The Third Annual Oscars Losers Lineup

Werth: You know what, Wise?  

Wise: What's that, Werth?  

Werth: I'd really like to thank the Acadamy.  

Wise: Because they like you, they really like you? 

Werth: No, because the Oscar telecast finally recognized Oscar losers.  I'm not gonna say that host Seth MacFarlane and Kristin Chenoweth stole our idea, but we have mined this territory twice before.

Wise: It seems Mr. MacFarlane did a lot of things to ruffle people's feathers at the Oscars.

Werth: One person who must have been super ruffled was legendary film director, Steven Spielberg. His hugely successful bio-pic Lincoln lost Best Picture and, more surprisingly, Best Director.

Wise: And not just because historical bio-pics are usually a shoo-in at the Academy Awards.

Werth: But Spielberg might be used to losing Oscars on his slavery-themed movies. The Color Purple (1985) was famously nominated for 11 Oscars and lost every single one. But perhaps less remembered is Spielberg's cinematic treatment of a group of Africans who escape a slave ship in 1839, only to be put on trial here in America, Amistad (1997). The film was nominated for four Oscars and lost them all.

Wise:Most of the gold that year went to another film about an ill-fated ship.

Werth: Amistad is based on the true story of a group of Africans who are kidnapped and sent to Cuba before rising up against their captors, slaying them, and then trying to steer their boat home. Unfortunately they wind-up off Long Island, and are soon in shackles again for murder. 

They become the center of an international property dispute that quickly leads to Presidential involvement due to the case's ramifications to American slavery. It's the sort of epic human issue canvas that Spielberg loves to paint on. 

Wise: Munich, anyone? 

Werth: The film veers between heavy-handedness, perceptive humor and stark, shocking realism, but the real joy in this film is to watch the performances. Morgan Freeman gives his typical charming and noble turn as freed slave Theodore Joadson, and Matthew McConaughey is spunky and eager as the defense attorney for the Africans, Roger Sherman Baldwin. 

But the two standouts are Djimon Hounsou as Cinque and Anthony Hopkins as former president John Quincy Adams. Hounsou is a revelation, his imposing screen presence a mix of sheer physical size, vocal roar, and intensity. 

Hopkins works magic by throwing himself whole hog into this addled and rickety, irascible and brilliant man. The scene where we first see Adams "napping" in Congress is textbook perfection of how to introduce a character with only a simple shot and one line of dialogue. 

Hopkins lost the best Supporting Oscar to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting and Spielberg wasn't even nominated. So my guess is Spielberg will avoid slavery flicks for a little while.
 

Wise: Perhaps there's no better example of an Oscar loser than Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage (1934).  Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, the film also stars Leslie Howard as Philip Carey, a club-footed aesthete who abandons his dream of studying art in Paris and returns to study medicine in London where he falls for cockney waitress Mildred (Davis).  He lavishes attention on her, but she prefers the company of wealthier men who enjoy life's rowdier pleasures and aren't burdened by a dysfunctional leg.  

Werth: I'm with ya' Mildred.

Wise: Mildred runs off with another man, but comes back destitute and pregnant.  Philip takes her in, but just as she makes it back on her feet, she runs off again beginning a cycle that results in both spiraling out of control.  Along the way, Philip finds comfort in the friendship he develops with a patient (Reginald Owen) and his daughter (Frances Dee).  

Werth: But Mildred's more fun.

Wise: This was the picture that made Davis' career.  She had been laboring in smaller films at Warner Bros., but when Bondage director John Cromwell caught of preview of one of Davis' performances, he insisted on borrowing her for the film.  Legend has it that the Warner brass was happy to have the tempestuous actress off the lot for a few weeks, but were furious when their contract player was transformed into a star by another studio and quietly encouraged the Academy not to nominate Davis.  

A furious write-in campaign erupted, but despite the best efforts of her peers, Davis still lost the Oscar to Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night.  Still, Davis is magnificent playing both the slatternly Mildred and Philip's fantasy vision of her: tender, compliant, virginal in softly-lit, frothy white dresses.  She even gets an incredible breakdown scene where she rages at Philip's impotence and later almost destroys his chances of finishing medical school.

