It is most difficult to remember that this is a ten picture race, potentially, not a five picture race as it always has been. One considers films that have been earning votes across the board. Heading into SAG and PGA weekend, we could be looking at boosts for several films. A SAG ensemble win for An Education (followed by a BAFTA slam dunk) ups that films prospects. An Inglourious Basterds ensemble win gives everyone a chance to see that whole cast on stage. A Precious win, as many are predicting on Tom’s list, could remind people how beloved that film is – beloved enough to win at Sundance and at Toronto. And then, of course, the unheard of and mostly impossible win for The Hurt Locker could give that film a leg up in the biggest way. We know it isn’t winning the PGA. To lose the Globe, the SAG and the PGA, even after winning the critics’ choice, heading into Oscar? Its last hope would be the DGA. Can it win there, or will it be an Avatarevolution?
But because these early races (except Critics Choice and PGA) deal with five, rather than ten, films, our perceptions could be way off. We’re not talking about an Academy being divided by five anymore. How will that impact these movies? Could it be that there is one potential nominee that can win that we aren’t even talking about? If there were, it would be anti-the-frontrunners vote. You have to figure that human beings kind of behave similarly when large amounts of them vote.
The only real showdown we’ve seen between Avatar, The Hurt Locker and eight other films was for the Critics Choice awards. But, and it’s a big but, the Critics Choice do not do preferential ballots; they do weighted ballots. There are only around 200 of them, so it wouldn’t be as hard. Still, in a ten picture split, at that time, The Hurt Locker pulled through. But that was then.
Once Avatar’s box office success took hold, its global reach too big to deny, topped off by a double Globe win – suddenly, it felt like there was only one movie headed for the Best Picture win: Avatar. And that still might prove to be the case.
Let’s stroll once again for one more look at 1936 – 1943.
I want to urge you all to buy Damien Bona, Mason Wiley’s Inside Oscar, 10th Anniversary Edition
I turned to Inside Oscar to read up a bit on the decade between 1936 and 1944 – when Oscar had ten Best Picture nominees.
Starting with 1936, it was clear that, even though there would be ten nominees, the power was still concentrated on the best director category. Screenplay and acting was equally important, for nominations at least.
SPLIT – 1936 – The Great Ziegfeld (3 wins, 7 noms) won Best Picture, but director went to Frank Capra for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1 win, five noms). Both films were represented for Screenplay and Acting nominations – only Louise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld won. San Francisco had six nominations, a was a huge blockbuster and won only Sound. My Man Godfrey also six nominations, zero wins. Six for the last Best Director slot for Dodsworth – won only art direction.
SPLIT – 1937 – The Life of Emile Zola headed into the race with the most nominations, a whopping ten (won 3, no editing nod but writing and directing). It was followed by Selznick’s A Star is Born with seven nods. Best Director went to Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth, which also had acting and writing nods (and editing) and followed with six nods. It won only Director. ¬† Next in line, Stage Door, with four, and The Good Earth with five.¬† All five of the films in the Best Director category dominated the Best Picture race.
1938 – Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take it With You won both Picture and Director out of a total of seven nominations (including acting, writing and editing). Oddly enough, Michael Curtiz was nominated for Best Director but his film, Angels with Dirty Faces, was not nominated for Best Picture. You’d think with ten nominee slots that film would have made it, but no. It did not. Boys Town, five nods, including acting and writing. Four Daughters with five, including acting and writing.
1939 – THE BIG SWEEP – Gone with the Wind A-Bombs the Oscars. If there is any year like 2010, it could prove to be this one. I am just going to type some of the Mason Wiley/Damien Bona text here because it’s so interesting.
Hollywood’s giants played king of the mountain at the 1939 Awards and David O’Selznick won. Frank Capra’s fame was such that when he finished Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the National Press Club insisted on throwing the premiere party in the nation’s capital. The event was monumental enough for the club to open its doors to women for the first time in its history [lol]. here was a lot of indigestion at the dinner, however, when the gentlemen of the press saw themselves portrayed as heavy-drinking cynics in Capra’s comedy about political corruption. The film was denounced in the U.S. Senate for “belittling the American system of government,” and Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. ambassador to England, wired President Roosevelt, the State Department, Will Hays and Harry Cohn to stop showing the movie overseas because it “will cause our allies to view us in an unfavorable light.”
