his performance in Moulin Rouge infinitely better.  I don't think I would have voted for him anyway but he would definitely rank a little higher.  He plays Toulouse-Lautrec, famous artist who stood under 5 feet tall.  He was also a big drunk.  Ferrer walks on his knees to convey Lautrec's short stature, they also use camera angles and body doubles for most scenes.  The film doesn't offer much in the way of plot but Ferrer keeps the film moving with his delightful performance.

4. Marlon Brando is in a no win situation when it comes to his performance in Viva Zapata.  He is entirely unconvincing as Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata but to his credit he doesn’t try to be.  He’s playing Stanley Kowalski if he were Mexican.  If he had tried to play a Mexican convincingly it would be offensive (see his performance in Teahouse Of The August Moon).  I can’t really condone this nomination at all.  I don’t entirely fault Brando, I place the blame on the producer who thought this was good casting.

3. Gary Cooper had one expression in his facial arsenal and it is on full display in High Noon.  He stares blankly but intently.  Apparently this was a conscience acting choice as he felt he looked silly when he would try to emote on screen.  It works well for some characters but still presents a dull performance.  Here he plays Marshal Will Kane who moments after retiring has to pick his badge back up and form a posse to fight an imposing threat.  Nobody in town is on his side and he has to stand alone.  It's a solid performance, one that would earn an Oscar if he hadn't already won.  I never thought Cooper was a good enough actor to need 2.

2. Alec Guinness plays a meek man with grand aspirations in The Lavender Hill Mob.  He works for a bank ensuring safe passage for gold bars but has been planning on stealing it for years.  One day he organizes a heist and hires a crew to steal the gold and smuggle it out of the country in the form of Eiffel Tower paperweights.  The movie is very funny and fun and Guinness has impeccable comic timing.  He also starred in The Man In The White Suit and The Card this year so he had a good year.

1. Kirk Douglas plays disgraced movie producer Jonathan Shields in The Bad And The Beautiful.  I absolutely love this film.  It won 5 Oscars, off of 6 nominations, this is the only one it lost.  That's a record for a film that was not nominated for Best Picture or Best Director.  So the Academy apparently loved this film too, just not enough to nominate it in the big categories.  Douglas is terrific in the lead.  The film is told in flashback from the perspective of 3 people who worked closely with Douglas and were wronged by him, a director, an actress and a writer.  Douglas has asked them all to collaborate on a new project but instead they get together and tell another producer who much of a piece of crap he is.  Douglas is great as this character that you are supposed to hate but at the same time completely understand his motives.

Jose Ferrer just won so I'm not voting for him.  Gary Cooper also already won, albeit 10 years ago, but I never found him worthy of 2 Oscars.  There's no way in hell I can vote for Marlon Brando.  Can you imagine if he won for this?  The year after A Streetcar Named Desire he wins for acting in brown face?  Then he does On The Waterfront?  That would be like Russell Crowe not winning for The Insider and then they gave him the win for Gladiator.  So the choice is between Alec Guinness and Kirk Douglas and both give really good performances.  I wouldn't mind if either of them won but I gotta vote for Kirk.  The Bad And The Beautiful is one of those films that should have gotten more Oscar love than it did.  In fact, it won everything it was nominated for except for this category.  Douglas also never ended up winning and Alec did, so that's also in his favor.  I suppose Cooper winning is fine, especially since he made John Wayne (who hated the film) accept the award in his absence, but Douglas deserved one before Cooper got 2.

Oscar Winner: Gary Cooper

My Vote: Kirk Douglas

GABBY Winner: Gene Kelly for Singin’ In The Rain

Best Actress

5. Joan Crawford stars as a famous playwright who finds out that her new husband is plotting to murder her in Sudden Fear.  This is an over the top melodrama thriller that is fine for what it is but it doesn’t feel like anything that should have been nominated for Academy Awards.  Crawford is especially way too over the top and broad to be taken seriously.  She thinks she has found her dream man until she hears a recording exposing his plan.  The first half of the film is him plotting behind her back and then the second half of the film is her trying to thwart his plans.  None of this makes much sense because it never gives any reason why she can’t just go to the police, especially because she has documented proof.  Crawford was a better movie star than she was an actress and that is on display here.  She is lit wonderfully and knows exactly how to present her face to the camera but her actual performance is nothing special.

4. Susan Hayward earned her 3rd of 5 nominations playing real life singer Jane Froman in With A Song In My Heart.  She quickly became a star but was crippled in a plane crash and lost the ability to walk.  Performing on crutches and sitting on pianos, she continued to perform, entertaining the troops in World War II.  This role is the definition of 'Oscar bait' but Hayward is good in the part.  She does a lot of song and dance routines but didn't do her own singing in the film, that was done by the real life Froman.  So I can't vote for her but it's a fine nomination. 

