1958 Oscar Watch

It’s hard not to look at the Oscars in a historical context.  I’m sure in 1958 Gigi was a movie that people assumed would be remembered forever.  Musicals were still very popular and this was a well made and fun one.  The decision made sense at the time.  Today you look at this and can think of 50 musicals better than Gigi.  It doesn’t hold up and as a result it’s one of the weaker Best Picture winners.  As for the rest of the winners, you have David Niven winning Best Actor for a supporting role and Burl Ives winning when I think most people agree it was for the wrong film.  On the plus side Susan Hayward wins an overdue Oscar for a good performance and Wendy Hiller also wins.  I guess you can also call Vincente Minnelli winning Best Director a retribution win.  There’s some good stuff here but a Gigi sweep makes this year kind of forgettable.
You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. Auntie Mame is a straight up comedy that managed to score 6 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.  I said that exact same thing recently about The More The Merrier.  It's so rare that a comedy gets a bunch of nominations that it sticks out and I feel compelled to vote for it.  This was also a huge box office hit, so it had that going for it too.  Unlike The More The Merrier, this movie didn't come together for me.  It's very episodic, I kept wondering when or if there would be any conflict, but it is a nice and breezy, fun film.  A young boy goes to live with his eccentric aunt after his father dies.  She's a kooky, wealthy, carefree and heavy drinking woman.  She loses her money in the Stock Market crash, ends up doing a series of odd jobs and tries to land a rich husband.  It's a very long film, unnecessarily so, but is enjoyable due to an incredibly fun lead performance from Rosalind Russell.  There's not a single scene in this film where she isn't funny, and it's a long film so that takes commitment.

4. Separate Tables is an ensemble drama about a bunch of people who live in a hotel.  It's episodic but well done.  Burt Lancaster is dating the manager of the hotel but conflicted when his ex-wife moves in, David Niven is a Major who pretends to be classy but is really guilty for groping women in a theater and Deborah Kerr is a young girl living with her mother.  All these stories weave in and out of each other until everyone decides to stop gossiping and have breakfast.  It's a good film but not something that should have won Best Picture.  It all takes place in the hotel so it feels like a play that was filmed rather than a cinematic movie.

3. Gigi is a big, colorful and grand old musical.  It’s perfectly nice and pleasant with wonderful costumes and art direction, some nice songs and a breezy tone that makes it enjoyable.  It’s like a light dessert after a nice meal.  It’s also kind of forgettable.  I just watched it and there’s only one song I can sing off the top of my head and it’s the pervy one at the beginning about liking little girls.  So why did this movie get 9 Oscars?  Off of 9 nominations no less, a clean sweep.  It was the biggest winner in Oscar history (until Ben-Hur broke that record the next year).  I don’t have an answer for that except that maybe they just voted for the fun one.  This is only two years after Around The World In 80 Days won and we’re in the same decade as other questionable winners like An American In Paris and The Greatest Show On Earth.  This must have just been what they were digging.

2. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is a Tennessee Williams adaptation which are not my favorite things in the world.  On the plus side they usually have rich dialogue that invites good actors to give great performances but there is a sameness to all of them.  They all seem to have the same few characters just in different situations.  This is about Brick, a former football player who is currently nursing a broken leg that he got from a drunken accident.  He spends most of his days drinking and ignoring his wife.  His father has just been diagnosed with cancer and the family is arguing about the inheritance.  In the original play Brick had a possibly homosexual relationship with another football player but in the movie that was changed.  Director Richard Brooks does a good job of opening up the play.  It still all takes place in one house but it doesn't feel claustrophobic or stagey.  It also has a great atmosphere, it makes me feel like I'm sitting in a smoky southern hotel drinking old whiskey.

1. The Defiant Ones is about two escaped convicts chained together, one white and one black, and they are running from the law.  This is brilliant social commentary but it is always tied to the characters.  The message never gets in the way of the story.  The subtext is all about racial politics but the movie is really about their relationship.  They grow and learn but the best thing about the film is that they don’t really change.  Just because they begin to love each other doesn’t mean they lose all prejudice.  It’s a terrific film, both Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are incredible and Stanley Kramer is an excellent craftsman here.  All the action in the film is expertly shot and it feels so real.  You can see the two of them sailing down river or climbing muddy hills or hanging by their chains and it feels like they are in real peril.

