1941: How Green Was My Valley

Maureen O'Hara and Walter Pidgeon

The Best Picture Oscar for 1941 was awarded to 20th Century Fox's "How Green Was My Valley." It also won Best Director (John Ford), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Arthur Charles Miller), and Best Black-and-White Art Direction, Interior Design (Richard Day, Nathan H. Juran, and Thomas Little).  It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Philip Dunne), Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood), Best Film Editing (James B. Clark), Best Dramatic Score (Alfred Newman), and Best Recording Sound (Edmund H. Hansen).

"How Green Was My Valley" is an epic snooze-fest of a family portrait of the Morgans, who lived in South Wales in the 19th century.  The family's patriarch is Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp), and the matriarch is his wife Beth (Sara Allgood).  They have six sons - Huw (Roddy McDowall), Ivor (Patric Knowles), Ianto (John Loder), Davy, (Richard Fraser), Gwilym, Jr. (Evan S. Evans), and Owen (James Monks) - and one daughter, Angharad (Maureen O'Hara).  The action of the film (such as it is) is seen largely through the eyes of Huw, the youngest son.

There are a lot of plot-lines that get started and then never really go anywhere.  Central to the town is the nearby coal-mine, where all the Morgans work.  When the owner of the mine suddenly decreases wages, the older Morgan boys, in defiance of their father, organize a strike.  Beth Morgan makes an impassioned speech that no one had better bring harm to her husband, then promptly falls into a freezing creek.  That's pretty much the end of that plot-line.

But then Huw jumps into the creek to save his mother and as a result is temporarily paralyzed.
 Meanwhile, the town's new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) and Angharad share a mutual attraction.  Mr. Gruffydd helps with Huw's recovery, which only heightens Angharad's attraction to him.  But, as a member of the clergy, Mr. Gruffydd won't marry, so Angharad marries the son of the owner of the mine, relocates out of the country, and that's pretty much the end of that plot-line.

Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, and Sara Allgood

After Huw is rehabilitated, he is sent away to school, where he immediately gets his ass kicked by not only his fellow students, but his teacher as well.  A boxing instructor with the very Star Wars name of Dai Bando is called in to teach Huw to defend himself.  Huw takes care of the school-boys, and Dai Bando takes care of the teacher.  When Huw is offered a scholarship to continue his education, he declines, and joins his father and brothers in the coal mine, thus ending that plot-line.

In the end, the idyllic valley where Huw grew up is forever polluted by waste from the coal mine, so Huw leaves, never to return to again.

Zzzzzzzzz.

1940: Rebecca

The 13th film to win the Best Picture Oscar was 1940's "Rebecca," produced by Selznick International Pictures.  It also won Best Black and White Cinematography (George Barnes), and was nominated for Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Actress (Joan Fontaine), Best Supporting Actress (Judith Anderson), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison), Best Film Editing (Hal C. Kern), Best Original Score (Franz Waxman), Best Black and White Art Direction (Lyle R. Wheeler), and Best Special Effects (Jack Cosgrove and Arthur Johns).

The film begins in Monte Carlo, where society dowager Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) is vacationing with her paid companion (Joan Fontaine).  When the grieving widow Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets the young companion, he begins to court her, and within a few weeks they have fallen in love and married.  Maxim takes the second Mrs. de Winter (she is never referred to by any other name) back to his palatial estate, Manderley, which is overseen by the icy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson).

Joan Fontaine and Florence Bates

Although she has been dead for a year, Maxim's first wife Rebecca's presence is everywhere.  He monogram is on nearly every item in the house, and Mrs. Danvers has preserved her bedroom and study as a sort of shrine.  Overwhelmed by her position as mistress of the estate, the second Mrs. De Winter begins to doubt her husband's love for her, convinced that he still deeply loves Rebecca.  Mrs. Danvers, for her part, adds fuel to those doubts by constantly talking about how beautiful, smart, and beloved Rebecca was.