Werth: No actress has ever done as much with the line "Wipe my mouth."

Wise: It's really an amazing performance, full of vibrance, passion, and wit.  

Werth: Which is more than I can say for this year's Oscars ceremony.  

Wise: Perhaps next year we can host— but until then, check in next week for more Film Gab!

 

The Second Annual Oscar Losers Lineup

Werth: So, Wise...

Wise: Yes, Werth?

Werth: The smoke from Sacha Baron Cohen's Oscar prank has finally cleared and the winners have stumbled home with their goodie bags from various and sundry Oscar fetes.




Wise: And it's time for us to salute those who didn't get to go home with a golden statuette.

Werth: Last year, we examined actresses in iconic roles whose dreams of Oscar glory were crushed by the Academy, and in honor of the three legendary directors who got the sharp end of the stick this year, let's take a look at directors who failed in the quest for the film industry's most prized phallic symbol.

Wise: No director springs to mind faster than Martin Scorsese whose Hugo spent most of the awards season neck and neck with Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist only to lose in the final tally.  



Werth: And who got shout-outs and thank you's all night long—not to mention becoming the cue for a drinking game for Rose Byrne and fellow Oscar-loser Melissa McCarthy.

Wise: But it's an earlier Scorsese film that seems an even more egregious loss.  The Aviator (2004) isn't very much like the films of Scorsese's maverick 70's heyday, but it does reveal a remarkably sure directorial hand, plus it was his fifth nomination in the category.  Those two facts combined made him look like a shoo-in for the prize—

Werth: Because if the Academy loves anything more than giving Best Supporting Actress to  a one hit wonder, it's presenting a Hollywood institution an award for later, and lesser, work.

Wise: Perhaps The Aviator wasn't lesser enough because Scorsese turns what could have been a run-of-the-mill bio-pic of legendary millionaire/germaphobe Howard Hughes into an epic history of Hollywood that's also a meditation on the costs of ambition.  Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hughes, and his twitchy energy brings humanity to a life that had been flattened into caricature by rumor and tall tales.  

Werth: That and Jane Russell's rack.

Wise: Of course the stand-out—and Oscar winning—performance is Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn.  Taking what could have been an opportunity for cloying mimicry of a Hollywood legend, Blanchett imbues the movie Kate with passion and tenderness in a performance that feels more like a revelation than an impersonation. 

Werth: She was so good, I honestly wanted to leave Hughes when she did and watch Blanchett play the rest of Kate's life.

Wise:  Nowhere are Scorsese's talents more apparent than in the visual vocabulary of the film.  Using the evolution of photography (from garish two-strip Technicolor to the lush hues of the 40's to the lurid spectrum of 50's spectacle), Scorsese not only signals the passage of time, but also the progress and eventual deterioration of his subject's mind.  

There are nods throughout to classic Hollywood films, but nostalgia didn't work for Scorsese (losing to Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby) until he produced an imitation of his own best work, finally winning Oscar gold for The Departed two years later. 

Werth: Scorsese wasn't alone this year in having to eat The Artist's dust in the Best Director category. No less than Terrence Malick and Woody Allen (neither of whom deigned to show up) had to eat Oscar crow. And usual Oscar darling Steven Spielberg didn't even get nominated.

Wise: I guess horses and comic books don't have the same dramatic heft as American slavery and the Holocaust. 

Werth: It reminds me of the 17th Academy Awards held in March, 1945. Otto Preminger (Laura), Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity) and Alfred Hitchcock (Lifeboat) lost to Leo McCarey's Bing Crosby-starring love letter to the Catholic church, Going My Way. Now, McCarey was a fine comedy director, but aside from the occasional Sunday hangover TCM viewing, Going My Way holds little of the regard that the other three films do.

Wise: Nor does it have Bob Hope or Dorothy Lamour—two of my favorite hangover cures.

