Oscar at a Glance

My Oscar Predictions: 2009

2010-02-26T21:32:00.004-05:00

Adapted Screenplay: PRECIOUS
Original Screenplay: HURT LOCKER
Animated Film: UP
Supporting Actress: Monique ~ Precious
Supporting Actor: Christopher Waltz ~ Inglorious Basterds
Actress: Sandra Bullock ~ The Blind Side
Actor: Jeff Bridges ~ Crazy Heart
Director: James Cameron
Film: Avatar

But who do I want to win??
Film: Avatar
Director: Quentin Tarentino
Actor: Colin Firth
Actress: Meryl Streep
Supp. Actor: Christopher Plummer
Supp Actress: Vera Farmiga

Just a few more days...

Avatar - Best Picture Nomination - 2009 Oscars

2010-02-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

I wasn't sure how I would feel about this film. I saw the trailers and I thought, wow, that looks really good. However, I am not science fiction aficionado, so the interest was not that strong.

Now that I have seen the movie, I can tell you that I was very pleasantly shocked. This move was fantastic. it has everything, drama, romance, science fiction, mystery and just good old fashioned movie power. Watching this film I can imagine now what people thought in the theaters in 1939 when they first saw Gone With the Wind. Or how one left the theater after seeing Casablanca or All About Eve, or even James Cameron, other epic film, Titanic. Avatar has replaced a film in my top ten favorites.

Beautifully written, the story is a classic love story set in a world much like a Utopia, until the humans arrive. The craftsmanship of the computer generated images are a far cry from Scorpion King. They are spectacular. James Cameron has made cinematic history again. You will soon forget you are in a make believe world it is so good. Fine attention to details, not to mention perfect sound effects.

If I could say one bad thing about this film would be the human world was void of any character, except for Giovanni Ribisi, who was perfectly cast.

So, will this film win Best Picture? Not sure, It should, but then I haven't seen Hurt Locker yet, which has the odds on favorite. Regardless this film will surely became a classic.

Inglourious Basterds -2009 Best Picture Nominee

2010-02-12T00:24:00.000-05:00

I am a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino, and Brad Pitt. However this movie left me wanting more. It was good, don't get me wrong, very good actually but it seemed as though something was missing, or maybe it was me.

The story was great, written by Quentin. Brad was at his finest. Fun, irreverent and classic. Christopher Waltz was simply amazing. Eli Roth is just a hottie. The film at first had me confused, as do most of Tarantino's films, but that is the magic of them. Was this going to be a deep war epic, (not likely) or a dark comedy (closer to the truth). What is was; was classic Tarantino, so it was both of those things and more. All of that wrapped up in almost three hours, and I still felt that he left something out and I wanted more.

Tarantino has stated this is his masterpiece, I would have to agree. This was expertly written, expertly cast and just an expert piece of film-making. After working on getting this story onto film for ten years, it should have been a masterpiece. His best work since Jackie Brown. The cinematography was good, the score was excellent, the acting was above par. Overall I would give this a solid A. Will it win the Oscar for Best picture? Unfortunately there are way too many films nominated (I hate the new 10 nomination thing...it takes away from the importance of the Oscar and being an Oscar nominated film) Many of the films nominated are not in the same league with this film, and if it was a different year, it may have walked away with the golden boy. Sorry Quentin, not this year.

Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois, 1951 Best Actress

2009-06-16T12:33:00.003-04:00

She won two Best Actress Academy Awards for playing "southern belles": Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End.

She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her 30-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.

Leigh sought the role of Blanche DuBois in the West End stage production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, and was cast after Williams and the play's producer Irene Mayer Selznick saw her in the The School for Scandal and Antigone, and Olivier was contracted to direct. Containing a rape scene and references to promiscuity and homosexuality, the play was destined to be controversial, and the media discussion about its suitability added to Leigh's anxiety, but she believed strongly in the importance of the work.

When the West End production of Streetcar opened in October 1949, J. B. Priestley denounced the play and Leigh's performance, and the critic Kenneth Tynan commented that Leigh was badly miscast because British actors were "too well-bred to emote effectively on stage". Olivier and Leigh were chagrined that part of the commercial success of the play lay in audience members attending to see what they believed would be a salacious and sensationalist story, rather than the Greek tragedy that they envisioned, but the play also had strong supporters,among them Noël Coward who described Leigh as "magnificent."

After 326 performances, Leigh finished her run. However, she was soon engaged for the film version. Her irreverent and often bawdy sense of humour allowed her to establish a rapport with her co-star Marlon Brando, but she had difficulty with the director Elia Kazan, who did not hold her in high regard as an actress. He later commented that "she had a small talent", but as work progressed, he became "full of admiration" for "the greatest determination to excel of any actress I've known. She'd have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would help her performance." Leigh found the role gruelling and commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I had nine months in the theatre of Blanche DuBois. Now she's in command of me." Olivier accompanied her to Hollywood where he was to co-star in William Wyler's Carrie.

The film won glowing reviews for her, and she won a second Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Tennessee Williams commented that Leigh brought to the role "everything that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of", but in later years, Leigh would say that playing Blanche DuBois "tipped me over into madness."

Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being difficult to work with, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, with which she was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis, in 1967.

Humphrey Bogart ~ 1951 Best Actor

2009-06-09T12:25:00.003-04:00

After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster in B-movies. His breakthrough came in 1941, with High Sierra (1941) and The Maltese Falcon (1941). The next year, his performance as Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942) raised him to the peak of his profession and at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award; Sabrina (1954), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.

Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn in the movie The African Queen in 1951, again directed by his friend John Huston. The novel was overlooked and left undeveloped for fifteen years until producer Sam Spiegel and Huston bought the rights. Spiegel sent Katharine Hepburn the book and she suggested Bogart for the male lead, firmly believing that “he was the only man who could have played that part”. Huston's love of adventure, a chance to work with Hepburn, and Bogart's earlier successes with Huston convinced Bogart to leave the comfortable confines of Hollywood for a difficult shoot on location in the Belgian Congo in Africa. Bogart was to get 30 percent of the profits and Hepburn 10 percent, plus a relatively small salary for both. The stars met up in London and announced the happy prospect of working together.

Bacall came for the duration (over four months), leaving their young child behind, but the Bogarts started the trip with a junket through Europe, including a visit with Pope Pius XII. Later, the glamor would be gone and she would make herself useful as a cook, nurse, and clothes washer, for which Bogart praised her, “I don’t know what we’d have done without her. She Luxed my undies in darkest Africa”. Just about everyone in the cast came down with dysentery except Bogart and John Huston, who subsisted on canned food and alcohol. Bogart explained: "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." The teetotaling Hepburn, in and out of character, fared worse in the difficult conditions, losing weight, and at one time, getting very ill. Bogart resisted Huston's insistence on using real leeches in a key scene where Bogart has to drag the boat through a shallow marsh, until reasonable fakes were employed. In the end, the crew overcame illness, soldier ant invasions, leaking boats, poor food, attacking hippos, bad water filters, fierce heat, isolation, and a boat fire to complete a memorable film.

The African Queen was the first Technicolor film in which Bogart appeared. Remarkably, he appeared in relatively few color films during the rest of his career, which continued for another five years. (His other color films included The Caine Mutiny, The Barefoot Contessa, We're No Angels, and The Left Hand of God.)

The role of Charlie Allnutt won Bogart his only Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1951. Bogart considered his performance to be the best of his film career. He had vowed to friends that if he won, his speech would break the convention of thanking everyone in sight. He advised Claire Trevor when she had been nominated for Key Largo to “just say you did all yourself and don’t thank anyone”. But when Bogart won the Academy Award, which he truly coveted despite his well-advertised disdain for Hollywood, he said “It's a long way from the Belgian Congo to the stage of this theatre. It's nicer to be here. Thank you very much…No one does it alone. As in tennis, you need a good opponent or partner to bring out the best in you. John and Katie helped me to be where I am now”. Despite the thrilling win and the recognition, Bogart later commented, “The way to survive an Oscar is never to try to win another one...too many stars…win it and then figure they have to top themselves...they become afraid to take chances. The result: A lot of dull performances in dull pictures”.

At the time of his death from cancer in 1957, Bogart was one of the most respected figures in American cinema. Since his death, his persona and film performances have been considered as having a lasting impact and have led to him being described as a cultural icon. In 1997, 40 years after his death, Entertainment Weekly magazine named him the number one movie legend of all time. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the Greatest Male Star of All Time.

An American in Paris ~ Best Picture 1951

2009-06-06T12:15:00.001-04:00

The single film which came out with the largest number of honors in 1951 was An American in Paris, which received six Oscars, including Best Picture. However, A Place in the Sun received six academy awards, including best director, and A Streetcar Named Desire took four of them for itself, including three of the acting awards. Oddly enough, the only nominee from that film that did not win was Marlon Brando, whose performance as Stanley Kowalski is now considered one of the most influential in movie history.

However, the Best Picture of 1951 was, An American in Paris a MGM musical film inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition by George Gershwin. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant, the film is set in Paris, and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner. The music is by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, with additional music by Saul Chaplin, the music director.

The story of the film is interspersed with show-stopping dance numbers choreographed by Gene Kelly and set to Gershwin tunes. Songs and music include "I Got Rhythm," "I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise," "'S Wonderful," and "Our Love is Here to Stay". The climax is "The American in Paris" ballet, an 18 minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron set to Gershwin's An American in Paris. The ballet alone cost more than $500,000, a staggering sum at the time.

The Bridge on the River Kwai ~ Best Picture 1957

2009-05-30T08:18:00.000-04:00

One of the most-loved war movies of all time opens in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma in 1943, where a battle of wills rages between camp commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) and newly arrived British colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness). Saito insists that Nicholson order his men to build a bridge over the river Kwai, which will be used to transport Japanese munitions. Nicholson refuses, despite all the various "persuasive" devices at Saito's disposal. Finally, Nicholson agrees, not so much to cooperate with his captor as to provide a morale-boosting project for the military engineers under his command. The colonel will prove that, by building a better bridge than Saito's men could build, the British soldier is a superior being even when under the thumb of the enemy. As the bridge goes up, Nicholson becomes obsessed with completing it to perfection, eventually losing sight of the fact that it will benefit the Japanese. Meanwhile, American POW Shears (William Holden, in a role originally slated for Cary Grant), having escaped from the camp, agrees to save himself from a court martial by leading a group of British soldiers back to the camp to destroy Nicholson's bridge. Upon his return, Shears realizes that Nicholson's mania to complete his project has driven him mad.

Filmed in Ceylon, Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for the legendary British filmmaker David Lean, and Best Actor for Guinness. It also won Best Screenplay for Pierre Boulle, the author of the novel on which the film was based and who could not speak English; the actual writers were blacklisted writers Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who were given their Oscars at the ceremonies in 1985. Wilson did not live to see this; Foreman died the day after it was announced. When the film was restored, their names were added to the credits.

Miyoshi Umeki ~ Sayonara

2009-04-10T08:15:00.001-04:00

A versatile performer who also had major roles on Broadway and on television, Umeki played Katsumi in "Sayonara," a tragic drama, based on the novel by James Michener, about American servicemen who fall in love with women they meet while stationed in occupied Japan.

In the film, which starred Marlon Brando, Umeki's character marries Airman Joe Kelly, played by Red Buttons, against the wishes of the military authorities and local citizens. When Kelly is transferred back to the United States and prevented from taking Katsumi with him, both characters commit suicide.

Buttons also won the best supporting actor award for his performance in the film.

Born on May 8, 1929, in Otaru, Hokkaido, Umeki began her career as a nightclub singer in Japan, billing herself as Nancy Umeki. After making a couple of records there, she attracted the attention of a talent scout, who persuaded her to move to New York City in 1955. Within a year, she had a recording contract and a regular spot on the television variety show "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends." It was her appearances on that show that led to her role in "Sayonara."

On television, she was best known as Mrs. Livingston on the situation comedy "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," starring Bill Bixby, which ran from 1969 through 1972.

Red Buttons ~ Comic Genius Wins for Drama

2009-04-03T08:09:00.004-04:00

Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on February 5, 1919 in New York City to Jewish immigrants. At sixteen years old, Buttons got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan's Tavern in City Island, Bronx. The combination of his red hair and the shiny buttoned bellhop uniform inspired orchestra leader Charles "Dinty" Moore to call him Red Buttons, the name under which he would later perform.

After the war, Buttons continued to do Broadway shows. He also performed at Broadway movie houses with the Big Bands. In 1952, Buttons received his own variety series on television - The Red Buttons Show ran for three years, and achieved high levels of success. His catch phrase from the show, "strange things are happening," entered the national vocabulary briefly in the mid-1950s.

His role in Sayonara was a dramatic departure from his previous work. In that film, he played Joe Kelly, an American airman stationed in Kobe, Japan during the Korean War, who falls in love with Katsumi, a Japanese woman (played by Miyoshi Umeki), but is barred from marrying her by military rules intended to reassure the local populace that the U.S. presence is temporary. His portrayal of Kelly's calm resolve not to abandon the relationship and touching reassurance of Katsumi impressed audiences and critics alike; both he and Umeki won Academy Awards for the film.

Alec Guinness ~ Consumate Actor

2009-04-01T08:03:00.004-04:00

April 2, 1914, London, Eng. British actor famous for the variety and excellence of his stage and screen characterizations. Throughout his school days Guinness amused his classmates by acting out stories he had invented at the age of seven while ill. He was first a copywriter for an advertising agency, then, after studying acting, made his stage debut in 1934 as an extra at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, London. Three years later he joined the acting company of John Gielgud and appeared in such classics as Richard II (1937), The School for Scandal (1937), The Three Sisters (1937), and The Merchant of Venice (1938).

In 1938 Guinness starred in a popular modern-dress version of Hamlet at the Old Vic Theatre, London. He produced Twelfth Night for the Old Vic company in 1948. While on leave from the Royal Navy during World War II, he made his New York stage debut in Flare Path (1942-43) and later appeared there in The Cocktail Party (1964) and Dylan (1964). Guinness' initial screen role was as Pip's friend Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), which was adapted to the screen from the novel by Charles Dickens. Next came Oliver Twist and then a series of Ealing studio comedies that included the internationally popular Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which Guinness played the eight heirs to a dukedom; The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), with Guinness as the mousy clerk turned bank robber; The Man in the White Suit (1951), with Guinness as the chemist who invents a fabric that will never wear out; and The Captain's Paradise (1953), in which he played a lovable bigamist.

Other famous films are The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for best actor; Lawrence of Arabia (1962), in which he played Prince Feisal; Star Wars (1977), in which he played Ben Kenobi; and Little Dorrit (1987), in which he played William Dorrit. In 1980 he won a special Academy Award for memorable film performances. Guinness also wrote dramatizations (The Brothers Karamazov and Great Expectations) and a film script of The Horse's Mouth and coauthored the play Yahoo (1976), in which he played the role of Jonathan Swift. Guinness was knighted in 1960.

Three Faces of Joanne

2009-03-30T07:55:00.000-04:00

Joanne Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle name, "Gignilliat", originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name - "Joanne". Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1979, in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba.

Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was in the second grade. Her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia. They moved once again when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced. She graduated from Greenville High School in 1947, in Greenville, South Carolina. Woodward won many beauty contests as a teenager. She appeared in theatrical productions at Greenville High and in Greenville's Little Theatre, playing Laura Wingfield in their staging of The Glass Menagerie directed by Robert Hemphill McLane. She returned to Greenville in 1976 to play Amanda Wingfield in another Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie. She had also returned in 1955 for the premiere of her debut movie, Count Three And Pray, at the Paris Theatre on North Main Street.

She majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, then headed to New York City to perform on the stage.

Woodward's first film was a post-Civil War western Count Three and Pray, in 1955. She continued to move between Hollywood and Broadway, eventually, understudying in the New York production of Picnic which featured Paul Newman. The two were married in 1958 after their work together in the film The Long, Hot Summer. By that time, Woodward had starred in The Three Faces of Eve, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress

2008 Oscar Winners

2009-02-23T00:08:00.004-05:00

I did not do very well this year on my predictions, however I did say some these were probably going to win, I just didn't pick them as winners...

Best Picture

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Best Director

DANNY BOYLE (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Actor

SEAN PENN

Best Actress

KATE WINSLET

Best Supporting Actor

HEATH LEDGER

Best Supporting Actress

PENELOPE CRUZ

2008 Oscar Predictions

2009-02-19T17:59:00.006-05:00

Well for what it is worth here are my final predictions for the Oscars most lackluster year (my opinion)

BEST PICTURE:
MILK, however Slumdog Millionaire will probably win it.

BEST DIRECTOR:
Gus Van Sant (MILK), again though
Danny Boyle will probably win for Slumdog Millionaire.

BEST ACTOR:
Mickey Roarke (The Wrestler) However,
Sean Penn could win his second statuette.

BEST ACTRESS:
Kate Winslet (The READER) No question here,

this will be the winner.

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) Again, no question.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Amy Adams (Doubt) But,

Penelope Cruz will proably win.

So there you have it, come back Monday morning and see how I fared this year.

