Oscars Slightly Out of Sync

Mary Pickford:
Best Actress for Coquette

TUESDAYS WITH OSCAR: 1929

The Second Academy Awards in 1929 were a remarkably bumpy affair.  The Academy did not handle the transition from silent to sound films well.  In fact, the reaction was rather chaotic, a mixture of panic and ineptness.  There was even talk of having two Best Pictures: a Silent Film and a Sound Film Category.  Fortunately, they opted out of this, but the writing was on the wall.  1929 would be the final year a silent movie would be nominated for Best Picture until The Artist in 2012.

1929 turned out to be the reverse of the previous year.  While all the nominated films from 1928 are highly regarded, none of the 1929 nominees are thought of as 'good'.  The winner (The Broadway Melody) is usually ranked as one of the Worst Best Picture winners (35% on Rotten Tomatoes, 82nd out of 86 in the Online Film Critics Society poll), and the other nominees have a ranking of 43% (Alibi),  40% (The Hollywood Revue of 1929), and 56% (In Old Arizona) respectively.  The fifth nominee has no ranking, because The Patriot (the aforementioned silent film) is now lost (the only Best Picture nominee so affected).  For good or bad, it does have an audience rating of 60% and ONE positive review, so it has that going for it. 

In short, in the mad rush to get in on the latest thing, the Oscars did throw the baby out with the bathwater, and 1929 is seen as not only one of the weaker years in its history, but also one of the worst.  As I cover that year's nominees and winners, it is a sad task indeed.  Few if any of the winners are remembered (let alone the nominees), and if they are remembered at all, it is precisely because they were Academy Award winners or nominees, not for their own artistic or entertainment aspects.

As always this is just for fun and should not be taken as my final decision.  I should like to watch all the nominees and winners before making my final, FINAL choice.   Now, on to cataloging the official winners (in bold) and my selections (in red). 

THE 1929 ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS

BEST PICTURE

Alibi
The Broadway Melody
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
In Old Arizona
The Patriot

Yes, it is all so very strange. 

Alibi, a gritty tale of gangsters, is the only nominated film that is a contemporary story.  In Old Arizona is the first Western to be nominated and the first sound film shot outdoors (a remarkable feat indeed).  Out of all the nominees, the strangest (not just for this year, but perhaps of all time) is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (also known as just The Hollywood Revue). 

The film lives up to its title: instead of having an actual plot, it is a series of vaudeville-like numbers where nearly the entire MGM roster does some kind of routine (Greta Garbo, Lon Chaney, Sr., and Ramon Novarro being the only major stars missing from this all-star extravaganza, I imagine due to Garbo and Novarro's accents and Chaney's steadfast reluctance to go from The Man of a Thousand Faces to The Man of a Thousand Voices).  Sadly, most of the stars are now forgotten (when was the last time Hollywood Revue cohost Conrad Nagel entered into conversation).

The Hollywood Revue was made to show that MGM stars had voices.  Some stars managed to survive (Joan Crawford does a good song-and-dance number, Laurel & Hardy became greater in talkies, and Marie Dressler, despite her looks, became one of MGM's biggest stars). Curiously, while Buster Keaton is in the film, I don't recall that we actually heard HIS voice (which was in reality quite good).

Other stars did not fare so well as those mentioned; along with Nagel, other big names of the time like William Haines and Marion Davies (best remembered as the inspiration for Suzanne Alexander in Citizen Kane) soon faded.  The worst fate was that of John Gilbert, who while possessed of a respectable tenor voice was perceived as not having a good-enough voice to be a leading man.  In The Hollywood Revue, Gilbert joined Norma Shearer in a dramatic performance of the Balcony Scene from Romeo & Juliet, first playing it straight, then spoofing it.  Leaving apart the idea that when watching it is hard to know which was the actual spoof, it must have been more rational than when Shearer played it totally straight in a film version of the Shakespeare masterwork when Shearer was 13 going on 34. 

If The Hollywood Revue is remembered, it is for its big closing number (which was in Technicolor too), a little ditty called Singin' in the Rain.  Curiously, that year's winner also had tunes that would be recycled in the Gene Kelly masterpiece.  Those who watch The Broadway Melody will recognize songs like You Were Meant for Me and the title number (part of the massive Gotta Dance sequence).  Another song that is heard in Singin' in the Rain is The Wedding of the Painted Doll, and The Broadway Melody had this number in spectacular Technicolor.  Sadly, that footage is lost, leaving us with the not-so-spectacular black-and-white version.

This leads us to The Patriot, which like The Wedding of the Painted Doll's color sequence, is also lost. No complete print is known to exist.  That isn't to say that, with any luck, a complete print might turn up, but for the moment, The Patriot is not available to fully appreciate.

