Best Screenplay 1932/33

1927/28 through 1997
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What was the Best Adapted Screenplay of 1932/33?

Lady for a Day (Robert Riskin)
4
40%
Little Women (Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason)
5
50%
State Fair (Paul Green, Sonya Levien)
1
10%
 
Total votes: 10

The Original BJ
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Re: Best Screenplay 1932/33

Post by The Original BJ »

As others have said, there are alternates galore. Some of them were screenplays for films mostly ignored by Oscar -- M, Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight, Gold Diggers of 1933. But, more surprisingly, a lot of the better Best Picture nominees were excluded as well -- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, A Farewell to Arms, 42nd Street.

In this context, State Fair is an absolutely baffling nominee. The humor is hokey, the plot is thin, and the stakes are really weak. I'm sure its portrait of small-town America during the Depression held more appeal for folks at the time, but the script barely amounts to anything today.

I don't much have a strong preference between the other two nominees. I'd say Little Women is more a solid adaptation than a sparkling one -- you can sense the writers trying to cram in a lot of the novel's vignettes into the movie's running time, and sometimes the effort shows. Still, the writers do a decent enough job of getting the story up on screen, and though maybe the actress's work makes it play even better, the script does hand Katharine Hepburn one of her most memorable early roles.

Lady for a Day is a bit on the minor side of Capra's filmography, but it has a solid amount of laughs, a genuine sweetness to it, and explores class issues of the era with real insight. Of course, there were stronger opportunities to vote for Robert Riskin up ahead (in fact, right around the corner). But if I'm really zeroing in on the screenplays, I think I'd have to argue that Lady for a Day has a stronger plot and zestier dialogue than Little Women, and give it the slight edge in this category.

Oh, and Mister Tee -- I believe one reason Lady for a Day disappeared from circulation for a while is because the original print was lost, and Capra was the only person to have a copy of it. It seems all future versions of the film were based on copies of this print.
Big Magilla
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Re: Best Screenplay 1933

Post by Big Magilla »

The best adaptation of Little Women was the 1978 mini-series, but the best screen version remains Cukor's 1933 adaptation, which gets my vote here, although had it been nominated, my vote would have gone to Cukor's other 1933 adaptation, Dinner at Eight with I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang right behind.

Capra's original 1933 version of Lady for a Day was superior to his 1962 remake (Pocketful of Miracles), but it's far from one of his best. The definitive State Fair was the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical version.
Mister Tee
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Re: Best Screenplay 1932/33

Post by Mister Tee »

There are plenty of solid substitutes (or additions -- this category could definitely have stood five nominees this year): Trouble in Paradise, A Farewell to Arms, Dinner at Eight, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Golddiggers of 1933, plus I'm No Angel if it's (as I seem to recall) based on a Mae West play.

The unifying factor for all three actual nominees is, they've all been remade at least once.

State Fair has never held any appeal for me in any of its incarnations, and here -- without It Might As Well Be Spring, reduced to hog and mincemeat contests -- it's enough to send me running for the exits.

I can't say I've ever had that much affection for any version of Little Women, either -- books about writers that end with the writer selling a story based on their own home lives are a dreary genre, by me. But there's a good bit to like in the incidental details of this version; it's not a disgraceful nominee.

As I'm sure I recounted in the film/director thread, I'm hobbled, on the subject of Lady for a Day, by the fact that I was over-familiar with its remake, Pocketful of Miracles, before I ever got to this original version. (For many years, it was impossible to track down, likely because of Pocketful.) So I can't say I love this, either...but it does have the plot-line I like best of the three nominees, so I'll have to give it my vote.

Though, if we could cast write-ins like they did in '34/'35, I'd be with Trouble in Paradise all the way.
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Best Screenplay 1932/33

Post by Big Magilla »

The Academy called it "Best Writing, Adaptation", so we're back to calling this category Adapted Screenplay, but to make it easy to find, I'm leaving "adapted" out of the thread title.
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