Best Supporting Actor 1946

[ITALIANO]

I saw The Green Years years ago, but I have a good memory. The scene I'm referring to - you can check - happens about 5 or 10 minutes after the movie begins, when the boy has just come to his new home.

OK, I checked. It's twelve minutes in and it is his first night in the new house.

Thank you.

[Big Magilla]

I saw The Green Years years ago, but I have a good memory. The scene I'm referring to - you can check - happens about 5 or 10 minutes after the movie begins, when the boy has just come to his new home.

OK, I checked. It's twelve minutes in and it is his first night in the new house.

[Big Magilla]

Not very likely. The trick is to stay awake until midnight, not fall asleep watching a dull actor at work. I was thinking of having a Loretta Young retrospective starting with Loose Ankles, which she made when she was 16. She plays a society dame who places an add in the paper looking for a gigolo to place her in a compromising position and gets several takers. The pre-code Loretta was a far cry from the proper lady of her later years

[ITALIANO]

Hey, everyone. New Year's Eve party at Magilla's! There's gonna be a Tom Drake marathon!

[Damien]

Hey, everyone. New Year's Eve party at Magilla's! There's gonna be a Tom Drake marathon!

[ITALIANO]

As for unsuspecting families, you are right of course - though I guess that often, rather than not seeing it, they actually don't want to see.

Part of the plot of Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding......in case anybody is interested in research on this topic.

Yes, of course. And it's a good movie.

[Reza]

As for unsuspecting families, you are right of course - though I guess that often, rather than not seeing it, they actually don't want to see.

Part of the plot of Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding......in case anybody is interested in research on this topic.

[ITALIANO]

It's one of those films I force on guests who tend to roll their eyes at the idea of watching an old balck-and-white movie instead of the latest new release and end up glad they did.

Mmm... Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you are a great host - but The Green Years??? This sounds like torture on your poor, unsuspecting guests. I'm sure that only after a few minutes they start shouting: "Ok, ok, it's a masterpiece, Magilla, it's a masterpiece!" hoping that you will stop the movie there. But no, you go on, mercilessly, till the end. And they never come back to your house.

Actually, that's more like the reaction I get when I try to show something with subtitles.

Smart friends you have...

It may be a recreation of a scene from the novel - which I haven't read - but in the movie it's at the beginning. As for unsuspecting families, you are right of course - though I guess that often, rather than not seeing it, they actually don't want to see.

[Big Magilla]

I saw The Green Years years ago, but I have a good memory. The scene I'm referring to - you can check - happens about 5 or 10 minutes after the movie begins, when the boy has just come to his new home. Of course the old man is his great-grandfather (though I'm not sure that we know it at that moment), and as I said it's meant to be tender, not sexual - but knowing how Americans deal with these things today, believe me, it would NEVER be shot this way. Plus, it's not like grandfathers don't do bad things to children - these things, sadly, often happen between relatives.

I will check, but the scene is a recreation of a scene from the novel, although today it probably wouldn't be found in a novel any more than it would be played out on screen, but not for the reason you assert. It wouldn't happen because it's rare in America today to find four generations like that living in the same house and would be alien to the experiences and senisibilities of the writer. And although sexual molestation may occur in families, family members aren't apt to suspect that a seemingly kindly old man would do something like that, which is why those things go undetected for as long as they do.

[Big Magilla]

It's one of those films I force on guests who tend to roll their eyes at the idea of watching an old balck-and-white movie instead of the latest new release and end up glad they did.

Mmm... Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you are a great host - but The Green Years??? This sounds like torture on your poor, unsuspecting guests. I'm sure that only after a few minutes they start shouting: "Ok, ok, it's a masterpiece, Magilla, it's a masterpiece!" hoping that you will stop the movie there. But no, you go on, mercilessly, till the end. And they never come back to your house.

Actually, that's more like the reaction I get when I try to show something with subtitles.

[ITALIANO]

It's one of those films I force on guests who tend to roll their eyes at the idea of watching an old balck-and-white movie instead of the latest new release and end up glad they did.

Mmm... Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you are a great host - but The Green Years??? This sounds like torture on your poor, unsuspecting guests. I'm sure that only after a few minutes they start shouting: "Ok, ok, it's a masterpiece, Magilla, it's a masterpiece!" hoping that you will stop the movie there. But no, you go on, mercilessly, till the end. And they never come back to your house.

[ITALIANO]

The Green Years isn't a masterpiece either, but Coburn has a "big", showy role in it. The movie, by the way, starts with a scene that would be unthinkable today: an old man in bed, a child taking off his clothes and then going into the same bed. The child starts to cry, softly, and the old man gently touches his hand... It's actually very tender and, obviously, not even remotely sexual, but Americans and not only Americans would never accept such a thing nowadays.

Oh, come on. Coburn was playing his great-grandfather and this scene was well into the film.

No. I saw The Green Years years ago, but I have a good memory. The scene I'm referring to - you can check - happens about 5 or 10 minutes after the movie begins, when the boy has just come to his new home. Of course the old man is his great-grandfather (though I'm not sure that we know it at that moment), and as I said it's meant to be tender, not sexual - but knowing how Americans deal with these things today, believe me, it would NEVER be shot this way. Plus, it's not like grandfathers don't do bad things to children - these things, sadly, often happen between relatives.