The Hollywood home team went on the defensive. Columnist Sheilah Graham called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the “best talking picture ever made.” Hedda Hopper swore, “To me, it is as great as Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech.” As the greenhorn scout leader who ends up in the Senate, James Stewart inspired The Nation to rave, “Now he is mature and gives a difficult part, with many nuances, moments of tragicomic impact. nd he able to do more than play isolated scenes effectively. He shows the growth of a character through experience.” The review hoped that “after this success, Mr. Stewart in Hollywood will remain as uncorrupted as Mr. Smith in Washington.” Harry Cohn wasn’t above electioneering, though, and the mogul ran ads in the trade papers celebrating Mr Smith’s unanimously favorable reviews. Prominently featured was Screen Book’s prediction: “Should win every Academy Award.”
There are bits about John Ford’s Stagecoach:
John Ford shared the laurels with Frank Capra as Hollywood’s most critically acclaimed director, and he dazzled again in 1939 with, of all things, a western starring John Wayne, hero of countless low-budget cowboy movies from Republic and Monogram. Variety hailed “the beauty of Stagecoach,” which lay “not in its action nor its story, but in the powerful contrasts of personalities, the maturing of characters and the astounding suspense that director Ford achieves.” The ads promised “2 Women on a Despeate Journey with 7 Strange Men,” while Life called it “a sort of Grand Hotel on wheels.” In the New York Post, Archer Winsten concluded that Stagecoach is “the best western since talking pictures began. It is so beautiful and exciting that maybe it ought not to be called a “western.”
The other big movies, Wuthering Heights and Goodbye Mr. Chips.
But there was only one movie that year, wasn’t there? One movie. 13 Oscar nominations, 9 wins (plus an honorary award for technical achievement).
The main topic of conversation in Hollywood throughout the year, however, was whether David O. Selznick would be able to pull of his mammoth undertaking of turning Margaret Mitchell’s massive Civil War epic, Gone with the Wind, into a movie. For three years, gossip columns were filled with every conceivable detail about the production, and Selznick’s search for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara was one of the most successful publicity ploys in the history of Hollywood. Everyone in town knew that there had been problems during production, since director George Cukor had been replaced by Clark Gable’s hunting buddy, Victor Fleming. Then Fleming had a nervous breakdown and was replaced by Sam Wood, and the director of Goodbye Mr. Chips. When the news came out that the picture had the unheard-of running time of three hours and forty minutes, rumors persisted that sheer logistics were turning this $4 million movie into “Selznick’s Folly.”
Despite the doomsayers, Gone with the Wind was undoubtedly the most eagerly awaited motion ever; a Gallup poll indicated that 56.5 million people were looking forward to it. When the film had its world premiere in Atlanta’s Fox Theatre on December 15, the mayor gave all civic employees and school kids the day off and 300,000 people showed up to greet Selznick and company at the theater. A few days later, the film opened in New York in an unprecedented dual premiere in the Times Square houses. The New York Times’ Frank S. Nugent wrote, “Anyway, ‘it’ has arrived at last, and we cannot get over the shock of not being disappointed; we had almost been looking forward to that.” By the time of the Hollywood premiere some two weeks later, no one thought that the Hollywood Reporter was overdoing it with the headline, “Gone with the Wind — Magnificent and Supreme Triumph of Film History.” And when the box office receipts were as unparalleled as the reviews, Harry Cohn and the others who had thought this was their year for the Oscars were running scared.
Even more than Titanic, Gone with the Wind and Titanic are on a more similar playing field. But let’s remember that Gone with the Wind had actors and writers represented; Avatar will not. On the other hand, when Gone with the Wind came out, it was a different set of rules. Avatar, like Gone with the Wind, breaks the rules, reinvents the possibilities and did it with great reviews and a shitload of cash. So, even if you think Gone with the Wind is a bad movie, or Avatar is very weak and cliched, storywise, you can’t help but marvel at everything else about it.