Barbara Streisand / Katharine Hepburn ~ Best Actresses 1968

2009-01-25T16:24:00.004-05:00

The 41st Oscars brought one of the greatest shocks to hit the Academy Awards show in years when two actresses in the Best Actress category won the award with an unprecedented exact tie - the only one in the Best Actress category in Academy history! [There had been a similar tie in the Best Actor category in 1931/2 between Fredric March (for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931/2)) and Wallace Beery (for The Champ (1931/2)), but it was a nominal tie. Beery was unofficially one vote short of the vote for March.]

The winners to share the Oscar were:
22 year-old Barbara Streisand in her film debut (in a role she had perfected on Broadway in 1964, that opens with "Hello, gorgeous") as the vaudeville comedienne queen Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, who drifts apart from husband/gambler Nicky Arnstein (miscast co-star Omar Sharif) due to her success. Streisand shared similar humble origins with the famed Follies star.

Katharine Hepburn in her monumental role as the witty, strong-willed, aging Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, who battles with co-star Peter O'Toole's King Henry II over the succession of Richard I (Anthony Hopkins). Her nomination (her eleventh of twelve career nominations) was a record-breaker in itself - it was the highest number of nominations ever recorded up to that time in the Academy's history. Hepburn's win was also a record for Oscar winners - it was Hepburn's third Best Actress Oscar - she had just won her second Oscar the year before for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and had won earlier for Morning Glory (1932/3). Her total of three Oscar wins tied her with Walter Brennan (who also had three Oscar wins - all Best Supporting Actor awards - that were given to him in 1936, 1938, and 1940). [Hepburn would win her fourth and final Oscar thirteen years later for On Golden Pond (1981).]

Best Picture 1968 ~ Oliver!

2009-01-23T15:57:00.001-05:00

The 41st Annual Academy Awards continued a stretch of wins for a musical being named as Best Picture. Oliver! was also the last musical to win Best Picture until Chicago won 34 years later for Best Picture 2002.

The Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the orphanage and hooks up with a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by an elderly mentor. Now a classic, but in 1968, this was the first Dicken's tale to be made into a musical. After an extensive run on Broadway, it was adapted to the screen with rave reviews and results.
However, it was not expected to win the Best Picture award. The two front-runners for the Best Picture award, The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl, apparently canceled each other out, and handed the top award to the major upset winner Oliver!

Oliver! was the first and only G-rated film to be honoured with an Academy Award for Best Picture. Ironically, the following year saw the first and only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar: Midnight Cowboy, which was re-rated R two years later. It was also the last musical to win the Best Picture Oscar until Chicago (2002) thirty-four years later.

When I first saw this film, I fell in love.. In love with the film, the music, the stars and it brought a whole new passion to me, the theater. Then when I saw this show in live theater, with the infamous revolving stage, again I fell in love.

All I can say is, "Please sir, I want some more."

and the Nominees are...

2009-01-22T12:23:00.004-05:00

Best Picture ~3
*'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'
*'Frost/Nixon'
*'Milk'
'The Reader'
*'Slumdog Millionaire'

Best Director ~4
*Danny Boyle, 'Slumdog Millionaire'
Stephen Daldry, 'The Reader'
*David Fincher, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'
*Ron Howard, 'Frost/Nixon'
*Gus Van Sant, 'Milk'

Best Actor ~ 4
Richard Jenkins, 'The Visitor'
*Frank Langella, 'Frost/Nixon'
*Sean Penn, 'Milk'
*Brad Pitt, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'
*Mickey Rourke, 'The Wrestler'

Best Actress ~ 4
*Anne Hathaway, 'Rachel Getting Married'
*Angelina Jolie, 'Changeling'
Melissa Leo, 'Frozen River'
*Meryl Streep, 'Doubt'
*Kate Winslet, 'The Reader'

Best Supporting Actor ~ 3
Josh Brolin, 'Milk'
*Robert Downey Jr., 'Tropic Thunder'
*Philip Seymour Hoffman, 'Doubt'
*Heath Ledger, 'The Dark Knight'
Michael Shannon, ' Revolutionary Road'

Best Supporting Actress ~3
Amy Adams, 'Doubt'
*Penelope Cruz, 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'
*Viola Davis, 'Doubt'
Taraji P. Henson, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'
*Marisa Tomei, 'The Wrestler'

Those are this years nominees, I have highlighted my first predictions as to the winners in red. The numbers next to the category is my correct # or predictions in that category.

Coming Attractions

2009-01-19T12:45:00.002-05:00

The 81st Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2009, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. So I suppose it is time for my predictions of the nominations...

Supporting Actresses:

I will call this list, the year of the Actress comebacks as I see the following ladies return to the list of the best.

Kathy Bates; Revolutionary Road

Marisa Tomei; The Wrestler

Debra Winger; Rachel Getting Married

Penelope Cruz; Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis; Doubt

Supporting Actors:

This list is called, Heath is going to win, so does anyone else really matter list.

Heath Ledger; The Dark Knight

Dev Patel; Slumdog Millionaire

James Franco; Milk

Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Doubt

Robert Downey Jr.; Tropic Thunder

Actresses:

Anne Hathaway; Rachel Getting Married

Meryl Streep; Doubt

Kate Winslet; Revolutionary Road

Sally Hawkins; Happy Go Lucky

Angelina Jolie; Changling

Actors:

Leonardo DiCaprio; Revolutionary Road

Frank Langella; Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn; Milk

Brad Pitt; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mickey Rourke; The Wrestler

Best Picture:

Revolutionary Road

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Doubt

Slumdog Millionaire

Terms of Endearment ~ Best Picture 1983

2009-01-17T15:48:00.001-05:00

One of the best films of the 80's, and one of my top 20 favorite Oscar films. Terms of Endearment, will endear itself for decades to come. The story of the relationship between a mother and daughter through the years, and the death of that daughter. By far one of the most cried at films ever produced.

The film, with three X's signifying kisses below its title, was a major Academy Award winner in 1983, with eleven nominations and five Oscars - and James Brooks was a triple Oscar winner! It won Best Picture, Best Actress (Shirley MacLaine - her first and sole win), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The other nominations included Best Actress (Debra Winger), Best Supporting Actor (John Lithgow), Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score.

Nicholson's role of Garrett Breedlove was specifically written by Brooks for Burt Reynolds, who elected instead to star in the racing flop Stroker Ace (1983) . Winger's role of Emma was originally written for Sissy Spacek.

The sit-com style film is about the thirty-year mother-daughter relationship between two women: stubborn brunette Emma (Debra Winger) and her devoted, possessive, blonde, widowed mother Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine). A sub-par sequel, titled The Evening Star (1996) found Shirley MacLaine reprising her role fifteen years later, as a grand-mother to her daughter Emma's three children, and Jack Nicholson with only a short cameo appearance.

Terms of Endearment will continue to move hearts and bring tears to millions of it's fans and viewers.

Robert Duvall ~ Best Actor 1983

2009-01-15T15:37:00.001-05:00

Tender Mercies concerns a defeated-looking drunk played powerfully by Robert Duvall, who shows up at a remote, ramshackle motel one day and stays. At first, he lingers because he is broke and has offered to work off his debt to the pretty proprietor, Rosa Lee (Tess Harper). Soon he is staying for Rosa Lee herself, and without much ado or conversation, they are married. The gaunt, hollow-eyed Mac proposes this while helping Rosa Lee with her vegetable garden. Lonely, impoverished Rosa Lee says yes with almost more gratitude than excitement or surprise. Only later does she learn that Mac used to be Mac Sledge, a famous country singer who drank himself out of a career at the top, and whose former wife was the still-successful country singer Dixie Lee (played by Betty Buckley).

Robert Duvall is one of those actors that is there, but not many take note of him. However, I have been a fan since I first saw him in To Kill A Mockingbird, as Boo Radley. Which was his first film. He is an extraordinary talent and desrved this Oscar many years sooner than he received it. Nominated four times, most recently in 1998 for his role in A Civil Action.

Jack Nicholson ~ Supporting Actor 1983

2009-01-11T15:11:00.001-05:00

What more can be said about one of the greatest actors of our generation, but Jack Nicholson as the retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove, that lives next door, was one of his finest roles. He showed in this film his versatility and ability to surprise and delight us. Actually I think that this role is closer to the real personality of Jack Nicholson on film, at least until As Good As It Gets.

Jack was born John Joseph Nicholson, April 22, 1937. Abandoned by his father in his childhood, he was raised believing his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his older sister. The truth was revealed to him years later when a Time magazine researcher uncovered the truth while preparing a story on the star.

Nominated for an Academy Award 12 times, and every decade since 1969, Jack has won three awards. Two for Best Actor for his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and As Good As It Gets and his supporting role in Terms of Endearment.

Linda Hunt ~ Supporting Actress 1983

2009-01-09T14:53:00.000-05:00

Linda Hunt, a diminutive lady and powerful actress, played the photographer Billy Swan to Mel Gibson's Guy Hamilton in this powerful political drama. The first time I saw the film, I seriously though that Billy Swan was being played by a man!

While still a child, Linda Hunt decided to become an actress, and began taking drama lessons at age 13. As she was quite small (4'9") and not a great beauty, she also studied directing, in case she never landed any acting roles. Hunt majored in directing at the prestigious Goodman Theater School in Chicago, and went on to spend several years in New York, working as a stage manager, director, and occasionally as an actress. Hunt finally started landing good roles and ultimately won two Obie awards and a Tony nomination. She debuted onscreen in Popeye (1980), but it was her second film, The Year of Living Dangerously (1983), that made her internationally known; for her portrayal of a male Indonesian dwarf, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She went on to have a fairly busy and successful film career as a character and supporting actress, often winning raves for her performances.

Shirley Maclaine ~ Best Actress 1983

2009-01-05T14:29:00.001-05:00

Upon winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, Shirley Maclaine made mention of her past lives internationally for the first time, and how joyous it was to sleep (although acting) with Jack Nicholson, and she rightfully stated.."I deserve this thing".

She did deserve it, as the endearing single mother to Debra Winger's tumultuous daughter, we saw her as we had never saw her before. And apparently from reports, the relationship between Shirley and Debra was quite tumultuous as well.

Named after Shirley Temple in Richmond, Virginia on April 24, 1934, Shirley Maclaine's dream was to be a ballerina, but do to weak ankles she was unable to fulfill that dream, but she did a great deal of dancing which led to her role in Irma la Douce which gave her, her third Academy Award nomination, the first two being for her roles in The Apartment and Some Came Running. She was nominated again in 1977 for Turning Point, but did not win until her last nomination for Terms of Endearment as Aurora Greenway.

1983 ~ 56th Academy Awards

2009-01-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

In 1983, I was not as big a movie buff as I am now. However a star emerged to me that year that had been around for sometime, but I finally took to him. Jack Nicholson. Today he is a legend, 25 years ago he was creating that legend. I saw Terms of Endearment and Jack Nicholson became endeared to me. He is my #2 favorite actor (Gregory Peck is and will always be #1).

Most of the people that were nominated I had not even heard of, and some of them today are not familiar, and Yentl?? Really? Amy Irving for Yentl, not likely.

Anyway, the 1983 Oscars were held on April 9, 1984 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the
Host was Johnny Carson

Best Picture
The Big Chill
The Dresser
The Right Stuff
Tender Mercies
*Terms of Endearment

Actor
Michael Caine, Educating Rita
Tom Conti, Reuben, Reuben
Tom Courtenay, The Dresser
*Robert Duvall, Tender Mercies
Albert Finney, The Dresser

Actress
Jane Alexander, Testament
*Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment
Meryl Streep, Silkwood
Julie Walters, Educating Rita
Debra Winger, Terms of Endearment

Supporting Actor
Charles Durning, To Be or Not to Be
John Lithgow, Terms of Endearment
*Jack Nicholson, Terms of Endearment
Sam Shepard, The Right Stuff
Rip Torn, Cross Creek

Supporting Actress
Cher, Silkwood
Glenn Close, The Big Chill
Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously
Amy Irving, Yentl
Alfre Woodard, Cross Creek

Joan Fontaine ~ Best Actress

2008-07-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo to British parents. In the US from childhood, she trailed far behind her sister Olivia de Havilland in her early career. As Joan Barfield, she appeared with various West Coast stage companies and in 1935 made her screen debut under that name in a minor role, supporting Joan Crawford in MGM's NO MORE LADIES. She then returned to the stage and it wasn't until 1937 that she began appearing regularly in films, mostly RKO B pictures, with the exception of A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, in which she partnered with Fred Astaire, and GUNGA DIN, in which she was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s love interest. It was not until the early 40s that her career took off, thanks to leads in two Hitchcock films. She was nominated for an Oscar for REBECCA (1940), and THE CONSTANT NYMPH (1943), and won the Academy Award, as well as the New York Film Critics Award, for her performance in SUSPICION (1941).
Fontaine subsequently starred in numerous films, at first as innocent, refined heroines and later as sophisticated, sometimes bitchy and scheming, worldly women. In the 40s and 50s she had many real or imagined well-publicized feuds with sister Olivia. The first three of her four husbands were actor Brian Aherne (1939-45), producer William Dozier (1946-51), and producer-screenwriter Collier Young (1952-61). A highly accomplished woman, she is a licensed pilot, champion balloonist, prize-winning tuna fisherman, and an expert golfer, as well as a licensed interior decorator and a Cordon Bleu cook.

Mary Astor ~ Supporting Actress 1941

2008-07-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

American leading lady who's real name was Lucille Langehanke, the beautiful daughter of first generation German immigrants. Because of a beauty contest she entered, one of many, she was noticed by a movie mogul and she was signed up at a studio at the age of 14. In 1924, her movie career took off, after landing a plum part in Beau Brummell, a film with the star, John Barrymore.
In the late twnenties, she was one of the few actresses who transitioned into "Talkies" very smoothly, becasue of her voice and strong screen presence. Mary Astor's golden era as an actress was during the 1930's. In later years Astor did many character roles. Mary's film career was prolific, with 123 motion pictures to her name.

Mary Astor won her Supporting Oscar for playing the girl who had a baby by Bette Davis' husband in THE GREAT LIE.

Donald Crisp ~ Supporting Actor 1941

2008-07-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

Born in Scotland, and In the US from 1906, Donald Crisp enjoyed a long and varied career as an actor and, until 1930, a director; he later featured as a fatherly character performer in some 400 movies through the early 1960s.

At the Biograph studios, Crisp appeared in numerous D.W. Griffith films -- portraying General Grant in THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), playing Lillian Gish's brutal father in BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919) and serving as Griffith's assistant director on both. He also directed a good number of silents including DON Q, SON OF ZORRO (1925), starring Douglas Fairbanks; THE NAVIGATOR (1924) was co-directed with Buster Keaton.

As a supporting actor, Crisp fought alongside Errol Flynn in THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936), was a stuffy military man opposite Kay Francis in THE WHITE ANGEL (1936) and played a judge in THE OKLAHOMA KID (1939). After winning a supporting actor Oscar as the head of a Welsh mining family in John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941), Crisp was typecast as white-haired, crusty but good-hearted fathers

Gary Cooper ~ Best Actor 1941

2008-07-10T12:22:00.001-04:00

The son of a Montana state supreme court justice, he received his elementary schooling in England, later attending Wesleyan College, an agricultural school in Montana, and Grinnell College in Iowa. After graduation, he worked briefly as a guide at Yellowstone National Park and began submitting political cartoons to his hometown newspaper, the Helena Independent. In 1924, Cooper set out for California, hoping to become a cartoonist for a Los Angeles newspaper. Instead he found himself a door-to-door salesman for a photographer and space salesman for theater curtain advertising. In 1925 he was introduced by friends to Hollywood casting directors and began playing cowboy extras in Westerns. During 1925 and early 1926 he appeared briefly in many films, including THE THUNDERING HERD, WILD HORSE MESA, THE VANISHING AMERICAN, THE EAGLE, and THE ENCHANTED HILL. He also played heavies in several two-reelers. His big break came in 1926, when he was cast as a last-minute replacement for the second lead in Goldwyn's THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH (1926), starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky.
The film was a big box-office hit and it started Cooper on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's all-time great stars. Tall, handsome, and laconic, with a shy smile and a hesitant delivery, he had an immediate appeal to both male and female audiences and steadily moved to the top. In the eyes of millions the world over he came to personify the strong, silent American, a man of action and few words. At first taken lightly by the critics, he received more press coverage for his romantic escapades (Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Evelyn Brent, etc.) than for his acting in films. But he soon settled down, married socialite Veronica Balfe, who had briefly appeared in films as Sandra Shaw, and gradually developed a natural aptitude for screen acting. By the mid-30s he was generally accepted as a capable performer.
His physique and nonchalant manner had been effective from the start in romantic and adventure films. Now his slightly awkward mannerisms and delayed reactions also proved to be perfect assets for screen comedy, under the guidance of such directors as Lubitsch and Capra. But above all, he remained most closely identified with his roles as a man of the American West. In 1942 he won the best actor Academy Award, as well as the New York Film Critics Award, for SERGEANT YORK (1941).