Wanting to make her husband happy, the second Mrs. de Winter hosts a costume ball.  She decides to design her own costume and surprise Maxim with it.  Mrs. Danvers suggests she copy a gown worn by one of Maxim's ancestors in a portrait that hangs at Manderley.  This is indeed what the second Mrs. de Winter does, but when she makes her appearance at the ball, everyone is mortified: it's the same costume Rebecca had worn at the previous year's ball.  She confronts Mrs. Danvers who tells her she'll never be able to take Rebecca's place, and nearly convinces her to leap to her death.  But in that moment, a flare signals that a ship has hit the rocks, and everyone's attention is diverted to that situation.

During the rescue, another boat is discovered at the bottom of the sea: the sailboat Rebecca was on when she drowned.  And, despite Maxim having identified and buried another body in the family cemetery, Rebecca's body is also found on the boat.

Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson

Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier

When the second Mrs. de Winter finds Maxim in the boathouse, he makes a confession to her: he mis-identified the body in order to hide the shocking truth:  he hated Rebecca.  She had informed him only days after their wedding that she had not intention of ending her wanton ways, and indeed continued to have affairs throughout their marriage.  Publicly, their marriage was seen a ideal, but privately it was a sham.  On the night that Rebecca died, she'd confronted Maxim with the news that she was pregnant with a child that wasn't his, and how delighted she was that her son would grow up to inherit Maxim's beloved Manderley.  During the argument that followed, Rebecca fell and hit her head, killing her instantly.  Maxim then
put her body on board the boat and scuttled it.

The ensuing investigation points to the idea that Rebecca had committed suicide by sabatoging her own boat.  But when the father of the child she'd been carrying, Jack Favell (George Sanders) produces a note written by Rebecca that dispels that notion, with which he attempts to blackmail Maxim.  Maxim notifies the police, and he is accused of murdering Rebecca.  Favell reveals that Rebecca had been seeing a doctor in London during her pregnancy.   When the doctor is interviewed, the full truth finally comes out: Rebecca was not in fact pregnant, but suffering from a late-stage cancer, with a prognosis of only months to live.  Her confrontation with Maxim had been an attempt to get him to murder her, as a passive form of suicide.

When the investigation is finally concluded, Maxim returns to Manderley, only to see it engulfed in flames.  The deranged Mrs. Danvers would rather see Manderely destroyed than to see Maxim and his wife happy there, so she burnt it to the ground.  The second Mrs. de Winter escapes the inferno, but Mrs. Danvers does not.  Although Manderley is forever gone, it is presumed that the de Winters lived happily ever after.

1939: Gone With the Wind

The Best Picture Oscar for 1939 was awarded to "Gone With the Wind," produced by Selznick International Pictures and MGM. It set the record for most nominations and wins for one film.  The nominations include Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Supporting Actress (Olivia deHavilland), Best Visual Effects (Jack Cosgrove, Fred Albin, and Arthur Johns), Best Original Score (Max Steiner), and Best Sound Recording (Thomas T. Moulton).  Wins include Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel - the first African-American Oscar winner), Best Director (Victor Fleming), Best Adapted Screenplay (Sidney Howard), Best Color Cinematography (Ernest Haller and Ray Rennahan), Best Film Editing (Hal C. Kern and James E. Newcom), Best Art Direction (Lyle Wheeler), and two special achievement Oscars: outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood (William Cameron Menzies), and pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment (Don Musgrave and Selznick International Pictures).  Whew!  That's a lot of awards!

Since this blog is really just for my benefit, I'm not going to write much about this film, as I've seen it at least a dozen times, and it's already one of my all-time favorite movies.

Hattie McDaniel

Just one interesting note, though, that I only became aware of through this project:  Harry Davenport (Dr. Meade) appeared in three consecutive Best Picture Winners.  He was the Chief of Staff in "The Life of Emile Zola," and the Night Court Judge in "You Can't Take it With You."  How about that?

