The Missed It By That Much Awards: Golden Globes Edition

So since for the 1932-33 awards year I'm using the expanded "Golden Globes" format (splitting up awards for picture, actor and actress between drama and comedy/musical), I'm sure most have you have been wondering who would have won for the previous five years if I'd been doing the Golden Globes thing all along.

Good question, thanks for asking.

It's kind of a mixed bag, as it turns out, which is why I didn't use this format in the first place. For every inspired choice, such as Marion Davies (comedy, Show People) or Edward G. Robinson (drama, Little Caesar), you get somebody like Maurice Chevalier (comedy/musical, The Love Parade) who'd have readers running for the exits. And then you start wondering whether I would really have given Marie Dressler the best supporting actress award of 1929-30 knowing I'd also give her an award for 1930-31. And on and on.

Clearly, I have too much time on my hands.

Anyway, here they are. Make of them what you will. At least Al Jolson dressed for the occasion.

1927-28
Picture (Comedy): The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin)

Actor (Comedy or Musical): Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer)

Actress (Drama): Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven and Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)

1928-29
Picture (Comedy): Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck)

Actor (Drama): Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

Actress (Comedy): Marion Davies (Show People)


1929-30
Picture (Comedy or Musical): Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor)

Actor (Comedy/Musical): Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade)

Actress (Comedy/Musical): Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade)


1930-31
Picture (Drama): M (prod. Seymour Hebenzal)

Actor (Drama): Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar)

Actress (Comedy): Marie Dressler (Min and Bill)


1931-32
Picture (Comedy/Musical): À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford)

Actor (Comedy/Musical): Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box)

Actress (Drama): Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)

The Missed It By That Much Awards Of 1932-33

You know it's a great year in movies when these are the people who didn't get a Katie Award nomination ...

Clark Gable (actor) and Mary Astor (actress) (Red Dust)

Gary Cooper (actor, A Farewell To Arms and Design For Living)

Marlene Dietrich (actress, Blonde Venus)

Dick Powell (supporting actor) and Ruby Keeler (supporting actress) (42nd Street, Gold Diggers Of 1933 and Footlight Parade)

Boris Karloff (actor, The Mummy)

Marion Davies (actress, Peg O' My Heart)

Ginger Rogers (supporting actress, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers Of 1933 and Flying Down To Rio)

William Powell (actor, Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage)

Joan Crawford (actress, Rain)

Clara Bow (actress, Call Her Savage)

Jeanette MacDonald (actress) and Maurice Chevalier (actor) (Love Me Tonight)

Irene Dunne (actress, Back Street)

Ben Hecht (writer) (Design For Living)

Glenda Farrell (actress, The Mystery Of The Wax Museum)

Charlie Ruggles (supporting actor, Love Me Tonight and Trouble In Paradise)

Ann Dvorak (supporting actress, Three On A Match)

Monday Is Marie Dressler Day On TCM

In honor of her birthday on Monday (November 9, 2009), Turner Classic Movies is showing Marie Dressler movies from 6 in the morning until 8 at night. They include her Oscar-winning turn in Min and Bill, her Oscar-nominated performance in Emma and Tillie's Punctured Romance from way back in 1914. Directed by comedy legend Mack Sennett, Tillie's Punctured Romance marks a couple of significant firsts—it was the first feature-length comedy ever produced and after years on the Broadway stage, was Marie Dressler's first Hollywood movie.

It may also have been the first performance by a very young Milton Berle in the role of a newsboy who gets slapped. Anyway, he said it was, but no one remembered him—he was only six years old—and no studio records exist to confirm his claim.

Tillie also marked a significant last: other than cameos, it was the last time Charles Chaplin appeared in a movie he didn't direct.

You might also check out The Patsy to see Marion Davies in her prime. Remem- bered now as William Randolph Hearst's mistress, skewered unmercifully in Citizen Kane as the no-talent "singer" Susan Alexander, Davies was actually a deft comic actress (I really recommend you track down Show People as well).

There are a lot of other name acts here as well—Mabel Normand, Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny (in his first movie), Rudy Vallee, William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy, Marjorie Rambeau.

Why, there's even Lillian Gish in a comedy.

Nothing but the best for Marie Dressler who was the biggest star in Hollywood during the Early Sound Era. Check it out.

Here's the schedule from TCM's website (as always times are Eastern Standard Time):

6:00am [Silent] Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
In this silent film, a con man dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Charles Bennett Dir: Mack Sennett BW-72 mins

7:15am [Silent] Patsy, The (1928)
In this silent film, a romantic young woman falls for her sister's fiancé, then discovers her sister is cheating on him.
Cast: Marion Davies, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler, Dell Henderson Dir: King Vidor BW-77 mins

8:45am [Musical] Chasing Rainbows (1929)
Musical performers fall in love while rehearsing for the big show.
Cast: Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny, George K. Arthur Dir: Charles F. Reisner BW-86 mins

10:15am [Romance] Divine Lady, The (1929)
Lady Hamilton's love affair with Admiral Nelson rocks the British Empire.
Cast: Corinne Griffith, Victor Varconi, H. B. Warner, Ian Keith Dir: Frank Lloyd BW-99 mins

12:00pm [Musical] Vagabond Lover, The (1929)
A small-town boy finds fame and romance when he joins a dance band.
Cast: Rudy Vallee, Sally Blane, Marie Dressler, Charles Sellon Dir: Marshall Neilan BW-65 mins

1:15pm [Romance] Girl Said No, The (1930)
A college sports star surprises everyone with his money-making schemes.
Cast: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler Dir: Sam Wood BW-92 mins

3:00pm [Drama] Min And Bill (1930)
Two crusty waterfront characters try to protect their daughter from a terrible secret.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau Dir: George Hill BW-66 mins

4:15pm [Comedy] One Romantic Night (1930)
A princess engaged to a prince falls for her brother's tutor.
Cast: Lillian Gish, Rod La Rocque, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler Dir: Paul L. Stein BW-72 mins

5:30pm [Drama] Politics (1931)
Two women take on small-town racketeers.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Rosco Ates, Karen Morley Dir: Charles F. Riesner BW-73 mins

6:45pm [Drama] Emma (1932)
A housekeeper faces unexpected snobbery when she marries her boss.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy Dir: Clarence Brown BW-72 mins

Best Actress Of 1928-29, Part One: What Do We Mean By Best?