Gone with the Wind won Picture, Dirctor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction, plus an honorary Oscar for technical achievement. Robert Donat won acting for Goodbye Mr. Chips (over Jimmy Stewart, Laurence Olivier and Clark Gable — what a scandal). Thomas Mitchell won one for Stagecoach in the “we have to give it something” category. Mr. Smith also won for writing.
1940 — SPLIT Rebecca wins Picture, John Ford wins Director for The Grapes of Wrath. After losing for Stagecoach, John Ford next came into the Oscar race with The Grapes of Wrath. Funnily enough, also in the race was Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. I’m sorry, but I have to go back to Wiley/Bona for this year as well – because it too could be seen like this year, with Rebecca being Avatar, Grapes of Wrath as The Hurt Locker, and The Great Dictator as Inglourious Basterds.
Another David O’Selznick triumph (incidentally, did you know that David just arbitrarily added the “O” into his name for the hell of it?) with Rebecca.
Selznick’s big casting coup, however, was in signing Alfred Hitchcock, England’s most successful director and the winner of the New York Film Critics Award for 1938, The Lady Vanishes. Hitchcock’s final British film was an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, but the fact that it died at the box office didn’t shake Selznick’s determination to have Hitchcock direct his du Maurier property [Rebecca]. And Selznick never let Hitchcock forget whose property it as. The director, who was used to having free rein over his movies, was totally unprepared for Selznck’s notorious memos, which came to him incessantly. More than two decades later Hitchcock commented, “When I came to America to direct Rebecca, David Selznick sent me a memo …. I’ve just finished reading it … I think I may turn it into a motion picture … I plan to call it The Longest Story Ever Told.
But Hitch pulled it off — reviewers and audiences were bowled over by Rebecca. The Los Angeles Times called it a “worthy successor to Gone with the Wind.” Olivier’s status as a dashing romantic lead was solidified, Joan Fontaine was declared a star, and it was clear that Hitchcock’s rotund figure was going to be part of Hollywood for a long time.
Rebecca opened in March, but it already had strong competition for the year-end Awards. The Grapes of Wrath had opened in January, and from the reviews it seemed likely that John Ford and Darryl F. Zanuck would be seeing Oscar’s glory. Walter Winchell declared that the adaption of John Steinbeck’s novel about a nomadic Dust Bowl family was “better than the book.” New York Times film critic Frank S. Nugent, who would later become John Ford’s son-in-law and favorite screenwriter, wrote, “The Grapes of Wrath is just about as good as any picture has a right to be; if it was any better we just wouldn’t believe our eyes.” This type of talk led to record grosses in Times Square and the Hollywood Reporter predicted, “The effect that Grapes has had on New York audiences, we feel certain, will be more than duplicated in the other showings throughout the country, particularly in the hinterlands, which are certain to have a greater appreciation of the subject than the Gotham crowd.”
And here is the part about The Great Dictator:
The Grapes of Wrath was sobering stuff for 1940 audiences; those who preferred their social messages in a lighter vein had The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s first film in four years. Not only did The Great Dictator give moviegoers their first chance to hear Chaplin speak on screen, it also presented the comedian in a dual role. Chaplin played both a Jewish barber one step removed from the Little Tramp, as well as Adolf Hitler, renamed Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania. Most critics called the film things like “Important” and “urgent” and the finale in which Chaplin delivers a long, passionate plea for human decency was likened to Tom Joad’s famous “they can’t keep us down” speech in The Grapes of Wrath. President Roosevelt was so affected by the movie that Chaplin was invited to recite the speech at the Chief Executive’s gala birthday party. The Hollywood Reporter noted that this marked Chaplin’s first official appearance in the District of Columbia since 1917 when he helped sell Liberty Bonds.”
