OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: Northwest Passage (1940)

Film: Northwest Passage (1940)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Ruth Hussey

Director: King Vidor

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Walter Brennan: click here to learn more about Mr. Brennan (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

One of my favorite jokes about Walter Brennan, and I want to say I heard it as an introduction Robert Osborne did on TCM to Kentucky a few years back, was about how you never entirely knew what age Brennan would be playing onscreen.  Brennan's big break in the mid-1930's in Barbary Coast, followed by him cementing his status as a valuable character actor in his Oscar-winning turn in Come and Get It, happened just after he had turned 40.  But most of his career was spent playing old men.  He didn't have all of his teeth due to an accident on a film set in 1932 (how he lost his teeth is hard to confirm-some say it was in a fight on a set with another actor, other stories blame a kick in the mouth from a mule), and his thinning hair made him look older than his age.  As a result, most of the roles that Brennan would become well known for in the thirty years when he was beyond being an extra & instead was a highly-billed (though never top-billed) character draw in movies would be playing older than he actually was, including Northwest Passage, where he plays a mentor role of sorts to Robert Young (our star in May!), who was just a decade younger than Brennan in this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) Northwest Passage is a fictionalized version of the real-life figure Major Robert Rogers (Tracy), who in 1940 was quite well-known thanks to the novel that this book is adapted from (Kenneth Roberts' book Northwest Passage, largely forgotten today, was the second bestselling book of 1937 behind only Gone with the Wind).  The film starts with a disgraced Langdon Towne (Young), after being kicked out of Harvard seminary as he wants to become a painter, joining the military unwittingly along with his friend Hunk Mariner (Brennan).  At this point, while they are critical players, it's Rogers who becomes the main headliner (this is MGM in 1940-you put Spencer Tracy in your movie, he's going to get the biggest part).  The movie follows them as they do raids alongside the Mohawk tribe against the French, but really the biggest problem for the soldiers is that they're starving and going mad with hunger (in some cases, quite literally) in the middle of the woods.  They finally reach the fort they are seeking, and at the end of the movie start a new adventure-seeking out "Detroit" and the famed Northwest Passage.

The movie is fascinating for a variety of reasons.  For starters, they only use half of Roberts' novel, and the studio clearly intended to make a sequel to the film, assuming it would be a hit in the same way that Gone with the Wind was (to the point where they billed it as "Book 1" on the title card).  However, the high production cost ultimately made it less-than-profitable even though it grossed a lot of money, and the sequel never appeared.  The film also attracted a lot of attention for its gross depiction of American Indians, including a raid on a sleeping American Indian village that results in one of the soldiers later attempting cannibalism on one of the deceased American Indians that they killed in the raid out of hunger.  Putting aside the Hays Code for a second (I am stunned the cannibalism was able to stay in this movie), this is hard to forgive & much like Song of the South, it wasn't a byproduct of our eyes today-it was criticized at the time too.

With that aside, there are aspects of Northwest Passage that are easier to recommend.  The film's river chain scene is the most famous sequence in the movie, and a great tribute to practical effects in early 1940's Hollywood, where they literally have one of the most realistic studio tanks rushing through a band of extras (plus stars Tracy, Young, & Brennan) as they attempt to fjord a river that would surely have drowned the men in real life.  The movie's cinematography, which was Oscar-nominated is gorgeous, a sea of green & brown as it was primarily shot outdoors in Idaho rather than in a studio lot (despite the above photo, which was one of the only good ones I could find with Brennan in it, the movie is shot in beautiful Technicolor), and it pays off with lush vistas for the actors to parade through.  The acting is solid too, particularly Tracy (who plays Rogers rightfully as a bit of a jackass) and Brennan.  Brennan would win an Oscar for his evil Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner that year (generally considered to be the best of his three Oscar wins), and he was on something of a role as he plays Hunk as sensitive, washed-up, and dare I say it...a little bit queer?  There's a scene where Brennan & Young are cuddled up and Young is talking about his girl back home that feels a bit gay to my Celluloid Closet eyes decades later.

OVP: San Francisco (1936)

Film: San Francisco (1936)

Stars: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt

Director: WS van Dyke

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Original Story, Assistant Director, Sound Recording*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If you spend a lot of time on Film Twitter or the online awards circuit, you will find that one of the bigger conversations discussed is "category fraud."  This, for those unfamiliar, is when someone who is clearly a lead player tries for a supporting nomination because they think it will be easier to get the nomination.  The debate runs the gamut between clear cases of fraud (Rooney Mara in Carol comes to mind) to cases where it's more debatable (think Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers).  I'm not in favor of this, and as a general rule when we do our OVP acting write-ups, I make a point of docking one point from any lead performance committing category fraud.  But the opposite occasionally happens, and I will admit...I don't have quite the same problem with it.  This is when a supporting performance for some reason pushes for lead-it's less common, but it's a peculiarity throughout the Oscars.  Perhaps the most flagrant example of this happened the very first year of the supporting categories, when Spencer Tracy was nominated for lead actor...for a performance that clocks in at less than 15 minutes.

(Spoilers Ahead) San Francisco is about Mary Blake (MacDonald), a broke young woman who is trying to make it as a singer.  She encounters Blackie Norton (Gable), who (because she sings like Jeanette MacDonald) pretty much hires her on the spot.  The two start to fall in love, but there's an unease about how they picture domesticity-Mary wants to continue her career to greater heights, whereas Blackie wants her to continue to sing for his nightclub.  This causes a rift in their relationship, where Mary ends up engaged to another man.  The film culminates with a showdown as Mary tries to (against Blackie's wishes) save his club from financial ruin after she leaves it...only to have the 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupt their fight, killing hundreds in the process, including Mary's new fiancee.  Mary & Blackie reunite, potentially as lovers but certainly as grateful friends, before the ruins of San Francisco morph into a then-modern day San Francisco.

The movie itself, I'll be honest, is a snore.  I love me some Clark Gable, but Jeanette MacDonald...is only good because she's not Nelson Eddy (who is the worst).  Sure she can sing, but her screen persona is so vacant & too wishy-washy.  She reminds me of an operatic Loretta Young, and that is not meant as a compliment.  The one impressive moment of the film is surely the earthquake, and yes-that's spectacular.  I honestly was floored by how it seemed to come out-of-nowhere (even though it had been regularly telegraphed), and in a world without CGI, it has a proper sense of danger & unrest.  If there was a Special Effects Oscar in 1936, San Francisco would've been an easy sell for the win.

But the nominations that did happen, I'm not onboard with.  Directing (and assistant directing) feels like the only thing that's worthwhile is the earthquake scene, but that's maybe 15 minutes of the movie-I can't get behind that.  The story itself is confusing, boring, and pretty repetitive.  I will say that the sound recording gets a thumbs up from me though-between the earthquake & MacDonald's crazy high notes, there's a lot of sound recording here, and I think it comes together well, if not as well as something like Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz just a couple of years later.

Which brings us back to Spencer Tracy.  Tracy's nomination is genuinely confusing.  His priest is a chauvinist (a trope for the actor), one who condemns MacDonald for dressing too provocatively in one scene.  But he's also barely there, and pretty much an afterthought (I didn't include him in the writeup for a reason)-if he weren't Spencer Tracy, you wouldn't notice this character.  I'm at a loss on how this happened.  If MGM wanted a lead actor for San Francisco, Gable was right there and a big star.  If they wanted Tracy for a film, he was considerably more engaging in Fury, which was also an MGM property and one that was nominated for a writing Oscar so it was in the Academy's purview.  I'm not confused as to why Tracy was marketed as lead (it would take until the 1970's before we'd more regularly start seeing leading actors attempt supporting nominations on the regular), but I'm baffled as to why the Academy bought it.