Vivien Leigh, Olivia deHavilland and Leslie Howard

Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh

1938: You Can't Take it With You

James Stewart and Jean Arthur

The Best Picture Oscar for 1938 went to Columbia Pictures' "You Can't Take It With You."  The film also won Best Director (Frank Capra), and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Spring Byington), Best Writing (Robert Riskin), Best Cinematography (Joseph Walker), Best Film Editing (Gene Havlick), and Best Sound Recording (John P. Livadary).

Ah, another delightful light comedy directed by Frank Capra - such a treat!  The stars this time around are a very young James Stewart and Jean Arthur as lovers from different social classes. As with Gable and Colbert in "It Happened One Night," the stars enjoy great on-screen chemistry.

The story begins with Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold), a successful banker who is seeking to build a munitions factory.  In order to do so, he must acquire several residential properties, but there is one home-owner who refuses to sell: "Grandpa" Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore).  Grandpa is the patriarch of a free-spirited household where everyone only does what truly makes them happy and pursues their own unique brand of creativity.  The merry band of
"weirdos" includes Grandpa's daughter Penny Sycamore (Spring Byington), who has taken to writing plays only because a typewriter was once erroneously delivered to her (later in the film she returns to a previous hobby of painting); her husband Paul Sycamore (Samuel Hinds), who manufactures fireworks in the basement; their daughter Essie Carmichael, an aspiring dancer who also produces candies; Essie's husband Ed (Dub Taylor) who plays the xylophone; and Essie's sister Alice (Jean Arthur), the least eccentric of the family, who works as a stenographer for the son of Anthony P. Kirby, Tony Kirby (James Stewart).  Other unrelated members of the household include Potap Kolenkhov (Mischa Auer), Essie's Russian dance instructor whose opinion of everything is "it steenks;" and Mr. Poppins (Donald Meek) as a former accountant who quits his job in favor of "making things up;" and Mr. DePinna (Halliwell Hobbes), who prints the advertising campaigns for the fireworks. There are also the servants Rheba (Lillian Yarbo) and Donald (Eddie Anderson).

When Tony proposes to Alice, she insists that their families meet each other, and invites Tony to dinner at her home.  Wanting his snobbish parents to see Alice's family as they truly are, he intentionally brings his parents on the wrong night.  Alice's family is in full "free-spirit" mode, and the evening does not go well, with everyone ending up in jail.

Halliwell Hobbes, Spring Byington, Dub Taylor, Ann Miller, and Mischa Auer

There's no point in going over each and every twist in the plot - the outcome is what you'd expect.  The senior Kirby comes to realize there's more to life than money, and that friends and passion are what really make life worth living.  Despite their ups and downs, and their seemingly insurmountable differences, the young lovers are allowed to be together at last, living happily ever after.

I thought this was a thoroughly delightful film.  It was charming, sweet, and funny.  I must say, though, I'm surprised at Spring Byington's nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  She wasn't bad, mind you (no one in the cast was), but it seems to me that others of the "eccentrics" stood out more than she did, particulary Donald Meek as Mr. Poppins and Lillian Yarbo as the maid Rheba.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed "You Can't Take It With You."

1937: The Life of Emile Zola

The Best Picture Oscar for 1937 went to the  Warner Brothers biopic "The Life of Emile Zola."  It also won for Best Supporting Actor (Joseph Schildkraut) and Best Screenplay (Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, and Norman Reilly Raine).  It was also nominated for Best Director (William Dieterle), Best Actor (Paul Muni), Best Art Direction (Anton Grot), Best Score (Max Steiner), Best Sound Recording (Nathan Levinson), Best Original Story (Heinz Herald and Geza Herczeg), and Best Assistant Director (Russ Saunders).

I found this film to be dreadfully dull.  It begins in 1862 with Emile Zola (Paul Muni) and Paul Cezanne (Vladimir Sokoloff) sharing a run-down studio apartment in Paris.  Zola writes a scandalous (but best-selling) book about the underbelly of Paris called "Nana."  He continues to write and becomes a huge, wealthy success, finally marrying his fiance Alexandrine (Gloria Holden).  Cezanne - still a struggling painter - decides to leave Paris for the south of France, but not before telling Zola that his success has made him complacent, no longer taking on social and political issues.

