Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Reza wrote:Why is The White Parade (1934) exclusively on view only at UCLA and by appointment? Why hasn't it been put on dvd so that the rest of the world could also get a chance to watch it?

Because no one wants to pay UCLA labs to do so.

East Lynne is in the same boat. That YouTube print is a bootleg.

Why is The White Parade (1934) exclusively on view only at UCLA and by appointment? Why hasn't it been put on dvd so that the rest of the world could also get a chance to watch it?

Watched the missing reel.

It would be nice if they would release a DVD or Blu-ray of it without the noise of the audience viewing it at the UCLA archive.

By the way, in case anybody missed it and is interested, a complete copy of East Lynne was uploaded to YouTube last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6_xXp8etko

Thanks for that, Andrew.

The Osborne book, which was the only book on the subject officially sanctioned by the Academy, was first published in 1989, three years after Inside Oscar. It was updated every five years through 2013 (the 85th Anniversary). I still have the last revision.

The entry for 1927/28 carries the following note:

For the first Academy Awards, all awards could be for a single achievement, for several achievements or for the whole body of work during the qualifying year. That is why multiple titles are listed by some names, and no titles by others. All achievements not receiving the First Award (*) in each category received "Honorable Mention" certificates.

Clarification:

There were just three entries for all awards except Best Actor. Chaplin was not listed. Except for Outstanding Picture (not Production) and Unique and Artists Picture (not Artistic Quality of Production), the awards are all listed by the names of the recipients, not the films for which they won

Title writing - Inside Oscar lists the titles of films for which the three title writers were mentioned. Osborne's book lists Gerald Duffy, Joseph Farham (given the statuette for the body of his work) and George Marion Jr.

Cinematography - Inside Oscar lists the name of the seven films for which three cinematographers, George Barnes, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (the latter both given statuettes), were mentioned.

The 1929 awards were also given to people, not films with the exception of Outstanding Picture. There were no nominations and no certificates given for runners-up. The book carries the disclaimer that "though not official nominations, the additional names in each category, according to in-house records, were under consideration by the various boards of judges.)

The oldest book I've got is "60 Years of the Oscar" by Robert Osborne and it only lists The Racket & 7th Heaven alongside Wings for Best Picture and then Chang, The Crowd & winner Sunrise in the Artistic Picture category. They were the films that received the honorable mention certificates.

He writes this "after Academy members made initial suggestions, twenty Academy appointed judges designated official nominees and five other judges made the final decisions"

So I think the other films you have mentioned were probably nominees but didn't come in the top 3.


Thanks for the information about East Lynne I'll try and find a copy.

Precious Doll wrote:

Big Magilla wrote: Diane Keaton won the Oscar for Annie Hall but she should have won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar in which she played a serial killer.

I agree that Keaton should won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, not Annie Hall, but I saw the movie and like anyone else who has seen it I know that she played the victim of a serial killer, not the serial killer. Did he see the movie or is he picking up on someone else's opinion?

Keaton's character was murdered but there it no narrative evidence in the film that suggested Tom Berenger's character was a serial killer that I recall.

Definition of a serial killer: a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behaviour pattern.

Long time since I saw it. Maybe the author was confusing the 1977 film with 1987's Black Widow which was about a female serial killer.

Uri wrote:

Big Magilla wrote:Among some very choice entries are The husband and wife nominations for Joel Coen and Frances McDormand for 1996's Fargo came almost twenty years after the last time a husband and wife team were nominated in the same year. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were nominated for 1974's A Woman Under the Influence. Was he drunk, or can't he count? 1996 was was 22 years later than 1974, not almost twenty.

Neil Simon and Marsha Mason were still married when they were both nominated in 1977.

Ah, that makes more sense.

Big Magilla wrote: Diane Keaton won the Oscar for Annie Hall but she should have won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar in which she played a serial killer.

I agree that Keaton should won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, not Annie Hall, but I saw the movie and like anyone else who has seen it I know that she played the victim of a serial killer, not the serial killer. Did he see the movie or is he picking up on someone else's opinion?

Keaton's character was murdered but there it no narrative evidence in the film that suggested Tom Berenger's character was a serial killer that I recall.

Definition of a serial killer: a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behaviour pattern.

Big Magilla wrote:Among some very choice entries are The husband and wife nominations for Joel Coen and Frances McDormand for 1996's Fargo came almost twenty years after the last time a husband and wife team were nominated in the same year. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were nominated for 1974's A Woman Under the Influence. Was he drunk, or can't he count? 1996 was was 22 years later than 1974, not almost twenty.

Neil Simon and Marsha Mason were still married when they were both nominated in 1977.

Geez, Magilla. What do these nitpickings have to do with the topic at hand?

All the Oscar books, which I owned as well, were written decades after the first awards. I'm not sure how well researched they were. I know that Damien and Mason did their job meticulously, but there were errors that Damien told me were mainly the result of erroneous submissions of ineligible films which they had access to rather than contradictory entries in differing books on the subject.

It was long after Inside Oscar that the changes now blessed by the Academy was made. Tom O'Neill's Movie Awards from 2003, which Damien hated I know, but it was a good reference work in its own right, also included The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh among Best Picture nominees.