The Defiant Ones is really the only thing worth voting for.  I’ll even say that it’s the only thing worth being nominated.  All the other films are good but I wouldn’t think any of them got robbed if they weren’t on this list.  The Defiant Ones is a great, great film.  Gigi winning is a really weak decision.  When you look at all the musicals that won Best Picture, West Side Story, An American In Paris, Chicago, Oliver!, La La Land for about 3 minutes, Gigi is the weakest of the bunch.  Then just think of all the better musicals that didn’t win.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this was less about Gigi and more about making it up to Vincente Minnelli.  He directed An American In Paris but lost Best Director that year, he also made The Bad And The Beautiful but failed to get nominated, this was the year they decided to say sorry.  Whatever the case, my vote goes to The Defiant Ones but Gigi does seem to make more sense than anything else.  It would seem odd if The Defiant Ones was beat by Separate Tables or Auntie Mame but it seems perfectly rational that they saw all these films and picked Gigi.

Oscar Winner: Gigi

My Vote: The Defiant Ones

GABBY Winner: The Defiant Ones

Best Actor

5. Spencer Tracy plays the title role in The Old Man And The Sea.  It just feels like any old guy who starred in this film would get an Oscar nomination for it.  It doesn't matter who you put on that boat, it's a one person show which the Academy loves and it's based on an Ernest Hemingway story which gives it prestige.  I was not a fan of this film and it's a case where I assume the book is better.  Since Tracy is just on a boat the whole film trying to catch a fish, the movie uses voice over narration to tell the story.  So it's basically just Tracy reading the audio book of The Old Man And The Sea while he sits in a boat and acts it out.

4. David Niven is hardly a lead role in Separate Tables.  He's part of the ensemble but I can see both how you might think he's the main character but also how you could not be able to see that at all.  The movie starts with him and ends with him and when he's not around people are gossiping about him but Niven is only in about 20 minutes of the film.  So he tricks you.  He's good in the role and when he's not on screen he hovers over the film because everyone talks about him but the performance itself is really rather small.  It's gonna be hard for me to vote for this because it seems like he's in the wrong category but he's also really good.  He's a Major who is trying to hide the fact that he's guilty of sexually harassing women in a movie theater.  He tries to keep a stiff upper lip and be proper but he gets phrases wrong and is vague when questioned about facts about his schooling.  When he's found out he has a few great scenes where he drops the facade and reveals that he is a lonely and sick man.

3. Tony Curtis plays a racist white guy chained to a black man in The Defiant Ones.  They are convicts escaping from a car crash and on the run from the law.  Through all their adventures along the road to freedom they learn about each other and grow to respect one another.  Curtis is really strong here in what is probably his best ever performance.  He gets to the heart of the character without ever resorting to anything that would get the audience on his side.  He really is a bad man and that’s how Tony plays him.  We only root for his escape because it’s a movie, he’s our hero and he’s a human being who deserves a second chance.

2. Sidney Poitier plays a racist black guy chained to a white man in The Defiant Ones.  Everything I said about Curtis goes double for Poitier.  He’s absolutely terrific in this film getting to the heart of a flawed character.  It’s hard to tell if it is the script or Poitier’s performance that makes his character so likable.  It’s probably a combination of both but Sidney has a natural charm to him that just makes him instantly relatable.  As soon as this guy is introduced you kinda hope he gets out and that’s before you know why he’s in prison.  It could have been for something really bad but you’re still like, ‘I hope he escapes’.

1. Paul Newman plays Brick, an alcoholic former high school football hero with a broken leg in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  For the first half of the film Newman gives a quiet and bored performance, not a boring performance, Brick is quietly medicating himself with booze and he is magnetic in his silence.  This makes his explosions all the more powerful.  When he confronts his father or his wife there is a fire in his performance.  Newman is really great here.  This was his first of what would turn to be 10 nominations.  If he won here it wouldn't be a bad thing as it would justify why he lost so many times for truly great performances before finally getting a career achievement award in 1986.