OVP: Test Pilot (1938)

Film: Test Pilot (1938)

Stars: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Marjorie Main

Director: Victor Fleming

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Story, Film Editing)

(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

MGM circa 1938 boasted of having "more stars than there are in heaven," and surely this was the case for the studio with a movie like Test Pilot.  The film features three of the biggest headliners of the era (Gable, Loy, & Tracy...plus Lionel Barrymore to boot!), and truly stunning aerial photography, and was cited for Oscar's top prize based on these stars & the film's significant profit.  However, I had seen Test Pilot maybe 10 years ago, and I had poor memories of it.  I didn't really care for the film initially, though it was so forgettable I honestly was curious as to why it had left a bitter taste in my mouth, particularly considering my passion for some of the actors.  Upon revisit, I was struck by a few things I didn't remember (we'll get there), but I feel like I was right-this movie doesn't really work despite having such magnetism on the call sheet.  Let's talk about why.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Jim Lane (Gable), an ace test pilot who recklessly jumps from dangerous plane to plane (and from woman to woman), much to the chagrin of his buddy Gunner (Tracy) and boss Drake (Barrymore).  One day, he crash lands in Kansas, and there he meets the beautiful Ann Barton (Loy), a country girl who is engaged to another man but who is clearly destined for Jim.  They end up together, marrying, but this isn't happily-ever-after (it's only about 30 minutes into the movie).  Instead, we get a dose of what this marriage is like, with Jim clearly an adrenaline junkie who can't give up his day job (and doesn't want to), and both Gunner & Ann on the ground, holding their breath as Jim nears death repeatedly (including one sequence where he barely lives, but one of his fellow pilots dies, a moment that is so telegraphed when they randomly introduce his wife & three kids that the set directors might as well have put a gigantic neon sign above the actor's death saying "destined for the morgue").  The climax of the film has Jim crash landing, and in the process he lives but it's Gunner who dies, which is enough to push Jim to give up this life for good, allowing him to have a grounded life with Ann & their family.

There are things to like in Test Pilot, and I don't want to push those aside.  For starters, it's interesting to watch a film from 1938 about a troubled marriage.  This isn't something we're used to in romances of this era, where "I do" is almost certainly followed by an end card, and it's interesting to see how Hollywood approaches a troubled domesticity between two of its biggest leading players.  I'll also point out right now that the aerial stunts & photography, particularly the landing in Kansas, are impressive for 1938 & this is the kind of film that would've surely gotten a VFX nomination (deservedly) had that category existed in 1938.

But the movie suffers as it goes on because it almost has whiplash it oscillates so frequently across genres.  The movie casts Loy & Gable, two of the era's most charming figures, and occasionally lets them play off of each other (which is a blast), but more often-than-not their courtship veers into sanctimonious, expositional melodrama, with Loy repeatedly underlining the pains she has of being in love with a man who is wrecklessly putting his life in danger.  This isn't necessarily a bad idea for a film, but it's so oft-repeated, with it being clear how it will end (it's not like Gable's going to pick his job over his wife), but it doesn't find a way to modulate its tone-every five minutes we're laughing then so shuddered with dramatics you almost feel guilty for being charmed by the two leads.  It doesn't know what to do with its story, and as a result it becomes a bit of a slog to get through.

The leads aren't able to bolster the movie either.  Loy & Gable clearly want this to be a spry romantic comedy-their acting styles are well-suited for one another, but when it's dramatic they can't pull it off, particularly Loy, who is the actor I like best in this movie generally, but she can't make her contradictory Ann make sense.  Weirdly, it's Spencer Tracy who is by-far the best person in this film.  I am not a Spencer Tracy cheerleader (hence the weirdly), and I'd pick Gable or Loy over him any day of the week, but Tracy is quite good as Gunner, giving him a wearied gruffness that I liked.  Two years removed from San Francisco (for which Tracy won an Oscar nomination but Gable didn't), this is another case where Tracy is taking the film wholesale away from Gable, who was the better movie star but not the thespian that Tracy was.  It's worth noting that Tracy's Gunner does have something of a queer sensibility (he doesn't seem to have any real romantic entanglements other than fretting about Clark Gable), which is perhaps too generous of a reading of Test Pilot, but I did see those shades as the movie continued.  Without this interpretation, Test Pilot doesn't have much to lend to it-for a movie that feels long, it's just the same story over-and-over again...to use the vernacular of the film, a movie that's not so much turbulent as merely routine.

OVP: Boys Town (1938)

Film: Boys Town (1938)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Full, Leslie Fenton, Bobs Watson

Director: Norman Taurog

Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy*, Adapted Screenplay, Original Story*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In the 1930's & 40's, it was quite popular (particularly with the Academy) to honor films that featured devout religious figures in major roles.  This isn't something entirely out-of-the-ordinary for Oscar, who has throughout the decades showered biblical epics like The Robe and The Ten Commandments and (most notably) Ben-Hur with nominations, but the films of this kind in the early Classical Hollywood period weren't plucked from the Old Testament-they were simply about religious men & women and the mundane (or not so mundane) aspects of their own lives.  The peak of this was arguably 1944/1945's one-two punch of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, both of which were nominated for Best Picture (the former won) & made mountains of cash at the box office.  Less-than-a-decade earlier, though, was 1938's Boys Town, also cited for Best Picture and winning Spencer Tracy his second (and last) Oscar for Best Actor.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Father Flanagan (Tracy), a real-life figure who believes "there's no such thing as a bad boy," and is intent on proving it by starting a sanctuary for troubled youth called Boys Town, where the young men who live there have their own government & judicial system, where they disperse their own punishments.  This seems to work, but Father Flanagan encounters considerable trouble when Whitey Marsh (Rooney) joins the school; his brother is in prison for murder, and Whitey is sent there against his will.  When he stays, he decides to prove Father Flanagan wrong, running for "Mayor of Boys Town" under a rebellious campaign, trying to wheel-and-deal his way to power to show up Father Flanagan, but it doesn't work & he leaves.  As he's departing, though, the little boy named Pee Wee (Watson) who has been following Rooney around for the whole movie, is struck by a car.  Whitey is horrified, thinking Pee Wee might die, and he runs back to see his brother, who accidentally shoots him & swears him to secrecy on a robbery he's witnessed, a secrecy that could doom Boys Town.  As one would expect, Whitey doesn't keep the secret & instead saves Boys Town, and becomes its mayor.

The film, as I mentioned above, is reminiscent of later films like Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, which...isn't a compliment coming from me.  Those two films are striking not just because they were so commercially & critically popular, but because they're essentially about nothing.  Each film is just a series of vignettes with no character growth & a minimal amount of strife enjoyed by the main characters. Boys Town isn't that, though it does threaten to become that in the first half hour focused on Father Flanagan.  Whitey is a lot of things, but consistent is not one of them, and when he comes in, it's clear we'll get a cliched arc, but the film itself is going to be about Whitey's story, making it an easier film to sit through than the Bing Crosby pictures.

That being said, Boys Town isn't particularly good.  Filled with cliches, a lot of it is going to be dependent on how allergic you are to the shoot-for-the-rafters appeal of Mickey Rooney.  Rooney is not an actor that I can really subscribe to.  If you want to use the parlance of current meme culture he "understood the assignment," but only because most films required him to be Mickey Rooney.  There's no part of the film where he isn't playing Rooney, which doesn't really work for Boys Town's street tough.  You won't really buy that Rooney, America's boy next door (and at this point in his career, pretty much exclusively Andy Hardy) is the younger brother of a small-time crook, or that someone so easily bamboozled has an ounce of street smarts.  Rooney gives the film some oxygen, but it's mostly hot air.

That being said, he's considerably more watchable than Spencer Tracy.  I've talked on this blog about my aversion to Tracy before, but I wouldn't really put Rooney & Tracy in the same category of actor.  Rooney always played himself, and I have yet to find the role that feels like he's genuinely stretching himself or adding a new dimension to the part he's playing.  But Spencer Tracy can act, he just usually plays the same version of the same curmudgeon.  Father Flanagan is a kindlier, gentler role for Tracy, but it's also one of the dullest parts I've seen him bring to the screen.  Spencer Tracy is a lot of things, but he's definitely not an actor who lacks stature in his role (I often use the word "sturdy" to describe him), but here Father Flanagan feels flat beyond words.  Tracy has a wry twinkle he can give him, but that's hardly great acting, and it's weird to think a man who would play such a specific type onscreen (and be nominated for nine Oscars in the process) won his second Academy Award for such a nothing performance.