How Green Was My Valley ~ Best Picture 1941

2008-07-05T12:21:00.000-04:00

John Ford's beautiful, heartfelt drama about a close-knit family of Welsh coal miners is one of the greatest films of Hollywood's golden age -- a gentle masterpiece based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn. The film focuses its eventful story on 10-year-old Huw (Roddy McDowall), youngest of seven children to Mr. and Mrs. Morgan (Donald Crisp, Sarah Allgood), a hardy couple who've seen the best and worst of times in their South Wales mining town. They're facing one of the worst times as Mr. Morgan refuses to join a miners union whose members have begun a long-term strike. Family tensions grow and Huw must learn many of life's harsher lessons under the tutelage of the local preacher (Walter Pigeon), who has fallen in love with Huw's sister (Maureen O'Hara). As various crises are confronted and devastating losses endured, How Green Was My Valley unfolds as a rich, moving portrait of family strength and integrity. It's also a nod to a simpler, more innocent time -- and to the preciousness of memory and the inevitable passage from youth to adulthood. An all-time classic, not to be missed.

John Ford ~ Best Director

2008-07-01T12:16:00.000-04:00

Born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. John Ford grew up with the American cinema. In the early days of filmmaking, his older brother Francis moved to Hollywood to work for Universal Pictures and John joined him in 1914, forging his apprenticeship as a moviemaker during the formative period of the classical Hollywood cinema.By 1917 he had been promoted to contract director, fashioning Westerns which often starred Harry Carey, Sr. Ford moved to the Fox studio in 1921 and established his reputation with such films as the Western spectacular THE IRON HORSE (1924). In his silent films, Ford composed images with a formality and a symmetry that valued order; even at this stage, he had acquired the mantle of a Hollywood master.

Although best known for his Westerns such as the landmark STAGECOACH (1939), Ford worked in many other genres throughout his long career. Early in the 1930s, he led Fox's top comedy starn Will Rogers, through a number of features. Ford also set a number of his films in his parents' native Ireland. THE INFORMER (1935), a drama of the Irish rebellion, won him the first of four Academy Awards for his direction. In retrospect, the film seems stylistically stodgy and thematically preachy, especially next to the vitality of THE QUIET MAN (1952), an unpretentious film about an Irish-American returning to settle in his native land. Ford also dealt with American history in THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (1936), YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939), DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939) and THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940).
After WW II Ford fashioned some of the best westerns ever to come out of Hollywood, including SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), WAGON MASTER (1950), THE SEARCHERS (1956) and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962). In creating the archetype for the genre in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946), Ford focused on the classic cinematic shoot-out, the famous final gunfight at the O.K. Corral, where Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers avenge the murder of their youngest brother. Against the harsh background of the buttes and desert of Monument Valley, Ford had the Earps ally with Easterner Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) to rid Tombstone of the evil Clantons and bring civilization to the town. In reshaping these familiar elements, Ford demonstrated that Hollywood genre films could be transformed into complex artifacts of popular culture and history.

Ford's postwar westerns examined all facets of the settling of the West. He began with a shared optimism in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and ended with a close examination of the dark side of manifest destiny in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.

Possibly his most underrated film, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, should be singled out for its brilliant use of color: rich and muted hues blended into an often somber aura. In this transitional work, part of a trilogy (including FORT APACHE, 1948 and RIO GRANDE, 1950) about life in the United States cavalry, Ford praises the work of the military in settling the West, while undercutting the role of war in settling disputes. THE SEARCHERS, now highly regarded by critics, historians, and such contemporary directors as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and George Lucas, presents not only a rousing adventure tale, but also a melancholy examination of the contradictions of settling the Old West.

If THE SEARCHERS is one of the most beautiful color films ever made, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, in black-and-white, is surely one of the most bleak and barren. This dark vision of a West of deceit and lying, abandons the stunning Technicolor vistas of the buttes of Monument Valley for the rickety buildings of a ramshackle town continually cast in shadow. The heroic shooting by Ranson Stoddard (James Stewart) of evil Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), revealed in flashback, is shown by the end of the film to be a lie and a sham. Still, society hails Stoddard as a hero and elevates him to a position of power as a United States Senator. The true Western hero, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), dies a pauper, unknown, save to his closest friends.

Although his final film was 7 WOMEN (1966), CHEYENNE AUTUMN, released in 1964 and his final film shot in Monument Valley, seems a more fitting cap to a career begun some fifty years earlier. Ford made many of the best films ever to come out of Hollywood, even as he managed to make a few of the worst. By focusing on the aforementioned works, one overlooks the wretched excess of THE WINGS OF EAGLES (1957). How he could make this film just after his masterpiece, THE SEARCHERS, is a paradox that suggests a great deal about working in Hollywood.

He married Mary McBryde Smith, on July 3, 1920 (two children). Ford never divorced his wife, but had a five-year affair with Katharine Hepburn after they met during the filming of Mary of Scotland (1936). The longer revised version of Directed by John Ford shown on Turner Classic Movies in November, 2006 features directors Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, and Martin Scorsese, who suggest that the string of classic films Ford directed 1936-1941 was due in part to his affair with Hepburn.

Ford is the only director to have won 4 Academy Awards for Direction.

Condensed biography from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film

Frank Capra ~ Best Director ~ '34-'36 & '38

2008-06-30T12:03:00.003-04:00

Frank Capra began as a prop man in silent films. However, he wrote and directed silent film comedies starring Harry Langdon and the Our Gang kids. Capra went to work for Mack Sennett in 1924 and then moved to Columbia Pictures, where he formed a close association with screenwriter Robert Riskin (husband of Fay Wray) and cameraman Joseph Walker. However, Sidney Buchman replaced Riskin as writer in 1940.

For the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were originally offered the roles, but each felt that the script was poor, and Loy described it as one of the worst she had ever read, later noting that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she and Montgomery were offered. After Loy, Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also each rejected the part. Constance Bennett wanted to, but only if she could produce it herself. Then Bette Davis wanted the role, but she was under contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner refused to loan her to Columbia Studios. Capra was unable to get any of the actresses he wanted for the part of Ellie Andrews, partly because no self-respecting star would make a film with only two costumes. Harry Cohn suggested Claudette Colbert to play the lead role. Both Capra and Clark Gable enjoyed making the movie; Colbert did not. After the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Capra directed a steady stream of films for Columbia intended to be inspirational and humanitarian.

The best known are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the original Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life. His ten-year break from screwball comedy ended with the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. Among the actors who owed much of their early success to Capra were Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant and Donna Reed. Capra called Jean Arthur "[his] favorite actress".

Capra's films in the 1930s enjoyed success at the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay). In 1936, Capra won his second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; in 1938 he won his third Director Oscar in five years for You Can't Take It with You, which also won Best Picture. In addition to his three directing wins, Capra received directing nominations for three other films (Lady for a Day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life). On March 5, 1936, Capra was also host of the 8th Academy Awards ceremony.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) was considered a box office disappointment but it was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Sound Recording and Best Editing. The American Film Institute named it one of the best films ever made, putting it at the top of the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers, a list of what AFI considers to be the most inspirational American movies of all time. The film also appeared in another AFI Top 100 list: it placed at 11th on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list of the top American films.

Capra's final theatrical film was with Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, named Pocketful of Miracles (1961). He planned to do a science fiction film later in the decade but never got around to pre-production. Capra produced several science-related television specials for the Bell Labs, such as Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957), and Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958). These educational science documentaries were popular favorites for showing in school science classrooms.

In 1982, the American Film Institute honored Frank Capra with television film The American Film Institute Salute to Frank Capra, hosted by Jimmy Stewart. In 1986, Capra received the National Medal of Arts.

Capra films usually carry a definite message about the basic goodness of human nature and show the value of unselfishness and hard work. His wholesome, feel-good themes have led some to call his Capra-corn, but those who hold his vision in high regard prefer the term Capraesque. It may be argued that much of the 'feel-good' type of cinema, which has become a genre of its own, is largely Frank Capra's legacy

Frank Capra died in La Quinta, California, of a heart attack in his sleep in 1991 at the age of 94. He was interred in the Coachella Valley Cemetery in Coachella, California.
He left part of his 1,100-acre (4 km2) ranch in Fallbrook, California, to Caltech. The Cinema Archives, run by film historian Jeanine Basinger, at Wesleyan University contain the personal papers of Capra.

His son Frank Capra, Jr. — one of the four children born to Capra's second wife, Lou Capra — was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios, in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007. Frank Capra's grandson is Frank Capra III. His great-grandchildren include Asa Capra, screenwriter Chanel Capra, actor Francis Capra and Ava Capra

Clark Gable ~ Best Actor 1934

2008-06-28T11:59:00.001-04:00

It Happened One Night for the first time in Oscar History, all top Oscar awards went for the same film, and this was the year, and It Happened One Night was the film, and Clark Gable was it's leading man.

Born in Cadiz, Ohio. The former blue-collar worker from Ohio became the "King of Hollywood," a title based on his being the leading male box-office attraction throughout the 1930s. The dashing, mustachioed image of Rhett Butler in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) remains indelibly associated with the name Clark Gable, but before his "I don't give a damn" made screen history Gable (with the aid of his MGM publicist Howard Strickland) had already established a distinctive screen persona as the virile, lovable rogue whose gruff facade only thinly masked a natural charm and goodness.

Following his marriage to actress Josephine Dillon, Gable played bit parts in several silent Hollywood features but he first achieved fame as a leading man on Broadway in the late 20s. With the flourishing of sound films, Gable joined the new generation of movie actors who made the move from New York to Hollywood in the early 30s. On the advice of director/actor Lionel Barrymore MGM granted him a screen test and, after a talkie debut in a Pathé western (THE PAINTED DESERT, 1931), Gable signed a contract with the prestigious Metro, where he remained until 1954. In his first year alone, Gable appeared in a dozen features, quickly rising from supporting player to romantic lead. He was teamed with all of MGM's leading ladies, most notably opposite Norma Shearer in A FREE SOUL (1931), Greta Garbo in SUSAN LENOX: HER FALL AND RISE (1931) and Joan Crawford in THE POSSESSED (1931) -- though he proved equally adept in male-oriented action sagas (THE SECRET SIX, 1931, SPORTING BLOOD, 1931, HELL DIVERS, 1932).

Despite his rising popularity, Gable balked at having to play gangsters and overly callous characters. In a now legendary act of studio disciplining, Louis B. Mayer "punished" Gable by loaning him out to lowly Columbia for a role in a minor romantic comedy. The project, Frank Capra's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), unexpectedly became the first film to sweep the five major Oscars (for best actor, actress, director, writer, and picture) and vaulted Gable to new prominence in the industry. His sensational appearance sans undershirt in the film's bedroom scene went down in Hollywood legend as the event that caused American males to make fewer trips to the haberdasher. While its effect on undershirt purchases may be purely apochryphal, the publicity from the event no doubt led to Gable's next major role, that of the bare-chested Fletcher Christian in MGM's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935), another Oscar-winner for Best Picture.

With such success under his belt, Gable commanded even greater star treatment at Metro and began appearing in fewer films each year, although his range of genre vehicle expanded. He continued his string of romantic comedies with Jean Harlow (RED DUST, 1932, HOLD YOUR MAN, 1933, CHINA SEAS, 1935, WIFE VS. SECRETARY, 1936, and SARATOGA, 1937), but also made offbeat musical appearances (SAN FRANCISCO, 1936, CAIN AND MABEL, 1936, IDIOT'S DELIGHT, 1939, in which he sang "Puttin' on the Ritz"), action dramas (CALL OF THE WILD, 1935, TEST PILOT, 1938 ) and romances (LOVE ON THE RUN, 1936). With MGM even promoting his image in its other feature films (Judy Garland singing "Dear Mr. Gable --You Made Me Love You" in BROADWAY MELODY OF 1938 and Mickey Rooney doing Gable impressions in BABES IN ARMS, 1939) Clark Gable remained King of the Hollywood box office throughout the decade, culminating in his highly publicized and memorable performance in GONE WITH THE WIND. Only his ill-conceived biopic PARNELL (1937) interrupted a string of popular successes.

Gable's reign at the top of Hollywood stardom in 1939 was enhanced by his storybook romance and marriage to actress Carole Lombard. Her untimely death in a plane crash in January 1942 marked a tragic downturn in Gable's life. He turned his back on his film career and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. After two years of decorated combat service, Gable returned to the screen in 1945 with his macho hero's image only further amplified. But despite much studio publicity for his return in ADVENTURE ("Gable's Back and Garson's Got Him") and some box-office success, Gable's post-war film career consisted mostly of routine, undistinguished vehicles. He consistently starred in one film a year, but never regained his status of 30s. Still, there were no pretenders to the throne. When MGM remade RED DUST in 1953 as MOGAMBO, Ava Gardner was in for Harlow, Grace Kelly played the Mary Astor role, and Gable's part? Only Gable could fill Gable's shoes, even twenty-one years later.

After a short-lived marriage (Lady Sylvia Ashley) and an unsuccessful attempt at independent production in the 1950s, Gable proved himself the King one last time, romancing the fragile Marilyn Monroe in John Huston's THE MISFITS (1961). His performance was greatly praised, but Gable had insisted on performing his own stunts, including breaking a horse. Doctors had warned him about an already weakened heart and the exertion proved too much (this would be Monroe's last completed film as well). He widowed his fifth wife, the former Kay Spreckles, in 1960, shortly before she gave birth to John Clark Gable, the son Gable had always longed for.

Claudette Colbert ~ Best Actress 1934

2008-06-21T11:57:00.000-04:00

Born, Lily Claudette Chauchoin in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Claudette Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, and with the advent of talking pictures progressed to film. She joined Paramount Pictures, and became noted for her versatility. She was acclaimed for her performances in several screwball comedies as well as dramatic roles and she received Academy Award nominations in both film genres.
From the mid 1930s until the late 1940s, she was one of the most successful and highly paid performers in American cinema. During the 1950s she continued to act in films and appeared in a number of television productions but concentrated mainly on her work in theater, remaining active until the late 1980s. In her later years, she retired to her home in Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of small strokes.

Colbert was reluctant to appear in the Frank Capra romantic comedy, It Happened One Night (1934), opposite Clark Gable. Filming began in a tense atmosphere; Colbert and Gable agreed that the script was below standard, but soon established a friendly working relationship and found that the script was no worse than those of many of their earlier films. She however continued to show her displeasure on the set.
Capra recalled Colbert's dissatisfaction with the part, commenting, "Colbert fretted, pouted and argued about her part... she was a tartar, but a cute one"
Upon completion of the film, commenting later in her life, "I left wondering how the movie would be received. It was right in the middle of the Depression. People needed fantasy, they needed splendor and glamour, and Hollywood gave it to them. And here we were, looking a little seedy and riding on our bus".
Colbert then starred in Imitation of Life (1934). Of the four films Colbert made in 1934, three of them – Cleopatra, Imitation of Life and It Happened One Night were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, with the last winning the award.

Colbert was the last choice for the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). Myrna Loy was originally offered the roles, but she felt that the script was poor, and Loy described it is one of the worst she had ever read, later noting that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she was offered. Miriam Hopkins, Constance Bennett and Margaret Sullavan had each rejected the part,Bette Davis was unavailable, and Carole Lombard turned Ellie down.

Colbert was very particular regarding the way she appeared on screen. She believed that her face was difficult to light and photograph, and was obsessed with not showing her "bad" side, the right, to the camera, because of a small bump from a nose broken in childhood. The vast majority of movie shots taken of Claudette Colbert were of her left profile. Thus dubbing her "the dark side of the moon".

It Happened One Night ~ Best Picture 1934

2008-06-19T11:32:00.002-04:00

Director Frank Capra took home every Oscar® in the book (well, okay, all the major ones) for this seminal 1934 comedy starring Clark Gable as a hard-bitten reporter who stays close to a runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert) rather than lose a good story. Funny and sexy, the film is full of memorable scenes often referred to in other films, such as the "walls of Jericho" (a mere bedcover hung on a line down the middle of a room so opposite-sex roommates can get undressed), the doughnuts-dunking lesson, the hitchhiking scene and Colbert's famous flash of thigh to stop a speeding car in its tracks, the night-time scene on a haystack in a deserted barn, and the dramatic wedding scene. Capra's brisk, urbane brand of wit was a perfect complement to his populist faith in the common man (in this case, Gable's character), and that inspired combination makes this film both a spirited entertainment and an uplifting experience. It beat out other great films, such as The Thin Man, The Barrets of Wimpole Street, The Gay Divorcee and Imitation of Life to win the coverted Best Picture Oscar.