I don't know if 2010 was when the changes were made or not, but that seems to be about when people started digging more thoroughly into contemporaneous reports. As I pointed out, the original press release in the Los Angles Times in early 1929 did not mention those two films. It's from the actual print edition which you can access with a prescription. You can get a trial subscription for seven days without paying if you want to check this or anything else out in the entire history of the Los Angeles Times or many other newspapers.

Searched:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/385554 ... s=Jannings

Found:

The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California)18 Feb 1929, Mon Page 17

I don't know what the Margaret Herrick library has on hand. Perhaps they have more detailed information such as the submissions that led to the final selections. Those three in each category that earned a statuette or a certificate were all considered winners. The nominees would have been the submissions or if you like, the five to ten submissions that got the most mention.

If want to read an Oscar book that is will really have you pulling your hair out, pick up a copy of Irish Professor Aubrey Malone's "And the Loser is..."

On the plus side, he generously quotes our Damien and John Harkness, but those typos, if that's what they are, should have been caught by someone in the editing process.

Among some very choice entries are The husband and wife nominations for Joel Coen and Frances McDormand for 1996's Fargo came almost twenty years after the last time a husband and wife team were nominated in the same year. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were nominated for 1974's A Woman Under the Influence. Was he drunk, or can't he count? 1996 was was 22 years later than 1974, not almost twenty.

Among the actors John Wayne beat in 1969 were Richard Burton for Anne of the Thousand Days and Peter O'Toole for The Lion in Winter. This several pages after discussing O'Toole in The Lion in Winter in the previous year's analysis. Goodbye, Mr. Chips was 1969.

And my absolute favorite:

Diane Keaton won the Oscar for Annie Hall but she should have won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar in which she played a serial killer.

I agree that Keaton should won for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, not Annie Hall, but I saw the movie and like anyone else who has seen it I know that she played the victim of a serial killer, not the serial killer. Did he see the movie or is he picking up on someone else's opinion?

Big Magilla wrote: It may be that The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh were in the running but didn't make the final cut which is why they have been removed from Oscar lists at least as far back as 2010. Older reference books did indeed include them.

It's probably a sign of how quarantine-cuckoo I am that I'm spending so much time on this, but, a few further words...

"Older reference books did indeed include them" is a rather soft-spoken way of saying "They were ALWAYS viewed as nominees". I owned every Oscar reference book prior to Inside Oscar -- A Pictorial History of the Academy Awards, Hollywood and the Academy Awards, Academy Awards Illustrated...and all of them had the list of five that includes the two Jannings movies. Inside Oscar was the first place to reveal the hinky machinations by which the final awards were chosen (Louis B. Mayer putting his big thumb on the scale), but never questioned the five historically listed nominees. If we're going to challenge why there were five Best Production nominees instead of the winner-plus-two-runners-up shown for Best Actor or Actress, do we also question why there were seven cited under Cinematography, or five under Title Writing? Especially because, as Inside Oscar documents, there was initial voting done by other Academy members beyond the select committee-folk choosing the winners, so it may be that that last group was working from a field defined by membership at large.

As to your contention that the Academy deleted the two films in question "at least as far back as 2010", this wasn't common knowledge when we did our thread back in 2012:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8405&hilit=best+pic ... 7&start=15

As you can see, all five films show up and are discussed -- though BJ does raise the issue of them being questioned at that point.

Here's the thing, though: how could it be suddenly decided in (let's be generous) 2010 that something was wrongly reported in 1928? How could this have been properly researched? Anyone cognizant enough to know what happened in 1928 would have been at least 100 years old in 2010. It's a guess either way, and I'm not comfortable with just rewriting long-established history without clearer evidence.

I'm not saying it's impossible the change was correctly made. But to present it as "The Way of All Flesh was never a Best Production nominee" has an Orwellian "We have always been at war with Eastasia" feel to it.

And, that off my chest, I'll return to screaming at my television set.

Technically there were no nominations. Awards were given in 15 categories with honorable mention given to two others in each category except Best Actor, Comedy Direction and Writing where there was only one runner-up when Charlie Chaplin's name was removed from all three disciplines and he was given an honorary award instead. Winners otherwise received a statuette (later dubbed "Oscar") and runners-up received certificates.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times announcing the awards on February 18, 1929, the Outstanding Picture of the Year Award, the only award based on box-office, would be presented to Wings with honorable mention going to Seventh Heaven and Two Arabian Knights. Apparently between the announcement and the presentation of the awards on May 16, 1929, Two Arabian Knights was replaced with The Racket. It may be that The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh were in the running but didn't make the final cut which is why they have been removed from Oscar lists at least as far back as 2010. Older reference books did indeed include them.

Most Unusual and Artistic Picture went to Sunrise with Chang and The Crowd runners-up as has always been noted.

The Academy only shows The Racket, 7th Heaven, and Wings as Best Picture nominees. They have three others (Chang, Sunrise, and The Crowd) down for Artistic Quality. They do not show The Way of All Flesh or The Last Command as nominees.

And their records are pretty thorough when it comes to notes on errata, discussing the lack of official nominees in 1928/29, the write-in "nominees" that were common until Bette Davis came in 3rd in voting as a write-in.

What I think is more likely to have happened was that someone at the Academy may have made notations on Emil Jannings' double nomination (for the two absent nominees) and put it in the wrong place. You might consider positing your question to their research department. They could probably research it and tell you if there was something amiss with previous records.