OVP: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Film: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff

Director: Victor Fleming

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Frank Morgan)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The concept of an "art film" has changed dramatically throughout film history.  Film historians differ about the definition of what an art film is, and it's a loose term, but by-and-large what we think of an art film as today is some variation on both its funding (usually they are independent movies), and frequently are told in a nonlinear or atypical fashion.  Prominent modern filmmakers that come to mind with the term include Terrence Malick, Bong Joon-Ho, Lars von Trier, Jonathan Glazer, Kelly Reichardt, & Darren Aronofsky.  Classical Hollywood wasn't really focused on avant-garde or art films, and as a a result when sound was introduced into movies, most of what we might classify modern art films as didn't really exist, especially in the 1940's in studio system.  In Italy & France at the time they were experimenting with these ideas (think Children of Paradise, Open City, or Bicycle Thieves), and certainly Powell & Pressburger were achieving something similar to what would eventually be an art house film with Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.  But even films like Brief Encounter which altered our expectations of what movie stars will look like or what we'd expect on a screen (by having actors that look like "ordinary people") still followed relatively conventional habits throughout the 1940's.  That being said, occasionally Hollywood will introduce some aspects (perhaps on purpose, perhaps considering the very conventional if talented director of this movie, by chance), and Tortilla Flat is a movie that reads as more "art house" to someone like me (who has seen a lot of major studio cinema of the 1940's) than I'm used to getting from a place like MGM.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tortilla Flat is based on a novel by John Steinbeck and it's about a group of men, one of whom is named Danny (Garfield) inherits two houses in a poor California town.  This is a huge step up for he and his friends, principally Pilon (Tracy), who were basically homeless, and in Danny's case, in jail, prior to the movie starting.  They enjoy the trappings of this more comfortable lifestyle, with Pilon being a bit of a scoundrel (I don't know that I've ever seen Spencer Tracy, sturdy & solid American movie star, play a character who for large swaths of the film is a total jackass before Tortilla Flat).  Danny falls in love with a local girl named Dolores (Lamarr), who wants a steadier man than he is, but after an accident that nearly kills Danny (and in the novel by Steinbeck, does), they realize they were made for each other, in part due to Pilon praying to the statue of St. Francis.  The movie ends with both of Danny's houses having burned down, the first by accident, the second on purpose, and all of Danny's crew now back to where they started, but Danny, the best of them, having escaped & started a new life with his bride.

Okay, so that's what the movie is about on paper, but it's not remotely as conventional as that.  For starters, there's virtually no consistent conflict.  While there are arguments between Dolores & Danny especially, it doesn't seem to really be about anything, and though Garfield was a pretty big name at the time (and Danny is the most important character in the film's structure), he disappears for extended periods of the film.  It's hard to exactly describe, but Tortilla Flat defies convention by not really being about what it's showing at its center (the relationship between Danny & Dolores), but instead about a journey of faith from Pilon, and without saying it, him changing his morality (even though it's rarely remarked upon by characters other than a priest played by Henry O'Neil who is barely in the movie).

Perhaps the best illustration of how this is strange is Frank Morgan's character.  He plays a man named Pirate (not, in fact, a pirate no capitalization), who is a sweet old man who spends most of his time caring for a group of devoted dogs (one of which worked with Fleming in a different, more famous film, where she was called Toto).  Pilon expects that Pirate is hiding money in the woods, and tries to trick him out of the money, but in a twist for the film, Pilon is right-Pirate is sitting on a gold mine in the woods, but he intends on using all of his money to buy a candlestick for St. Francis because he prayed to him once to save a favorite dog (who then lived).  After this happens, Pirate has an epiphany & shows the dogs what appears to be a religious vision of St. Francis in the woods, as a thank you for the new candlestick.  It's as weird as it sounds...this is such an odd plot in a film from a studio not known for risks, and with very conventional leading stars.  I struggle to know how to rate Tortilla Flat in part because I don't know what it's about, because it's basically about nothing (and it's not good at that), but it's a film I'd recommend if you are into curiosities like this, and Morgan is good in this role-this is a strange Oscar nomination, but not an unworthy one.

OVP: Fury (1936)

Film: Fury (1936)

Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Walter Brennan

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Sylvia Sidney-click here to learn more about Ms. Sidney (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles. 

We will give Sylvia Sidney her due in a second & kick off her month below, but I cannot ignore the fact that this film feels weirdly prescient immediately after watching it.  I tend to write these articles, especially "Saturdays with the Stars" weeks, if not occasionally months, in advance of when they publish (I have only missed one Saturday in two years, and I had pneumonia & 103-degree fever when that happened, and I am not breaking that streak again).  As a result, I watched Fury days after the terrorist attack on the Capitol on January 6th.  I suspect (and hope) that is not old news for you even though it was a month ago that it happened (I would like to think that such an attack on democracy would not wither out of the news cycle so quickly), but it's bizarre to watch a film like this after such an attack, as it's really, really similar in some ways to what happened on January 6th.

(Spoilers Ahead) Here's what I mean.  We have a film about a guy-named-Joe (Tracy, and oh god, I just realized the main character is named Joe).  He's in love with a girl named Katherine (Sidney) and for reasons that aren't really clear, they have to spend a year apart.  As Joe is returning to Katherine, whom he is engaged to & will soon marry, he is stopped (by Walter Brennan in a small role, and why is it that I can never tell how old Walter Brennan is supposed to be?), and accused of the kidnapping of a child that has taken place nearby.  Joe fits the description of the kidnapper, specifically his love of peanuts, and is arrested.  The townspeople catch word of Joe, and start gossiping, working themselves up into a fury, eventually creating a mob that storms a government (based on lies that they've heard about Joe), and destroy the building, with no regard for whether or not the lies are true, or if Joe is actually guilty.

Eerie, right?  The rest of the film obviously isn't as connected to real life, as it turns out that Joe is really alive, but wants revenge, and lets the townspeople go to trial for his murder, but is convinced by Katherine (when she understands he's still alive), to free them before they're convicted of murder & hanged.  The film itself is good, but I'll admit right now it's too close to reality for me to be able to judge it properly.  I'm going with three stars because it's compelling (I was screaming at one point at the screen), and Tracy is solid in the lead, but the ending is disappointing (Fritz Lang hated the ending, as it pretty much exonerates the townspeople for their hand in Joe's attempted murder), and I was honestly so shocked by the similarities it threw me off from appreciating the film properly.

I don't want to neglect Sylvia Sidney here, as we only have four Saturday's in a short month to be able to invest in her.  In 1936, when Fury was made, she was just coming off of a divorce after a marriage to Bennett Cerf (if you've ever watched old reruns of What's My Line? you know who Cerf is), and was a pretty big deal.  She'd largely taken over the perch at Paramount that Clara Bow had once sat in, despite the two actresses having little in common in their onscreen personas, and was smartly playing opposite a lot of major leading men of the era, stoking her popularity in the process (audiences were enamored with her saucer-like eyes).  It was about this time that she started to become the most highly-paid woman in Hollywood, though her position at that perch was short-lived.  Sidney's a weird actress to profile for this series, as I alluded to when we kicked off our month devoted to her as she was very famous for a brief period of time (essentially just 1936 & 1937), and then took long sabbaticals from acting that were broken up by memorable movies.  This month we're going to just focus on those two years, but tell as much of her story as possible.  Here, she's serviceable-her character is badly written (as is much of the third act, which is where she gets a lot of her screen-time), but she has enough of a glow to her that I'm curious what she'll be like as we move into next week, and one of her biggest classics.

OVP: Broken Lance (1954)

Film: Broken Lance (1954)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, Jean Peters, Richad Widmark, Katy Jurado
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actress-Katy Jurado, Motion Picture Story*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We shall continue on our look at the writing categories at the Oscars with Broken Lance.  The Best Motion Picture Story category would disappear in the mid-1950's, but not before it gave a few nominations to some movies that are largely forgotten now, one of which is today's picture.  Broken Lance was a remake of the 1949 film House of Strangers, which starred Edward G. Robinson & Susan Hayward, but in some ways it's more a reimagining of King Lear.  The film features a then-ascendant Robert Wagner, who was in the early throes of movie stardom, and Spencer Tracy, who at the time was at the tail-end of his lucrative years at MGM (this film was a loan to Fox, and Tracy would be an independent player within two years of this movie's release despite at one point being the most valuable man on the lot).  Let's give it a look, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Matthew Devereaux (Tracy) and his four sons, three of whom are from his first marriage, including the most prominent of the three Ben (Widmark), and a fourth Joe (Wagner) is from his second marriage to Senora Devereaux (Jurado, and no she doesn't get a real name).  The three brothers from the first marriage are tired of living under their father's tyrannical control, and want access to his money & cattle ranch, particularly to modernize it.  Joe, his favorite, is the only one who still sees his father with respect, and so when his father leads a raid on the mine offices that are poisoning his river & killing his cattle, Joe takes the fall knowing it'll kill his father to be in prison.  While Joe's away, Ben & the brothers begin to out-maneuver & rebel against their father, causing their father to have a fatal stroke.  In the end, Joe, who wants nothing to do with the ranch, is nearly killed by Ben who doesn't believe that his younger brother has no designs on the family fortune, and in the process Ben dies, with Joe thus taking up his father's place, ending the feud within the family.