Katharine Hepburn ~ Best Actress 1932/33

2008-06-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

Morning Glory is the story of a naive and pretentious aspiring actress, starring Katharine Hepburn in only her third film. This RKO film, directed by Lowell Sherman and adapted from a stage play by Zoe Akins, is notable since it helped to launch the actress' successful career, and provided her with the first (of four) Best Actress Oscars - the film's only nomination. Many critics have noted that Hepburn should have won an Oscar for her first screen appearance in A Bill of Divorcement (1932) a year earlier. This film, as already mentioned was the first of four wins for Katherine, the leading lady of leading ladies, and the holder of more Oscar wins and nominations than any other Actress or Actor. The American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the top female star in their Greatest American Screen Legends list.

born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, a successful urologist from Virginia, and Katharine Martha Houghton. Hepburn's father was a staunch proponent of publicizing the dangers of venereal disease in a time when such things were not discussed. Hepburn's mother campaigned for equal rights for women, and co-founded Planned Parenthood with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. The Hepburns demanded frequent familiar discussions on these topics and more, and as a result the Hepburn children were well versed in social and political issues. The Hepburn children were never asked to leave a room no matter what the topic of conversation was. Once a very young Katharine Hepburn even accompanied her mother to a suffrage rally. The Hepburn children, at their parents' encouragement, were unafraid of expressing frank views on various topics, including sex. "We were snubbed by everyone, but we grew quite to enjoy that," Hepburn later said of her unabashedly liberal family, who she credited with giving her a sense of adventure and independence.

Some of what has made Hepburn greatly beloved today — her unconventional, straightforward, anti-Hollywood attitude — at the time began to turn audiences sour. Outspoken and intellectual with an acerbic tongue, she defied the era's "blonde bombshell" stereotypes, preferring to wear pantsuits and disdaining makeup. She also had a famously difficult relationship with the press, turning down most interviews, which did not help her exposure to the public. When she did speak with the press, occasionally she fed them lies to amuse herself. On her first outing with the Hollywood press corps after the success of A Bill of Divorcement, Hepburn talked with reporters who had invaded her and her husband's cabin aboard the ship City of Paris. A reporter asked if they were really married; Hepburn responded, "I don't remember." Following up, another reporter asked if they had any children; Hepburn's answer: "Two white and three colored." Hepburn's aversion to media attention did not thaw until 1973, when she appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for an extended two-day interview.

On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old. In honor of her extensive theater work, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour. The Morning Glory though, was never to fade, thanks to her tremendous work on film, she would live forever.

Charles Laughton ~ Best Actor 1932/33

2008-06-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

Laughton received his only Academy Award for his flamboyant portrayal of England's famous, much-married monarch, Henry VIII. It was the first time that a performer in a British-made film won the best actor statuette. Laughton made King Henry an endearing but larger-than-life character by sitting lewdly, posing majestically, and dominating each shot by positioning himself at the center of the action. In the film's most famous scene, he rips apart a capon, eats it with his fingers, and tosses the bones aside, then belches loudly. Laughton earned international acclaim in Alexander Korda's irreverent biopic and soon found himself in demand as a Hollywood actor. He was nominated for best actor Oscars twice more (1935 and 1957).

Born at Victoria Hotel, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Englad. Following in his hotelman father's footsteps, he started out as a hotel clerk, but after returning from WWI service, found himself drawn to the stage and joined an amateur group. He later enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and as a gold-medal-winning student he appeared in several of the school's productions in 1925. The following year he made his professional debut on London's West End. In the cast of one of his first plays was a young actress, Elsa Lanchester, who was also appearing in a series of two-reel comedy films. He teamed with her in two of these in 1928, and in the following year they married. It was also in 1929 that he made his debut in feature films. His parallel stage career brought Laughton (and Lanchester) to New York in 1931 with the play Payment Deferred. The following year he launched his lengthy and remarkable career as a Hollywood character star.

Although Laughton gave some of his finest performances in British films, notably in THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1933), for which he won the Academy Award, and REMBRANDT (1936), the bulk of his films were made in the United States, and in 1950 he became an American citizen. Rotund and boisterous, Laughton was a brilliant performer with an astonishing range. He played sadists and kind men, butlers and rulers of state, murderers and jurists, artists and gray, prosaic men with the same convincing strength and insatiable relish. At times, when his roles were thankless or the films unimportant, he tended to "ham it up," frivolously carrying a part to its ludicrous extreme; but audiences rarely minded and seemed to savor the feast along with him.

He had a long and resilient marriage to actress Elsa Lanchester, although, in her autobiography, Lanchester revealed that Laughton was homosexual. According to her own account, she was shocked to learn about this, but eventually decided to remain married to him. However, she claims as a result of this, she decided not to have children with him. The decision caused him great grief, as he longed to become a father, as many friends of Laughton, among them Maureen O'Hara and Stanley Cortez, have stated. In her autobiographical book, Lanchester tells that one night, after they had been married for two years, the police stopped Laughton at the door of his London flat; they had a young boy in custody who had been loitering outside the house, presumably to get money after Laughton had approached him in Hyde Park. When her husband, in tears, confessed, Miss Lanchester told him not to worry about it, that it didn't matter. That's why he cried . . . when I told him it didn't matter.

Frank Lloyd ~ Best Director 1932/33 & 1928/29

2008-06-04T10:55:00.001-04:00

Born in Glasgow, Scotland. Frank Lloyd, the son of a musical comedy actor, he began his own career on the British stage at 15. He came to Canada in 1910, the US in 1913, entered films as an actor in 1914, and began directing the following year. In the next four decades he directed some 100 films, for Paramount, then Fox and other studios, many of them routine commercial productions but some truly meritorious. A highly skilled craftsman, he had few pretensions about the significance of film other than as a means for entertainment, or about his own role as a director, and blended easily into the Hollywood studio system. Accordingly, he is short-shrifted by many film historians. But films like CAVALCADE (1933), MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935), and WELLS FARGO (1937) reveal not only technical mastery but also a cohesive style and a keen visual sense. Lloyd produced or co-produced many of his own films as well as a number of productions directed by others, and in the silent years he wrote many of his own scripts.

Lloyd was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was once married to writer Virginia Kellogg.

Cavalcade ~ Best Picture 1932/33

2008-06-01T10:50:00.003-04:00

Cavalcade is a 1933 film that takes a historical view of English life from New Year's Eve 1899 through New Years Day 1933. It is told from the point of view of well-to-do Londoner residents Jane and Robert Marryot (played by Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook). The film chronicles events including the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic and the Great War. It used the tagline "The march of time measured by a mother's heart!" The film was directed by Frank Lloyd; Reginald Berkeley wrote the screenplay based on the original play by Noel Coward. Fox Movietone newsreel cameramen were sent to London to record the original stage production as a guide for the film version, which may account in part for the faithfully stagy nature of the final film.

Despite being a Best Picture Oscar winner and widely spoken of as one of the finest films ever made at the time, as well as being influential on later Upstairs, Downstairs-type dramas including Forever and a Day and Coward's own This Happy Breed, the film version of Cavalcade has fallen into obscurity.

First Best Director ~ Frank Borzage

2008-05-25T18:59:00.000-04:00

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. At 13 went to work in a silver mine but soon latched on to a touring stage company as a group boy and eventually an actor. In 1912 he arrived in Hollywood and began playing bit parts in Ince films. Before long, he was playing heavies and leads in dozens of Ince Westerns and Mutual comedies. By 1916 he was directing films for Universal. Most of his early efforts were quickie melodramas and Westerns in which he also starred. His first important film, HUMORESQUE (1920), contained many of the elements that would characterize his work in years to come. Along with Clarence Brown, Borzage was Hollywood's great romanticist, an unabashed sentimentalist who told some of the screen's most beautiful love stories with warm, lyrical tenderness. He pioneered in the use of the soft focus, and the gauzed photography of his films, combined with a fluid, caressing camera movement, gave his lovers an idealized halo that contrasted sharply with the selfish, unfeeling world around them. Dismissed by some film historians as a "gushy sentimentalist," Borzage was one of Hollywood's most original artists and one of the most consistent in style. His reputation reached its peak in the late silent and early sound era. With several exceptions, Borzage's films of the 40s and 50s were the least interesting of his illustrious career.

Borzage died of cancer in 1962 at the age of 68, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. For his contributions to film, Borzage was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Wings ~ Best Picture 1927-28

2008-05-09T18:53:00.001-04:00

The silent classic war film filmed in widescreen Magnascope, director William Wellman's and Paramount's Wings, was the official first winner of the Best Picture award as the "most outstanding motion picture production." The most expensive film of its time (at $2 million), it featured spectacular aerial footage (air battles, bombing raids and crashes) and state of the art visual effects in its story of two flying buddies who are in love with the same woman, but war has it's casualties. It starred Silent Film Godess Clara Bow, and Charles Rogers, Richard Arlen and a very young Gary Cooper. I recently was able to view this film in it's entirety. I wondered how a silent film would keep my interest for 139 minutes, but this film was absolutley captivating and beautifully filmed. Clara Bow, is mezmerizing, as in silent films you have to rely on your gestures and face, which Clara was a true artist. Amazingly though she did not win the Oscar. Both Charles "Buddy" Rogers (who later married the famous silent star, Mary Pickford) and Richard Arlen were dashingly handsome and quite skilled as artists. There was also the newcomer, an even more dashingly handsome Gary Cooper in his first film role. Not once in 139 minutes of this film did I loose interest. Actually after seeing it, it has become one of my top 20 favorite movies of all time.

The film Sunrise was also awarded an Oscar as 'Best Picture' in the category of "Artistic Quality of Production" (or "Unique and Artistic Picture"). [The category of "Unique and Artistic Picture" was abandoned by the Academy after the first year of the awards.]

The fable-like, poignant story, subtitled A Song of Two Humans, is a silent-era melodramatic masterpiece - a beautiful, atmospheric, lyrical and poetic work of art with roots in the German Expressionist movement (from 1914 to 1924). The story of corruption and redemption involves a rustic farmer in a romanticized rural town who falls prey to the seductive wiles of a city vamp in an illicit affair. He plots to murder his loving wife during a boat trip to the temptation-ridden city. His conscience is awakened during the attempted killing and he relents, and in the city the couple fall in love again. On their return trip, a tempestuous storm appears to drown the wife, but she is eventually found and the family is reunited and reconciled.

To provide continuity, the Academy now lists Wings as the "official" Best Picture of the first awards. That makes Wings the only silent picture to have won the Best Picture award.

Janet Gaynor ~ Academy's First Best Actress

2008-05-05T18:42:00.003-04:00

Born Laura Gainor in Philadelphia, PA. After graduating from a San Francisco high school, she went to Los Angeles, hoping to get into films. She worked briefly as a bookkeeper in a shoe store and an usherette in a local theater, then began appearing as an extra in movies. She gradually worked her way to to bit parts in Hal Roach comedy shorts and a led in a two-reel Western. Her first substantial part, under contract to Fox, came in THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926).

Within a year, she was the most important star on the Fox lot on the strength of her appeal in Murnau's masterpiece SUNRISE and Borzage's box-office hit SEVENTH HEAVEN. She won the first Academy Award ever given in the best actress category, for her performances (early Oscars were often awarded for cumulative work) in SUNRISE, SEVENTH HEAVEN (both 1927) and STREET ANGEL (1928).

Diminuitive, dimpled and sweetly wholesome, her appeal lay in her ability to project vulnerability and naïveté, even when playing prostitutes or misguided women. She often co-starred with equally wholesome Charles Farrell. At the height of their popularity as a team, in the early 1930s, they were known as "America's favorite lovebirds." In 1934, she was Hollywood's top box-office attraction.

After getting out of her Fox contract, Miss Gaynor scored handsomely in two successful Selznick films, A STAR IS BORN (1937, Oscar nomination) and THE YOUNG IN HEART (1938), then announced her retirement from the screen. Having married and divorced (1932-34) Lydell Peck, an attorney, in 1939 she married Gilbert Adrian, Hollywood's most famous costume designer. She emerged from retirement (much of it spent on a Brazilian ranch) occasionally in the 50s for radio and TV work and a mother part in the film BERNADINE (1957).

She was widowed in 1959, and in 1964 she married Paul Gregory, a producer. In 1976 her still-life paintings were exhibited in a New York gallery. In 1978 she was honored with a special plaque from the Motion Picture Academy for "her truly immeasurable contributions to the art of motion pictures and for the pleasure and entertainment her unique artistry has brought to millions of film fans around the globe."

Her final appearances came in 1980, in the short-lived Broadway stage adaptation of HAROLD AND MAUDE and in an episode of the TV series "Love Boat." In 1982 she was critically injured in a traffic accident, in which her husband and actress-singer Mary Martin were also hurt. She sustained 11 broken ribs, a broken pelvis and collarbone, and various internal injuries from which she never fully recovered. Her death of pneumonia two years later was directly attributed by the coroner to these injuries.

Emil Jennings ~ Best Actor 1927-28

2008-05-01T18:37:00.003-04:00

Emil Jannings was born as Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz in Rorschach, Switzerland. In 1900 he came in touch with the theater for the first time, where he worked as a unpaid trainee. Later he acted for touring companies. In the following years he worked his way constantly up und played in Nuremberg, Darmstadt, Bremen and finally for Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Bigger roles in the theater followed in 1917.

He made his debut in 1914 for the film "Im Schützengraben/Der jährige Kriegsheld", but his real career started in 1916. In the following four years he acted in "Aus Mangel an Beweisen", "Nächte des Grauens" "Die Ehe der Luise Rohrbach" , "Lulu" , "Die Augen der Mumie Ma" , "Vendetta" and "Rose Bernd" .

When played the role of Ludwig IV in the movie "Madame Dubarry" , directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it became his great breaktthrough in his film career. In the next ten years he went down in film history with his silent movies. He played in the successful productions "Kohlhiesels Töchter" , "Die Brüder Karamasoff" , "Algol" , "Anna Boleyn" , "Danton" , "Das Weib des Pharao" , "Peter der Grosse" and "Tragödie der Liebe" .

In the middle of the 20's nearly all ways led to Emil Jannings. He personified the leading roles in international successful productions "Quo Vadis" , "Nju" , "Der letzte Mann" "Tartüff" , "Varieté" and "Faust" . Because of his huge successes of his last movies he got a three-year contract with Paramount. In the USA he shot up fast among others in the movies "The Way of All Flesh - Der Weg allen Fleisches" , "The Last Command - Sein letzter Befehl", "The Patriot - Der Patriot" and "Betrayal - Verrat" . For his performance in "The Way of All Fleshs" and "The Last Command" he achieved the first actor oscar in film history.

When the sound film rang in a new era, Emil Jannings' "stardom" began to wane because of his knowledge of English, and his strong German accent and soon he went back to Germany.
His first film in Germany also caused a sensation and counts to the best movies of the 30's. The leading actress Marlene Dietrich lauchned her Hollywood career with this film. We are talking about ""The Blue Angel" , where Emil Jannings played professor Unrat.

But in the next years he wasn't able to go on from his earlier successes, only in the National Socialist Germany he became again a great star. In these years he played often historical personalities and worked for the National Socialism.

After the war he was denazified in 1946 and got the Austrian nationality one year later.

Charlton Heston ~ Best Actor 1959

2008-04-30T18:14:00.001-04:00

In a long career, Heston was known for playing heroic roles, such as Harry Steele in Secret of the Incas , Moses in The Ten Commandments, Colonel George Taylor in Planet of the Apes and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur. Early in his career, he was one of a handful of Hollywood stars to publicly speak out against racism and was active in the civil rights movement. During the latter part of his movie career, he starred in films such as The Omega Man and Soylent Green that had a strong environmental message. He was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.

Heston was born on October 4, 1924, in Evanston, Illinois, and his original name was John Charlton Carter.

He was renowned for his chiseled features and compelling speaking voice and for his numerous roles as historical figures and famous literary characters.

``I have a face that belongs in another century,'' he often remarked.

Ben Hur won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

Heston liked to cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed: Andrew Jackson (`The President's Lady, The Buccaneer), Moses (The Ten Commandments), title role of El Cid, John the Baptist (The Greatest Story Ever Told, Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy), General Gordon (Khartoum'), Marc Antony (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra), Cardinal Richelieu (The Three Musketeers), Henry VIII (The Prince and the Pauper).

Heston decided to become an actor after impulsively auditioning for a high-school play. His stage experience in high school resulted in a scholarship to Northwestern University.

After serving in the United States Air Force (1944-1947), he went into theatre and radio, making his Broadway stage debut in Antony and Cleopatra in 1947. He also performed on television in the late 1940s, making notable appearances in televised productions of Julius Caesar, Wuthering Heights (1950), and The Taming of the Shrew.

Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist.

He had the title role in Peer Gynt in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley's 1949 version of Julius Caesar, for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis (Casablanca) spotted Heston in Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract.

When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theatre and television, he replied, ``Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like''.

Heston made his Hollywood film debut with star billing as a tormented, cynical young man in Dark City (1950), a crime thriller, and then gained wide commercial and critical success with a role as the circus manager in the all-star The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), by American director Cecil B. DeMille.

The Greatest Show On Earth was named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952.

In the 1950s and 1960s Heston achieved tremendous fame by playing larger-than-life roles in historical epics that featured his rugged resolve and commanding physical presence, including The President's Lady (1953), DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). In 1959 he won an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Ben Hur.

During this period Heston also starred in several films made on a more modest scale, including Touch of Evil (1958), 55 Days at Peking (1963), and Major Dundee (1965).