Werth: I'm particularly fond of Lifeboat. Hitchcock had already made quite a name for himself with several American films like Rebecca (1940) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), but Lifeboat's style holds glimpses of some of his future filmwork like Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954) and Rear Window (1954). The setting of Lifeboat is—a lifeboat. There are no cutaway shots to other sets, or a family waiting back home, or flashbacks to a happier time. Hitchcock forces us to join a group of castaways after their liner is sunk by a German U-boat by trapping us with his camera. There is nowhere for these survivors to run in the open sea, and by limiting all but a couple of the camera shots to the boat, the visual claustrophobia makes us as stir crazy as this motley crew. And what a crew!

Wise: Please tell me there isn't a Skipper or Gilligan among them.

Werth: More like a Mrs. Howell. Tallulah Bankhead as reporter and bon vivante Connie Porter gives the best screen performance of her storied career. Her droll line deliveries (in English and German) and cigarette gesticulation are mesmerizing. And since she's got some free time on this boat, why not seduce the handsomest sailor (John Hodiak) aboard?

Wise: Why not indeed?

Werth: The cast is full of fantastic character actors like William Bendix, Hume Cronyn and Walter Slezak, and it's really surprising how many sharp plot twists writer John Steinbeck pulled out of such a little boat. All told Lifeboat is much more fun to watch than Der Bingle buh-buh-buh-booing through a Catholic boy's school.

Wise: That'll get you in trouble these days.

Werth: But back then it got him an Oscar for Best Actor—and in this week's blog, being a winner makes him a real loser.

Wise: We'll discuss more Tinseltown winners and losers in next week's edition of Film Gab.  

We Had Faces Then...

To warm you up for Sunday's Oscar glamour-fest, U.K. paper The Telegraph has a great photo collection online of past winners of the Academy Award with their statuettes. Where else will you see Barbra Streisand kissing John Wayne?

Hooray for Hollygab!

Werth: It's time, Wise!

Wise: It's time, Werth!

Werth: For the annual celebration of Hollywood—the Oscars!

Wise: And this year's celebration of Hollywood is actually a celebration of Hollywood. With nominated movies like Hugo, My Week with Marilyn and The Artist plumbing movie history to tell their stories and move the audience—

Werth: And Oscar-nominated classic Hollywood-folk like Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick and Meryl Streep (yes, she's been around long enough to fall into the Classic category) on the bill, this year's Oscars promises to be a hat-tipping frenzy to good ol' Tinseltown.

Wise: No town does self-adulation like Hollywood does, but if there's anything La La Land likes better than a salute to its own grandeur, it's a sordid examination of its seamy underbelly.  And no film better captures the glory and the gutter of the film capital than L.A. Confidential (1997).  Based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel, the film depicts the intersection of silver screen dreams gone bust, organized crime and police corruption.  


Werth: Wasn't Peter Lawford's house at that intersection?

Wise: While on a liquor run for the precinct Christmas party, tough guy LAPD Detective Bud White (Russell Crowe) encounters glamorous Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) who bears a striking resemblance to Hollywood noir moll Veronica Lake, and later discovers that she's part of a ring of high class hookers dolled up to look like stars.  Meanwhile, smarmy Detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), who acts as technical adviser to the square cop drama Badge of Honor (obviously a burlesque of Dragnet), gets a tip from gossip rag publisher Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) and busts a starlet and her beau for pot possession amid a blaze of flashbulbs. 

Back at the precinct, by-the-books sergeant Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) rats on his fellow cops against the advice of his Captain (James Cromwell) in a bid to advance his career.  


Werth: So many juicy plot threads—so many fine character actors.  

Wise: The three men eventually discover they're all following the same trail of corruption and reluctantly join forces.  Together they uncover a web of dirty dealings and backroom alliances that threatens both the Hollywood mythos and the good standing of the LAPD.  

Werth: It's enough dirt to fill even the tawdriest celeb-news rag.

