Academy Award History, Part Eight: 1940-1941

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hitchcock Ford Welles

As the Academy entered a new decade, several changes came to the Awards. For the first time ever, the winners were kept a complete secret until the envelopes were opened on stage. The first year, the winners were known in advance. But to heighten suspense, the Academy decided that for future shows, the names of the winners would be given to the press on the condition that they would not release the names until after the ceremony. This agreement held until 1939, when the Los Angeles Times printed the winners in their evening edition on the night of the awards thereby “spoiling the surprise.” The decision was made to maintain absolute secrecy regarding the winners, and accounting firm Price Waterhouse & Co. was hired to count the ballots and place the winners’ names in sealed envelopes. There were also numerous name changes for the Best Picture category. The original “Outstanding Picture” lasted for the first two ceremonies before becoming “Outstanding Production” in 1930, a change that held until 1941 when the Academy renamed the prize “Outstanding Motion Picture.” This only lasted for three years before the Academy decided on “Best Motion Picture,” before finally becoming the current “Best Picture” in 1963. Read more ›

Academy Award History, Part Six: 1936-1937

August 14, 2015August 14, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

By 1935, Hollywood was no stranger to the biopic. Major films of the both the silent and sound era that focused on the lives of major historical figures include Napoléon (1927), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), and Cleopatra (1934). However, other than Charles Laughton’s Best Actor award for his portrayal of Henry VIII, the Academy was largely indifferent to biographical films, preferring to focus on “original” stories. That attitude changed in 1935 when Paul Muni won Best Actor for his work in The Story of Louis Pasteur, and The Great Ziegfeld took home the award for Outstanding Production. This trend would continue the following year with The Life of Emile Zola winning the top honor. The actor in the lead role as Zola? Paul Muni (who lost to Spencer Tracy). Though both films are competent and still watchable, they do have issues that voters apparently overlooked.

Academy Award History, Part Five: 1934-1935

August 12, 2015August 14, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When announcing the winner for Best Director at the sixth Academy Awards, host Will Rogers said, “Come and get it, Frank,” meaning Frank Lloyd, the director of soon-to-be Best Picture winner Cavalcade. However, some thought he meant Frank Capra, who had directed Best Picture nominee Lady for a Day. In fact, Capra himself thought this and actually stood up and began walking to the stage before realizing that he was not the correct Frank. Capra returned to his seat, later referring to the event as the “longest crawl in history.” However, the following year Capra would make a different kind of history by directing It Happened One Night, the first (of only three) films to win all five major awards: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Not a bad turnaround. It was a feat no one could have predicted, nor could it have been planned.

Academy Award History, Part Four: 1931-1933

August 10, 2015August 14, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In 1932, the Academy followed up All Quiet on the Western Front and Cimarron with the star-studded Grand Hotel. The film was a big budget, heavily promoted all-star showcase. For Greta Garbo, the Barrymore brothers—John and Lionel, Wallace Beery, future humanitarian Jean Hersholt, and up-and-coming star Joan Crawford to all appear in the same film was unheard of. But they did and it worked. From the opening telephone booth scene and the glorious bird’s eye view matte shot (above) through the rags to riches ending for (Lionel) Barrymore’s ailing accountant and Crawford’s struggling stenographer, the film attempts and succeeds at pulling together multiple storylines.

Academy Award History, Part Three: 1929-1931

July 15, 2015August 14, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

MGM’s Irving Thalberg’s claim that “talking pictures [were] just a fad” proved to be wrong as 1929’s The Patriot became the last silent film to be nominated for 82 years (you’ll just have to wait if you don’t already know). 1930 marked the year that Hollywood fully embraced full sound pictures. It was the year that the Academy changed the name of the top prize to Outstanding Production, a change that would hold until 1940. It was also the year that there were two Academy Award ceremonies. The 2nd Annual Academy Awards were held on April 30 followed by the 3rd Annual on November 5. The former was for films released August 1, 1928 – July 31, 1929, while the latter was for films August 1, 1929 – July 31, 1930. One reason for doing this was because audiences were confused when awards were being given out to films that were nearly two years old. The Academy wanted to “catch-up” by awarding films that had been recently seen by the audience. The other reason for the quick turnaround was to quiet a controversy that had risen up at the second awards. For the first two Academy Awards ceremonies, the winners were chosen by a committee. This did not cause a problem at the first awards when everyone who won seemed to deserve it. But at the second ceremony, when all of the awards went to films that had been produced by members of the awards committee, Hollywood was not happy. Read more ›