In the late 1960s and early 1970s he adapted his powerful screen presence to star in several science-fiction and disaster films, such as Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), The Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), Earthquake (1974), and Airport 1975 (1974). Most of his later roles are as indomitable authority figures in war sagas and Westerns.

Heston also directed Mother Lode (1982) and A Man for All Seasons (1988), a film he made for television.

An influential member of the Hollywood film community, Heston served six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1966 to 1971. He also became an outspoken supporter for a number of conservative political causes.

In 1998 Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), becoming a popular symbol for the pro-gun political lobby, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle.

He delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying, ``America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns.''

Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were ``quite a ride. ... I loved every minute of it''.

That same year, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour.

``The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life,'' President George W. Bush said at the time.

Heston died on April 5, 2008 at his home in Beverly Hills, California with Lydia, his wife of 64 years by his side. Heston was 83. Heston had been given the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease in 2002

Simone Signoret ~ Best Actress 1959

2008-04-25T18:10:00.000-04:00

Signoret was born Simone-Henriette-Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany to André and Georgette (Signoret) Kaminker. She was the oldest child of three, with two younger brothers. Her father, a linguist who later worked in the United Nations, was a French-born Jewish army officer of Polish descent^[1], who brought the family to Neuilly-sur-Seine on the fancy outskirts of Paris. Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere and studied the English language in school, earning a teaching certificate. She tutored English and Latin and worked part-time as a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper, Le Nouveau Temps, run by Jean Luchaire.

Signoret's sensual features and earthy nature led to type-casting and she was often seen in prostitute roles. She won considerable attention in La Ronde (1950), a film which was banned briefly in New York as immoral. She won further raves, including an acting award from the British Film Academy, for her portrayal of yet another prostitute in Jacques Becker's Casque d'or (1951). She went on to appear in many notable films in France during the 1950s, including Thérèse Raquin (1953), directed by Marcel Carné, Les Diaboliques (1954), and Les Sorcières de Salem (1956), based on Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

1958, Signoret went to England to film Room at the Top (1959), which won her numerous awards including the Best Female Performance Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was the only French cinema actress to receive an Oscar until Juliette Binoche in 1997 (Supporting Actress), and the first woman to win the award appearing in a foreign film. She was offered films in Hollywood but turned them down and continued to work in France and England. She played opposite Laurence Olivier in Term of Trial (1962). She did return to America for Ship of Fools (1965) which earned her another Oscar nomination and she went on to appear in several Hollywood films before returning to France in 1969.

Hugh Griffith ~ Supporting Actor 1959

2008-04-21T18:05:00.000-04:00

Hugh Griffith began his film career in British films during the late 1940s, and by the 1950s was also appearing in Hollywood films. He also had a successful career as a theatre actor, and in 1958 was nominated for Tony award for his performance in Look Homeward, Angel on Broadway. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Ben-Hur (1959), and received a second nomination for his role in Tom Jones (1963). He appeared as the magistrate in Oliver! in 1968.

Shelley Winters ~ Supporting Actress 1959

2008-04-19T18:02:00.000-04:00

Shelley Winters borrowed her stage name from her favorite poet, Percy Blyhte Shelley, and her mother's maiden name, Winter. The first studio she signed with reportedly added the final "s," but it has also been said that she added the "s" herself when she heard that she was being referred to as "Chilly Winter".

She left school at 15 to work as a counter clerk and model while studying drama and entering beauty pageants, determined to make it as an actress. For her first appearance on Broadway, a 1941 play called The Night Before Christmas, she needed to join the union, Actors Equity, and had to borrow $25 from her sister for dues -- a fortune in those days. Winters has since speculated that her sister, then a student nurse, may have sold blood to come up with the cash. Winters headed west in the early 1940s, and first signed with Columbia studios, but was stuck with bit parts. She shared an apartment with Marilyn Monroe; they shared a bathing suit for cheesecake shots and a mink coat for dates. Legend has it that Winters taught Monroe how to "act pretty", by tilting her head back, lowering her eyes, and ever-so-slightly opening her mouth.

By the 1950's Shelley was soon tired of the limited roles and began to turn heads with her "serious" roles and in 1959 was cast as Mrs. Petronella Van Daan, Anne Frank's neighbor with whom they shared a secret home for two years hiding from the Nazi's. Her role in this film gave Hollywood a whole new look at who Shelley Winters was and her powerful abilities as an actress. In one scene she brought the pain of war and the pain of depression to the screen, when milk is spilt on her fur coat.

Shelley would go on to star in at least 25 more films and TV roles and won a second Oscar a few years later. Even though most remember her in her role in The Poseidon Adventure, this role was a career changing move for Shelley Winters.

Ben-Hur ~ Best Picture 1959

2008-04-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

A lot has been said about this film this past week with the passing of Charlton Heston. Just today I heard that the director's (William Wyler) son David Wyler is currently in the process of producing and directing a re-make. Regardless of how many time this story is told (currently three film adaptations, this being the third) none could outshine the 1959 Best Picture version.

Ben-Hur premiered at Loews Theater in New York City on November 18, 1959. The film went on to win a record of eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, a feat equaled only by Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

The chariot race in Ben-Hur was directed by Andrew Marton, a Hollywood director who often acted as second unit director on other people's films. Even by current standards, it is considered to be one of the most spectacular action sequences ever filmed. Filmed at Cinecittà Studios outside Rome long before the advent of computer-generated effects, it took over three months to complete, using 8000 extras on the largest film set ever built, some 18 acres (73,000m²). Eighteen chariots were built, with half being used for practice. The race took five weeks to film. Tour buses visited the set every hour. To give the scene more impact and realism, three lifelike dummies were placed at key points in the race to give the appearance of men being run over by chariots. Most notable is the stand-in dummy for Stephen Boyd's Messala that gets tangled up under the horses, getting battered by their hooves. This resulted in one of the most grisly death scenes in motion pictures at this time and shocked audiences.

Gentleman's Director ~ William Wyler

2008-04-05T17:55:00.002-04:00

Wyler was born Willi Weiller to a Jewish family in Mulhouse in the French region of Alsace (then part of the German Empire). He was related to Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures, through his mother (a cousin of Laemmle's). His family connections served him well, as he became the youngest director on the Universal lot in 1925. In 1928, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He soon proved himself an able craftsman, and in the early 1930s became one of Universal's greatest assets, directing such solid films as The Love Trap, Hell's Heroes, and Tom Brown of Culver and The Good Fairy.

He later signed with Samuel Goldwyn and directed such quality films as These Three, Come and Get It, Dodsworth, Dead End, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, The Letter, The Westerner, and The Little Foxes.

Between 1942 and 1945, Wyler served as a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps and directed the documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress. He also directed two key films which first captured the mood of the nation as it prepared for battle and, four years later, peace. Mrs. Miniver (1942), a story of a middle class English family adjusting to the war in Europe, helped condition American audiences to life in wartime (and galvanized support for the British). The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the story of three veterans arriving home and adjusting to civilian life, dramatized the problems of returning veterans for those who had remained on the homefront. Wyler won Best Director Oscars for both films (which also won Best Picture Oscars).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Wyler directed a handful of critically acclaimed and influential films, most notably Roman Holiday (1953) for introducing Audrey Hepburn to American audiences and leading to her first Oscar, The Heiress earning Olivia de Havilland her second Oscar, and Ben-Hur (1959) for its eleven Oscar wins (matched only twice, by Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003).

In 1965, Wyler won the Irving Thalberg Award for career achievement. Eleven years later, he received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. In addition to his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins, ten of Wyler's films earned Best Picture nominations. He received twelve Oscar nominations for Best Director, winning three times, while three dozen of his actors won Oscars or were nominated.

Although most of the most famous directors had their own particular style, Wyler (along with Michael Curtiz) didn't. He did not build a stable of players like Capra, Sturges or Ford. He directed varied types of films without any trademark shots or themes. But his films were always well crafted and beautifully made.

On July 24, 1981, Wyler gave an interview with his daughter, producer Catherine Wyler for Directed by William Wyler, a PBS documentary about his life and career. A mere three days later, Wyler died from a heart attack. Wyler's last words on film concern a vision of directing his "next picture...Going Home". Wyler is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Wyler was briefly married to Margaret Sullavan (25 November 1934 - 13 March 1936) and married Margaret Tallichet on 23 October 1938 until his death; they had four children.

Gentleman's Agreement ~ Best Picture 1947

2008-03-30T17:47:00.000-04:00

Gentleman's Agreement is a 1947 film about a journalist (played by Gregory Peck) who falsely represents himself as a Jew to research antisemitism in New York City and the affluent community of Darien, Connecticut. The movie was controversial in its time, as was a similar film on the same subject, Crossfire, which was also released the same year and also nominated for an Oscar for best picture. Gentleman's Agreement was based on Laura Z. Hobson's 1947 novel of the same name.

In the space of just under two hours, Gentleman's Agreement manages to touch on nearly every form of discrimination facing Jews. Phil is turned away from one hotel that suddenly finds itself full up when the manager realizes he talking to someone "of the Hebrew faith." His best friend, Dave Goldman (John Garfield), faces covenants written or merely understood (the "gentleman's agreement") against renting to Jews as he searches for housing. The movie even touches on Jewish self-hate when Phil's secretary, Miss Wales (Havoc), who has been passing as a gentile, finds out that Phil has gotten management to bar discrimination on the basis of religion at the magazine, telling him, "It's no fun being the fall guy for the kikey type."

At the time Gentleman's Agreement came out, it did what Phil's article was supposed to do: It created a sensation and made people more aware of the racism around them. It was a critical smash, earning eight Oscar nominations and winning three, including Best Picture and a Best Director statuette for Elia Kazan.

Though the film is dated and the two main stars, Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire, seem somewhat naive and lifeless, this film did what it was supposed to do. Bring to the stage and to the forefront Anti-Semitsim and how it effects us all.

Ronald Coleman ~ Best Actor 1947

2008-03-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

Ronald Colman won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in Double Life, an honor long overdue and most deserved.

Popular stage actor Tony John (Colman) is best-known for his droll and witty performances in drawing-room comedies. He is frequently co-starred with his former wife Brita (Signe Hasso) - the two still care for each other but Tony's complete involvement in his roles had put an end to their marriage. When he is in a light comedic role he is a pleasure to be around, but if he is involved in a drama he is impossible to live with. As Brita tells it, "We were engaged during Oscar Wilde, broke it off during Ronin, we married during Kaufmann and Hart and were divorced during Chekhov." When asked why he and Brita don't marry again, since they have remained so close,Tony replies with a smile, "We love each other too much for that."

Tony opts to take on the biggest challenge of his career - Shakespeare's Othello, and Brita agrees to be his Desdemona - against her better judgement. As Tony prepares for the difficult role he meets an admiring waitress (Shelley Winters) and enters into a brief liaison with her. As he becomes further immersed in the Othello character he begins to suspect that Brita is having an affair with their press agent, Bill (Edmund O'Brien).

As Tony becomes increasingly surly and jealous, lashing out at those around him, Bill begins to form his own suspicions; when the waitress is found strangled in her rooms, the press agent starts to believe whatis almost too horrible to contemplate.

Bill tries to convince Brita that Tony is becoming seriously dangerous, but she believes she can help her husband by continuing to appear with him on stage. Her role as Tony's Desdemona could prove to be her last....

Colman's performance is riveting - he portrays an essentially good man who is losing touch with reality, desperately aware of what is happening to him but powerless to stop it, and panicked by what it could mean to those he loves.

To see the Colman we are accustomed to - suave, elegant and gentle - succumb to such demons is truly disturbing - it is also viewing cinematic acting at its best.

Ronald Charles Colman was born on February 9, 1891 in Richmond, Surrey, England. He was the fifth of six children born to Charles and Marjory Fraser Colman (three daughters and three sons; the oldest son dying at age 5). Producers began to notice Colman in the small acting parts he was able to get - they found in him a young actor with striking good looks, a rich voice and a dignity that was rare in one so young. He worked with stage greats Gladys Cooper and Gerald DuMaurier, gaining invaluable experience. Acting lifted his spirits and cut through his natural reserve, making him more extroverted; as he put it, "One can be someone else, in another, more dramatic, more beautiful world."

Colman's first film work came in 1917. He was invited to do a two-reel comedy 'The Live Wire' - the set was an old house, the budget was negligible, and Colman doubled as the leading character and prop man. For the next three years, he would divide his time between stage and rather primitive British film efforts. Colman liked the extra income film work provided, but still felt his future lay on the stage.

In 1919, after a brief courtship, he married an actress named Thelma Raye . The marriage was in trouble almost from the beginning - Raye, a somewhat domineering young woman, made the mistake of taking her husband's gentleness as malleability - her attempts at control were not a success. The two separated in 1923 but were not divorced until 1934. Unfortunately, Thelma was not the type to let go easily, and she would continue to plague Colman for many years. This dreadful experience greatly contributed to Colman's pronounced reticence regarding relationships.

By the time she had known him for three years, Benita Hume had become convinced that her constant companion did not appear to be interested in marriage. She left California on a New York-bound train. She made it as far as Albuquerque, New Mexico where she received a telegram: "Come home and let's get married." No signature was needed.

The two were married at a ranch in San Ysidro, California in September 1938 - the new Mrs. Colman would later remark, "Imagine! I not only have that beautiful man, but that voice!" Theirs was a happy marriage, lasting for 20 years.

In 1948 Colman starred in his last major motion picture, A Double Life. Departing somewhat from his gentlemanly screen persona, Colman gave a stunning performance as an actor tormented by mental demons - and won the year's Best Actor Academy Award.

The Colmans lived quietly on their San Ysidro ranch property during the last years of Colman's life. Always prone to lung ailments, Colman contracted pneumonia and died peacefully in his sleep on May 19, 1958, his wife at his side. He was buried at Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, CA.

Loretta Young ~ Best Actress 1947

2008-03-19T17:42:00.000-04:00

She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah as Gretchen Young (she took the name Michaela at confirmation) she moved with her family to Hollywood when she was three years old. Loretta and her sisters Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (screen name Sally Blane) worked as child actresses, of whom Loretta was the most successful. Young's first role was at age 3 in the silent film The Primrose Ring.

She was billed as "Gretchen Young" in the 1917 film, Sirens of the Sea. It wasn't until 1928 that she was first billed as "Loretta Young", in The Whip Woman. In 1930, Young, then 17, eloped with 26-year-old actor Grant Withers and married him in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was annulled the next year, just as their second movie together (ironically titled Too Young to Marry) was released.

While Loretta was working on a picture called The Perfect Marriage, Dore Schary visited her on the set.

Schary, a former writer and producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was now the production chief of Vanguard Pictures, run by David Selznick, Myron's brother. Selznick wished to do The Farmer's Daughter as his next project, a movie about a Swedish-born girl who works as a maid for a United States congressman, and eventually becomes a congresswoman herself.

The starring role had been offered to Ingrid Bergman, a genuine Swede, but she had turned it down. Several other starlets had been considered as well, including the skater Sonia Henie, also from Sweden.

But Dore Schary had been certain that Loretta was right for the role. As they spoke on the set, Loretta expressed doubts about her ability to master a Swedish accent. Schary had a solution; hire Ruth Roberts as a voice coach. Ruth was Swedish, and had helped Ingrid Bergman lose her Swedish accent.

"We always said Ruth took away Ingrid's accent, and gave it to me," Loretta used to quip. Loretta agreed to do Farmer's Daughter. The role of "Katie" was such a departure from the glamorous women she usually portrayed, it would be a great challenge.

Filming began, and Ruth Roberts proved even more valuable than expected, Loretta said. "We'd do a scene, the director would yell, 'Cut!,' I'd think it was fine, but Ruth would stop, and whisper to me: 'Go a little deeper, say this word softly.'

I'd ask for another take, follow her directions on these small touches, and we were all surprised at how well they worked. If Ruth had been a man in this era, she could have been a director, and a superb one, at that."

The Farmer's Daughter was released in spring, 1947, to wide acclaim. Moviegoers loved it and so did the critics. In 1947 Loretta was nominated and won the Best Actress Award for her role in The Farmer's Daughter is a 1947 movie that tells the story of a farmgirl in an unnamed U.S. state (seemingly similar to Minnesota) who ends up working as a maid for a Congressman and his politically-connected mother.

Loretta made a few more movies, and then moved to television, and is probably best known for her show, The Loretta Young Show.

In 1935, Young had an affair with Clark Gable, who was married at the time, while on location for The Call of the Wild. During their relationship, Young became pregnant. Due to the moral codes placed on the film industry Young covered up her pregnancy in order to avoid damaging her career (as well as Gable's). Returning from a long "vacation" (during which she secretly gave birth to her daughter), Young announced that she had adopted the little girl. The child was raised as "Judy Lewis" after taking the name of Young's second husband, producer Tom Lewis. According to Lewis's autobiography Uncommon Knowledge, Lewis was made fun of because of the ears that she received from her father, Clark Gable. Over the years she had heard rumors and secretly knew that Clark Gable was her biological father, but it was not until 1958 when Judy's future husband Joseph Tinney told her that "everybody" knew the rumors that she really began to suspect. It was not until a few years later, after becoming a mother herself, that she finally got the nerve to ask her mother, who, after promptly vomiting, admitted to her that Clark Gable was her father and the she was "a mortal sin."