[Mister Tee]

I see I'm not the only one who took several days to get around to this. And I end up in pretty much the same place as most.

Harold Russell in Best Years is roughly akin to Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields: a clearly amateur actor, but also an affecting presence who somehow makes his film work better. I can understand the emotion that drew Academy voters to choose him. But I opt to pass and vote for one of the more professional performances.

I'm not so crazy about The Green Years -- or, I guess I should say, my memory isn't so crazy about it: it's well over 20 years since I saw it, and I can't recall a whole lot about it. Anyway, I cast my one Coburn vote in 1943.

I always loved William Demarest, but, like Damien, I can't believe he was nominated here, rather for any one of his Sturges classics. (How could Officer Kockenlocker have been ignored?) I actually mildly enjoyed The Jolson Story the last time I watched it, largely from being astounded at just how many famous tunes the man generated. He was The Beatles or Supremes of his time.

All three of Clifton Webb's nominated performances are pretty memorable, but this is the one for which I'm not tempted to vote. I actually find much of The Razor's Edge pretty cheesy, if amusing. And I think Webb's work is a bit too Laura-like without attaining the earlier film's heights.

Anyway, this is where I've always know I'd go for Claude Rains. It's really sad the veteran's advantage couldn't have won it for him in real time: his career certainly deserved it, and the film, while not as Academy-celebrated as Hitchcock's just-previous efforts, was well-liked enough to get a screenplay mention. In the hindsight of history, of course, it's now viewed as one of the half-dozen great Hitchcock films, and Rains' performance -- as Damien correctly says, somehow sympathetic despite being a clear villain -- is his career peak. I'm happy to join in the slaute, however little and late it may be for him.

[Damien]

William Demarest was a classic, irascible screen presence, but he had little to do in The Jolson Story and apparently made the cut here because of the (inexplicable to us today) popularity of The Jolson Story. He didn’t even get to use his patented cantankerousness in the film. I’m glad Demarest’s career resume has an Oscar nomination on it, but it’s a shame it wasn’t for The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek or Hail The Conquering Hero.

Harold Russell is a very affecting presence in The Best Years of Our Lives but, unfortunately, his performance simply isn’t very good. His awkward line readings are those of an amateur. His Special Oscar was well-deserved, his Supporting Actor statuette was not.

I like Charles Coburn much more in The Green Years than in his winning role in The More The Merrier, although that is admittedly partially due to my MGM Anglophilia-philia. The Green Years is a lovely picture, and Coburn is lovely in t.

The Razor’s Edge is an ambitious and sophisticated film with occasional sidesteps into naiveté. But sophistication reigns whenever Clifton Webb is on screen. He takes a character that easily might have been seen as a sterotype and made it a fascinating original. Bitchy and somewhat obnoxious, but also possessing unexpected reserves of kindness, Elliott Templeton is a marvelous screen character, as well as one who impresses as being so obviously gay.

But Claude Rains’s multi-faceted villain is the clear choice here. His growing self-awareness that he could never compete with Cary Grant for Ingrid Bergman’s love combined with his realization that he can’t fulfill his quietly horrific mother’s expectations make him one of the most complex – and sad – heavies ever. And anyone who could engender some sympathy for a Nazi is a hell of an actor.

My Own Top 5:
1. Reginald Owen in Cluny Brown
2. Claude Rains in Notorious
3. Aldo Fabrizi in Open City
4. Oscar Levant in Humoresque
5. Walter Brennan in My Darling Clementine

[Big Magilla]

The Green Years isn't a masterpiece either, but Coburn has a "big", showy role in it. The movie, by the way, starts with a scene that would be unthinkable today: an old man in bed, a child taking off his clothes and then going into the same bed. The child starts to cry, softly, and the old man gently touches his hand... It's actually very tender and, obviously, not even remotely sexual, but Americans and not only Americans would never accept such a thing nowadays.

Oh, come on. Coburn was playing his great-grandfather and this scene was well into the film, after the boy has been forced to sleep in a bed with his great-grandmother (Gladys Coooper) and is crying because the kids at school made fun of him because of the ugly suit she made for him from her undergarments. The boy, as I previously noted, is played by Dean Stockwell in one of his most affecting child roles. The film opens with the orphaned boy getting off a train in 1900 Glasgow where he is met by his grandmother (Selena Royle) who has had to walk some distance to the station because her miserly husband (Hume Cronyn) wouldn't spend a dime on a horse and carriage rental.

The objectionable Coburn/Stockwell scene is the one in which the old man tells the boy to beat up someone younger and less fortunate than himself and he does. Of course that turns out OK, with the old man as well as the boy learning a life lesson.

It's one of those films I force on guests who tend to roll their eyes at the idea of watching an old balck-and-white movie instead of the latest new release and end up glad they did.

The film was on the New York Times list of the year's ten best films along with The Best Years of Our Lives; Brief Encounter; Henry V; My Darling Clementine; Notorious; Open City; Road to Utopia; Stairway to Heaven and The Well-Diggger's Daughter. A film like The Green Years probably wouldn't make that list today.