3. Bette Davis plays what is basically a thinly veiled version of Bette Davis in The Star.  She's an Oscar winning actress whose career is in decline, she's broke, nobody will hire her and she refuses to take roles that she feels are beneath her inflated sense of her stature.  There are reports that the character was based on Joan Crawford but Bette is definitely better suited for the role.  I wanted this film to be more campy.  There is a great scene where she drives around drunk with her Oscar on the dashboard but the majority of the film is played pretty straight.  Davis is good here, this is like the transition between her early melodramas and her over the top films of the 60s.  There's no way I can vote for her though, this isn't 3rd Oscar level material.

2. Julie Harris was 27 when she played a 12 year old tomboy in The Member Of The Wedding.  Knowing that, it feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does.  She’s absolutely believable in the role.  She originated the role on stage too so it feels like a performance that has been lived in.  The film is a coming of age story about a girl who doesn’t fit in.  She’s a girl that is wise beyond her years and she is in a rush to grow up.  The other girls won’t let her in their club and she hates being stuck playing with her young cousin who she sees as a baby.  Harris is captivating in the role and commands the screen.  At times it can be a little too theatrical, like she’s playing to the balcony, but it’s hard to take your eyes off her.

1. Shirley Booth won a Tony for her role before making her film debut in the film adaptation of Come Back, Little Sheba.  This is another performance that feels very real, probably because she played it so much on stage and she was an unknown so we had no other Shirley Booth performances to compare this to.  The film is about Shirley as an under appreciated but hopeful housewife.  Her husband is an alcoholic who doesn’t pay her much attention.  They married young and he sort of resents their marriage as he could have finished medical school if he didn’t have to drop out to support her.  Even though her life is sad she talks about it like she’s the happiest person in the world.  I really liked this performance and Booth is perfect in the part.  She doesn’t have movie star looks at all and her voice is also very unique.  If this part went to someone like Joan Crawford you wouldn’t believe it for a second.  Booth just is this character.

Crawford’s got 1, Bette’s got 2.  This is the only year that both of them were nominated, knowing their famous rivalry makes me wish one of them won just to see what would happen but neither of their performances are worthy.  Hayward hasn’t won yet but this isn’t something I want to vote for, musical biopic is one of my least favorite genres.  The vote is between Julie and Shirley.  Both are Tony award winning actresses recreating their stage roles.  Both are in their film debuts.  Both performances are Oscar worthy.  Everything is kind of even between them.  Julie is 27, Shirley is 54. In a way, Julie’s young age makes her performance more impressive.  I could really go either way but I’m picking Booth because she’s a little more believable in her role.  Also, Julie is young and pretty, she could have had more chances (she didn’t but I’m not looking in the future), Shirley is a character actress who will not get a lot of lead roles.  This is her big chance and she nailed it.

Oscar Winner: Shirley Booth

My Vote: Shirley Booth

GABBY Winner: Shirley Booth

Best Supporting Actor

5. Richard Burton stars in My Cousin Rachel as a guy who...has a cousin Rachel, I was a little confused by the fact that everyone wanted to have sex with their cousin in this film.  Burton is raised by his cousin who moves away to marry his cousin.  He dies and Burton suspects that he was killed by his new cousin wife.  He goes there seeking revenge but ends up falling in love with his cousin as well but then suspecting that she is trying to kill him too.  I was, how to put this, unable to pay attention to this film.  Have you ever been reading a book that is kind of dull and you realize you've been reading the same page over and over?  That's what this film felt like.  I was watching it and so bored that my mind started to wander and then it would be 3 minutes later and I had no idea what was going on.  So I'm not gonna vote for this, also Richard Burton is so clearly the lead in this film, it's his story, he's in practically every scene.  This isn't a case where an actor could go lead or supporting and you put them in the category where they have the best shot at getting nominated, this is downright fraud.

4. Jack Palance is an actor that I knew as a kid from the City Slickers movies so seeing him as a young man is always weird.  It’s like seeing you grandparents wedding photos, you only know them as old and seeing them young can be jarring.  In Sudden Fear he plays the villain.  He marries wealthy Joan Crawford and plots her murder so he can take her money.  Honestly, I found him very bland.  When he’s introduced he’s supposed to be dashing and romantic but he’s just kinda boring then he turns evil and he’s just kinda boring.  There’s a sameness to his performance that never elevated what could have been a really fun part.