Young died at 87 from ovarian cancer at the Santa Monica, California home of her half-sister, Georgiana Montalban, and was interred in the family plot in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Young has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for motion pictures, at 6104 Hollywood Blvd, and another for television, at 6141 Hollywood Blvd.

Celeste Holm ~ Supporting Actress 1947

2008-03-08T17:41:00.000-05:00

Today Celeste Holm is 90 years old, but in 1947 she was 30 years old and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in only her third film, Gentleman's Agreement. Probably better known for her role in All About Eve in 1950, Celeste made her career playing the friend or confidant to the leading lady. In her role of Anne in Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement won critical acclaim throughout the industry. She would go on to be nominated twice more in 1949 for her role in Come to the Stable and in 1950 in All About Eve.Holm's first professional theatrical role was in a production of Hamlet starring Leslie Howard, and she quickly rose to prominence with her portrayal of Ado Annie in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma! in 1943.

After she starred in the Broadway production of Bloomer Girl, 20th Century Fox signed Holm to a movie contract in 1946, and in her first two years as a film actress Holm cemented herself immediately as a formidable performer, especially when she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for best supporting actress in Gentleman's Agreement. After her famous performance in All About Eve, however, Holm realized she preferred live theater to movie work, and took on very few film roles over the following decade.

On her 85th Birthday, Celeste married her 5th husband, Opera Singer, Frank Basile.

Edmund Gwenn ~ Supporting Actor 1947

2008-03-01T17:36:00.001-05:00

One of the most loved Christmas films of all time is the 1947 film, Miracle on 34th Street. This movie has become a Christmas classic and known for the debut of young Natalie Wood. But it also starred the best Santa ever, Edmund Gwenn.

Before this lovable role, which won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Gwenn was as likely to play the bad guy as the good guy. In Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 "Foreign Correspondent,", Gwenn was an assassin who specializes in pushing people off tall buildings. But as Kris Kringle, he played a slightly dotty old fellow who believes he's really Santa Claus--and actually may be, after all.

In one delightful scene, Gwenn is the department store Santa at Macy's in Manhattan. When a little Dutch girl, newly arrived in America as a war orphan, speaks to him in her native tongue, Gwenn's Mr. Kringle immediately responds in perfect Dutch, then joins her in a traditional Dutch Christmas song. He warms not only the little girl's heart, but also all the millions who made this movie a classic. From then on, Gwenn personified charm and affection on screen in a long string of genial roles and was best known as Kris Kringle.

finally...Best Picture 2007!

2008-02-24T23:52:00.000-05:00

But before we get to that... we have to have a commercial.

Martin gets to announce Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men...I win again!!

DENZEL!! Announcing the 80th Best Picture: No Country for Old Men

So how did I do? Seven out of Nine Predictions. Not bad!! If I would have just got those Actress awards right, but I don't think anyone expected those..

Great show tonight as usual. Best dressed, Helen Mirren and Colin Farrell!!

Worst dressed, Cate Blanchett and Daniel Day-Lewis, he looked very unkept, more so than Johnny Depp. Will Johnny Depp ever win an Oscar? Maybe next year.

Well three and half hours, it's over.

Goodnight.

Going on Three Hours ~ LIVE Oscar Blog!

2008-02-24T23:37:00.000-05:00

Amy Adams, does she have a differant dress on? Original Score: ATONEMENT. First award of the night.

Tom Hanks. Mr. Smartass last year, can he rectify himself? Best Documentary Short Subject: FREEHELD. Jon was right, why is Tom Hanks there, the nominees and winnder were announced from Bagdad. Tom left the stage? Oh no he went to the other side. Documentary Feature: Taxi to the Dark Side. These awards should have been announced earlier in the night.

Harrison Ford, the ultimate man's man! Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody Juno, look at that tattoo on her arm! She was an exotic dancer, and now an Oscar winner. there is hope for me!!

Three Hours and finally Best Actor

Helen Mirren presenting in the best dress of the night...the Best Actor for 2007: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood, goes into the elite group as a two time winner. Was there any question? Do you think his earrings could get any bigger?

Commercials?! Stop the Madness

2008-02-24T23:08:00.000-05:00

Penelope Cruz, Foreign Film: The Counterfieters.

Patrick Dempsey! WHEW!!!! and who is that singing the 5th nominated song? Is he not hot!?

And then they bring out John Travolta...revolting. He has NOT aged well. Best Original Song: Falling Slowly from Once. Wow, three Enchanted songs nominated and they don't win? Sheesh! I wonder if that is an upset?

Okay we are going into 2 1/2 hours and now we get more commercials than is needed. Come on get to the AWARDS!!!

Ugly Cameron Diaz, could she have strutted any more, and she can not even talk correctly. Could she have not fixed her hair?

My bet is on There Will Be Blood...Best Cinematography: There Will Be Blood

Hillary Swank, saying goodbye. Who did we know died, who did we not know that died. Where was Brad Renfro? Did he not count? Come on or was it just Academy nominated artists? Maybe I misunderstood. Ingmar Bergman I think received the most applause.

OMG! More commercials!

Beautiful, Amazing, Beautiful, Stunning and Old

2008-02-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

Colin Farrell is a beautiful man, and presenting the 4th nominated song...

Jack Nicholson, Amazing man, star and actor, loving the Best Picture montage.!!

Renee Zellweger, she looks beautiful as ever. Film Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum, didn't we see this already?

Nicole Kidman, absolutely stunning. She doesn't look pregnant? Honorary Oscar: 92 year old Production Designer, Robert Boyle. An amazing artist and amazing that he is still working at 92!! He looks better than Cameron Diaz! He don't sound old either. He referred to Hitch, wow he worked with Alfred Hitchcock!

And we are at two hours!

Live OSCAR Blog! ~ Shock #2

2008-02-24T22:17:00.000-05:00

Kristen Chenoweth! Captivating. And a great voice.

Dame Judi Dench and Halle Berry...no it's not. I'd rather have Judi Dench and Halle Berry...Best Sound Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum.Per Hallberg, check out his earring! Think he might, just might be gay? Best Sound Mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum. Didn't we just see this? Okay get those two guys off the stage, Seth Rogen is getting old.

10:15 p.m. Forest Whitaker is on the stage, Best Actress...hold your breath!! Marion Cotillard La Vie en Rose. Wow another shock, not as big as Tilda's win, but almost. Cate Blanchett gets nothing. But she did look extremely happy for Marion. Julie Christie should have won this, and I think she thought so too. She was somewhat hesitant about applauding. So far the biggest upset of the night. It's either that one or the fact Halle Berry wasn't an actual presenter.

Live Oscar Blog! ~ First Shock

2008-02-24T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's a great show thus far, loving the flashbacks to the prior winners years ago...

Alan Arkin, last years suprise winner in Little Miss Sunshine. Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton!!! That was a shock, Oh my God! did you see her face? Did anyone see Cate's face? I didn't see that coming but great shock, she is deserving! Well so much for my perfect score. I bet there were people in Vegas that lost a hell of a lot of money on that announcement!

Jessica Alba gives the boring awards, I understand why, you have to have someone absolutely beautiful to give out those awards, so that it will not be as boring. Congrats to the winners and to the Academy for choosing Ms. Alba.

Josh Brolin and James McAvoy on stage together at the same time...ummmmmmm. BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men. I win another one!!

President Sid... I didn't catch his last name. Does it matter? I have to admit that was the best way that I have seen the way the ballots are tabulated presented ever.

Mylie Cyrus again???? PLEASE!! Stop this crazy mess, announcing the 3rd nominee for Best song.

After the Break ~ LIVE BLOG

2008-02-24T21:30:00.001-05:00

Presenter, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson: Best Visual Effects: GOLDEN COMPASS. I can not believe it beat out Transformers? Quote Walt Disney, because you will never measure up to him.

Cate Blanchett is the presenter: She really should have done something with her hair, and that purple dress is just not very becoming! Art Direction: SWEENEY TODD. Is that Joan Rivers without any plastic surgery??

First Acting Award??? YEAH Best Supporting Actor! YES! Can we say Javier Bardem? Jennifer "American Idol Reject" Hudson presents the award, and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor goes to: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Awww and he tributes his mother in Spanish. See he is not a horrible villain.

Hey I'm two for two so far... Best Animated and Best Supporting Actor. Can I go the distance? Maybe, we will see. To be honest I am hoping for something unexpected, it makes for a better show. Montage time and then Kerri Russell announces the second nominated song. She always seems to be wearing the same dress on every show I've seen her on. I thought this was Oscar, it seems like American Idol!! Come on get the the awards.

Owen Wilson, is he sober??? He seems to be having a hard time reading the monitor. Does anyone else thing he sounds like Dennis Hopper? Live Action Short Film: Le Mozart de Pickpockets. Can we say totally international Oscars tonight? A lot of foreign winners.

Best Animated Short, PETER and the WOLF, presented by Jerry Seinfeld as a bee. The best way to have to see him, I agree.

One hour down...how many more to go?

Live Oscar Blog! ~ THE OSCARS

2008-02-24T20:47:00.001-05:00

Love that opening sequence!! Awesome. And now Jon Stewart. Give me Ellen!!! And of course they have to open with a bit about the writer's strike.

Love the Hillary Clinton joke.... Julie Christie — in a movie a woman who forgets her husband — Hillary Clinton calls it “the feel good movie of the year” ....and now onto the election jokes.

The first presenter is, Jennifer Garner. Ms. Ben Affleck. Fist award of the night 8:40p.m. goes to Costume Design: ELIZABETH THE GOLDEN AGE

Hello George. Presenter #2: 80 years of Oscar. Presenter # 3 and 4; Steve not funny Carrell and Anne Hathaway. Animated Feature Film: Ratatoullie Disney adds another one to their long list.

Katherine Heigel is absolutley gorgoues. Presenter #5 Make Up: La Vie En Rose

A half an hour, three awards, we are moving pretty good here. and the first Song nominee; Happy Working Song from Enchanted. Amy Adams CAN sing!

Commercial break... 9:05 p.m.

LIVE Oscar Blogging ~ Red Carpet

2008-02-24T20:11:00.000-05:00

Regis Philben hosting the Red Carpet, first time in 30 years? In 2038 I'm sure he will not be hosting it then. George Clooney talking about Notre Dame? Come on George give us a break, at least act like your excited about being nominated. Marion Coitllard is beautiful! Good Luck.

John Travolta? Why? Never mind. Why are they interveiwing him. I guess he is presenting.

Laura Linney, one of the most under-rated actresses of our time. Good luck Laura.

Javier, oh Javier he will go down in Hollywood History as one of greatest villians ever to have graced the screen.

Okay why is Mylie Cyrus on, not only the Barbara Walters special and now on the Oscar Red Capet show? Give me a break!! Or give me the Jonas Brothers! YEAH!

Can they keep the camera at an appropriate angle? Come on the side angle shots are totally disorientating.

Regis asking who's dress Helen is wearing, that is just not sound right.

Daniel Day-Lewis, the Best Actor winner for sure. Both of his ears are pierced, and what the hell is that his wife has on? Cameron Diaz?, Another why is she there? Amy Adams, another under-rated actress. She is beautiful.

Ellen Page, a very refreashing young woman.

Hillary Swank, WOW she is even more beautiful than ever. Who is she there with?

4 minutes left until the Oscars... lets tell Regis goodbye and get on with the show!

LIVE Oscar Blogging ~ Pre Show

2008-02-24T19:37:00.001-05:00

Watching the Barbara Walters Special right now, can her show get anymore boring?? And she doesn't even have actual Acadmey Award nominees, well except Ellen Page from Juno. Boring show!! Get on with the Red Carpet Show!!

Final Predictions ~ 80th Annual Academy Awards

2008-02-17T17:07:00.001-05:00

BEST FILM ~ NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

BEST DIRECTOR ~ COEN BROTHERS

BEST ACTOR ~ DANIEL DAY-LEWIS

BEST ACTRESS ~ JULIE CHRISTIE

BEST SUPP. ACTOR ~ JAVIER BARDEM

BEST SUPP. ACTRESS ~ CATE BLANCHETT

BEST ANIMATED FILM ~ RATATTOULIE

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Ethan, Joel Coen - No Country for Old Men

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Diablo Cody - Juno
So that's it, my predictions for 2007. This year is one of the best in Oscar's recent history and the roles, films and faces will be many and thanks to the writer's strike ending in the nick of time we will be able to see Oscar Night in all it's glory.

I will be blogging live Oscar night, February 24, 2008 beginning at 8:00 p.m. so come and watch the Oscar's with me and see how I fared this year in my predictions...see you Oscar Night!

Predix Supporting Actor 2007

2008-02-06T17:03:00.001-05:00

Personally I feel Casey Affleck should get the gold this year, but from all accounts, records, polls and blog in the country, Javier Bardem has this category all wrapped up. But we know from past experiences (Brokeback Mountain vs. Crash) that is not always the case when it comes to Academy Award night. So this could still be anyone's ball game!

Affleck plays that coward Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He plays it with such intensity and power he actually steals the show from Brad Pitt (who plays Jesse James, quite well actually). If not an Oscar win it certainly is the best role of his career so far.

Tom Wilkinson, who is nominated for his role in Michael Clayton, plays Arthur Edens an attorney who has an apparent breakdown and tries to sabotage one of his firm's biggest cases is moving and volatile. Tom has quickly become one of this generations best character actors and this role shows us why.

Hal Halbrook is by far one of the most recognized actors of our time. Both on film and on TV. Hal demands the stage and screen with a presence much like that of the late Gregory Peck, and brings and air of sophistication and believability to any role he takes on.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman mesmerized us a few years ago and won the Best Actor Oscar as Truman Capote in the film Capote. He literally became Truman Capote. He continues to show his versatility and has quickly become one of the best actors of our generation. He could slip through and win this thing, but I am going to jump on the bandwagon and say...

Javier Bardem will win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as what some are saying will become the vilest villain ever to grace the big screen in No Country for Old Men.

Supporting Actress Predix 2007

2008-02-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

Supporting Actress is a role that is considered supporting to the plot, story and the lead actors. Unfortunately Cate Blanchett's role as one of the many Bob Dylan in I'm Not There is the best of the film, the only one that comes close to her is the same role played by the late Heath Ledger (who also should have been nominated). Cate steals the film, and the role. But with her also being nominated for the Best Actress category in Elizabeth, The Golden Age she may split her own vote, and the Academy may, just may think she is too good for her own pants. But look for her to take home the gold this year in this category, as she dominates.

This is not to down-play the portrayals of her sister nominees. Ruby Dee, who should have won a nomination for her role in 1961's Raisin In the Sun. Her role in American Gangster is iconic, even if it is a very small part. Amy Ryan is fantastic in Gone Baby Gone, and deservedly garnered her nomination. We have just begun to hear about this great actress. Tilda Swinton has been around a few years now with very little fanfare, but she is of the caliber of Blanchett, and will be a force to reckon with if she continues taking these powerful roles. Saoirse Ronan completes the nominees for this category, and takes the young new starlet spot that seems to be an Academy regular. She does well, but in my opinion she is no where close to the other nominees and Marisa Tomei or Jennifer Jason Leigh were more deserving for this nomination.

Cate Blanchett gets my pick for this year's Best Supporting Actress award.

Actors 2007 Predix

2008-02-01T16:58:00.000-05:00

The Nominees are:
Daniel Day-Lewis; Johnny Depp; George Clooney; Tommy Lee Jones & Viggo Mortensen....
All five are extraordinary artists. All five have given performances in this past year that are Oscar worthy, unlike some that are nominated and even win, because they didn't get the Oscar the year before...but anyway, I digress.
Let's start at the bottom of most of the lists. Viggo Mortensen ~ Eastern Promises
He should have been nominated for his role last year in A History of Violence. At first I thought this was the reason his name was put into the pot this year. Then I saw it. Incredible. This man is one of the most multi-faceted talents since Spencer Tracy. I think he could almost play any role. Not only does he portray his characters, but his whole appearance changes from one role to another. I'd like to see him win, but I think it will not come this year.

Then there is the hometown boy (my hometown, Cincinnati) George Clooney ~ Michael Clayton.
I am really having an hard time understanding his appeal. Really. I think he is a fine actor, and this role is probably the best he has given, but I almost keep seeing the same man in every role. Add some depth to it George. He came close this year, really close, but I do not think it's close enough. But given his appeal with the Academy, he might just win it. But not likely.

Who should win? Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones ~ In The Valley of Elah. He has been one of my favorite actors since I saw him in 1977 on TV in the Amazing Howard Hughes. Talk about a versatile actor. Then his role as Sissy Spacek's Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter...loved it! he has just gotten better with age and experience. I'd love to see him win his second Oscar, but I don't think it is going to happen, but then again Paul Lukas beat out Humphrey Bogart in 1943 and everyone thought for sure that was in the bag! So, we will see.