Wise: Hollywood obviously loved this lurid self portrait because L.A. Confidential garnered nine Oscar noms—Basinger took the prize for Best Supporting Actress while director Curtis Hanson and his collaborator Brian Helgeland won Best Adapted Screenplay.  That adulation, I think, comes from Hanson's carefully calibrated balance of trash and tinsel, where even the worst offenders look great in close-up. 

Werth: When I think of tinsel-y trash in Hollywood only one movie comes to mind. When it was released in 1967, Valley of the Dolls was one of the most anticipated films of the year. Based on the hugely popular Jacqueline Susann book, Dolls tells the story of three young actresses who climb the ladder of fame and fortune only to find booze, pills, egos and the occasional unfaithful gay husband.

Wise: At least they look fabulous throughout the histrionics. 

Werth: With stunts like holding the premiere on a cruise ship, Twentieth Century Fox expected a massive hit. Bomb enthusiasts would have you believe that Dolls sank faster than the Costa Concordia, but when you look at the box office receipts for 1967, it ranked right behind The Dirty Dozen at 6th with $20 million, which was plenty of scratch in that era.

Wise: Enough to buy dolls and a wig for Susan Hayward.

Werth: But critics savaged its sleazy soap opera storyline and hammy performances. So Dolls has become one of those camp classics that is more famous for its over-the-top scenes of mod hair-spray adverts, booze-filled pools and wig flushing. But with all that—or more accurately, because of it—the performances are a real treat to watch with or without your red dolls.

Patty Duke as starry-eyed performer Neely O'Hara gets to go from ambitious, hard-working singer to drug-addicted bitch and back again with real verve.

Susan Hayward as old school Broadway belter Helen Lawson almost makes you forget that Judy Garland was originally supposed to play the role.

Wise: Unfortunately, poor Judy was living Valley of the Dolls at the time, plus, at least according to Duke, she was tortured by the director Mark Robson. 

Werth: Lee Grant gives teeth to protective manager Miriam Polar and knowing poor Sharon Tate's sad real-life ending gives her portrayal of tragic, well-busted Jennifer North an un-planned layer of sorrow. The music by Andre and recently passed Dore Previn earned John Williams his first arranging Oscar nomination. I'll be watching on Sunday to see if he wins his sixth Oscar for War Horse or The Adventures of Tintin. Wise, are you coming over to watch the show in your tux?

Wise: If you're going to wear your strapless gown.

Werth: I need to find a matching stole.

Wise: Filmgabbers, make sure you wear the appropriate attire when you join us next week as we do our 2nd Annual Oscar Losers Film Gab! 

Werth: Top hats and low gowns please!



Oscar? I Hardly Know Her!

Werth: Welcome to our First Annual Oscar Post-Show Wrap-up, Wise!

Wise: It’s good to be here, Werth.

Werth: So since everyone else has re-hashed the ceremony, the winners, the fashions—

Wise: —Melissa Leo’s F-bomb—

Werth: —and Charlie Sheen.

Wise: Charlie Sheen wasn’t at the Oscars.

Werth: I know, but everyone keeps talking about him.  So, we here at Film Gab are going to focus on an overlooked Oscar topic—

Wise: The losers. It must be terrible riding high on the rush of earning a nomination, being feted all over town, getting gussied up by some chic designer for the red carpet strut only to come crashing back to earth when someone else’s name is read.  And the worst part is having your disappointment broadcast around the globe.

Werth: I think the biggest loser this year had to be beautiful, classy, and amazingly talented Annette Bening.

Wise: Because she’s married to Warren Beatty?

Werth: Because she’s been left at the altar four times by old man Oscar.

Wise: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride... except to Warren Beatty.

Werth: But Annette should take heart! She is in good best actress loser company. In fact, in 1951, there were two monumental lady losers.

Wise: I’ll bet neither of them was married to Warren Beatty.

Werth: Not that we know of. The Best Actress category at the 1951 Oscars had two of the most iconic performances in film history going head-to-head: Bette Davis’ willfull, grand dame of the theater Margot Channing in All About Eve; and Gloria Swanson’s neurotic, silent-film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

Wise: Now THAT’S a film character throw-down I’d like to see!