The movie is heavy-handed, and too short, a complaint I don't often give, especially to movies I didn't particularly like.  The flick glosses past some of the relationship between Joe and the rest of the family-there's too few scenes establishing his animosity with both the brothers and with the community at-large, who view him with suspicion because he is biracial (Jurado, his mother in the film, is Mexican in real-life but is playing a Native American, cause, you know, the 1950's in Hollywood).  They also rush through the cattle raid portion of the film, which is a fatal error in the plotting of the movie as it's so central to the back-half of the picture.  This is a rare case where the one Oscar win that the movie got arguably was in its least successful element.

The movie's other Oscar nomination was for actress Katy Jurado, the only one in her career. Jurado was the rare woman-of-color in the 1950's to have sustained success, and one could make an argument that her nomination here was a "makeup award" for her iconic turn in High Noon (which won her a Golden Globe, but somehow left her out of the Best Supporting Actress race with AMPAS).  Here, though, she does nothing with the role.  The part is basically just there for her to dote on Spencer Tracy, and repeatedly tell him to be easier on his three elder sons.  She's in only a few scenes of the film, and there's nothing there other than long-suffering wife.  The writers don't give her anything to do, and the director doesn't have time to let her establish a stereotypical role.  As a result, this is a wasted nomination on an actress who deserved a better role to be highlighted by the Academy.

OVP: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Film: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin
Director: John Sturges
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We are continuing on our look at the Best Actor field this week with a trip somewhere between Babes in Arms and Saturday Night Fever, to the mid-1950's.  The Academy Awards generally gets a crush on an actor and then it dissipates.  Even with legends like Olivia de Havilland or Barbara Stanwyck who continued working for decades, their nominations usually happened within a ten-year time frame.  But there are a couple of actors who just kept getting nominated for decades, and one of those performers was Spencer Tracy.  Tracy, one of the biggest stars on the MGM lot during the 1940's, kept getting prestige projects right up until his death (he was nominated for his final film role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).  When an actor does something like this, there are the legendary performances (Boys Town, Woman of the Year, Guess Who's...) and then there are nominations where it feels like they probably just skated into the nominations field, and that's what I've always considered Bad Day at Black Rock, arguably the least discussed of Tracy's nominations today (this despite it being nominated in three pretty big-tier categories at the time).  Today, though, it will take center stage as we look at Tracy's fifth Oscar nomination.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is really short (it's only 81 minutes long, which is weird for a Best Actor nominee post, say, the early 1930's).  It is about John Macready (Tracy), who has just come back from World War II in 1945 in a western desert town called Black Rock.  They make a point of acknowledging that the train has not stopped there in four years, and thus his entry into the town is surprising.  The town is very reluctant to welcome him, and are actively hostile despite him seeming pretty innocuous at first.  Of particular note is Smith (Ryan), who openly wants to kill Macready once he realizes that Macready is there to give the father of one of his fellow soldiers, a man named Komoko (a Japanese-American) a medal since Komoko's son saved Macready's life.  The only people who attempt to help Macready are Doc (Brennan) and a beautiful young girl named Liz (Francis), who quickly regrets the decision.

The film does a pretty good job of addressing the hatred that was inflicted on Japanese-Americans after the bombing in Pearl Harbor.  As the film continues, we learn that Komoko was burned in his house by Smith, who leased him a piece of land he knew to be barren...only to have Komoko find water on it & thus be able to farm it.  They murder him for his success, first by burning down his house (with him inside), and then shooting him when he escapes.  Smith has so many accomplices that inevitably one will crack, but Macready manages to stop him before he kills too many of them (except Liz), and get the man arrested.

The film isn't bad, though it's not great.  You're not going to hear this complaint from me very often, but the movie is too short.  The animosity that Robert Ryan's character instantly shares toward Tracy's Macready feels weird-like they've spent years expecting to get caught, and are just way too suspicious about a dormant murder.  It also doesn't allow us to really differentiate between a pretty stellar supporting cast (Borgnine, Jagger, Marvin), with only Walter Brennan (as always, playing Water Brennan) seeming to stand out.  I kept thinking weirdly of a rather obscure Hungarian film called 1945, which has a similar idea behind it (a town that has a terrible war crime secret), but it unfolds so much better, and thus proves that Bad Day could be a true classic (see 1945 immediately if you haven't as it's unbelievable).

The film's three nominations therefore are a bit misguided if not unwarranted.  The best of the bunch is Director, as it's taut-this is a movie with no fat, even if it could use some for flavor, but the camerawork is excellent, and I loved the showdown scene & use of the expansive outdoors to give us a sense of isolation.  Tracy's performance is sturdy but dull-if you've read this blog for a while you know that Tracy's not an actor I really enjoy, and this is a good example why-there's nothing other than "silent hero" in his Macready, and compared with an actor who adds so much flavor to his performances like Ryan (or a scene-stealer such as Brennan), I have to assume this was a default nomination even if you enjoy Tracy as a rule.  The script is the least of the three, because it's too short-there's too much exposition to try to make up for the lack of time, and it suffers with so many of the townspeople feeling interchangeable.

OVP: Libeled Lady (1936)

Film: Libeled Lady (1936)
Stars: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly
Director: Jack Conway
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jean Harlow-click here to learn more about Ms. Harlow (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the mid-1930's, Jean Harlow was one of the biggest stars in America.  On the MGM lot, she was worth more to the studio by the time that Libeled Lady came out than Joan Crawford or Norma Shearer, the two women who had basically bankrolled the company for years.  She had managed to float her way through two husbands since the last time we had discussed her in Red Dust, and was at the time madly in love with William Powell, who would be her costar in the film.  The movie would be a gargantuan hit for MGM, making nearly $3 million at the Box Office during the height of the Depression, and further cementing Harlow as the most valuable asset on the MGM lot.  As we're about to see, though, that distinction would be (to pardon the expression) short-lived.  But first, Libeled Lady.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is basically one of those madcap screwball comedies that went extinct the second Cary Grant met Alfred Hitchcock, but it's a pip.  Jean Harlow plays Gladys, a frequently jilted bride whose fiancé Warren (Tracy) is constantly putting his newspaper's needs ahead of hers.  In the opening scenes, we find out that his paper has printed a libelous lawsuit about Connie Allenbury (Loy), the daughter of his rival newspaper's chief James Allenbury (Connolly).  Connie sues Warren's paper for $5 million, but he can't afford to pay this kind of money, so he enlists the help of famed lothario Bill Chandler (Powell) to woo Connie after marrying Gladys in a sham marriage, so it looks like Connie has been romancing another woman's husband.  The problems ensue when both Connie AND Gladys fall for Bill's line, while Bill only loves Connie.  The film's final moments are a series of coincidences and one ups-manship, with ultimately Gladys ending up back with Warren and Connie & Bill reunited despite their differences.

Libeled Lady is marvelous.  It's hard to judge because when you put Powell & Loy together you expect The Thin Man (though they actually made 14 movies together in their time in the spotlight), and this isn't quite as sparkling as that, but it's hard to compare any movie to The Thin Man.  The film is hilarious, with some great physical comedy and some ace comedic work.  It's a testament to Harlow that put against an acting titan like Tracy, and two Grade-A comedians such as Loy & Powell that she pretty much steals the picture as the "dumb blonde who isn't so dumb."  As a result, I kind of loved Libeled Lady in a way I wasn't expecting-this is the sort of film I'd probably give a 4.5 star rating to (but we don't do halves here), but as there are parts where the one-liners could have popped a little bit more, I'm going to lean to four stars, though I reserve the right to change my mind about that in the future.

The movie would, sadly, be one of the last high-water marks of Harlow's career.  She would make just two more pictures, Personal Property and Saratoga, both big hits, before she died in 1937 from kidney failure at the age of only 26.  Because of her youth and beauty, and how we never got to see her grow old, urban legends still persist about Harlow (chiefly that she died as a result of the hair dye that created the platinum blonde look she'd make iconic, though this has been proven to be false).  As we've found this month, though, there was a really good comedienne and actress beyond those famous locks, and it's a pity for us all that we didn't get to see what her growing power at MGM might have meant for her future career-perhaps some of the star turns that still awaited her fellow MGM players Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo could have been hers?  We will never know.  Next month, we'll spring ahead into the 1940's to take a look at a different starlet, one who was just as blonde as Harlow, but it was two other assets that insured her immortal status in Classical Hollywood.