Then the Pirate, Johnny Depp ~ Sweeney Todd. One of the most talked about roles since Charleton Heston played Ben-Hur. But Charleton Heston didn't sing and dance, did he? Nominated three times in this decade alone, Johnny has seduced us, scared us, mystified us for now over 20 years. I do not understand why he was not nominated before his role in the first Pirate movie. Didn't the Academy see Cry-Baby or Edward Scissorhands? Would I like to see him win, yes. Will he? Not likely...

That brings us to the front-runner. Daniel Day-Lewis~ There Will Be Blood
His performance as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989) is ranked #11 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time and won him his first Oscar. His performance as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York (2002) is ranked #53 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time and garnered him his third Oscar nomination. His powerful performance as Gerry Conlon in In The Name of the Father (1993) gave him his second Oscar nomination. Only 22 male actors have been nominated more than he, names like Gary Cooper, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Jimmy Stewart come to mind. I have seen all four of his nominated portrayals and I must admit that he is a great performer. However, this role is much like his character in Gangs, but more darker and much more angrier. I loved his performance, it made the movie, and I know he is on the top of every-ones list. But Daniel Day-Lewis is not one of my favorite actors. But I still have him to take the prize this year. I mean who am I to go against the grain.

2007 Picture Predix

2008-01-28T16:54:00.002-05:00

(updated Feb. 10, 2008)

I am bouncing back and forth and all around this year with the Best Picture nominees. There are some outstanding films this year, and I am not sure which one is going to win. It's not like years in the recent past when one seemed to stand out, and unlike 2005 when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash, I see any one of these films winning the golden man.

Right now I am bouncing between, There Will Be Blood-No Country for Old Men and Atonement. There Will be Blood, will surely become a classic, and the cinematography was phenomenal. No Country for Old Men is volatile and explosive, and Atonement has all the right plots, mystery and love to be an Academy favorite, but for now i am going to go with...

No Country for Old Men

2007 Actress Predictions

2008-01-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

2008 is full of great nominations, and even greater performances. Some of the best performances in this decade have come to film this year, and the women that have been nominated are no exception. From Cate Blanchett with her 4th and 5th nominations, to the young Ellen Page, who is just starting what looks like to become an illustrious career.

However, this year I think we are going to see a comeback, and the Oscar will be given to Julie Christie this year for Best Actress. Her portrayal of a woman with Alzheimer's is phenomenal. Look for her to walk away with the gold this year.

She has already won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actor Guild award, along with several others. Julie has been around for years, but recently has made a big comeback, last year her role in Running With Scissors should have been a nomination. Julie Christie won an Oscar for her portrayal in 1965 of a bored, amoral fashion model in the film Darling, and was nominated in 1971 in McCabe and Mrs. Miller and again in 1997 for her role in Afterglow.

If Julie does not get the Oscar this year, I for one will be surprised, but that is not to say the other actresses are not good enough. This year is tough, and the women up for the award would be tough to beat. Laura Linney has been one of my favorites since Tales of the City, and she is one of the most under-rated actresses of our age. Of course Cate Blanchett is being touted as the next Katherine Hepburn ( a role she won her Oscar for) She is powerful on screen no matter what she plays, even a guy, as she was also nominated as a supporting actress this year as one of the Bob Dylans in I'm Not There.

Some say if anyone has a chance to beat Julie this year though it will be Marion Cotillard in the tragic story true of Edith Piaf. but she did not sing the songs, her voice was dubbed by Jil Aigrot, and the Academy may not like that as well.

Young Ellen Page is faced with an unplanned pregnancy in the indie film JUNO and plays an offbeat young woman who makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child - she decides to have it and find the perfect family to raise it. Where else to find them but in the Penny Saver? Page navigates the pitfalls of quirkiness and cuteness and delivers a textured performance.

Who will win? Who knows, but my guess and $$ are on Julie Christie.

2007 Nominees

2008-01-22T16:46:00.000-05:00

Lets see how I did with my predictions this year for nominations. The films nominated for an Academy Award are:

"Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood." I had three out of five, left out were Sweeny Todd and Into the Wild.

Nominees for Best Actor are:

George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises." I chose James McAvoy over Tommy Lee Jones. So four out of five there, not too bad.

For Actress the nominees for this year are:

Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno." I only chose Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard, so two out five in this category...

Supporting Actor nods went to: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"; Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"; Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"; Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton." Good Job! I got five out of five!! But Supporting Actress, only one out of five, Tilda Swinton, the other nominess: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"; Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"; Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"; Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"; Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton."

As for Best Director: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Jason Reitman, "Juno"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood." I got three out of that five.

So now onto the predictions for the winners! I will post predictions this week.

Going My Way ~ Best Picture 1944

2007-12-30T10:45:00.001-05:00

Going My Way was an irresistible film from writer-director Leo McCarey stars Bing Crosby as a low-key, crooning priest who joins the parish of a no-nonsense but sweet old Irish man of the cloth (Barry Fitzgerald).

While Bing turns local toughs into a choir and saves a young woman from taking a wayward path, the elder priest worries over the church building fund and whether he'll get a chance to see his old mother back in Ireland before she dies. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be won over by this charmer, with a lovely ending guaranteed to make you bawl for a week. Cast also includes Frank McHugh, James Brown, Gene Lockhart, Jean Heather and Risë Stevens

Bing Crosby ~ Best Actor 1944

2007-12-27T10:43:00.000-05:00

Bing Crosby, born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, Washington. Won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Going My Way. Crosby a popular crooner and box-office star of the 1940s and 50s who amassed one of the entertainment world's largest fortunes. Crosby made his screen debut as a band singer in THE KING OF JAZZ (1930), but his most successful films were the ROAD movies of the 1940s with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.
Crosby's effortless, mellow singing style, easygoing charm and escapist material -- songs with a "Sunny Side of the Street/Pennies From Heaven" philosophy and sentimental films like HOLIDAY INN (1942), GOING MY WAY (1944), WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954) and HIGH SOCIETY (1956) -- helped audiences forget WW II and its aftermath and made him enormously popular.

Ingrid Bergman ~ Best Actress 1944

2007-12-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

Ingrid Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden on August 29, 1915. Her mother, Friedel Adler Bergman, a Hamburg, Germany native, died when Ingrid was just three years old. Ingrid’s father, Justus Samuel Bergman, a Swede, raised Ingrid until his death, when she was 12. As a teenager, Ingrid appeared as a film extra, in addition to acting in productions at the private school she attended. After graduating in 1933, she attended the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm for a year, during which time she made her professional stage debut. Her first speaking role in a film came in Swedish director Gustaf Molander’s "Munkbrogreven" in 1935, in which she played the maid of a hotel that sold illegal liquor.

In 1936, Ingrid made the film that would change her life. The picture "Intermezzo," Her performance caught the attention of Hollywood film producer David O. Selznick, who bought the rights to remake the film in Hollywood with Ingrid in the starring role. With this move she began a career that would span five decades, win her three Oscars, two Emmys and a Tony Award, and see her image go “from saint to whore and back to saint again,” as Ingrid once described it herself.

Ingrid was to win her first Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of a Victorian housewife who was being driven to insanity by her husband in the 1944 film "Gaslight." The next year, she was nominated for Best Actress again, for the film "The Bells of St. Mary’s," but lost to Joan Crawford.

Barry Fitzgerald ~ Supporting Actor 1944

2007-12-19T10:39:00.000-05:00

Barry Fitzgerald has the distinct record in the Academy for being nominated twice for the same role. In 1944 he starred as Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way. He received and Academy Award nomination for best actor for the role, and second nomination for Best Supporting actor as well. He won for Best Supporting. Maybe it was just a bad year for male roles that year.

Born William Joseph Shields in Dublin, Ireland. He worked as a civil servant, and joined the Abbey Theatre. Starring in such plays as Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, a role he recreated for Alfred Hitchcock in his screen debut in 1930. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields.

Ethel Barrymore ~ Supporting Actress 1944

2007-12-17T10:35:00.001-05:00

Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. She spent her childhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Catholic schools while there.

She was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore, and the great-aunt of actress/producer Drew Barrymore.

Played her first starring role on Broadway in 1900, in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. True to the tradition of her illustrious family, she soon established herself as "the first lady of the American theater."

Miss Barrymore made her film debut in 1914, followed by a variety of movie roles through 1919. Then, except for a remarkable performance as the Czarina in the film RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (1932), in which she appeared with her brothers, it became all theater for her until 1944, when she made a triumphant return to the screen, winning the best supporting actress Academy Award for her performance in NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART (1944). After that, she played many engaging character roles as the last surviving member of the "Fabulous Barrymores." Known for her morbid sense of humor, her huge book collection, and her great love for baseball. A Broadway theater was named after her.

Joseph Mankiewicz ~ Best Director 1950

2007-12-16T10:25:00.001-05:00

During his long career in Hollywood, Mankiewicz wrote forty-eight screenplays, including All About Eve, for which he won an Academy Award. He also produced more than twenty films including The Philadelphia Story which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941. However, he is best known for the films he directed, twice winning the Academy Award for Directing. In 1944, he produced The Keys of the Kingdom, which starred his wife, Rose Stradner, and Gregory Peck.

In 1958, Mankiewicz directed The Quiet American an adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel about the seed of American military involvement in what would become the Vietnam War. Mankiewicz, under career pressure from the climate of anti-Communism and the Hollywood blacklist, distorted the message of Greene's book, changing major parts of the story to appeal to a national audience. A cautionary tale about America's blind support for "anti-Communists" was turned into, according to Greene, a "propaganda film for America."

He was the younger brother of Herman J. Mankiewicz. His sons are writer/director Tom Mankiewicz and producer Christopher Mankiewicz. He also has a daughter named Alexandra Mankiewicz. His great-nephew is radio & television personality Ben Mankiewicz, currently on TCM.

Mankiewicz, who died in 1993, was interred in Saint Matthew's Episcopal Churchyard cemetery, Bedford, New York

All About Eve ~ Best Picture 1950

2007-12-12T10:15:00.001-05:00

One of the greatest movies of all time, All About Eve was nominated for a record 14 Academy Award nominations and took home 6, including Best Picture and Best Director. This movie was all about deception, betrayal, love and backstabbing. It also mirrored the relationship of the characters with the actresses that portrayed them.

It was also one of the first films to debut the new rising starlet, Marilyn Monroe, who played a rising young starlet. Bette Davis was enchanting as well as diabolical as Margo Channing, while Anne Baxter, who played Eve Harrington was a true chameleon, taking on the great Margo Channing and becoming an almost duplicate of the aging star of stage. Bette Davis claims to have based her character on the persona of film actress Talullah Bankhead. Davis' line "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night" is legendary, but, in fact, all of the film's dialog sparkles with equal brilliance.

George Sanders, too was manipulative and almost menacing, yet he was the guy you loved to hate. His role gained him an Academy Award for Best Actor in a supporting role, as Addison DeWitt. The film also starred, Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter, Hugh Marlow and Bette Davis's own real life husband, Gary Merrill.

All About Eve is film perfection.

Jose Ferrer ~ Best Actor 1950

2007-12-10T14:00:00.000-05:00

Husband to Rosemary Clooney, uncle to George Clooney and father in law to singer Debbie Boone, Jose Ferrer received his Oscar for playing the famous poetic swordsman with the huge nose CYRANO DE BEFRGERAC.

Ferrer, who was born in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1933 he graduated from Princeton University, where he wrote a senior thesis titled French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán and was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club. Ferrer made his Broadway debut in 1935. In 1940, he played his first starring role on Broadway, the title role in Charley's Aunt — part of it in drag. He played Iago in Margaret Webster's 1943 Broadway production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer's wife at the time, Uta Hagen, as Desdemona. It became the longest-running production of a Shakespeare play staged in the U.S., a record it still holds. Then, in 1946, he played the title role in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, a performance which won him a Tony Award and then took the role to the big screen where he won the Oscar.

Ferrer made his film debut with Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc in 1948, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, for "Best Supporting Actor". Ferrer won an Academy Award as "Best Actor" for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1955 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, becoming the first Puerto Rican to win the award, only weeks after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a suspected Communist, charges that Ferrer vehemently denied.

Ferrer had five children with singer-actress Rosemary Clooney: Miguel was born in 1955, Maria in 1956, Gabriel in 1957, Monsita in 1958, and Rafael in 1960. Clooney was Ferrer's third wife. The two were married in 1953, divorced in 1961, and remarried in 1964, only to be divorced again in 1967. Ferrer had previously been married to famed actress and acting teacher Uta Hagen (1938–1948), by whom he had a daughter, Leticia (Lettie), and actress Phyllis Hill (1948–1953). At the time of his death, Ferrer was married to Stella Magee, whom he married in the late sixties.

José Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer on January 26, 1992 in Coral Gables, Florida at the age of 83. He was laid to rest in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan.

Judy Holliday ~ Best Actress 1950

2007-12-07T13:58:00.000-05:00

Born Judith Tuvim ("Tuvim" is Hebrew for "Holiday") in New York City, she was the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim, Jewish immigrants from Russia. she attended elementary school at PS 150, a school in Sunnyside, Queens, New York. Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre run by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

Holliday began her show business career in December, 1938, as part of a nightclub act called "The Revuers." The other four members of the group were Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Alvin Hammer and John Frank. The Revuers were a staple of the New York nightlife scene until they disbanded in early 1944.

Holliday made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945, at the Belasco Theatre in Kiss Them for Me and was one of the recipients that year of the Clarence Derwent Award. In 1946, she was back on Broadway, as the scatterbrained Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. Author Garson Kanin had written the play specifically for his friend, the brilliant but difficult Jean Arthur. Arthur played the role of Billie out-of-town, but after many complaints and illnesses, resigned. Kanin chose Holliday as her replacement.

It has been widely reported^[who?] that when Columbia bought the rights to film Born Yesterday, studio boss Harry Cohn wouldn't consider casting the unknown (outside of Broadway) Holliday. Kanin, together with George Cukor, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, conspired to promote Holliday by offering her a key part in the 1949 film Adam's Rib. She got rave reviews and Cohn offered her the chance to repeat her part for the film version of Born Yesterday. She won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress, beating out such formidable competitors as Gloria Swanson, who was nominated for Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis for All About Eve.

Holliday died from breast cancer, in 1965 at the age of 43. She was survived by her young son, Jonathan Oppenheim, and by her ex-husband, clarinetist and conductor David Oppenheim.

George Sanders ~ Supporting Actor 1950

2007-12-06T13:56:00.000-05:00

George Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, of British parents. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, when Sanders was 11, the family returned to Britain and, like his brother, he attended Brighton College, a boys' independent school in Brighton. After graduation he worked in an advertising agency. It was there that the company secretary, an aspiring actress named Greer Garson, suggested to him a career in acting.

He made his British film debut in 1934 and, after a series of British films, made his American debut in 1936 with a role in Lloyd's of London. His British accent and sensibilities, combined with his suave, snobbish, and somewhat menacing air, were utilised in American films during the next decade. He played supporting roles in prestige productions such as Rebecca, in which he joined forces with Judith Anderson in her persecution of Joan Fontaine. He also played leading roles in such less high-profile pictures as Rage in Heaven. During this time he was also the lead in both The Falcon and The Saint film series, and also played Lord Henry Wotton in a film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1947 he co-starred with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

In 1950 he gave his most widely recognised performance, and achieved his greatest success, as the acerbic, cold-blooded theatre critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He moved into the field of television and was responsible for the successful series George Sanders Mystery Theatre. Sanders played an upper crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in a 1965 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode, "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair", and reprised the role later that year in "The Yukon Affair". He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the 1960s live-action Batman TV series.

Later, he provided the voice for the malevolent Shere Khan in the Walt Disney production of The Jungle Book.

In 1940, he married Susan Larson; the marriage ended in divorce in 1949. From 1949 until 1954, he was married to the Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose previous marriage had been to Conrad Hilton. (In 1956 Sanders and Gabor starred together in the film Death of a Scoundrel.) Sanders was then married to actress Benita Hume, widow of actor Ronald Colman, from 1959 until her death in 1967. His last wife was Magda Gabor, the older sister of his second wife; the marriage lasted only 6 weeks. Following this he began to drink heavily.

After being convinced by a woman he had taken up with, George Sanders sold his beloved house in Majorca, Spain. Soon after, he checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona, Spain. His body was discovered two days later, along with five empty bottles of Nembutal. He left behind a suicide note that read:

"Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

His friend David Niven recorded in his autobiography Bring On The Empty Horses that Sanders had long predicted that he would commit suicide at the age of 65.

His body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the English Channel.

Josephine Hull ~ Supporting Actress 1950

2007-12-02T13:51:00.001-05:00

Josephine Hull only made five films, beginning with the 1929 film The Bishop's Candlesticks. That was followed by two 1932 Fox features, After Tomorrow (recreating her stage role) and The Careless Lady. She missed out on recreating her You Can't Take It With You role in 1938, as she was still onstage with the show. Spring Byington appeared in the film version). Hull and Canadian-born Jean Adair did play the Brewster sisters in the 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace (starring Cary Grant), and Hull was in the screen version of Harvey as well, playing Jimmy Stewart's sister. It is for that role that she won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Variety said that Hull, as "the slightly balmy aunt who wants to have Elwood committed, is immense, socking the comedy for every bit of its worth.