BEST ACTOR

George Bancroft (Thunderbolt)
Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona)
Chester Morris (Alibi)
Paul Muni (The Valiant)
Lewis Stone (The Patriot)

Baxter managed the transition from silent to sound films, but time has not proven kind to either Baxter or his performance in In Old Arizona.  It's a safe bet that nobody remembers his role and a strong bet that apart from 42nd Street (where Baxter gave one of the most memorable lines in film, "You're going out there a youngster, but you've GOT to come back a STAR!), nobody remembers Baxter himself.  Out of all the nominees, Muni is the only one to have had a long and respected career afterward. 

Baxter's win sets a bad precedent.  He plays The Cisco Kid, making it the first time that an Anglo receives special recognition for playing a Hispanic.  Curiously, Paul Muni would follow suit when the Yiddish theater star would play Benito Juarez in Juarez (and looking like The Mexican Golem).  The fact that an Anglo played a Hispanic in film in 1929 (complete with thick Mexican accent that even my Mexican-born mother would find unrealistic) is not surprising.  The fact that Anglos play Hispanics in 2012 (example, Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in Argo) is not just surprising, but an absolute scandal. 

BEST ACTRESS

Ruth Chatterton (Madame X)
Betty Compson (The Barker)
Jeanne Eagels (The Letter)
Corrine Griffith (The Divine Lady)
Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)
Mary Pickford (Coquette)

Pickford's win is important for three reasons.  First, it was the first time an actress won an Oscar for playing against type.  Long known as "America's Sweetheart", Pickford had made a wildly successful career out of playing plucky and spunky heroines, more in tune with Victorian virtues.  In Coquette, "The Girl With the Golden Curls" bobs her hair and plays a flirtatious flapper, driving men to distraction and even murder.  Going against one's screen image to win Oscars was a lesson future actors learned well.  Shirley Jones and Donna Reed, both 'girls-next-door', won Oscars for playing women of ill repute in Elmer Gantry and From Here to Eternity respectively.  Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren downplayed their glamour and beauty and went on to win for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Two Women. 

More recently, good guy Denzel Washington won his second Oscar in part for playing the evil Detective Harris in Training Day, and Matthew McConaughey left his dim-witted, chest-baring himbo persona to play a homophobic redneck struck with AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club. 

Second, it was the first successful Oscar campaign.  Pickford had written a letter to a former employee, "I don't care how I look.  I'm going after the Oscar" (and this was in the awards SECOND year).  She hosted members of the Academy (of which she was a founder) for teas at her palatial estate, Pickfair.  Regardless of how good the other actresses were, the award was in the bag, bought for the price of a good meal and favors called in. 

Third, it is the first de facto Lifetime Achievement Award.  In the documentary Mary Pickford, it is stated that people sensed her career was coming to an end and for everything she had done (fought for more artistic control, co-founded United Artists, made Hollywood both powerful and respectable), she more than deserved the award.  The actual quality of her performance was an afterthought.

Eagles achieved her own history-making with her sole nomination for The Letter.  It was the first posthumous nomination in the Academy's history.  She had died three months after the film's completion, though no one has ever firmly established the actual cause of death.

BEST DIRECTOR

Lionel Barrymore (Madame X)
Harry Beaumont (The Broadway Melody)
Irving Cummings (In Old Arizona)
Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady)
Frank Lloyd (Drag)
Frank Lloyd (Weary River)
Ernst Lubitsch (The Patriot)

Yep, Lloyd got three nominations, so I figure this gave him the edge come winner's time.  However, it is so confusing that even the Academy isn't sure if Drag and Weary River count as one or two nominations (it lists Lloyd as having two nominations, but I count three films).  Still, I count progress in that, while the Academy is still handing out multiple nominations at this time, Lloyd was singled out for ONE film rather than two or three.  In the future, this would be the standard, and it would become rare for people in major categories to receive more than one nomination in a single year, let alone in the same category (the last time I remember such a thing in the Director category was when Steven Soderbergh received Best Director nominations for both Erin Brockovich and Traffic, winning for the latter). 

Curiously, The Divine Lady is the ONLY film to win Best Director WITHOUT receiving a Best Picture nomination.  In the future, the reverse would be true (Best Picture nomination without its director receiving a nod), and while eventually Best Director and Best Picture would tend to go together, the Academy at least this year did spread the wealth around. 

Now that we've covered the categories, let's go over my choices.  I'm throwing in my own Shadow Nominees.

