2/13/23
Newsletter #246
The Crack of Dawn
Since the Oscars are coming up soon, I dug out another old Film Threat cover article that I wrote in 1991 about the Oscars, and am culling it for interesting data. The article contained a lot of speculation as to why certain kinds of films won Oscars, while others didn’t. Comedies, for instance, rarely win Oscars. In nearly a hundred years only two comedies have won Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934) and Annie Hall (1977). Since I wrote that article The Artist (2011) has won, although it’s listed as a “comedy-drama.”
I came up with my own categories for the Best Picture winners. My keenest and most obvious observation was that up until that time the common denominator was length. The longest film nominated was usually the winner. In fact, the longest films that have ever been nominated have all won: Gone With the Wind (222 minutes), Lawrence of Arabia (216 minutes), Ben Hur (212 minutes) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (201 minutes) and The Godfather Part II (200 minutes), Schindler’s List (195 minutes), and Titanic (194 minutes). There are actually twenty-two Best Picture winners over 150 minutes. But this category has rapidly been losing popularity. In the last twenty-five years the only two films to win Best Picture that were the longest film nominated that year were Titanic and Lord of the Rings.
The category for Best Picture that is rapidly growing in popularity is, “That Which Seems Important.” The prime example is Gentleman’s Agreement (Best Picture, 1947), the first film to take on Antisemitism; or On the Waterfront (Best Picture, 1954), exposing corruption in the trade unions – both films directed by Elia Kazan.
In the last ten years, six of the ten “seem important:” 12 Years a Slave (2014), Spotlight (2016), Moonlight (2017), Green Book (2019), Nomadland (2020), and CODA (2021).
Because Film Threat actually allowed me to add as much minutia as I wanted, I include the rest of this nonsense. Why? Because this is the shit I live for.
THE ACADEMY'S BIGGEST BLUNDERS:
* Ridiculously, the first six years of the Academy Awards consisted of half of one year and half of another year.
A letter from the Academy to its members in 1928 states, "The ruling of the committee confines the nominations to achievements in pictures first publicly exhibited in Los Angeles Metropolitan district (previews excepted) from August 1, 1927, to August 1, 1928." Janet Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for three films: Sunrise, Street Angel and Seventh Heaven, while Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor Oscar for two: The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. It was simply expected back then that an actor would make several pictures a year and the more good performances they gave in that year the better their chances of winning the award. In the Los Angeles Daily Times dated May 6, 1927, there is an advertisement for the premiere of Seventh Heaven and in the July 8, 1927 Los Angeles Daily Times there is an advertisement for the premiere of The Way of All Flesh. That means that both The Way of All Flesh and Seventh Heaven were not eligible for awards. Seventh Heaven also won Best Screenplay and Best Director that year. That same year Chang was nominated for "Artistic Quality Of Production" but is advertised in the Los Angeles Daily Times as premiering on June 24, 1927, and thus not eligible, either. Their own rules didn't seem to mean anything to the Academy in that first year. (Note: The 1927-28 Academy Award ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, nine months after the calendar year had ended, so it's no wonder they couldn't remember what was eligible).
* At the 1934 Oscar ceremony, MC Will Rogers announced the winner of the Best Director award by saying, "Come on up and get it, Frank." Unfortunately, there were two men named Frank nominated: Frank Capra and Frank Lloyd. Both stood and went to the podium. It was established there that in fact the winner was Frank Lloyd. Frank Capra had to go sit down. This may well have inspired Capra to win the next year.
* In 1956 there were two films released that were entitled High Society, one with Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Bing Crosby that was a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, and one with The Bowery Boys. As fate would have it High Society was nominated for Best Motion Picture Story, meaning original story. A remake is not eligible for this award, so the nomination went to the Bowery Boys movie. The nominated writers, Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman (frequent writers for The Three Stooges), knowing that it was an embarrassing mistake had their names removed from the final ballot. But that wasn't the end of the controversy with this specific award that year. The winner was one Robert Rich for The Brave One which was in fact a pseudonym for blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo. Since he had left the country and no one knew that this was his pseudonym there was no one there to pick up the Oscar. It sat on the podium for the remainder of the ceremony. Trumbo finally received the award in 1975.