OVP: Boom Town (1940)

Film: Boom Town (1940)
Stars: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill, Chill Wills
Director: Jack Conway
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Special Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Hedy Lamarr's career in Hollywood was hitting its stride by 1940, and indeed she was about to have a massive run of hits for MGM before her contract would expire in 1945.  Lamarr, frequently written into parts that would tailor to her unmatched beauty, here managed to be in one of the biggest moneymakers of her career opposite two of the biggest stars on the MGM lot (Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy) as well as an actress of major acclaim who had just left a lucrative contract at Paramount to make a play as a freelancer (Colbert).  Lamarr, as a result, is someone who is getting top billing but nonetheless isn't getting a part that probably warrants it.  That being said, Boom Town is a pretty fun film even if it's not a leading showcase for Lamarr, and one that puts together two stars who proved six years earlier for Columbia that they were a pair-to-be-reckoned with.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around the on-again-off-again friendship & working relationship of two oil men who start the film largely down-on-their-luck: Big John (Gable) and Square John (Tracy).  Both men have dreams of striking it big, and between Big John's know-how and Square John's land purchase in the middle-of-nowhere, they begin to strike it rich.  However, Square John wants to marry a girl that he left home, but when she comes to town, Betsy (Colbert) in fact falls for Big John, not Square John, and they elope.  This sets off a rivalry between the two men as they see their fortunes ebb-and-flow, clearly in love with the same woman.  The back-half of the movie centers around Big John, who has gotten egotistical and is having an affair with a woman named Karen (Lamarr), who feeds him insider information about the oil game as she hears it (in the way that beautiful women always hear everything).  Square John essentially tries to destroy Big John's company in hopes of making him go back to Betsy, his love for her overcoming his own need to be with her, and it works.  In the end both men find themselves broke, trying to find another oil fortune, and Betsy is happy living with them on the frontier.

The film is fun, if admittedly way-too-long.  The picture was nominated for Best Cinematography, which feels a bit of a stretch for a movie so conventional, and for Best Special Effects-both of these nominations come from one extended sequence where one of the oil derricks is on fire, and we have to see the two biggest stars on the MGM lot put it out with nitroglycerine.  It's a thrilling sequence, one that likely required a great deal of visual trickery as well as pragmatic effects, but the rest of the movie is devoid of such technical creativity, relying instead on movie star magic to fill in the gaps, so it's likely the film's gargantuan box office that reminded AMPAS to include it for such honors.

That said, I liked Boom Town a lot-Colbert & Gable, in strangely the only re-teaming they ever did after It Happened One Night, are electric and lovely together, pretty much stealing the picture.  The pickup scene recalls some of their best chemistry, and while Colbert's character has some eye-rolling moments in terms of the film's feminism, overall I enjoyed their relationship; it wasn't perfect, but it was real & we see sides of the marriage that usually disappear behind the end credits sign.

The shoot wasn't a great one for Lamarr.  While she enjoyed Gable, she and Tracy didn't get along at all (Tracy spent most of the shoot moping about getting second-billing to Gable-the two would never make another film together as a result).  There's a scene in the movie where Tracy pushes Lamarr's chest where Lamarr looks visibly upset, and pushes away; apparently he was actually hurting her and she was angry about the way he was treating her while the cameras were rolling.  Despite her success in Algiers, Lamarr needed a hit here as MGM had been giving her crap since then, and she got it-Boom Town got her enough clout to ensure leading roles for years (though some would argue she'd squander that clout, given that she'd soon be turning down Laura and Gaslight which are now considered classics).  Either way, Lamarr's terrific in an underwritten role.  She doesn't show up until over an hour into the picture, but I loved her in it-she takes the "other woman" and makes her genuinely likable, someone that you don't want to break up the central marriage, but honestly hope will end up with a nice guy, as she's much smarter than the men that she's helping get to the top.  Some of the moxie that I enjoyed in Ecstasy finally finds its way into this movie.  Next week, our last with Lamarr, we'll go toward the tail-end of her time in the spotlight with an even bigger hit than Boom Town, and in fact one of the biggest (inflation-adjusted) grossers of all time.

OVP: Mannequin (1938)

Film: Mannequin (1938)
Stars: Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Mary Philips
Director: Frank Borzage
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Always and Always")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the biggest problems with the concept of a movie star is that it takes longer for me, as an avid film-watcher, to connect with the actor or actors onscreen as someone other than the movie star.  When I see Reese Witherspoon, for example, I don't see her as a character at the beginning of a film-I see her as "Reese Witherspoon-Movie Star."  It's only later in the film, as I become immersed in the story, that she becomes Tracy Flick or Elle Woods or June Carter Cash.  This is particularly difficult and striking for older film stars, as they have never been anything other than movie stars to me (whereas I remember the moment that Reese Witherspoon started to become famous).

(Spoilers Ahead) This was a particular problem for me during the movie Mannequin, with two of the most iconic stars of Classical Hollywood at the center, Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy.  At this point in their careers Crawford had been famous for over a decade, Tracy was about to take his first Oscar, and both were major headliners, so having them together is a bit of a moment (this is the only film they ever starred together in), but the film itself asks that, particularly with Crawford, that she be a character that's down-on-her-luck and just some sweet girl from Hester Street that wants to find a way out of her terrible life.

The problem lies in the fact that modern audiences never really ever buy that Joan Crawford is anything other than Joan Crawford, Grade-A movie star and longtime star of the silver screen.  Crawford is one of my favorite actors, to be sure, but she's always at her best playing someone that conceivably could be Joan Crawford-a movie star or heiress, or at least someone with nerves of steal who is willing to do what it takes to survive.  Here we have her in Mannequin, surely self-sufficient as Jessie, but trying to be a girly girl who wants to be whisked away and is smitten with a low-life scum even if she's clearly meant for bigger and better things.  Crawford was 33 at the time, hardly an ingenue anymore even if she's supposed to play one and while she gives it her all (Crawford was always the consummate movie star, never letting things like bad material get in the way of a potential dose of spotlight), she's never really believable as this down-on-her-luck worker.  It's hard to believe that she'd be willing to settle for her louse of a first husband Eddie (Curtis), or that she couldn't convince Spencer Tracy that she loved him unconditionally as the film progressed.

This lack of believability hurts the movie immensely, particularly since without it all we have is Crawford's strong movie star chops.  I've talked on here multiple times about my dislike of Spencer Tracy, and while he's usually slightly better as a romantic lead than a dramatic one, he can't quite compete with Crawford (she feels too good for him too), and his behavior seems more about conquering her and less about being in love with her.  The movie feels terribly slight-the title itself is a reference only to a quick throwaway scene where Crawford is modeling, though she does get a good aside in about lingerie-and the nomination for Best Original Song falls into that category.  "Always and Always" is a trite little number that Crawford and Tracy dance to twice in the movie, including a scene where Crawford sings to him, but it's a bit slow and not at all memorable.  Much like this picture.

Those are my thoughts on this movie, but I'm curious about yours.  This was a relatively successful film during one of the bleaker portions of Crawford's career-anyone want to defend it, or are we all fine saying it's mediocre, and she's the best part?  Does anyone else think it's weird that two films named Mannequin were Oscar-nominated for Best Song (and only Best Song)?  And if you haven't seen it, can someone tell me what movie am I finally going to love Spencer Tracy in?  He's nominated for nine Oscars-he must have deserved it for one of them, right?!?

OVP: Edward, My Son (1949)

Film: Edward, My Son (1949)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr, Ian Hunter, Mervyn Johns, Leueen MacGrath
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Deborah Kerr)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have never quite gotten the Academy's fascination with one Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (yes, that is somehow his middle name-who would have thought with such boring first and surnames that his parents would go all sorts of obscure Catholic saint on his middle)?  Tracy's films are of course in the Academy's wheelhouse (stoic dramas and sappy issue pictures), but there are just SO many of them and I am stunned the public was so into him so consistently for decades on end considering he's a relatively mundane presence and his only really great attribute is that he gives a fine soliloquy (he's one of those actors who seemed perfect for the stage, but the cinema just feels less matinee when he's on it).  Either way, here we have yet another of Tracy's many, many Oscar-nominated films, though at least it isn't Tracy amassing to his seismic nominations count and instead his British costar Deborah Kerr added to her impressive one.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on the successful play by Donald Ogden Stewart, the movie is the story of Arnold Boult and his wife Evelyn, who have recently had a child and are living in a relatively modest existence, but are happy and love each other.  As the film progresses, Arnold's ventures in business become more corrupt but insanely successful, but as a result his child is spoiled and his wife becomes increasingly unhappy, to the point where they both start up affairs (though in Evelyn's case it's more emotional than physical).  The film goes on with Evelyn eventually going to the bottle and dying (and having an hilarious little hair-and-makeup moment where she suddenly ages 900 years from indulging in the bottle-the producers kind of went bombastic), and with Edward eventually dying as well after performing a stunt without permission and then killing his crew in the Air Force, Arnold is forced to finally have a reckoning with his life.

