1929 Oscar Shouldabeens

[Precious Doll]

Best Film

1. Diary of a Lost Girl
2. Applause
3. The Man With a Movie Camera
4. Piccadilly
5. Pandora’s Box

Best Director

1. G. W. Pabst, The Diary of a Lost Girl
2. Rouben Mamoulian, Applaiuse
3. Dziga Vertov, The Man With a Movie Camera
4. E .A. Dupont, Piccadilly
5. G. W. Pabst, Pandora’s Box

Best Actor

1. Buster Keaton, Spite Marriage
2. Gary Cooper, The Virginian
3. James Thomas, Piccadilly
4. Basil Rathbone, The Last of Mrs Cheyney
5. George Bancroft, Thunderbolt

Best Actress

1. Anna May Wong, Piccadilly
2. Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl
3. Louise Brooks, Pandora’s Box
4. Helen Morgan, Applause
5. Gloria Swanson, Queen Kelly

Best Supporting Actor

1. George Barraud, The Last of Mrs Cheyney
2. Richard Arlen, The Virginian
3. Herbert Marshall, The Letter

Best Supporting Actress

1. Hannah Jones, Piccadilly

Best Screenplay

1. Piccadilly
2. Spite Marriage
3. Queen Kelly
4. Thunderbolt
5. The White Hell of Pitz Palu

Best Screenplay Adaptation

1. Diary of a Lost Girl
2. Applause
3. Pandora’s Box
4. Noah’s Ark
5. The Virginian

Best Cinematography

1. Pandora’s Box
2. Diary of a Lost Girl
3. The Man With a Movie Camera
4. Thunderbolt
5. Noah’s Ark

Best Editing

1. The Man With the Movie Camera
2. Diary of a Lost Girl
3. Applause
4. Piccadilly
5. Spite Marriage

Best Sound

1. Applause
2. The Virginian
3. Thunderbolt
4. The White Hell of Pitz Palu

Best Art Direction

1. Noah’s Ark
2. Diary of a Lost Girl
3. Pandora’s Box
4. Piccadilly
5. Thunderbolt

Best Costume Design

1. Piccadilly
2. Pandora’s Box
3. Queen Kelly
4. Diary of a Lost Girl
5. The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Best Music

1. The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
2. Thunderbolt
3. The Virginina
4. The Letter
5. Applause

[ksrymy]

BEST PICTURE
01. Arsenal (dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
02. Pandora's Box (dir. G. W. Pabst)
03. Piccadilly (dir. E. A. Dupont)
04. Un Chien Andalou (dir. Luis Buñuel)
05. Big Business (dir. James W. Horne, Leo McCarey)
06. A Cottage on Dartmoor (dir. Anthony Asquith)
07. Lucky Star (dir. Frank Borzage)
08. Days of Youth (dir. Yasujirô Ozu)
09. Hallelujah! (dir. King Vidor)
10. Asphalt (dir. Joe May)

BEST DIRECTOR
01. Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Arsenal
02. Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou
03. G. W. Pabst, Pandora's Box
04. E. A. Dupont, Piccadilly
05. Anthony Asquith, A Cottage on Dartmoor

BEST ACTOR
01. Uno Henning, A Cottage on Dartmoor
02. Erich von Stroheim, The Great Gabbo
03. Chico Marx, The Cocoanuts
04. Ronald Colman, Condemned!
05. Charles Farrell, Lucky Star

BEST ACTRESS
01. Anna May Wong, Piccadilly
02. Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl
03. Jeanne Eagels, The Letter
04. Betty Amann, Asphalt
05. Janet Gaynor, Lucky Star

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
01. Lupino Lane, The Love Parade
02. King Hou Chang, Piccadilly
03. Donald Calthrop, Blackmail
04. Nils Asther, Wild Orchids
05. Hans Adalbert Schlettow, A Cottage on Dartmoor

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
01. Nina Mae McKinney, Hallelujah!
02. Kay Francis, Dangerous Curves
03. Seena Owen, Queen Kelly
04. Margaret Dumont, The Cocoanuts
05. Lillian Roth, The Love Parade