A number of reviewers felt that Hitler was hardly a laughing matter, but no one could help but crack up at Jack Oakie’s Mussolini takeoff, Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria. Oakie was a cheerful comic from the Midwest who had starred in such programmers as College Humor, College Rhythm and Collegiate, and in this character part, critics finally took notice. Daily Variety marveled, “In the Great Dictator he throws his chest farther than Mussolini himself.” Oakie had always been popular with the public. When, as a lark, he stopped by a theater in the San Fernando Valley showing The Great Dictator and signed autographs, the owner told him, “if you’d only let me advertise when you’re coming. I wouldn’t have to give away dishes.”
In the end, Rebecca led the nominations with 11. It won Picture, and Black and white cinematography only. How bizarre. Avatar, it seems likely, will win a hell of a lot more than that. The Grapes of Wrath won only two out of seven – Director and Supporting Actress. The Great Dictator won zip and wasn’t even nominated for Best Director (lol).¬† We know Inglourious Basterds is at least winning one, possibly two Oscars. The Philadelphia Story won Actor and Writing. Kitty Foyle had five nominations, and won only one for Ginger Rogers. And The Letter was nominated for seven Oscars and went home empty handed.
1941 — How Green was My Valley Took Picture and Director, among other wins. As we’ve said before, this was probably the most argued about Oscar year (maybe next to the Rocky year).
I don’t know if you, dear readers, are still with me, but for those of you who are interested in Academy history, I’m going to go ahead and type passages from Inside Oscar from this year because it is such a great year to remember.
RKO was hurting for money and it couldn’t attract the top names in Hollywood because it couldn’t afford them. So the studio began to hunt for new talent. It didn’t take long for the company to find twenty-five-year-old Orson Welles; in fact, it would have been hard to overlook him. The young man had already made history with the Mercury Theatre broadcast of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds on Halloween night, 1938. Luckily for RKO, the Mercury Theatre was short on funds when the studio came a-courting, and Wells consented to come to Hollywood to make a movie.
After he got a tour of the studio facilities, Welles said, “This is the biggest toy-train set any boy ever had.” For his film debut, Welles settled on a script by Herman J Mankiewicz about an eccentric publishing tycoon, and recruited actors from the Mercury Theatre to interpret it. RKO gave him total artistic control because, after all, howmuch trouble could the tyro get into on such a small budget?
In her autobiography, Tell it to Louella, Louella Parsons boasts, “I believe I have carried only one grudge for any length of time and that was against Orson Welles. I feel justified.” Parsons, who was employed by publisher William Randolph Heart, explained:
When Orson, characterized as the “boy genius,” came to Hollywood, I was one of his biggest boosters. He was born in Grande Tour, Illinois, just six miles from Dixon, and I had known his family. I was delighted to give a boost to a local boy who had made good.
Then when I heard that the film he was making, Citizen Kane, was about Mr. Hearst, I called him to ask if this was so. “Take my word for it,” he said. “it isn’t. It’s about a completely fictional publisher.”
I took his word, and so informed the Hearst editors who kept insisting that it did concern Mr. Hearst.
Then Orson pulled one of the classic double crosses of Hollywood. he arranged for Hedda Hopper to see parts of the picture.
Hedda couldn’t wait to get on the phone to tell Hearst that Louella hadn’t told him to the truth — Citizen Kane was indeed about William Randolph Hearst. Some twenty years later, Louella wrote, “I am still horrified by the picture … the boy genius certainly used all his talents to do a hatchet job.”
Heart’s attorneys told the boss he had a good case for libel against RKO, so in late 1940 the publisher dangled the threat of a lawsuit before the studio’s executives.¬†¬† RKO held up Kane’s release for two months until its lawyers convinced the studio that such a suit was groundless. In December 1940, Hearst retaliated by ordering his publications to omit all references to RKO and its films. The immediate effect of this executive order was the pulling of a laudatory review of Kitty Foyle, which RKO had just opened to qualify for the 1940 Oscars. And the publisher also let it be known that he would not look too favorably upon any theater chains that saw fit to book Citizen Kane. Afraid of losing the all-important newspaper advertisements, the major theater chains told RKO they wanted nothing to do with the movie.