The film is striking in very few ways, but one of the ways it is how it ends, actually.  The film is drab and dull, and the performances are overcooked, but the ending is actually quite interesting, and in some ways resembles the way Rod Sterling would have ended the film.  When Arnold discovers that his son had a child out of wedlock, he tries initially to spoil the child and find it and make it a replacement to Edward.  However, a friend of his, who knows where the child is, refuses because he doesn't want the child to end up like Edward.  After this altercation Arnold ends up in jail, and in most films, he would have had his comeuppance after having his son and wife die, along with going to the pokey, but here the film actually has him continuing to not see the err in his ways, wanting to find his lost grandchild and spoil it by giving it "everything it needs."  It's the sort of ending that clearly feels cribbed from the harsher universe of the theater rather than the calmer, warmer cinema where he would have had a less indulgent parenting style with the child.

This is the only thing to lend itself to the film.  There are moments in Deborah Kerr's nominated performance, especially in the middle when she's trying to find a balance between her newfound wealth and stature and her struggles with her husband's failing morality that feel like it might make the picture more special, but as the film progresses and the ladylike Kerr is forced to become a raging, aging alcoholic she cannot seem to muster such a performance and it feels dangerously close to histrionics.  She's still more interesting than Tracy, but I think that's just because I like Kerr in general and not Tracy in general, so all things being even she's going to win.  As it is, though, Kerr is hardly at her finest here and cannot save the film which is overly preachy and cannot sustain the plot.  Also, I get why they didn't cast anyone to play Edward (he's always off-screen both in the movie and play), but it feels more gimmicky than neat, and as a result I feel like they might have gained if we had an Edward to project upon since the script doesn't feel rich enough to carry his absence.

Those are my thoughts on this late 1940's film.  Anyone want to rush to its defense?  I greatly favored Olivia de Havilland's excellent work in The Heiress, but does someone want to make the case that this is the film Kerr deserved her elusive Oscar for?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

OVP: The Actress (1953)

Film: The Actress (1953)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

You may not have realized this because I haven't said anything and we're already four days into the festival, but the Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days of Oscar is one of my most hallowed Academy Awards traditions.  Every year like clockwork I make my list of all of the missing OVP films that Netflix/the studios (it's case-by-case on whom to blame there) haven't released on DVD and that I can't get delivered to my apartment, and though I always have failed, I try my darndest to keep up with the rigorous schedule.  This year I have no illusions that it will be a challenge, but my goal is to not have any of the (100 or so-eek!) movies that are on my DVR slip quietly into the night without either seeing them or finding a different way to get my hands on them while I make room for the new (100 or so-double eek!) movies that TCM is throwing down my pipe.  That is how we chance upon this little-discussed Jean Simmons dramedy from the early 1950's based on the life of future Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon.  I'm hoping you enjoy obscure film reviews (I know I do) because the blog is going to be filling up with them pretty darn fast over the next few weeks.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, as I mentioned, is based on the very early life of Ruth Gordon, long before she became a great writer (even penning Spencer Tracy's classic Adam's Rib) and become the antichrist's wet nurse (if you don't get that reference you really need to see more movies).  The film follows her as she has a domineering father (Tracy) and a doting but troubled mother (Wright-and I cannot believe that they managed to make Teresa Wright look so believably old in this film despite only being about 35-kudos to the makeup and hair team) and tries to convince them to support her love of acting and quest to become a great star on the stage.  Her father wants her to do something more practical, like become a gym teacher, while her mother wants her to get married to her nice boyfriend Fred (Perkins, in his screen debut).  But Ruth wants to act, and is willing to go to great lengths and make great sacrifices to get there.

The interesting thing about The Actress is where it was positioned in Ruth Gordon's actual career and the way that sort of reflects the bitter anguish of the film (the ending of the movie has Tracy forced to sell his beloved spyglass after losing his job but still wanting to send his daughter to New York City to pursue her dream).  While Gordon would have some success earlier in her career (most notably playing Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Raymond Massey in Abe Lincoln in Illinois), it wasn't until after The Actress that she actually made her biggest impact in the cinema, eventually in the late 1960's (when most actresses would be in their twilight years) winning an Oscar for Rosemary's Baby, another nomination for Inside Daisy Clover, and legions of fans as Maude Chardin in the beloved Harold and Maude.  In 1953, Gordon's career had been a success not as an actress, but as a writer, winning three Oscar nominations and writing several of the classic Tracy-Hepburn films.

This adds an extra level to what Jean Simmons is doing as her Ruth, because we assume that she actually won't get to be Hazel Dawn, her idol, and instead will have to settle for a different vocation, one that may bring her even more joy and would allow for her to find the love of her life, but isn't the dream that she wanted for herself as a child.  Simmons plays the part excellently, perhaps the first time I've ever really gravitated toward her in a film (before I'd kind of gotten a "stodgy" vibe from the actress).  I love the way that her confidence exceeds her ability, and the way that she has written so many plays and acts for herself-her greatest part is herself, which is a meta-joke considering Gordon wrote this particular film about herself.  Tracy and Wright are both fine as her parents, though Tracy could probably do this part in his sleep and doesn't get the wit that he had in some of his other collaborations with Cukor and Gordon (this is more bluster).  All-in-all, a good film made more interesting by the back story.  And the costumes were a nice touch, even if there isn't really anything particularly special going on aside from putting Jean Simmons in a parade of bows and hats (though if you've ever wanted to see Norman Bates unironically sporting a fur coat that feels like it's straight out of Liberace's closet, you cannot pass this movie up).  The rest of the costume work is a series of too-fashionable dresses that feel well outside of the budget of Ruth, particularly with her penny-pinching father.  Random trivia about the nomination, though: Walter Plunkett was nominated twice that year for outfitting Jean Simmons, also gaining a citation for Young Bess.  He ended up losing, however, to Edith Head with Roman Holiday-clearly Plunkett should have gone with Audrey Hepburn.

Those are my thoughts on the film.  What about you-has anyone seen The Actress, and wants to weigh in on its quality and costumes?  If not, what about Ruth Gordon and Jean Simmons, both big actresses in their days who have gotten a little lost in the pop culture shuffle?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: A Guy Named Joe (1943)

Film: A Guy Named Joe (1943)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Ward Bond, James Gleason, Lionel Barrymore, Esther Williams
Director: Victor Fleming
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Sometimes a film is more about the backstory, at least a classic one is, for me.  While A Guy Named Joe made it onto my viewing docket mostly because it was nominated for an Academy Award, my familiarity with it was not in regard to it randomly losing a trophy to Going My Way, but instead due to some of the behind-the-scenes tension that it elicited, particularly the famed car accident involving Van Johnson that caused a delay in the film's production (a delay which helped launch Van Johnson's career as he was a newbie at the time and the studio wanted to replace him-when Spencer Tracy said no, Johnson got to keep the part and became a headliner as a result of this film) and the famed feud between Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne (who adamantly disliked each other).  The actual film itself isn't nearly as interesting as the stories behind it, in fact, though it does keep an air of mystery that's rare in a romantic drama over what direction the ending will head.

(Spoilers Ahead) I think what made me dislike the film is that the movie is predicated in large part on who "owns" Irene Dunne's heart, and while this is true of a lot of romantic triangles (in fact, it's the basis of all of them), I really didn't like Tracy or Johnson's characters, and that's crucial to the plot of the film as you're meant to like them both.  Johnson's ace pilot is a little too green to believably fall for the more world-weary Dunne, a woman who has already had her heart broken and is clearly much older than Johnson (she was actually 18 years his senior in real life, and it shows in the way that she practically looks like his mother onscreen).  Tracy's Pete is a much better match, age-wise (he was two years younger than Dunne, for the record), but his personality and the way that he's meant to be a type of guardian angel and yet hasn't gained much perspective (frequently sabotaging Dunne's Dorinda in her quest to get over him and find happiness) is off-putting.  The film's focus would more smartly be on him trying to convince her to move on, but the fact that the basis of the movie is on him ruining her relationship with Johnson's Ted made me like him a lot less.