BEST SCREENPLAY
01. Piccadilly (Arnold Bennett)
02. Days of Youth (Akira Fushimi & Yasujirô Ozu)
03. Asphalt (Joe May, Hans Székely, & Rolf E. Vanloo)
04. A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith & Herbert Price)
05. Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, Benn W. Levy, Charles Bennett, based on "Blackmail" by Charles Bennett)

BEST FILM EDITING
01. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov & Yelizaveta Svilova)
02. Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
03. Pandora's Box (Josep Fleisler)
04. Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel)
05. Piccadilly (J. W. McConaughty)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
01. Arsenal (Daniil Demutsky)
02. Asphalt (Günther Rittau)
03. Piccadilly (Werner Brandes)
04. Pandora's Box (Gunther Krampf)
05. Man with a Movie Camera (Mikhail Kaufman)

BEST ART DIRECTION
01. The Divine Lady (Horace Jackson)
02. Piccadilly (Alfred Junge)
03. Queen Kelly (Harold Miles)
04. Diary of a Lost Girl (Emil Hasler, Ernö Metzner)
05. Arsenal (Vadim Myuller, Iosif Shpinel)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
01. Piccadilly (uncredited)
02. The Divine Lady (Max Rée)
03. Queen Kelly (Max Rée)
04. Seven Footprints to Satan (uncredited)
05. The Love Parade (Travis Banton)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
01. Hallelujah! ("Swanee Shuffle," music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, performed by Nina Mae McKinney)
02. The Broadway Melody ("You Were Meant for Me," music by Nacio Herb Brown, lyrics by Arthur Freed, performed by Charles King)
03. Hallelujah! ("Waiting at the End of the Road," music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, performed by Daniel L. Haynes)
04. The Divine Lady ("Lady Divine," music by Nat Shilkret, lyrics by Richard Kountz, performed by Nat Shilkret)
05. On with the Show ("Am I Blue?," music by Harry Akst, lyrics by Grant Clarke, performed by Ethel Waters)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
01. Man with a Movie Camera (uncredited)
02. Un Chien Andalou (uncredited)
03. The Divine Lady (uncredited)
04. Seven Footprints to Satan (uncredited)
05. Arsenal (uncredited)

RESULTS
9 nominations: Piccadilly (2 wins)
6 nominations: Arsenal (3 wins), Diary of a Lost Girl
5 nominations: A Cottage on Dartmoor (1 win)
4 nominations: Asphalt, Un Chien Andalou, The Divine Lady (1 win), Hallelujah! (2 wins), Pandora's Box
3 nominations: Days of Youth, The Love Parade (1 win), Lucky Star, Man with a Movie Camera (2 wins), Queen Kelly
2 nominations: Blackmail, The Cocoanuts, Seven Footprints to Satan
1 nomination: Big Business, The Broadway Melody, Condemned!, Dangerous Curves, The Great Gabbo, The Letter, On with the Show

[Reza]

AMPAS did not recognize Corrine Griffith as a runner-up until after Inside Oscar was published.

Damien, will you be adding her and some of the other ''lost'' nominees in a revised edition of Inside Oscar?

[Big Magilla]

IF I recall correctly, there were no official nominees in 1929, those listed as nominees were actually runners-up. AMPAS did not recognize Corrine Griffith as a runner-up until after Inside Oscar was published.

[Reza]

I enjoyed The Divine Lady (1929). It follows the later Vivien Leigh version (That Hamilton Woman- 1941) almost scene for scene, so I suspect both are based on the same book. However, it omits Emma Hamilton's later fall into poverty. Corinne Griffith is certainly pretty, but she has a disconcerting thing she does with her mouth, sort of a smirk or curling of the lip to one side, which I found off-putting.

I'm still very confused about Corinne Griffith's nomination - mentioned in some books but not in Damien's. And the only reason I could figure Frank Lloyd's win as director of this film was because he also had two additional nominations for Drag and Weary River.