David Niven wins which is fine, I suppose.  If only because Newman and Poitier got there’s eventually.  The performance is just really too small to win Best Actor, supporting would be fine but this category is filled with guys who command the screen for their film’s entire running time.  Niven shows up for like 3 scenes and walks away with a Best Actor Oscar.  Sometimes I use a double nomination as an excuse to vote for someone else, “Can’t vote for both of them so blame it on a vote split and pick the person I really want to vote for anyway”.  This year though, I really want to vote for Curtis and Poitier.  Their chemistry together is a big reason why the film works.  Since I can’t vote for them both, I really can’t vote for either of them.  I’m also not gonna vote for Tracy because he’s won twice and I wasn’t a fan of the performance anyway and I don’t want to vote for Niven because the part is too small.  That leaves Newman.  The only bad part about him winning here is that he’s going to deliver better performances but seeing as how the Academy didn’t honor him for any of those anyway, might as well use this year to get it out of the way.  If he wins here it makes sense that he doesn’t win for The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke and The Verdict.

Oscar Winner: David Niven

My Vote: Paul Newman

GABBY Winner: Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier

Best Actress

5. Deborah Kerr is hardly the lead in Separate Tables.  Between her and Niven they probably appear in about 30 minutes of the movie.  Unlike Niven, she doesn't have a character that people talk about when she's not there.  She plays a woman who lives with her mother and has a sort of resentment for her life.  She misses being able to travel and have fun because all she does now is stay at home with mom.  She also has a thing for David Niven and when she finds out that he's secretly a pervert she has a good scene where she gets to cry and get all emotional.  But the part really isn't that big or important to the film's story.  I actually forgot she got nominated.  I watched the film and I was like, ok I gotta think of something to write for Niven and Hiller, then I get done and I see that Kerr got nominated too and I had to remember what exactly she did in the film.

4. Elizabeth Taylor is at her sexiest as Maggie “the cat” in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  She’s a beautiful southern belle in a loveless marriage to a drunk who may be gay.  I feel like Taylor learned to act as she went along.  She gets a little better in every film until she got great.  Here she’s good, but not great.  She’s still relying on her beauty more than her talent.  When you get to 1959 and Suddenly Last Summer it all comes together.  Maggie is an interesting character because she seems to want equal parts love and money.  She wants her marriage to work but she also seems to not care and is really only interested in the inheritance.  I never got any scheming from Taylor, her performance is a little too innocent.  If she had a little more bite to her it would make her more interesting and also understandable.  At the end of the film we see that she is willing to lie to get in the will but I never saw that maliciousness anywhere else in the film.

3. Shirley MacLaine got her first Oscar nomination for playing Ginny, an unrefined and uneducated woman who falls for a G.I. in Some Came Running.  I really did not like this film.  There's very little story, most of the actors look bored and not a lot happens over a long running time.  The film's only saving grace is MacLaine.  Calling her a lead is a bit of a stretch, but she plays a woman who I was under the assumption was a prostitute.  She's not, she mentions having a job but we mostly see her hanging out in bars and getting men to buy her drinks or just hanging out at other people's houses.  She got drunk with Frank Sinatra and they got on a bus to his hometown.  Frank falls for a school teacher but MacLaine is in love with him.  The teacher represents the life he could have and MacLaine represents the life he's comfortable in but doesn't like.  He ends up marrying MacLaine even though he thinks she's dumb basically because he's lonely and the relationship with the school teacher is complicated.  MacLaine takes a role that could have been ordinary or annoying and makes it into the most important role in the film.  She's not exactly the lead, she disappears for a lot of the movie but when the movie does focus on her it feels like the movie is about her simply because Shirley is so good.

2. Susan Hayward finally won her Oscar on her 5th and final nomination as convicted murder Barbara Graham in I Want To Live!.  While not my favorite of her nominated performance, it is definitely my favorite of her nominated films.  Barbara Graham is a habitual criminal who is facing the death penalty for a murder she did not commit.  What I like about the film is that they don't paint Graham as a saint or as purely innocent.  She is not guilty of this crime but she has committed many crimes and she is not really a good person.  The movie paints her as something far more sympathetic, a human being.  By the time you see her walking to the gas chamber you're left with a slew of emotions.  Hayward is really good here and the film is terrific.  She portrays this flawed character with dignity and pathos but just enough slime to make you question what you would do in the same situation.  The Academy did the right thing by waiting to honor her for the right role.