Of the three nominees for best actress of 1928-29, one of them, Marion Davies, is pretty much here just to round out the field. Which is not to say Davies didn't deserve the nomination. While she is mostly remembered now as the inspiration for no-talent opera singer Susan Alexander in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane—a grossly unfair characterization if that's what Welles really thought of her—Davies was actually a very talented comic actress and it shows in the silent comedy, Show People, for which I've nominated her. But the fact is, no matter how good Davies was, 1928-29 boils down to a race between two actresses, Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Lillian Gish in The Wind, who between them deliver not just the two best performances of the year, but two of the best performances of any year.

By now if you've been following this blog (a big "if," I'll grant you), you've heard of both Lillian Gish and Maria Falconetti. Gish, as you may recall, was my choice for the best actress of the Silent Era. She was D.W. Griffith's go-to actress for every great movie he ever made and then after his career faded, she carried on for another decade making nothing but top-notch films. The Wind is probably the finest performance of her award-winning career.

Falconetti, on the other hand, only made one movie of significance, The Passion of Joan of Arc, but, boy, what a movie. Pauline Kael, the influential albeit erratic critic for New Yorker magazine, said after Carl Dreyer's masterpiece was rediscovered in 1981 that Falconetti's performance "may be the finest performance ever recorded on film." Premiere magazine ranked it as the twenty-sixth best performance of all time in a list of the 100 greatest performances in film history, making it the highest ranked silent performance.

Choosing between them involves not so much a matter of knowing good from bad as knowing what it is in a performance that you value. And this is where I run into a problem: as a woman I once knew said to me twenty-five years ago, "You don't have any values."

True. But she of the Katie Awards, Katie- Bar-The- Door, and Mister Muleboy of the blog The Mouth O' The Mule are positively silly with values and fortunately for me, often have strongly held opinions even on issues they have no opinion about. They both agree that Lillian Gish was a great actress; where they disagree is on the issue of whether Maria Falconetti was an actress at all.

Two events in movie history permanently scarred Katie, Ali McGraw's Oscar nomination for Love Story and Anna Paquin's win for The Piano. Subsequent work firmly established in Katie's mind that neither can act a lick and that honors were bestowed on them in anticipation that they might one day prove to have talent and in recognition of the work of other people. In reaction, she's adopted an informal rule: "Never give someone an Oscar for their first performance."

Here, Maria Falconetti wasn't technically appearing in her first movie—the Internet Movie Database lists small roles in a pair of 1917 shorts—but she might as well have been. And while Katie agrees that The Passion of Joan of Arc is one of the greatest movies ever made and that Maria Falconetti is effective in it, she's convinced Falconetti's performance is a product not of any particular skill but of director Carl Dreyer's relentless bullying, Rudolph Maté's excellent camera work and Dreyer's and Marguerite Beaugé's patient work in the editing room.

Roger Ebert describes the effort that produced the performance this way: "Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face—so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression."

Katie-Bar-the-Door thinks that given to what degree Dreyer hectored and humiliated her, and worked her to the point of exhaustion, it's no surprise that Falconetti convincingly comes across as hectored, humiliated and exhausted.

Consider too that since this is a silent film we're talking about, there are no line readings, which greatly complicate the actor's task, and because Dreyer shot the whole thing in a series of close-ups, there's very little need for Falconetti to play off the other actors. Dreyer simply put the camera on Falconetti and recorded everything and then assembled a character out of the footage.

Katie says that's not acting, it's something else—maybe a perfect face and a lot of film. I mean, if you put a stovepipe hat on your dog and took a hundred pictures of him, in one shot he's bound to look like Abraham Lincoln. But that doesn't make your dog the 16th president of the United States. (And no this is not my dog, who actually bears an uncanny resemblance to Woodrow Wilson.)

On the other hand, Mister Muleboy who is actually a trained actor in addition to being a highly intuitive blogger, points out that's "presumably the case in every feature film," that most screen performances consist of "a director badgering, sucking, pleading, or manipulating a 'performance' out of the actor. Usually manipulating it at the editing table. Crafting that 'great scene' from the (potentially nonsensical) multiple takes that, when combined, gave rise to that 'perfectly modulated, brilliant' performance. And that, in this director's/editor's medium, the idea of one acting performance that is in the control of the actor is—at best—only conjecture."

In fact, this is true of every per- formance, he says, even Marlon Brando in On The Water- front. Trying to identify where the work of the director and editor and cinematographer leave off and the work of the actor begins is like trying to identify the individual ingredients in a baked cake and then hand out an award to the sugar and the butter.

Hmm. So who's right?

Oh, wait. Katie-Bar-The-Door just reminded me that I'm married to her which pretty much means that even if she's wrong, she's right. But I don't think she's wrong. You know?

Also she says it's recycling day and can I please put out the newspapers? Gotta go.

To read Part Two, click here.