[MCAR]

Picture:
Applause
Eternal Love
The Love Parade
The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
Piccadilly

Actor:
George Arliss – Disraeli
John Barrymore – Eternal Love
Maurice Chevalier – The Love Parade
Ronald Colman – Bulldog Drummond
Charles Farrell – Lucky Star

Actress:
Renee Maria Falconetti – The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
Greta Garbo – The Single Standard
Camilla Horn – Eternal Love
Helen Morgan – Applause
Anna May Wong – Piccadilly

Supporting Actor:
Claud Allister – Bulldog Drummond
Lew Ayres – The Kiss
Hobart Bosworth – Eternal Love
Lupino Lane – The Love Parade
Herbert Marshall – The Letter

Suporting Actress:
Renee Adoree – The Pagan
Marie Dressler – The Divine Lady
Margaret Dumont – The Cocoanuts
Dorothy Janis – The Pagan
Lillian Roth – The Love Parade

Director:
Carl Theodor Dreyer – The Passion of Joan Of Arc
E.A. Dupont – Piccadilly
Abel Gance - Napolean
Ernst Lubitsch – The Love Parade
Rouben Mamoulian – Applause

Original Screenplay:
Arnold Bennett - Piccadilly
F. Adler, C. Bruckman, L. Neal & P.G. Smith – Welcome Danger
Abel Gance - Napolean
Grigory Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg –The New Babylon
Dziga Vertov – The Man With A Camera

Adapted Screenplay:
Guy Bolton & Ernest Vajda – The Love Parade
H.H. Caldwell, K. Hilliker & H. Kraly – Eternal Love
Carl Theodor Dreyer – The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
Dorothy Farnum – The Pagan
Garrett Fort – Applause

[Reza]

Yet another film from 1929!

Finally caught up with Disraeli, one of George Arliss' big hits from the sound era and which he had performed on stage as well as in an earlier silent film version. The film is quite stagy but his performance is excellent. He certainly does not play to the gallery and is quite restrained. In fact he gives a witty performance (his looks, unfortunately, get in the way - it takes a while to get used to that silly lop sided, knowing grin). He seems to be having a great time playing the wily British Prime Minister.

I've added him to my list below knocking off Johnny Mack Brown (The Single Standard). The film also makes my list knocking off Bulldog Drummond.

[Reza]

I seem to be suddenly catching up on films from 1929.

Glad to finally see Jeanne Eagles in The Letter, a rather faded print. It is an odd film, seems to end abruptly as if either some footage is missing OR Eagels just wasn't available to film a fade-out ending. In the book, I think she and husband were walking up steamship ramp, going to another remote posting where she would spend endless decades of boredom -- her punishment worse than death (somehow I liked the melodramatic ending of the 1940 version).

Also, she is quite awful in both opening and closing scenes, seems not to know her lines, is improvising to the great distress of her fellow actor who seems tentative about when to jump in with his lines and sometimes talks over her -- not in a natural conversational way, but in the way of under-rehearsed plays. However, she is magnificent in the trial scene. She made one more film (Jealousy, with Fredric March) and died of a heroin overdose. So sad for an actress said to be one of the most incandescent of the American stage of the 1920s. Also supposedly a great beauty which, unfortunately due to years of drug abuse, is not visible here. Did she also play this part on stage? I know she played Sadie Thompson in Rain.

She gets on my list below for her great acting on the stand (not unlike Ruth Chatterton also in Madame X) and for the confession scene where she talks of her love for the man she killed.

Incidently Wyler's 1940 version is ofcourse far superior and Bette Davis is magnificent throughout that film.[/color]

[Reza]

Just finished watching the 1929 version of Madame X. While the film itself is static and dull, Ruth Chatterton is very good. Her performance improves as the film goes along. Her dialogue delivery, in the sequences before the ''descent into the gutter'', is expressionless. When she becomes the hardened drunk street walker her performance is superb, climaxing with the scenes on the witness stand.

Have edited my list below and added Ruth Chatterton - removing Mary Pickford (The Taming of the Shrew).[/color]

[Reza]

Quote from Andrew: ''Reza - What is the box set called that looks great''.

It is probably a pirated set of videos ''prepared'' by some dealer in Bombay, India. The videos belong to an Uncle of mine who may have picked them up in the U.A.E. I came across them amongst his belongings and are part of his collection of films that officially ''belong'' to me while he lives in exile in Greece. Any way the films are a great tool to ''introduce'' my kids to black and white films / silent films - usually a deadly combo to many ignorant people today. Not only do the kids enjoy the comedies, they find it amusing that they have to ''read'' the plot. Better they watch these films than play stupid ''kill kill'' games on tv. And it will, hopefully, be an easy transition to later enjoy Garbo, Crawford, Bogart etc in other b/w classics. After all who else is going to inherit my films and movie books after I'm gone? I'd hate for them to be disposed off for a ''buck''.