1. Rosalind Russell plays the title character in Auntie Mame.  Her brother dies and puts in his will that she will become the caretaker of his son.  We first meet her as she's throwing a wild, bohemian party that looks like it would fit in at the Moulin Rouge.  That's when the young boy comes to live with her and soon enough he's mixing martinis for her.  She is a wealthy woman without a care in the world and what she lacks in a maternal instinct she makes up for with sheer exuberance for life.  She may not know what's best for the boy but she can teach him how to enjoy life.  Russell is simply incredible in the film.  There is an energy to her performance that is contagious, you simply can't take your eyes off her.  At times it can feel theatrical but it fits in with the character, Russell is over the top but that's who Mame is.  This character is big and requires a big performance and Russell is hilariously broad.

When Deborah Kerr is your number 5 you know you got a good lineup.  This has a strong chance of being one of the best categories of all time.  I could see any one of these performances winning independent of anything else.  It’s only when you put them against each other that some of them seem weak.  None of them had wins either which makes it even harder to pick a winner.  It really comes down to Hayward and Russell.  If it weren’t for Loretta Young winning in 1947, we could have given one of them an Oscar that year and the other one this year.  Both are overdue, both have had careers that warranted an Oscar and both are great in their films.  I could really go either way but I’m picking Russell for one main reason.  Hayward is in a good film.  Robert Wise directs the hell out of this film and I think a number of actresses could have played that part as good as Hayward.  Auntie Mame on the other hand would be a big pile of crap if it weren’t for Russell.  I can’t imagine anyone else in the part and can see the movie being an absolute failure if it weren’t for her.  I also think Russell had the better career.  Hayward had more nominations but Russell made better films.  It’s really a toss up but Russell just slightly takes the cake.

Oscar Winner: Susan Hayward

My Vote: Rosalind Russell

GABBY Winner: Rosalind Russell

Best Supporting Actor

5. Gig Young received his 2nd Oscar nomination for the Doris Day/Clark Gable romantic comedy Teacher’s Pet.  I don’t really get this nomination at all but the movie is good so it’s not such a bad thing that it’s here.  Gable is an old school newsman who doesn’t think journalism can be taught but ends up falling for Day who is a journalism teacher.  A series of comic complications ensue.  About halfway through the film, Clark gets angry because Doris is going on a date with Gig Young.  He’s a nice, handsome, smart guy that is seen as competition.  He really doesn’t do a lot in the film.  His big scene is when he basically tells Clark to go after the girl while he’s nursing a hangover.  He has some bits of comic business that are fun but nothing here really warranted a nomination.

4. Arthur Kennedy plays Frank Sinatra's brother in Some Came Running.  This was Kennedy's last of 5 nominations and is the only one I was not impressed by.  All the other nominations were for really good performances in interesting films.  He's not bad but he doesn't really do much in the movie.  He's Sinatra's brother and he looks upon him as a black sheep.  He's got all the skeletons in his closet though as he's having an affair with his much younger secretary.  He certainly doesn't detract from the film but there's nothing really that stands out as Oscar worthy.

3. Lee J. Cobb plays Fyodor, the father of The Brothers Karamazov.  Honestly, I'm so close to the end of this project I just didn't have the time for this film.  It came on TCM so I recorded it.  I watched all the Lee J. Cobb scenes but fast forwarded through everything else.  I have seen too many movies at this point to know that a 2½ hour movie based on a Dostoevsky novel is not for me.  Cobb ranks a little higher because of who he is though.  He plays this character exactly how you want him to be plated.  He's loud, boisterous and over the top but I ain't got no time for this.

2. Theodore Bikel plays the sheriff chasing after The Defiant Ones.  This performance reminds me of another Oscar winning one in Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.  It’s the same kind of character, he’s not chasing after these men for any grand reason, he’s doing it because it’s his job.  He doesn’t care if they’re guilty or innocent or black or white, they are two men that he is paid to capture.  It’s a very simplistic role and Bikel plays it very honestly.  It’s also not a showy role at all, he’s very quiet and low key through the film but still manages to be a captivating character.  Bikel was also good in I Want To Live! this year.