Still, there are occasionally scenes that make it worth the wait for this picture (particularly the climactic scene where Dunne herself is forced to go up into the cockpit and flies the plane), but they're few-and-far between and at two hours it pushes its luck, patience wise, by a solid thirty minutes.  I wish they would have pursued a little bit more the odd conundrum of the movie, particularly since Pete exists in heaven, and perhaps that should be his end goal-to get Dorinda to stay with him in spirit until they can meet up for the eternity.  This feels like A) a solid question for a movie of that time and B) actually a genuinely interesting idea for a movie in general, as I don't know that I've seen it and kind of wish Golden Age Hollywood would have done it as it would be relegated to a Christian-only studio somewhere at this rate.  As it stands now, the movie is pretty dull, and I find it odd that it made it into the writing category for the Oscar nomination and not something like sound (considering the persistent airplanes overhead) as its story is only interesting in a two-sentence description and not in actual execution.

Those are all of my thoughts on the film (it's pretty straight-forward, and not even the three movie star leads add much in terms of great panache), but hopefully you can spur some conversation in the comments.  Have you seen A Guy Named Joe, and if so weigh in on the love triangle, the behind-the-scenes drama, and whether or not this deserved an Oscar nomination.  And if not, at least let's hear about a favorite performance you have of Tracy, Dunne, or Johnson!

OVP: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Film: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, Roy E. Glenn, Cecil Kellaway
Director: Stanley Kramer
Oscar History: 10 nominations/2 wins (Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Actress-Katharine Hepburn*, Supporting Actor-Cecil Kellaway, Supporting Actress-Beah Richards, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing, Art Direction, Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Sometimes when you're watching a movie you have to continually remind yourself that it was made almost fifty years ago.  The reality is that ideas in movies, particularly in films that were important socially, frequently become outdated and provincial the further you get from the issue.  The public evolves, and what was once groundbreaking no longer seems that way in the eyes of the audience.  It's why arguably the best social issue films are those that are as honest as possible, and in many ways skirt making it about "the issue" (Brokeback Mountain, for example, is hardly a "social issue" film at all, becoming more of a romance and a film simply about prejudice in general, which is something that unfortunately never seems to disappear).  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner doesn't have this foresight, instead focusing on the there-and-now.  That is forgivable (not all films have to be omnipotent) but seeing a dated plot combined with overacting and a script that can't decide whether it's funny or wants to have something serious to say is not forgivable, and this, one of the last four AFI's 100 Years films I had to see (I'll be done with the list in the next couple months or so-and yes, I picked a better-respected film to end the list), was a large disappointment considering its vaunted status as a film classic.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows John (Poitier) and Joanna (Houghton) as they decide to introduce themselves (they have recently been engaged) to their parents.  Joanna's parents Christina (Hepburn) and Matt (Tracy) are at first comically dumbfounded, and then after a while have a serious worry about the future of their daughter and her intended.  The same could be said for John's parents (Glenn and Richards).  In both cases the women are given to a more romantic impulsiveness while the men have a more practical sensibility.  The film continues with the same repeated argument over their happiness vs. their personal safety/future, before we get to the inevitable conclusion, with Matt providing a speech about how his love for Christina being a strong model for why the two should in fact get married.

The film is ridiculous for about every reason imaginable, but the first giant elephant in the room is that John and Joanna shouldn't get married, but it has absolutely nothing to do with race.  These two met each other eleven days prior, have a fourteen-year age gap, and have very few shared experiences.  Those are all perfectly reasonable objections, and one wonders why they made the story about them so impulsive-couldn't she have know him for a year or something like that?  I'm surprised in the entirety of the film that no one used that as a reason to object to the union-they haven't made it through an entire lunar cycle together, which is a sign that marriage should be off of the table.  The entire film seems predicated on the only objection being the race of the two individuals, when in fact that (even in 1967) shouldn't remotely be at the top of the list of parents should worry over.

The film also makes painstaking points to make the film more palatable to all audiences, but in the process declaws the entire film and makes it decidedly uninteresting.  The first is that Matt and Christina, the director insists, are not going to remotely be coming at this from a position of prejudice.  Perhaps Stanley Kramer wanted to play the Avenue Q "everyone's a little bit racist" card here, but it never comes across that way-we never seem to see Matt and Christina object because John is black, but only because their daughter and he will have a hard life.  It would have been more interesting if they'd spent some time with Matt focusing on the fact that if John were white, he'd be thrilled by the match.  And that's the other thing to take issue with in this movie-John is too perfect.  He's a wildly decorated medical doctor, frequently making trips to foreign countries to help needy children, an upstanding widower who is willing to sacrifice his own personal happiness for Joanna.  Forget the fact that he's too good for his flighty, impetuous fiance-he's too good for anyone.  I'm surprised Kate Hepburn didn't try to marry him herself.  The fact that they made him flawless helps the argument of why they should get married, but once again it sacrifices the real, which makes issue films dated-realism is key, and even if an issue becomes more for the history books than the headlines, a film will still be relevant if it remains honest.  Having John play the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Guy is not doing that.

The film received ten Oscar nominations, a staggering number, though it's hard to explain why in hindsight.  The score is saccharine and overwrought, the screenplay has trouble with tone and consistently contradicts itself, the editing is nothing special (the most impressive part of it is the way that it tries to hide Spencer Tracy's clearly debilitating health), and the art direction is just a lush San Francisco home.  The film received a quartet of acting nominations, and I can't quite decide which one I support the most.  Arguably the most intriguing is Cecil Kellaway's as a family friend of Matt's who is trying to convince him the match is a sound one.  Kellaway, who had been nominated for an Oscar nineteen years earlier, is quite charming as a priest with a fondness for the bottle and who doesn't see what the hoopla is about, and while he's not giving great acting, his is the only comic portion of the film that doesn't feel glib.  Beah Richards, who made a career out of playing every African-American actor in Hollywood's mother at some point in her career, gets one gigantic speech to Spencer Tracy late in the film that feels wholly out-of-character and completely off-kilter (it's arguably the most out-of-place scene in the film), and the rest of the time she just sits and reacts to things-the role is a trite one, and Richards' delivery adds nothing to the role.  It feels like a throwaway nomination in a weak year for that category (though a strong one everywhere else-1967 being one of cinema's best years) for a longtime character actress.

The leading pair is hard to judge.  You don't get much more storied than Spencer Tracy and Kate Hepburn, particularly when they're together, and it's hard not to be impressed by the incredible backstory of the making of this film (with Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer putting their salaries on the line to get the studio to back the making of the film, as Tracy was so ill that he died several dies after shooting ended).  The tears in the final soliloquy may be Kate's best most in the film, but it's hard not to see them as tears for Tracy, not for her fictional Matt.  Otherwise they are trading on their most indisputable talents (Hepburn's ability with timing and Tracy's Broadway-engrained stage presence) with little else to lend itself.  Hepburn could play this role in her sleep, and yet frequently doesn't seem to get the motives of her character.  Considering she was up against Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker and Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, two of the most iconic characters in the movies, it feels like sentiment won her that second Oscar more than anything else, as she's been far better before and is, while always watchable, boring and listless in this role.  Tracy, whom I have less of a passion for than Hepburn, seems to float too much from opinion-to-opinion, relying heavily on the disjointed script without making any sort of personal assumptions about his own character or trying to do some of the heavy lifting.  As a result his Matt is a contradiction, and not a good one.

We'll end there, but I'm hoping you have thoughts on this film, one of the few "classics" I've never seen but I'm guessing you have.  If so, share in the comments!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 2

This Article is part of a 15-Year Anniversary series commemorating the American Film Institute’s 25 Greatest Stars.  For the Actresses, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  For the Actors, click the number for Part 1.

I'm really enjoying this series, even if it's timeliness is questionable (I'm hoping you are too!).  Where last we left off, I had just finished discussing James Cagney's surprisingly high ranking on this list.  We're now going to discuss the next eight fellas on the list, going through their Oscar history, chief, fame, my favorite performances and the ones I've shamefully neglected (please play along with your own thoughts in the comments!).

9. Spencer Tracy (1900-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Tracy was one of the most beloved in the history of the Academy (he's probably the closest analogy to Meryl Streep amongst classic Hollywood, even better than Kate Hepburn or Bette Davis, since it seems like he ALWAYS was nominated, whereas Hepburn and Davis went through periods of their career where they missed).  He received nine nominations for Best Actor, winning for Captains Courageous and Boys Town.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being half of one of the most scandalous relationships in the history of Hollywood.  Though married, Tracy carried on a decades-long affair with actress Katharine Hepburn, to the point that they are generally considered one of Hollywood's most iconic couples, despite not discussing the relationship publicly during his lifetime.  Tracy was a bit of a cad, though, if we're being honest.  Amongst his other conquests were Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, and Gene Tierney.
My Favorite Performance: Hmm-I've seen only one of Tracy's nominated performances (his films, if you look at them collectively, are not what you'd call "in my wheelhouse").  I'd probably go with Woman of the Year, one of the better pairings between he and Kate.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I mean, I'm missing eight nominated performances-that's pretty damn glaring.  Probably toward the top of the list would be Judgment at Nuremberg and Inherit the Wind, though-both seem like classic Tracy "actorliness."

10. Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

Oscar Nominations: This is actually a bit tricky.  Chaplin won three Oscars in his career: one honorary one at the 1971 ceremony, a competitive one a year later for Original Dramatic Score for Limelight, and an Honorary Award at the very first Oscars for acting, writing, directing, and producing The Circus.  Chaplin received another trio of nominations, and possibly a fourth depending on if you count his nomination for Best Actor (which was later taken away) for The Circus.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential Silent Era star.  With his cane and mustache and waddle he's the definition of an icon-most of the populace hasn't seen a Charlie Chaplin movie, but few wouldn't recognize him going through the gears of Modern Times or eating a shoe in The Gold Rush or charming a girl in City Lights or even parodying Hitler in The Great Dictator.  He is an icon of the cinema.
My Favorite Performance: You just can't beat City Lights, and I don't know that anyone could try.  I frequently debate with myself what my favorite Silent film is, but City Lights is in the Top 3, if not the top spot period.  It's one of the most romantic movies ever made.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen three of his four "major" films, but have never gotten around to The Great Dictator, the only film that Chaplin officially received an Oscar nomination for acting for (he lost to Jimmy Stewart).

11. Gary Cooper (1901-1961)

Oscar Nominations: Cooper received five Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Sergeant York and High Noon.  Cooper also won a posthumous Honorary Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Looking super duper.  While Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Pride of the Yankees, and High Noon are genuine, recognizable classics, it was Cooper's mention in "Puttin' on the Ritz" that has entered the lexicon most fully.  Cooper also was one of several men on this list that had a notoriously long list of romantic conquests: Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and most famously (and tragically) Patricia Neal.
My Favorite Performance: I haven't seen High Noon in decades, and I remember not particularly caring for it when it first came out-I have a suspicion that would have changed quite a bit since then (I've seen clips enough to form that opinion), but I'll reserve that right until I re-view the film.  In the meantime, we'll stick with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Cooper and Tracy are not what you'd consider my favorite actors (along with Burt Lancaster, these are kind of the trio of actors from this era that I respect but don't love).  That said, I know that I need to get around to seeing The Pride of the Yankees at some point to see Cooper become the luckiest man on the face of the earth (does anyone else always picture Bill Pullman whenever that quote comes up?).

12. Gregory Peck (1916-2003)

Oscar Nominations: Peck received five Oscar nominations in his long career, winning for To Kill a Mockingbird.  He also won the Jean Hersholt in 1968.
Probably Best Known Today For: His commanding and calming presence in the film To Kill a Mockingbird.  His work as Atticus has been celebrated by generations of young adults investigating the novel by Harper Lee and then coming to the movie.  Peck was also known to a number of people for his political causes, being a strong advocate for gun control and against President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork for the Supreme Court (one of the rare Democrats on a list that is pretty Republican).
My Favorite Performance: I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird sort of has to be at the top of the list, doesn't it?  If not that, I've always been truly mesmerized by him in Spellbound and of course enchanted by him in Roman Holiday.  I will also take this opportunity to point out that I have long had a crush on young Gregory Peck (yes, it's the ears).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I would probably have to go with The Yearling, one of those rare genuine classics of childhood that my parents didn't have me watch.

13. John Wayne (1907-1979)

Oscar Nominations: 3 nominations (one for producing), he finally won in 1969 for True Grit (a film that would later garner Jeff Bridges an Oscar nomination as well).
Probably Best Known Today For: Being Hollywood's quintessential cowboy.  Few people were so perfectly typecast as John Wayne, an actor who was occasionally brilliant but always a star.  I would assume that if you asked my generation about Wayne, they'd reply with some variation of "I remember my grandpa sitting around watching John Wayne movies all the time."  Wayne's filmography doesn't have a classic that stands out so fully that he's associated with it (Stagecoach may come the closest), but he himself is a universally recognized legend even today.
My Favorite Performance: You'd be hard-pressed to find a better Wayne performance (and he gave a LOT of them) than his work in The Searchers, which is to Wayne what Vertigo is to Jimmy Stewart.  An absolutely astoundingly good piece of acting from an actor that traded pretty hard in typecasting.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Wayne made SO many movies (he starred in 142 films, and from what I can tell was almost always the lead).  I will probably go with his Oscar-winning work in True Grit, but I've oddly both seen a lot of the essentials (Stagecoach, Red River, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) and yet missed quite a few more (Sands of Iwo Jima, Rio Bravo, True Grit, The Shootist).  Wayne's the sort of actor where you never really finish his filmography it's so long.

14. Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)

Oscar Nominations: 13 nominations for producing, directing, and acting, he won Best Picture and Best Actor for Hamlet, as well as Honorary Awards in 1947 and 1979.  Plus, Kenneth Branagh would be nominated for playing Olivier in My Week with Marilyn!
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the ultimate Shakespearean actor of the 20th Century.  Olivier brought Shakespeare to the silver screen in a way no other actor ever has, and was amply rewarded for it at the Oscars (four of his acting nominations were for playing the Bard).  Olivier is well-regarded as one of the first and most successful actor-directors, and for his long relationship with actress Vivien Leigh.
My Favorite Performance: Which of his stoic romantic leads is it easier to fall in love with?  I'll probably go with Maxim de Winter in Rebecca just slightly over his work in Wuthering Heights (Henry V isn't as much my cup of tea, I have to admit, even if it's his most well-regarded work).
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: If I'm being honest, this would probably be Marathon Man-his villainous dentist has always seemed like a hammy but memorable-looking performance.  The film buff in me knows, though, that Hamlet with its pair of Oscars for Baron Olivier should probably be up there.  I'll eventually get to both though.

15. Gene Kelly (1912-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly won the Honorary Award at the 1951 Academy Awards, but only received one competitive nomination in his career for Anchors Aweigh.
Probably Best Known Today For: Laughing and singing in the rain.  His Don Lockwood puddle-jumping is one of the most memorable and celebrated scenes in the history of the movies, ranking up there with Janet Leigh's interrupted shower and Judy Garland clicking her heels.  Kelly would of course celebrate multiple dances on-screen, and while he wasn't quite as personally popular as Astaire off-screen (Kelly was apparently a bit of a tyrant on the set), he was effortlessly graceful onscreen.
My Favorite Performance: The sheer joy that is Singin' in the Rain.  It's so weird that in an era where the Academy was honoring some of the very best in musicals (just the year before they'd honored the Kelly vehicle An American in Paris with Best Picture) they for some reason couldn't get more excited for what is basically a perfect movie.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I'm going to go with the "last" of the great MGM musicals It's Always Fair Weather as the movie I'm most intrigued by seeing.  There's really no topping Kelly dancing, but Cyd Charisse is a good way to try.

16. Orson Welles (1915-1985)

Oscar Nominations: Welles was nominated for acting in, writing, and directing Citizen Kane (he won for writing), then had to wander through the wilderness of filmmaking until his Honorary Award at the 1970 Oscars (it's fascinating thinking about how many legends of the movies ended up with Honorary Oscars even though they already had one-I think we should make that a rule that if you've already won, you can't take the Honorary Oscar).
Probably Best Known Today For: Creating what is considered the go-to reference for the great American film, Citizen Kane (which, for the record, is one of the finest motion pictures ever put to a projector).  Welles would become rather large and a bit of a sell-out later in his career, but there was no denying the man was a genius and Citizen Kane remains a towering, complete triumph.
My Favorite Performance: After Marlon Brando, Welles is my favorite actor, so I've not only seen most of his movies, I've genuinely loved them.  I would probably put Charlie Kane at the top of the list, but Harry Lime (The Third Man) and Hank Quinlan (Touch of Evil) would be worthy choices as well.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: The Other Side of the Wind (kidding...kind of).  I'd surely have to go with his mesmerizing noir The Lady from Shanghai opposite Rita Hayworth.

And those are the second round of gents.  Considering the clip I'm on, there's a decent chance we'll have another actors' list this weekend, but these are eight of the most famous men in the history of cinema-any opinions to share?  The comments await!