Werth: Lots of name-calling, nail-scratching and smoking. Helped along by Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning dialogue, Davis is a force of nature in All About Eve as the aging theater star who has to ward off the advances of an ambitious underling. She is tough, elegant, funny and at certain moments, vulnerable. Davis’ song-worthy eyes flash with an intensity that goes beyond mere performance. She becomes Channing and endows her with the fire that made Davis one of the most fascinating actresses, and Channing one of her most fascinating characters.

Wise: Until she did Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Werth: Speaking of crazy old ladies, Davis’ 1951 formidable competition came from an old, silent film star playing an old, silent film star. By the time Gloria Swanson made Sunset Boulevard she was already a Hollywood legend, but she had been out of the limelight for many years. So her turn as forgotten silent screen siren Norma Desmond seemed eerily close to home. Swanson always declared she was nothing like Desmond, which is good to hear. As Desmond, her wide-eyed focus, her grandly inflected voice, her flailing gestures with a wire cigarette holder clutching her finger are so over-the-top that her desperation practically reaches through the screen to grab and shake you. Swanson’s genius was to make this grand Guignol character noble and proud, so that as she descended into madness, we pitied instead of laughing at her.

Wise: It would be hard to choose which performance deserved the Oscar more.

Werth: Apparently Academy members that year felt the same way, because they gave the statuette to Judy Holliday for her brilliantly funny turn as a goofy mob moll in Born Yesterday. Neither Davis nor Swanson would ever win another Oscar, but perhaps they get the last laugh as their star turns in these two films have become ingrained in our culture whereas Holliday (despite her amazing talents) has faded into the shadows of these two “losers.”

Wise: It is interesting how shortsighted the Oscars can sometimes be.  What seems like the performance of the year, can quickly fade from memory, while an overlooked performance emerges as iconic.  

Werth: Ya’ hear that Natalie P.?  

Wise: If we’re discussing Oscar’s losers, then I don’t think there are many better examples than Judy Garland’s loss to Grace Kelly in 1954, partly because Garland performance in A Star is Born is the best of her career, but mostly because Grace Kelly’s emotional turn in  The Country Girl has been almost completely overshadowed by the image of icy blond perfection she epitomized while working with Hitchcock in  Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.  The Country Girl was an unglamorous departure for Kelly—

Werth: And we all know how the Academy loves to reward beautiful actresses for playing “ugly”... or demented ballerina bird chicks.  

Wise: Still, as good as she is in the role of long-suffering wife of drunk actor Bing Crosby, she just doesn’t compare to Garland—

Werth: Playing the long-suffering wife of drunk actor James Mason.  

Wise: Garland’s performance is full of subtlety, drama, histrionics and gentleness, plus she sings.  A Star is Born was supposed to be a triumph for Garland.  Four years earlier, she had been fired by MGM and plenty of Hollywood wags has assumed her career was over, but after a spectacularly successful concert tour, she set up Star at Warner Bros. with the help of her husband/manager Sid Luft.  At MGM, Garland had always been surrounded by sophistication and swooning violins.  Decamping to Warner allowed her to tackle grittier subject matter, and in Star she is absolutely heartbreaking as a woman undone by love.  The producers of the Academy Awards telecast were so certain that Garland would win that they dispatched a camera crew to the hospital room where she was recuperating from the birth of her son Joey.  

Werth: And then she lost.

Wise: And the crew packed up and left without saying a word.  At least she got a telegram from Groucho Marx who called it the “biggest robbery since Brinks.”  

Werth: Too bad a telegram doesn’t look as good on the mantlepiece as a shiny gold statuette.  



Wise: I wonder if we’d get the telegram or the statuette for Best Performance by a Classic Film Blog Duo.

Werth: Let’s go for the telegram. Oscar losers rock!  

Wise: Tune in to Film Gab next week for more cinematic winners and losers.