BEST DIRECTOR

Lionel Barrymore (Madame X)
Harry Beaumont (The Broadway Melody)
Irving Cummings (In Old Arizona)
Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady)
Frank Lloyd (Drag)
Frank Lloyd (Weary River)
Ernst Lubitsch (The Patriot)
G.W. Pabst (Diary of a Lost Girl)

Alas, one of the great films of 1929, Diary of a Lost Girl, is nowhere on the Academy's radar.  Certainly they could have thrown out one of Lloyd's three nominations and given Pabst one.  However, of the nominated directors, Lubitsch is the only one to resonate with modern audiences.  The Patriot seems a departure for Lubitsch, given he was known more for his sly, sophisticated comedies (hence the term, 'the Lubitsch Touch).  The Patriot is a biopic about Czar Paul I, as far from light, witty comedies as one can get.  Still, to think Lubitsch won only an Honorary Oscar seems a terrible disservice.

BEST ACTRESS

Ruth Chatterton (Madame X)
Betty Compson (The Barker)
Jeanne Eagels (The Letter)
Corrine Griffith (The Divine Lady)
Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)
Mary Pickford (Coquette)
Louise Brooks (Diary of a Lost Girl)

Yes, I have not seen all the performances.  However, I have seen Coquette, and am hard-pressed to think THAT was the best performance of 1929.  Leaving aside the fact that a 37-year-old woman is trying to pass herself off as a girl of 17(!), Coquette has other flaws, major ones at that.  Mary Pickford said it best with narration by one of my favorite actresses (Laura Linney), "...the awkwardness of early sound production showed, and her choice of story was a mistake".  Stagey, lifeless, and oddly idiotic, Pickford if judging by the film either played it as if it were a silent film or just wasn't aware that it wasn't a comedy.  We can see how difficult, if not traumatic, the sudden shift from silent to sound was for all stars, even ones like Pickford, who had theater experience before she began making films.

Scott Eyman in his biography of Pickford (Mary Pickford: America's Sweetheart), wrote, "As cinema, Coquette is paralytic, a devastating falling-off from the fluid, entirely satisfying My Best Girl" (her final silent picture).  He adds that if one compares clips from both films, it would be "an example of the terrible toll that was exacted on the cinema by the coming of sound".  He too agrees that her win was probably more for her overall body of work than this one embarrassing feature.  "Mary's Oscar for her inferior work in Coquette surely qualifies as the first Life Achievement Award to be handed by the Academy."  A contemporary review in Photoplay Magazine says it best, "It was a credible good try, but few could be found who would agree with the Academicians that it was last year's outstanding labor before the microphone".

I would have thrown Pickford out altogether and put in Louise Brooks' haunting and devastating work in Diary of a Lost Girl, but without that option I'm going for Eagles' The Letter.  Judging from the clips I've seen, her turn as the murderess who still loves the man she killed is a strong performance. 

BEST ACTOR

George Bancroft (Thunderbolt)
Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona)
Chester Morris (Alibi)
Paul Muni (The Valiant)
Lewis Stone (The Patriot)

I can't say that I'm spoiled for choice.  I'm not particularly thrilled by any of the performances (and with Stone's lost, it is almost impossible to make a total judgment).  However, of the clips I have seen Morris strikes me as the best of a weak lot.  His Chick Williams, ruthless gangster, appears to be a performance that fits the bill.  Cold, calculating, selfish, but in the end terrified, Morris' only nomination, while forgotten and perhaps forgettable, looks better than Baxter's accented pseudo-Mexican.

And Now, My Choice for the Best Picture of 1929 is...

BEST PICTURE

Alibi
The Broadway Melody
Diary of a Lost Girl
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
In Old Arizona
The Patriot
      
Oy vey!  Talk about doing the best you can with what you've got.

I'm one of the few people who DOESN'T hate The Broadway Melody.  It's creaky, stagey, and at times perplexing in terms of plot (why would this Bizarre Love Triangle resolve itself so easily?).  Having seen it, I think it would have worked better as a silent film with sound sequences (like the musical numbers), like what The Jazz Singer did.  People forget that The Jazz Singer is not an all-talking film, just a silent film with the musical numbers in sound (after all, who could silence Al Jolson).   

In truth, I think Diary of a Lost Girl was the Best Film that year, but like a lot of good movies, it wasn't nominated.  Of the ones that were, I'm throwing out The Hollywood Revue.  A filmed vaudeville show as Best Picture? 

I brought it down to either The Patriot or Alibi, and it wasn't easy.  I think I might lean more towards The Patriot, but the clips I've seen of Alibi it looks like it could be a good movie.  Not a great movie, and not one that would rank high on the OFCS list.

One last note.  I've noticed that my Shadow Nominees are growing, so much so that I'm considering either a Part II for Tuesdays With Oscar (My Own Nominees and Winners) or a spin-off (Thursdays With Oscar?).  I'm leaning towards a Part II.  After all, Hollywood loves sequels. 

Next week, the 1930 Oscars.