Paul Muni and Gale Sondergaard

Meanwhile, it comes to light that there is a traitor among the officers of the French Army.  Going on nothing more than the fact that he's Jewish, the Army convicts  Captain Albert Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut) of the crime, and banish him to the prison on Devil's Island, in South America.
 Eventually, Col. Picquart (Henry O'Neill) discovers evidence implicating Major Esterhazy (Robert Barrat) as the actual spy, but is ordered by his superiors to remain silent, in order to avoid embarrassing the French military.

Dreyfus's wife Lucie (Gale Sondergaard) asks Zola to take up her husband's cause. Though he is reluctant to give up his life of luxury, he sees the injustice, and pens an article for the newspaper accusing the Army of a massive cover-up.  He is charged with libel.

Then there are long and confusing courtroom scenes, but in the end Zola is found guilty.   Rather than serve his prison term, he flees to London so that he can continue to write about the Dreyfus Affair.   Eventually, new administration admits that Dreyfus was innocent, the officers who were involved in the cover-up either commit suicide or resign, Dreyfus is returned to the France, given a promotion in the Army and knighted as a member of the Legion of Honor.  At his ceremony, Dreyfus wonders why Zola did not attend, and at that moment the newspaper boy announces the headline, "Zola Found Dead!"  He had died of carbon-monoxide poisoning, thanks to a faulty stove.

I think the film would have been better - or at least more interesting - if they'd concentrated more on the Dreyfus Affair than, well, the life of Emile Zola.  The pace of this film is very slow, and filled with lots of flowery speeches about liberty, and justice, and the power of ideas, and blah blah blah.

Not a great one!

1936: The Great Ziegfeld

The ninth Best Picture Oscar winner was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "The Great Ziegfeld," from 1936.  It also won  Best Actress (Luise Rainer) and Best Dance Direction (Seymour Felix).  It was nominated for, but did not win, Best Director (Robert Z. Leonard), Best Art Direction (Cedric Gibbons, Eddie Imazu, and Edwin B. Willis), Best Film Editing (William S. Gray), and Best Original Screenplay (William Anthony McGuire).

Let me start by saying LUISE RAINER, LUISE RAINER, LUISE RAINER.  She made this film for me.  She was the first actor to win back-to-back Best Acting awards (she won the next year for her portrayal of O-Lan in "The Good Earth."  I've not seen that film, but I've read the novel, and the character is light-years away from what she portrayed here).

"The Great Ziegfeld" is a fictionalized account of the life of theater impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, of follies fame.  The film roughly follows the events of his life, but was intended less as a biopic than as a tribute.  Interestingly, Ziegfeld had died only four years before the film was released.  It seems that his widow, famed actress Billie Burke (Glinda the Good in "The Wizard of Oz") was eager to pay off his debts, and was only all to happy to sell the rights to his life story.

The film begins at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.  Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell), the son of a well-known music professor, is attempting to draw audiences to his star attraction: Eugen Sandow, "The World's Strongest Man" (Nat Pendleton).  Across the Midway, his chief rival Billings (Frank Morgan) is having considerably greater success getting audiences for his "hoochy-coochy" dancer Little Egypt. Eventually, Ziegfeld starts thinking outside the box and allows female audience members to caress the muscles of Sandow, increasing his show's profits.

When Ziegfeld takes his strongman to San Francisco, he is denounced as a fraud when the lion that was supposed to battle Sandow falls asleep as soon as it's released from its cage.  Ziegfeld flees to Europe, encountering Billings on the ship.  Once in Europe, Ziegfeld loses all his money in Monte Carlo, then proceeds to steal not only Billings' valet (Ernest Cossart), but his potential star, as well.
The star is French entertainer Anna Held (Luise Rainer), whom Ziegfeld eventually marries (in the film, not in reality), to keep her under contract.