1. Burl Ives can really make a case for being THE supporting actor of the year.  Not only does he win the Oscar for The Big Country but he also turns in an iconic performance as Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  I will say with no hesitation that he is much better in the latter film but if that was taken out of the equation he still probably gets my vote for the former.  The Big Country is a western starring Gregory Peck as a man in the middle of a family feud, trying to make some peace in the uncivilized old west.  The first hour of the film you’re following one family, the Terrils, and seeing the other, the Hannesseys, as the antagonists then something happens and in walks Burl Ives as the head of the Hannesseys and he’s breaking up a soirée with a shotgun.  Now you see both families as victims of the other.  Ives is magnetic and powerful and just fills the screen with not only his large frame but his bigger than life presence.

This category is pretty weak.  If I was voting for performer instead of performance the vote would be between Cobb and Kennedy but as much as I love both of those actors, they didn’t deserve it this year and it would only be a vote for a good actor who should have an Oscar.  The two best performances are Bikel and Ives and when you throw Cat On A Hot Tin Roof into the mix, Ives wins handedly.  It also wouldn’t make much sense to vote for Bikel and not Curtis or Poitier.  The Ives win holds up even if he was better in another film this year.  He’s great in The Big Country too so it’s not an injustice just an oversight.

Oscar Winner: Burl Ives

My Vote: Burl Ives

GABBY Winner: Burl Ives for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Best Supporting Actress

5. Martha Hyer.  As I was watching Some Came Running, I knew it got nominated for 3 acting Oscars.  I knew Shirley MacLaine and Arthur Kennedy but was not familiar with Martha Hyer.  I didn't know who she was and assumed she played either Arthur Kennedy's wife, daughter or mistress.  She doesn't play any of them, she plays the teacher that Frank Sinatra falls for.  So, out of 4 female characters in the film, it didn't even occur to me that she would be the one that got nominated.  She just didn't stand out at all.  She offers to read Frank's book, she likes it, they kiss and then she stops talking to him for no real reason which pushes him to Shirley MacLaine.  I really don't know what made the Academy single her out for a nomination.  The really weird thing is that MacLaine herself is more of a supporting part and would have fit right at home in this category.

4. Peggy Cass plays Agnes Gooch, a frumpy and off putting woman who gets hired as a secretary to Auntie Mame.  She is hired to help Mame write her autobiography and write down everything she says or as she puts it, ‘I’m your sponge’.  I liked this performance and thought it was very funny but it didn’t have much of an arc and was a touch too broad.  Cass plays Agnes like a cartoon character or a cross between Kristen Wiig and Rachel Dratch on SNL.  It brought some laughs but I was seeing a caricature more than a character.

3. Maureen Stapleton plays a particularly lonely woman in Lonelyhearts.  This was a film I knew nothing about going into and ended up really enjoying.  Montgomery Clift stars as a newspaper writer who gets hired to write the Miss Lonelyhearts column, where lonely women write in to the paper with their problems and he gives advice.  He has no experience giving advice so he’s conflicted about what to tell them and he ends up really caring about the people that write in.  Stapleton is one of the women who writes him.  She is married to a war veteran who is impotent (they call him crippled in the film but you can figure out what they’re talking about since he doesn’t have a limp leg).  She meets with Clift and they end up making love because they are both lonely.  She thinks it’s the start of a relationship but when Clift tells her it was a mistake she tells him off.  Then she disappears for a large chunk and you think she might be gone forever but she comes back near the end for a great scene with her husband that inspires him to go after Clift for revenge.  She is really great in the role and does the most with her small screen time.  It’s a really great nomination for a great actress in a good film.  Not sure if it’s substantial enough to win though.

2. Cara Williams doesn't even have a name in The Defiant Ones but she still manages to create a fully formed character.  She plays Billy's mother who gives the two criminals shelter late in the film.  She's not in the film that much but you learn so much about her through her performance.  You sense that she's lonely and unhappy just by the way she looks at Tony Curtis or lights his cigarette.  She does a lot without having a speech that spells out her character.  It's a very interesting role in an incredible film.