[Damien]

I feel that Laurel & Hardy are the greatest of all comedians because they are the most empathetic, and the most like us. Chaplin positioned himself as an uber-sensitive individual, someone who "felt" more than the rest of us, which I always found unseemly. Plus I have never found him particularly funny. Keaton was brilliant but the combination of his deadpan persona and the overall surrealistic feel of his world created a bit of a distance between himself and the viewer. Stan and Ollie's fans loved them in a way that I don't think any other comedians had ever or again been so appreciated. As far as I'm concerned, they're right up there with Ethan Hawke as the greatest of all cinematic figures.

Putting Pants On Phillip iand Liberty are two of the funniest things I've ever seen. I was fortunate enough to see them both in a theatre a number of years ago.

Andrew, there is a series of nine DVDs out now called The Lost Films Of Laurel and Hardy, with the films mastered from original 35mm prints. These contain (I think) all of their extant silent films, as well as some movies Stan and Ollie did solo, and movies in which they made guest appearances. Each one retails for $29.99, but I've purchased them for less on eBay. They're utterly invaluable for anyone who cherishes Laurel and Hardy.

Reza, I love the fact that your children love L & H. They're very lucky to have you exposing them to The Boys.

[andrew]

I've just started to explore the Laurel and Hardy silent films, the sound era shorts are often shown on tv in the UK but they never show any of the silent ones.

I just saw the documentary The Laughing 20's which featured some quite long extracts from Putting Pants on Phillip - which looked very funny and quite different from their usual appearances.Also had From Soup to Nuts, Wrong Again, The Finishing Touch & Liberty - the last two were so funny.

I've heard great things about Two Tars & The Second Hundred Years so I'll hopefully get to see them soon, but there really aren't any bad Laurel & Hardy films so any of them will make for an enjoyable evening.

Reza - What is the box set called that looks great.

[Reza]

Damien, I didn't know you were a Laurel and Hardy fan. I recently found this great old book on them - The Official Record of the Greatest Comedy Team in Movie History! LAUREL & HARDY, with text by John McCabe, compiled by Al Kilgore and filmography by Richard W. Bann. It covers all their films. Also picked up a boxed set of some of their videos containing:

Should Married Men go Home?
That's My Wife
Love 'Em & Weep
Their Purple Moment
Sugar Daddies
Two Tars
From Soup to Nuts
You're Darn Tootin!
We Faw Down
Leave 'Em Laughing
Double Whoopee
The Finishing Touch
Sailor Beware
Liberty
Habeas Corpus
Big Business
Angora Love
Bacon Grabbers
Slipping Wives
With Love and Hisses
Wrong Again
Flying Elephants
Putting Pants on Phillips
The Second Hundred Years

I'm gradually watching and enjoying these films with my 8 year old daughter. A good way to introduce her to silent cinema. Had seen a number of these before but am enjoying them once again. My 6 year old son enjoys the scenes where the ''fat uncle'' hits the ''thin uncle''.

[Damien]

Best Picture:

Applause
*Big Business (short)[/quote]
Andrew, always nice to find a fellow Laurel & Hardy fan.

[andrew]

Best Picture:

*Big Business (short)
Bulldog Drummond
Diary of a Lost Girl
Hallelujah
The Love Parade

Best Actor:

*George Arliss - Disraeli
Maurice Chevalier - The Love Parade
Ronald Colman - Bulldog Drummond
Gary Cooper - The Virginian
Paul Muni - The Valiant

Best Actress:

Louise Brooks - Diary of a Lost Girl
Marion Davies - Marianne
Jeanne Eagels - The Letter
Jeanette MacDonald - The Love Parade
*Helen Morgan - Applause

Best Director:

*Ernst Lubitsch - The Love Parade
Rouben Mamoulian - Applause
Leo McCarey, James W. Horne - Big Business
King Vidor - Hallelujah
G.W. Pabst - Diary of a Lost Girl