Academy Award History, Part Two: 1927-1929

July 6, 2015August 13, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Just what is “The Academy”? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded on May 4, 1927. Prior to the Academy, the various branches of the motion picture industry had their own individual guilds and unions (as they still do) but no collective organization where they could all meet and discuss issues in the industry. As actress Mary Pickford put it, the Academy “is our open forum where all branches can meet and discuss constructive solutions to problems with which each is confronted…The producer, star, featured player, cinematographer—in fact, every individual can come into the Academy with any problem or proposal and feel that all barriers are leveled, that in this open court his voice carries the same weight as that of any other person, regardless of position and standing.” The first meeting and banquet was held one week later on May 11. 300 guests attended and 230 joined the Academy for a fee of $100, or a little more than $1300 by today’s standards. Read more ›

Academy Award History, Part One: An Overview

June 26, 2015August 13, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Replicas of Oscar statues are lit in the night outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 19 March 1999 in Los Angeles ahead of the 71st Academy Awards to be held 21 March 1999 at the Pavilion. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE) AFP PHOTO/Timothy A. CLARY (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images) — (Photo credit TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

For several years now I’ve wanted to undertake a year-long viewing of all of the Best Picture Winners in order. There are numerous blogs and lists that rank the Best Picture winners, but that is something I’m not really interested in. Comparing a CGI-infused fantasy epic based on a best-selling trilogy to a World War II drama centered on “the problems of three little people” is ludicrous at best. To say it’s like comparing apples and oranges doesn’t even apply here because at least those are both fruits; it’s more like comparing houses to cars. All of the films on the list are Best Pictures, but that is where the comparison ends. To simply rank Lawrence of Arabia, It Happened One Night, 12 Years a Slave, and All About Eve in relation to each other doesn’t consider the history, innovations, and competition of any particular year. When we throw in the politics of the time, both on a national scale and within the industry itself, the exercise becomes even more pointless. Read more ›

2015 Academy Award Picks

February 21, 2015July 10, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 1 Comment

“And the Oscar goes to…” Roughly 40 million viewers will tune in this coming Sunday evening to hear those words and, more importantly, the name or title that follows. In terms of viewers, The Academy Awards may not be the Super Bowl, but they are the crowning jewel of popular media, drawing twice as many viewers as the Golden Globes or the Grammys and nearly three times as many viewers as the Emmys. Many of those viewers will already have their ballots filled out in hopes of winning a friendly wager, or simply bragging rights, among friends or co-workers. I am one of those viewers. So, here I present my thoughts and predictions for this year’s Oscars. Read more ›

“And the Oscar doesn’t go to…”: Academy Award Controversy

February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 by Charles Bane ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Every Oscar year has controversy and one of this year’s centers around Selma. The film focuses on a major event in the Civil Rights movement, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights. The film received only two nominations, one for Best Original Song for “Glory” by John Legend and Common and…one for Best Picture. Had the film only been nominated for best song, there may actually have been no controversy. But it was nominated for Best Picture with no nod to its director, Ava DuVernay, its screenplay, co-written by DuVernay and Paul Webb, or any of its performances, particularly the lead performance by David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr. Is this really the same actor who played the snooty, money grubbing, corporate jerk in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and the “can we trust him” detective in Jack Reacher (2012)? Read more ›

The Moviegoer

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie.

Category: Academy Awards