3. Arthur Hunnicutt plays Zeb Calloway in The Big Sky, a Howard Hawks western that isn't very good.  It stars Kirk Douglas so it’s watchable but it’s one of those movies that doesn’t really have a plot.  A group of fur trappers ride the river and along the way some episodic stuff happens.  Hunnicutt plays the Festus of the group.  He’s like the old prospector who has seen it all and can spout wisdom and wax poetic about life in the wilderness.  I kept comparing his character to Walter Huston in Treasure Of The Sierra Madre but he’s nowhere near as fun as that.  It’s a stock role that’s been done numerous times and, unfortunately, Hunnicutt doesn’t really bring anything new to the role.

2. Anthony Quinn won his first Oscar for playing Eufemio Zapata, brother of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano in Viva Zapata.  Unlike Marlon Brando, Quinn was actually born in Mexico which makes his performance a little more authentic and appropriate.  I had to look up where he was born.  I always thought he was Italian but I assumed he wasn’t Mexican just because they put Brando in brown makeup so I thought they just did the same for the whole cast.  Quinn is actually the best part of his film.  He gives a fiery performance that injects much needed energy into a otherwise dull biopic.

1. Victor McLaglen is so good in The Quiet Man that it doesn’t seem like acting.  It feels like they grabbed this Irish boxer with no acting experience and put him in a movie.  That’s not the case though as he’s an Oscar winning actor playing an ordinary man.  He’s just natural at being unnatural. He plays a man who won’t let his sister marry until he gets married.  John Wayne wants to court his sister so they make him think that a woman in town has her eye on him.  It’s a very big and fun performance that could easily steal scenes but McLaglen is also a very giving actor so he shares the screen as well.

Anthony Quinn winning here was a good decision, his second win was questionable but this one was legit.  He makes his film watchable and is by far the best thing about it.  McLaglen is a good part of a great machine.  I’m voting for him because I like his performance and film better.  He had one already though so it’s no great loss.  They are the only two worth voting for here so either of them winning is fine.  By which I mean, only one of them winning would be fine.  This is a really terrible category.  3 out of 5 of the performances shouldn't have been nominated.  Burton is the lead of his film, Palance isn't very good and Hunnicutt is just kind of bland.  If this Oscar went to anyone other than Quinn or McLaglen it would have been a real head scratcher.

Oscar Winner: Anthony Quinn

My Vote: Victor McLaglen

GABBY Winner: Donald O'Connor for Singin' In The Rain

Best Supporting Actress

5. Terry Moore plays a young girl who rents a room from a couple in Come Back, Little Sheba.  Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster are a married couple who don’t have a very physical relationship.  When this young girl moves in, Burt starts to take a fancy to her.  She has a boyfriend in a long distance relationship but starts seeing another boy in her class.  I feel like a lot of actresses could have played this part just as well.  I didn’t see anything exceptional in her performance that made me think otherwise.  When the film focused on her I thought it lost a little steam as well.

4. Thelma Ritter earned her 3rd of 6 Oscar nominations for playing a nurse who looks after and then becomes a close friend of crippled singer Jane Froman in With A Song In My Heart.  Ritter was such an interesting presence in films.  She had such a pure Brooklyn accent that everything she said sounded sarcastic.  She adds some much needed humor to the film about half way through.  The first part of the film is Susan Hayward singing and then she gets into a plane crash and can't walk.  Ritter keeps the movie from going into stale melodrama with her impeccable timing.

3. Colette Marchand plays a prostitute that befriends Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge.  This is a case where she is so good in the film that I wish the movie had been about her character.  She meets the artist on the street when he saves her from a policeman.  They start a relationship and she doesn’t seem to mind his small stature.  She routinely takes his money though but they seem to be in love.  Then you find out that she was just using him for his money so she could support a boyfriend.  She’s so good in the film that the movie loses a lot of steam once she’s gone.  The last half of the movie really suffers from her absence.

2. Gloria Grahame appeared in Sudden Fear, Macao, The Greatest Show On Earth and The Bad And The Beautiful this year.  That's gotta be why she won the Oscar because her nominated performance in The Bad And The Beautiful barely makes a blip on my radar.  She's in less than 10 minutes of the film, basically 2 scenes, and she dies off screen.  There's nothing really Oscar worthy about it but at the same time it's impossible for me to be upset about it because I love Gloria Grahame.  This film is about Kirk Douglas as a shady movie producer and it's told in flashbacks by the 3 people he screwed over the most.  Grahame appears in the last segment.  She's the wife of a writer that Douglas has hired to work on a screenplay, when Kirk thinks that she is distracting him from his work he arranges to have her meet with a suave actor to distract her from distracting her husband.  They end up having an affair and die in a plane crash.  Once the writer finds out that Douglas was involved in all this he cuts all ties with him.  So her character is more important to the film than her performance, which like I said, is barely present.