William Powell and Luise Rainer

Held eventually becomes a huge star, and spurred by his success, Ziegfeld decided to launch an over-the-top extravagant revue to be called "The Ziegfeld Follies."   And the rest of the film pretty much chronicles his swings between success, squandering his fortunes, and rebounding.  Eventually, he and Held divorce - though Held is still devoted to him - and he ultimately remarries the actress Billie Burke (Myrna Loy).   By 1929, his successes are largely behind him, his stars are leaving Broadway for the burgeoning film industry in Hollywood, and he's generally derided as a "has been."   Hoping to regain his past glory, he invests heavily in the stock market, just in time for the collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression.  With one last look at the lights of Broadway, Ziegfeld dies in his chair at home, leaving his widow deeply in debt.

I've skipped over a lot of plot points here.  The main thrust of the movie is a tribute first to the extravagance of Broadway during its "Golden Age," and secondarily to the charm and charisma of the man who drove it.  As a result, the film has several lavish production numbers, some more entertaining than others.  Of particular note is an amazing dance routine by Ray Bolger (portraying himself), and the only film footage of Fanny Brice I've ever seen (also portraying herself).

I neither loved nor hated "The Great Ziegfeld."  It is was it is: an homage to a time and a place that was significant in its day but which no longer exists, and a tribute to the man who drove it.  But I will say it again: it there's any reason to watch this film, it is for the performance of Luise Rainer.  Her arc from comical diva to broken woman is just phenomenal.  As with Clara Bow in "Wings," I can only assume that Myrna Loy received billing above Luise Rainer because she was the bigger star of the day.  Loy doesn't make an appearance until the last 45 minutes of the 3-hour-plus film, and her total screen-time is probably about 20 minutes.  Luise Rainer is the female lead of this movie!

1935: Mutiny on the Bounty

The Best Picture Oscar of 1935 went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "Mutiny on the Bounty."  The film was also nominated for Best Director (Frank Lloyd), Best Actor (Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone), Best Screenplay (Jules Furthman, Talbot Jennings, and Carey Wilson), Best Music Score (Nat W. Finston and Herbert Stothart), and Best Film Editing (Margaret Booth).

Oscar went back to honoring an epic film with "Mutiny on the Bounty," and although it is filled with historical inaccuracies, it is roughly based on a true story.

In 1787, the HMS Bounty sits in the harbor of Portsmouth, England, about to embark on a two-year journey to Tahiti.  The purpose of the trip is to bring to the West Indies enough breadfruit trees to serve as inexpensive food for slaves.  Although the ship already has officers, it needs a crew.  Inmates wishing to escape their sentences, and ordinary men pressed into service by the ship's Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) while out drinking form the majority of that crew.  Also going along is midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone), whose sole purpose is to complete a dictionary of the Tahitian language for his patron, Sir Joseph Banks (Henry Stephenson).  The captain of the ship is the notorious William Bligh (Charles Laughton), a man known for his cruelty.

And that cruelty makes up the bulk of the picture.  Before the ship even sets sail, he assembles the crew on the deck to witness the discipline of a man who was found guilty of striking an officer.   When the convicted man is brought on board for flogging, it is discovered that he is dead.  Bligh has the corpse flogged anyway.

And so it goes.  Any infraction - however slight - earns the harshest treatment from Bligh.   Any hint of insubordination is similarly dealt with.   Needless to say, the crew (and the audience) doesn't so much fear Bligh as they hate him.

There are too many instances of horrific cruelty to name, but there are few crew members whose stories are focused on:

Ellison (Eddie Quillan), a young man who was pressed into service while he and his wife were out at a pub.  He left behind a baby son in England.

Clark Gable and Charles Laughton

Burkitt (Donald Crisp), a thief.

Smith (Herbert Mundin, who also played Alfred Bridges in "Cavalcade"), nervous sort who is the only nod to comic-relief in the film.

Bacchus (Dudley Digges), the ship's surgeon, whose cure for everything seems to be a bottle of spirits.  (OK, he's actually another nod to comic-relief).