1. Wendy Hiller plays the manager of the hotel in Separate Tables.  She is engaged to Burt Lancaster, who drinks a lot and is not happy that his ex-wife is staying at the hotel.  Hiller exists in the background for a lot of the movie but shines in the scenes where she takes center stage.  She has a really great scene with Burt when she calls him out for still being in love with his ex-wife and basically pushes him to go back to her.  She is strong enough to realize that his heart belongs to another woman and he is only staying with her to spare her feelings.

This is a decent category but not the strongest just because nobody leaps out as a winner.  So let's start knocking some people off.  I didn't like Hyer's performance at all so she's gone.  Then Cass, Stapleton and Williams are good but not that substantial.  That leaves Hiller, that was easier than I thought.  Hiller is a supporting character whose presence can be felt throughout the film.  She's in the background a lot but you're always partly focused on her.  Niven and Kerr on the other hand, who were in the lead categories, exist only in their own section of the film and when the focus shifts off of them you almost forget about them.  Hiller is present throughout.  I'm voting for Hiller over her competition for the same reason.  Cass, Stapleton and Williams only exist in their section of their film and they are not felt throughout.  They are all quality performances but not big enough for a win over Hiller.

Oscar Winner: Wendy Hiller

My Vote: Wendy Hiller

GABBY Winner: Elsa Lanchester for Bell, Book And Candle

Best Director
Vincente Minnelli wins an overdue Oscar for Gigi.  He lost when An American In Paris won and he wasn't even nominated for The Bad And The Beautiful.  So this is a total makeup win.  His work on Gigi doesn't really compare to that final death penalty scene in Robert Wise's I Want To Live! or Stanley Kramer's wonderful work in The Defiant Ones.  Richard Brooks also manages all the terrific performances in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  I'm not sure what Mark Robson is doing here for The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, a movie about Ingrid Bergman in China complete with a racist performance by Robert Donat.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay
The Defiant Ones rightfully wins the Original category over Houseboat, Teacher's Pet, The Goddess and The Sheepman.  I have no idea why Gigi won Adapted, unless all the good scripts (I Want To Live!, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Separate Tables and The Horse's Mouth) cancelled each other out.

Best Scoring of a Dramatic of Comedy Picture/Scoring of a Musical Picture
Dimitri Tiomkin wins his 3rd Oscar for The Old Man And The Sea.  Nothing really great is in the category, Vertigo should have been nominated.  The Big Country has a big sweeping score but The Old Man And The Sea has good music too.  Gigi wins the Musical Picture category and that's one of the film's wins that I have no complaints about.

Best Original Song
The title song from Gigi wins and since it only got one nomination in this category it keeps its perfect score.  Thank Heaven For Little Girls was eligible but not nominated.  Songs from A Certain Smile, Houseboat, Marjorie Morningstar and Some Came Running got nominated instead, nothing really great in this category either.

Best Sound Recording
As we've established, musicals always win this category but for some reason Gigi didn't get a nomination so they went with South Pacific instead.  I would have picked either Vertigo or I Want To Live!.  The final scene in the latter film is mostly silent as we hear the sounds of the gas chamber getting ready and is very effective.

Best Art Direction/Costume Design
Gigi wins both of these categories and deservedly so.

Best Cinematography (Black and White)/Cinematography (Color)
The Defiant Ones wins the black and white category, rightfully.  Gigi wins the color category which had less to do with the actual camerawork and more to do with how well the colorful sets looked on camera.

Best Film Editing
Gigi keeps up the sweep and wins this category, which is a bit of a joke.  Both The Defiant Ones and I Want To Live! are better edited films.  Auntie Mame also got a nomination which is a joke.  All of the scenes end with the lights going off and then fading to black.  It feels like they needed extra time to move the scenery around.  They could have cut 15 minutes off of the long running time if they tightened up those transitions.

Best Visual Effects
Tom Thumb probably looked really cool in 1958.  I just watched it and the effects don't hold up at all, not even in a chintzy way.  They're actually pretty corny.  I've never seen the other nominee, Torpedo Run.

Up Next

1967, and then we're done.