1. Jean Hagen is hilarious and iconic as the untalented and dim Nina Lamont in Sigin’ In The Rain.  This beautiful silent film star is completely oblivious to the fact that she lacks any skills past being pleasing to the eye.  Once the era of the talkies hits, her studio scrambles to keep up with the changing times.  This means turning Lamont’s latest picture into a talking one.  The only problem is that her voice is grating to the ears and she’s also not that bright and fails to grasp the concept of a microphone.  Diction lessons can’t quite do the trick so they decide to dub her and turn the film into a musical.  How this movie only got 2 Oscar nominations is a big mystery but Hagen does manage to steal the film away from the likes of Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor.

Not a bad category.  The only person here I think would be a bad winner is Terry Moore.  Ritter isn't the best in the category but her winning would give a good actress an Oscar.  Marchand and Hagen are my favorite performances and Grahame earns points because she's terrific in everything, even in small roles like this.  If Gloria Grahame was nominated for Sudden Fear instead of The Bad And The Beautiful then this category gets a little interesting.  I can’t vote for someone with so little screen time but at the same time I can’t be mad that they wanted to give Gloria Grahame an Oscar.  She was so great in so many films.  They should have waited a year to honor her and given it to her for The Big Heat where she plays a gangster's moll who gets scarred by a hot pot of coffee.  But she won here and like I said, it's impossible for me to hate that decision.  The only problem is that Jean Hagen is so great in Singin' In The Rain.  It's not a role that usually wins Oscars (obviously) but she is absolutely hilarious and the film is a classic.  This is 1 of only 2 nominations for the film so I'm gonna vote for it both chances I get. 

Oscar Winner: Gloria Grahame

My Vote: Jean Hagen

GABBY Winner: Jean Hagen

 Best Director
At least they had the sense not to give this category to The Greatest Show On Earth.  Cecil B. DeMille was nominated but the Oscar went to John Ford for The Quiet Man.  This was his 4th Oscar and Fred Zinnemann would have been a better choice for High Noon but he won his next year.  The other nominees were John Huston who had 2 and Joseph Mankiewicz who had 4.

Best Story and Screenplay/Screenplay/Story
Best Story and Screenplay, which I'm assuming means Best Adapted Screenplay, goes to The Bad And The Beautiful over a pretty stacked category that included Five Fingers, High Noon, The Quiet Man and The Man In The White Suit.  The Lavender Hill Mob wins Best Screenplay over a weaker category that included The Atomic City, Breaking The Sound Barrier, Pat And Mike and Viva Zapata!.  Then there's Best Story which goes to The Greatest Show On Earth for some reason.  The category wasn't the greatest but it could have gone to The Narrow Margin or The Sniper.  The Pride Of St. Louis and My Son John were also nominated.

Best Scoring of a Dramatic of Comedy Picture/Scoring of a Musical Picture/Song
Dimitri Tiomkin wins for his score to High Noon and for the song The Ballad of High Noon ("Do Not Forsake Me O My Darlin'").  Two Oscars for the same music is a bit much so how about we give him the song Oscar but give the score Oscar to The Thief, a silent film that relies heavily on the music.  Best Scoring of a Musical Picture didn't go to Singin' In The Rain but instead to With A Song In My Heart, the Susan Hayward musical biopic about the singer who performed for the troops on crutches after a plane crash. 

Best Sound Recording
I guess when the word 'sound' is in the title of your film you have a leg up in this category as Breaking The Sound Barrier wins over two musicals which usually win this category, Hans Christian Andersen and With A Song In My Heart.

Best Art Direction (Black and White)/Art Direction (Color)
The Bad And The Beautiful rightfully wins the black and white category over Rashomon, getting its only nomination.  Moulin Rouge rightfully wins the color category.  The best sets of the year exist in these two films.

Best Cinematography (Black and White)/Cinematography (Color)
 The Bad And The Beautiful wins the black and white category over some weak competition.  High Noon didn't get a nomination but The Big Sky, Sudden Fear and My Cousin Rachel did.  The Quiet Man rightfully wins the color category, one of the most beautiful looking movies ever.

Best Costume Design (Black and White)/Costume Design (Color)
 Another split between The Bad And The Beautiful and Moulin Rouge.  The best costumes of the year exist in these two films.

 Best Film Editing
High Noon is clearly the best choice in this category.  Telling the story in real time and the editing amplifies the tension. 

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