Many of Hearst’s friends came to his defense, and Hearst traveled in all the best circles: RCA head David Sarnoff, Fox’s Nicholas Schenck, MGM’s Joeph Schenck, Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and various Rockefellers pleaded with RKO to take the publisher up on his offer to pay for the production cost himself if the studio would burn the negative of the film. Even when Hearst threw in a bonus of several thousand dollars into his offer, RKO still said no.
If you want more, here’s more:
Meanwhile, Orson Welles was busy alienating collaborator Herman J Mankiewicz. During production, Mankiewicz, a Hollywood veteran, had been amused by the boy wonder’s bravado, quipping, “There but for the grace of God goes God.” But when the director said he wanted sole writing credit on the finished film, claiming that he had rewritten most of it, Mankiewicz took the matter down to the Screen Writers Guild, and got to keep his co-credit. Welles angered the Hollywood community further by calling film producers “stupid” in a lecture at New York’s New School and then committed blasphemy by scoffing that “David Selznick thinks Gone with the Wind is art and will go to his grave thinking so.”
RKO had sought the advice of so many industryites on what to do with Kane that it seemed as if tout les Hollywood had seen teh film before opened and the studio scratched plans for a $5.50-a-ticket gala los Angeles premiere. When Citizen Kane finally premiered in New York at the independently owned Palace Theatre on Broadway, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote that Kane had come “within the withering spotlight as no other film has ever been before” The New York Post raved, “The interlocking jigsaw puzzle of human personalities and their relationships to each other simply doesn’t appear in other American motion pictures. Citizen Kane has the field to itself.” In Hollywood, Sidney Skolsky wrote, “I still remember what William Wyler, Leo McCarey and other great directors said after seeing Citizen Kane. The claimed that Welles, in his first effort, had given them all lessons.” But Welles’ biggest Hollywood booster was Louella’s rival, Hedda Hopper, who, despite entreaties from Louis B. Mayer and Sam Goldwyn, went right ahead with her six-part radio program glorifying Welles’ life and accomplishments. Though a cause celebre, Citizen kane was a failure to Hollywood’s way of thinking — it didn’t make money.
In the end, the NYFCC gave Citizen Kane their Best Picture award, but John Ford their Best Director award. Citizen Kane had nine Oscar nominations (including acting, writing, directing, editing) won only Screenplay at the Oscars, while How Green Was My Valley, nominated for ten, won Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction. The other three up for Best Director were Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Sergeant York, and The Little Foxes. Though the brilliant Maltese Falcon was nominated for Picture, it did not achieve a director nod.
1942 РMrs. Miniver wins Picture and Director.  All five directing nominees had films represented in Best Picture. Mrs. Miniver had a whopping 12 nods, and won 6 of them. It was nominated in acting, editing and writing. No other film had a chance.
And finally, the last year with ten Best Pic nominees, 1943 — Casablanca won Picture and Director.
Its competition in the directing category were: Ernst Lubitsch for Heaven Can Wait, Clarence Brown for The Human Comedy, George Stevens for The More the Merrier, and Henry King for The Song of Bernadette. All five recognized for Best Picture as well. 
So, the random thoughts I’ve gathered from this exercise is that the Best Picture of 2010 will have to have a directing nod, even if it doesn’t win. Ideally, it will be represented in the acting, writing and editing categories. Avatar could get shut out of both acting and writing, though I think the Academy will ultimately honor Cameron’s script. It is really unheard of (not impossible) for a film to sweep the Oscars without acting or writing nominations – that will certainly herald a new day in Hollywood and a new direction for the Academy. You can see by this moment in history that not only do the best film go unrewarded, but very few of the films nominated are remembered today at all, except by Oscarphiles.
I also learned that back in the early days of Hollywood, and maybe today, the directors got by on their power and their popularity. The directors carried the films through the Oscars. The John Fords, the Leo McCareys, etc. Also, just because your movie didn’t make any money and didn’t win many Oscars does not mean it won’t someday be remembered as the greatest film of all time.
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