The enmity between Christian and Bligh builds and builds, as does the resentment of the crew, and since we know there's going to be a mutiny coming, the audience is always wondering "will this be the straw that breaks the camel's back?"  I never so badly wanted to see a film character get what's coming to him!

But  the Bounty does in fact make it to Tahiti, and the men get a reprieve from the harsh conditions of the ship for a while.  All except Christian, who Bligh orders to stay aboard during the entire time they're in Tahiti.

Meanwhile, Bayam is invited to live with the local chief Hitihiti (William Bambridge) and begins a relationship with his daughter Tehani (Movita Casteneda, the longest surviving cast member who died in 2015).  Eventually, the chief persuades Bligh to allow Christian to come ashore for a day, and he too falls in love with a local girl, Maimiti (Mamo Clark).

Movita Casteneda, Mamo Clark, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone

With the breadfruit saplings on board, the crew re-boards the ship and begins the journey to the West Indies.  But after their time in paradise, the brutal conditions of the ship seem less tolerable.  When Bligh's actions lead to the death of the beloved Bacchus, it's finally almost too much for Christian to take.  When he sees Ellison and Burkitt being held below deck in chains, he makes the decision: MUTINY!

Oh, how I wanted to see Bligh beg for his life like a sniveling coward.  You know that's how bullies always end up!  But no, Christian puts him and the rest of the officers and crew that didn't want to be part of the mutiny in a row-boat, gives them food, water, a compass, and sets them adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Bayam, who also didn't want to take part in the mutiny, was below decks, and missed being put on the boat.  He and Christian had become good friends by this point, so Christian promised him he could stay with them unharmed as long as he made to move to re-take the ship.  Bayam agrees, although it effectively ends their friendship.

As Bligh and the others run out of food, and start to lose all hope, Christian and the Bounty return to England.  Bayam marries Tehani, and Christian marries Maimiti, eventually producing a son with her.  One Christmas day, Bayam decides that he wants to be friends with Christian again and the two men reconcile.

Shortly thereafter, a British ship is spotted off the coast.  The mutineers know they either need to flee or hang for their crime, so they re-board the Bounty, and under Christian's command, set sail for parts unknown.  When the British ship arrives, Bayam is surprised to discover that it is captained by none other than Captain Bligh!  Of course, Bligh doesn't believe that Bayam had no part in the mutiny, and vows to have him court-martialed once they return to England.  But in the meantime, Bligh is on an obsessive quest to track down Christian, and sails around the south seas in search of him.

Christian, meanwhile, has led his band of mutineers (and a few native Tahitians) to the uninhabited Pitcairn island, where they decide to settle.  Since there is no natural harbor, the plan is to run the Bounty aground and then burn it.  From there, they will build their new island-paradise home together.

Meanwhile, Bligh manages to run his ship into a coral reef.  The ship sinks, but everyone escapes on the life-boats.  Somehow or other, they manage to get back to England.  Bayam stands trial, is found guilty of mutiny, and is sentenced to death.  In his final statement to the court, Bayam recounts the untold cruelty of Captain Bligh, and admonishes the British Navy to be one made of men who want to serve, not men who are forced to serve.  At the last minute, Bayam's old patron, Sir Joseph, appeals directly to King George III, and Bayam is spared.

Wow!  Talk about adventure on the high seas!  There was so much that was great about this film, but first and foremost I have to mention the acting.  Captain Bligh has got to be one of the most evil, loathsome, hateful, despicable characters in cinematic history, and Charles Laughton NAILED IT!!  It's said that he was always self-conscious about his weight and (perceived) unattractiveness, and it was especially hard for him to work alongside hearth-throbs Gable and Tone, but every physicality he brought to the character - the way carried himself, the downturn of his mouth, the hooded eyes - emphasized the unattractiveness of the character.  And then there's Clark Gable and Franchot Tone.  Following up on his success with "It Happened One Night," it's easy to see why Gable was considered the "King of Hollywood."  The fact that all three men were nominated for Best Actor led to the creation of the Supporting Actor categories the next year.

Add to that the locations, the special effects, the drama....this was definitely an EPIC Best Picture!