Hull made only one more film, The Lady from Texas (1951); she had also appeared in the CBS-TV version of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1949, with Ruth McDevitt (an actress who often succeeded Hull in her Broadway roles) as her sister.

Moving to The Bronx, Hull had been retired for some years before her death in 1957 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

My Picks ~ 1960

2007-11-30T16:32:00.000-05:00

As already mentioned as we reviewed the winners and losers at the Academy's 33rd Annual Awards, there were a lot of omissions in 1960. Some films that we would think would have been Oscar contenders for Best Picture were not even nominated for that category, such as Psycho and Spartacus. Directors that should have been nominated but didn't, like the great Alfred Hitchcock. Actors that should have won but didn't, such as Greer Garson or Deborah Kerr.

Very often the Academy doesn't get it right, but then again who are we as critics, film buffs and hobbyists to say what is or isn't an Academy caliber film or role. 1960 was not one of the best years for the Academy or for that matter Hollywood in general.

I always like to take a look at what could have been, so here is my take on who and what should have taken home the statuette in 1960;

Psycho should have been nominated for Best Picture. Would it have won? Probably not. My choice for Best Picture would have been Elmer Gantry or Exodus. Also Anthony Perkins should have garnered a nomination, and if so he would have won for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Norman Bates in Psycho. Was Janet Leigh's supporting performance a winning one? Not really, but Greer Garson in a leading role was. And what about Jean Simmons? Burt Lancaster deservedly won for his role in Elmer Gantry, but Ralph Bellamy would have gave him a run for his money if nominated. Here is how my 1960 Oscars would have looked;

Picture: Elmer Gantry
Director: Alfred Hitchcock for Psycho
Actor: Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry
Actress: Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello
Supp. Actor: Sal Mineo in Exodus
Supp. Actress: Eva Marie Saint in Exodus

But then, what do I know.

The Apartment ~ Best Picture 1960

2007-11-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

Nominated 10 times and winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (co-written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond), Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing, Billy Wilder's The Apartment has been said to be his best work.

The story of an up and coming young men played by Jack Lemmon, who secretly lends out his apartment to other company executives for adulterous sexual affairs and liaisons. This is fine until he realizes that the young elevator girl, played by Shirley MacLaine, whom he has feelings for is being taken for trysts by his married boss (Fred MacMurray) to his apartment.

This movie was a glimpse at what had happened to corporate America during the 1960's when a lowly but ambitious accountant prostitutes his own standards and moral integrity and allows himself to be exploited just so that he can get ahead. Powerful and engaging performances by Lemmon, MacLaine and Fred MacMurray (one of the omitted of 1960) as well as Ray Walston and Edie Adams.

The Apartment, today is still a moving and entertaining film, even if somewhat out-dated. It is listed as one of the 100 Greatest Movies of all time. Was it the Best Picture of 1960? Many will dispute that. Was it the Best Picture out of the nominees? There is no question there.

Elizabeth Taylor ~ Best Actress 1960

2007-11-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

With roles like that of Maggie the Cat, and in films like National Velvet, Giant, Suddenly Last Summer and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, no one can deny that Elizabeth Taylor is not one of the greatest, most beautiful and most enduring actresses of our time, or any time. However, her fourth consecutive nomination in BUtterfield 8, some say was not an Academy Award winning performance. Instead it was awarded to her due to being nominated four years in a row, or due to a recent bout of pneumonia that almost left her dead, or possibly due to her recent loss of her husband.

As a part-time model and wanton, fast-living, disturbed call-girl Gloria Wandrous caught in a doomed romance with a wealthy married man (Laurence Harvey) and her love for her disapproving friend (Eddie Fisher) Elizabeth seemed edgy throughout the film. Almost like it was a forced performance, and not up to her prior performances.

She soon became a hated actress from her fans for stealing Eddie Fisher from his wife Debbie Reynolds and their family as Elizabeth and Eddie soon developed a romance which led to his divorce and their marriage. 1960's version of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Elizabeth would go on to win another Best Actress award in 1967 for her role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and would also be awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993.

Shirley Jones ~ Supporting Actress 1960

2007-11-19T16:23:00.001-05:00

Looking back on the films and the nominees now, there would probably be no question as to who the winner would be in this category. Janet Leigh. Her performance in Hitchcock's now famous and classic Psycho was a career making role. But in 1960, things were a little different in Hollywood.

Mary Ure attacked the screen in 1960 for her sexually-emancipated Clara Dawes in Sons and Lovers. Some called her performance riveting, others called it over acted. Whichever it may have been it awarded her her first and only nomination.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, husky-voiced actress Glynis Johns was the daughter of British stage actor Mervyn Johns. Her performance of the hotel keeper trying to lure Peter Ustinov to marry her was memorable, but not as memorable as her role in Mary Poppins a few years later and certainly not one of her better roles.

An expert at playing disturbed modern women, Shirley Knight trained at the Pasadena Playhouse before making her film debut in FIVE GATES TO HELL (1959). A bright, and outspoken leading lady, she earned early critical acclaim in Hollywood for her Academy Award nominated role in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, but remained dedicated to the theater. After losing the best supporting actress race for the second year in a row, she wasn't interested in returning to the West Coast. In one of the best all-time appraisals of Tinseltown, she told a reporter later in 1963 in New York, "Hollywood -- that's where they give Academy Awards to Charlton Heston for acting." She did periodically make more movies, but never gained another Oscar nomination.

Janet Leigh was Hollywood's All American girl in 1960, and everyone thought she would walk away with the award that year in Hitchcock's thriller, Psycho. Unfortunately she didn't and also she never received another nomination.

Some can say what they want, but Shirley Jones played her role as the prostitute in the acclaimed film Elmer Gantry superbly. Typecast to that point as sweet, naive females, mostly in musicals, Shirley won the Academy over with her against type performance. One of the many female winners that won playing prostitutes.

Peter Ustinov ~ Supporting Actor 1960

2007-11-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

By 1960, Peter Ustinov was already larger than life, both on the screen and with his career. He had already been nominated for an Academy Award in 1951 for his supporting role in Quo Vadis?. He had written, directed and worked on stage for over 20 years, when he finally won his first of two Oscars.

As a greedy Roman slave trader-master Lentulus Batiatus, trains Kirk Douglas in a gladiator school in Stanley Kubrick's tale of a slave revolt, Spartacus. The movie today when watched seems poorly written, acted and directed, but has became a classic regardless. Ustinov was one of the few remarkable portrayals of the film. This role also put Ustinov at the top of the heap, and he continued to play supporting roles as one of Hollywood's best character actor in a career that would span over 60 years until his death in 2004.

Burt Lancaster ~ Best Actor 1960

2007-11-02T16:16:00.000-04:00

1960 gave us many great movies and a slew of great performances by male actors. Spencer Tracy was nominated for a 7th time with his portrayal as a "Clarence Darrow-style" trial lawyer named Henry Drummond opposite prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady (unnominated Fredric March as Biblical literalistic William Jennings Bryan) in director Stanley Kramer's fictionalized dramatization of the 1925 Tennessee Scopes Trial, Inherit the Wind.

Lawrence Olivier, one of the greatest actors of all time, gave us an award winning performance as seedy vaudevillian performer in The Entertainer, his sixth nomination.

Trevor Howard, a powerful character actor became a leading star in Sons & Lovers as an alcoholic coal-mining father Walter Morel. This would be his first and only nomination.

Jack Lemmon gave what some call his greatest film performance ever as lonely, ambitious and young New York insurance clerk C. C. Baxter who loans out his Manhattan apartment for romantic trysts for his company's executive supervisors while falling in love with the elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine).

But it would be the powerful and brilliant performance of Burt Lancaster, as the starring role of the bible thumping preacher with skeletons in closet and life in the moving Elmer Gantry.

Some of the other nominations in 1960 were questionable, but in the Best Actor category each one was deserved.

1960 ~ 33rd Annual Academy Awards

2007-11-01T13:39:00.001-04:00

The 33rd Annual Academy Awards has been dubbed the Year of Omissions by many Oscar and Film buffs. Throughout 1960, many powerful performances and films would become classics but not even nominated at Award time. One of the biggest snubs in the Best Picture History was the exclusion of the classic Hitchcock thriller "Psycho", not only was it not nominated for Best Picture, (yet, the Alamo was) but Hitchcock lost as Best Director to Billy Wilder's work in The Apartment. Janet Leigh who was nominated for a Supporting Award for her work in Psycho was overlooked and the award went to Shirley Jones, who was superb, but who remembers any scenes from her role as opposed to the famous "Shower Scene"? Anthony Perkins was not even considered for his powerful portrayal of Norman Bates in Psycho. And who is Chill Wills?? This is just a few of the omissions in this Oscar Race.

Nominees for 1960 are;

Best Picture:
The Apartment; The Alamo; Elmer Gantry; Suns & Lovers and The Sundowners

Best Director Nominees:
Billy Wilder; Jack Cardiff; Jules Dassin; Alfred Hitchcock; Fred Zinnemann

Best Actor Nominees:
Burt Lancaster; Trevor Howard; Jack Lemmon; Lawrence Olivier; Spencer Tracy

Best Actress Nominees:
Elizabeth Taylor; Greer Garson; Deborah Kerr; Shirley MacLaine; Melina Mercouri

Supporting Actors:
Peter Ustinov; Peter Falk; Jack Kruschen; Sal Mineo; Chill Wills

Supporting Actresses:
Shirley Jones; Glynnis Johns; Shirley Knight; Janet Leigh; Mary Ure

My Picks ~ 1938

2007-10-29T13:40:00.000-04:00

This is the posting I like the best. When I give my take on what should have and could have been at the Oscars. 1938 was a good year for movies and performances, and the Academy seemed to be on target with most of their nominations except that Bringing Up Baby was left by the wayside, along with it's star, Cary Grant.

But though they were pretty good at their nominations, their choices for the winners was a wee bit off. Spencer Tracy is one of the greatest actors of our time, but was his performance Oscar worthy? Not really, but James Cagney's was, and he should have gotten the award for Best Actor. As for the Best Actress award, Bette Davis was flawless in Jezebel. I actually like her performance here rather than her previous Oscar winning performance in 1935's Dangerous. However, Norma Shearer should have won in '38 for her dynamic performance in Marie Antoinette, even if she was a little too old to play the famous Queen. And by the way, were was Katherine Hepburn in 1938 for her roles in Bringing Up Baby and Holiday? So how would my 1938 Oscar lineup looked? Here you go...

Best Picture: Boys Town
Actor: James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces
Actress: Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette
Supp Actor; James Garfield in Angels with Dirty Faces
Supp Actress: Fay Bainter in Jezebel
Director: Norman Tourog for Boys Town

You Can't Take it With You ~ Best Picture 1938

2007-10-20T13:37:00.000-04:00

With films like, Alexander's Ragtime Band; The Citadel ; Boys Town and Jezebel on the list of contenders in 1938, You Can't Take It With You, even though an outstanding film by Frank Capra, was uninspired. And being a comedy not a likely Academy Award winner. But the light-hearted and wacky filmed-version of the popular Broadway comedy, with a great cast won not only the Best Picture, but a Best Director Oscar for Capra. It told the story about the eccentric, free-spirited, and madcap Vanderhof family living in a big house in an ethnic Manhattan neighborhood and the introduction of their grand-daughters boyfriend's family when they are invited over for dinner. Nominated for 7 awards, the film only garnered two.

Spencer Tracy ~ Best Actor 1938

2007-10-19T13:32:00.001-04:00

Even though Cary Grant was omitted from the nominations, as well as the film he starred, "Bringing Up Baby", the 1938 Best Actor category was chock full of Hollywood elite.

James Cagney was nominated with his first of three career nominations and his what many say is his career-greatest performance as convicted killer Rocky Sullivan in Michael Curtiz' "Angels With Dirty Faces."

Leslie Howard played the role of Professor Henry Higgins in his second nominated role. Many thought he would win this time as he had won the award at the Venice Film Festival that year.

The well loved Charles Boyer,with his second of four unsuccessful nominations as the thief Pepe Le Moko in Algiers was, unfortunately not a likely winner.

Robert Donat (with his first nomination) as a young British doctor named Andrew Manson in The Citadel was also well liked but not a likely winner either. Spencer Tracy had been nominated three times in a row, with already two wins under his belt, so this looked like a win for Cagney who rightfully deserved it. But in Academy fashion is was not to be. Spencer Tracy was awarded the gold. However Spencer Tracy's Oscar was incorrectly engraved "Dick Tracy."

Bette Davis ~ Best Actress 1938

2007-10-04T13:28:00.001-04:00

For Best Actress in a leading role in 1938, the field was full of talent. Fay Bainter who was also nominated as Best Supporting Actress in her role in "Jezebel" would be named a nominee for her leading role in "White Banners." Many thought Bainter would take home the Oscar for her leading role as co-nominee Bette Davis had won Best Actress the previous year for her work in "Dangerous". Another talented star Margaret Sullivan had given an Academy Award caliber performance for her work as co-star Robert Taylor's tubercular-ailing wife Pat Hollmann in post-war Germany, in director Frank Borzage's film based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel "Three Comrades". Wendy Hiller would earn her first nomination as Eliza Doolittle in the British film, "Pygmalion". But the odds on favorite at Oscar time in 1938 was not Bette Davis, but Norma Shearer, in the title role of Marie Antoinette, many say she was a sure winner as her famous husband, Irving Thalberg had died the previous year and she had not won since 1930.

But as the envelope opened and Bette Davis was named as Best Actress of 1938, she would have won two Oscars, which were won back to back. Norma Shearer would make a few more movies, but retire in 1942.

Walter Brennan ~ Supporting Actor 1938

2007-10-03T13:23:00.001-04:00

Probably one, if not the best well known and most sucessful charecter actors in film history, Walter Brennan would win his second of three Academy Awards in 1938 for his role as Loretta Young's father and scruffy horsebreeder Peter Goodwin, in "Kentucky" (the film's sole nomination). It was Brennan's second win in only a three year old category! The film was one of six films Brennan made in 1938.

He would go on to win two more nominations in the coming years and one more win. He would continue his work that would span six decades.

Fay Bainter ~ Supporting Actress 1938

2007-10-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

Fay Bainter was the first performer to receive simultaneous nominations in both the lead and supporting acting categories in the same year. She remains one of only ten actors/actresses to have accomplished the dual nominations for two separate films in the same year. Her breakthrough nomination was for Best Supporting Actress, which she won, for her performance as Aunt Belle in 1938’s “Jezebel”. That same year she was nominated for Best Actress for her leading role in “White Banners”. The other nine are Teresa Wright, Barry Fitzgerald, Jessica Lange, Sigourney Weaver, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Holly Hunter, Julianne Moore and Jamie Foxx. She was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1961's, The Children's Hour.Fay was born December 07, 1891 in Los Angeles California. Though as close to Hollywood as possible for an aspiring actress, working in stock at age five, and by the time she was 19 was one of the privileged members of theatrical impresario David Belasco’s company and quickly gained notoriety. But in 1934 Bainter made a switch from the stage to the silver screen with her debut role in This Side of Heaven..Bainter has appeared on the screen countless times throughout her career, appearing as both herself in notable TV and film cameos, as well as starring in memorable leading and supporting roles.

She continued to move audiences with her gentleness and amiable talent until her death in April of 1968. Fay Bainter succeeded her husband, Reginald Venable, who died four years earlier. The two are buried at Arlington National Cemetery as a result of her husband's military service.

1938 ~ 11th Academy Awards

2007-10-01T13:00:00.003-04:00

My mother gave me my introduction to the movies. From a young age I sat while she worked on her movie scrapbooks, and looked through her books that talked about Hollywood. I became mezmorized by the lure of Hollywood, actors, actresses and movies. So to begin my blog I am going to start with the year she was born, 1938.

Throughout the month of October we are going to look at the nominated films, actors, directors and trivia of the 11th Annual Academy Awards, 1938.
The 1938 Academy Awards were presented Feb. 23, 1939 at the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles.
And the Nominees were:

Best Picture:
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Alexander's Ragtime Band
Boy's Town
The Citadel
La Grande Illusion
Four Daughters
Jezebel
Pygmalion
Test Pilot
You Can't Take it With You

Actor:
Charles Boyer as Pepe Le Moko in "Algiers"
James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces"
Robert Donat as Andrew Mason in "The Citadel"
Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins in "Pygmalion"
Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in "Boys Town"

Actress:

Fay Bainter as Hannah in "White Banners"
Bette Davis as Julie Morrison in "Jezebel"
Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion"
Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette in "Marie Antoinette"
Margaret Sullivan as Pat Hollmann in "Three Comrades"

Supporting Actor:

Walter Brennan in "Kentucky"
John Garfield in "Four Daughters"
Gene Lockhart in "Algiers"
Robert Morley in "Marie Antoinette"
Basil Rathbone in "If I Were King"

Supporting Actress:

Fay Bainter in "Jezebel"
Beulah Bondi in "Of Human Hearts"
Billie Burke in "Merrily We Live"
Spring Byington in "You Can't Take it With You"
Miliza Korjus in "The Great Waltz"