THE WINNERS OF THE MOST AWARDS:
* Walt Disney won 31 awards: 12 cartoon awards, 7 Live-Action Short Subjects, 4 Feature
Documentaries, 3 Short Subject Documentaries, 3 Special Honorary Awards, 1 Special Effects, and an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial award.
* Gordon Hollingshead won 12 awards: 10 Live-action Short Subjects, 1 Documentary Short
Subject, and 1 Assistant Director award (This award was only given from 1932-33 to 1937).
* Cedric Gibbons won 11 times for Art Direction.
* Billy Wilder won 9 awards: 6 for Writing, 2 for Director, 1 for producing the Best Picture.
* Alfred Newman won 9 for Music Scoring (Alfred's brother, Lionel Newman, was nominated
12 times for music awards and finally won his one and only award in 1969. Lionel's son, Randy
Newman, was nominated for Music Scoring and Best Song in 1981, but did not win).
* Edith Head won 8 for Costume Design.
* Edwin B. Willis won 8 for Art Direction.
* Fredrick Quimby won 7 for Best Cartoon.
* Richard Day won 7 for Art Direction.
* Dennis Murren won 6 for Special Effects.
* Walter M. Scott and Thomas Little both won 6 for Art Direction.
* Francis Ford Coppola won 5 awards: 3 for Writing, 1 for Director, 1 for producing the Best
Picture.
* Douglas Shearer and Fred Hines both won 5 for Sound.
* John Barry won 5: 4 for Original Score, 1 for Best Song.
* Irene Sharaff won 5 for Costume Design.
* Charles Brackett won 5: 3 for Writing, 1 for producing the Best Picture and one Honorary.
* Kathrine Hepburn won 4 for Best Actress (the most ever won in the acting categories).
* John Ford won 4 for Direction (the most for any director. The two runners-up are: William
Wyler with 3 and Frank Capra with 3).
* Frederico Fellini won 4 Best Foreign Film awards (although the producers Carlo Ponti and
Dino De Laurentiis probably retain two of them).
* Joseph Ruttenberg and Leon Shamroy both won 4 for Cinematography [Vittorio Storaro has since won 4].
* John Box, George James Hopkins, Keogh Gleason, and Sam Comer all won 4 for Art
Direction.
* Joseph L. Mankiewicz won 4: 2 for Writing, 2 for Direction.
* Richard Edlund, L. B. Abbott, and Glen Robinson all won 4 for Special Effects.
* Henry Mancini, John Williams, John Green, Andre Previn, Johnny Mercer, and Dimitri
Tiomkin all won 4 for Music.
* Ben Burtt won 4 for Sound Effects Editing.
* Oliver Stone won 4: 2 for Direction, 2 for Writing
* Ingrid Berman won 3: 2 for Best Actress, 1 for Best Supporting Actress.
* Walter Brennan won 3 for Best Supporting Actor (he is the biggest winner in the supporting
field).
* Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, and Dustin Hoffman have all
won 2 awards for Best Actor.
* Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Olivia De Havilland, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sally
Field all have won 2 Best Actress Oscars.
* Jack Lemmon, Robert DeNiro, and Jack Nicholson all won 2: 1 for Best Actor, 1 for Best
Supporting Actor.
* Helen Hayes, Maggie Smith and Meryl Streep all won 2: 1 for Best Actress, 1 for Best
Supporting Actress.
* Shelly Winters is the only one to win 2 Best Supporting Actress Awards.
* Anthony Quinn, Peter Ustinov, and Jason Robards have all won 2 Best Supporting Actor
Oscars.
* Barbra Streisand has won 2: 1 for Best Actress, 1 for Best Song.
* The film to win the most Oscars in total is Ben Hur with 11. [Titanic has since tied it].
* The film to get the most nominations is All About Eve with 14.
Adapting old articles is more difficult than just writing something new. Still, I thought it might be fun. As Charles Foster Kane’s executor says to him, “So you think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” Or when Claude Rains assigns Lawrence to go to Arabia, Lawrence says, “This will be fun.” Claude Rains smiles and says, “It is understood, Lawrence, that you have a funny sense of fun.”
Today we rest; tomorrow we work on the bridge. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.