Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:31 am
1952 may just be the year when Hollywood hit bottom. Production was being slashed, studio contracts were being cancelled left and right, television was the most popular medium, and the second and most damaging wave of HUAC hearings in Jan.-Apr. 1952 just about destroyed what was left of the industry's morale. Look through newspaper microfilm of '52, week by week, and you'll see just how much lackluster junk there was in theaters that year. If ever Hollywood appeared to have thrown in the towel, it was in '52. The widescreen processes that would save the industry--especially CinemaScope--had been announced by the end of the year, and the first films were in production. So by early '53, when the awards were given, there was a feeling of anticipation, of waiting for things to get better, but meanwhile they had to honor the year they had just suffered through--and do it, for the first time, on national television.
If the Best Picture that year was between High Noon and The Quiet Man, then you had two leading contenders made far outside the studio structure. The only truly "independent" film ever to win had been Hamlet. High Noon would have been United Artists' first win under its new and revolutionary setup. UA's still nascient clout probably accounts for the failure of The African Queen to be nominated the year before. With all the other strikes against it--the Carl Foreman controversy, the fact that Westerns were rarely considered Best Picture calibre--there was probably just too much studio resistance. The Greatest Show on Earth was the year's only blockbuster (unless you count This Is Cinerama, which played only in NY and LA in '52, but was so big there that tourists were actually journeying to New York, reportedly, just to see it), and voting for it was a kind of fallback. The other factor is that High Noon is a bummer, a bitter, almost despairing film. It is easily the best of the BP nominees this year; it holds up really well, and its great historical interest just makes it richer and more fascinating.
The Quiet Man, Ford's paeon to Irish whiskey, wife-beating, and men slugging each other silly as a form of male bonding becomes more and more queasy-making as the years go on.
I've always adored Singin' in the Rain, catching it at just the right time--in 1973, when I was 19 and Cahiers, Pauline Kael, etc., had lionized it. It was considered little more than a routine musical; it played off, made its money, and little was thought of it.
The odd duck of the '52 Oscars is The Bad and the Beautiful, which opened in LA just in time for Oscar consideration, might not have been widely seen at the time of the nominations, yet won five Oscars including Supporting Actress and Screenplay (beating High Noon by the blacklisted and self-exiled-to-England Foreman), despite not being nominated for Best Picture. Its unfortunate title, which Minnelli and John Houseman, its producer, both hated might have impeded it. (The working title, from the short story it's based on, was Tribute to a Bad Man, which must have given the marketing dept. at MGM the willies). When the voters finally saw it, they embraced it more enthusiastically than they had that better-known and more acid Hollywood-on-Hollywood film from the period, Sunset Blvd.
Like most of the important films in 1952--Singin' in the Rain, High Noon, The Quiet Man--it's a film that looks back at Hollywood's myths about itself and, unlike High Noon at least, ultimately conservative. It's beautifully directed by Minnelli who found his stride in melodrama with this film. It contains career-high performances by Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, and Dick Powell. The Oscar to Gloria Grahame always confused me; I'm glad she had an Oscar, but why for this, which she is hardly in and has little screen time? And of course, she beat out Jean Hagen who might be the most undeserving loser ever in this category.
But clearly, MGM backed the wrong horse; if it had pushed TBATB for BP instead of the clunky Ivanhoe, Minnelli's melodrama could have been the compromise studio winner instead of DeMille's circus thingie and would have been a choice halfway acceptable to posterity.
If the Best Picture that year was between High Noon and The Quiet Man, then you had two leading contenders made far outside the studio structure. The only truly "independent" film ever to win had been Hamlet. High Noon would have been United Artists' first win under its new and revolutionary setup. UA's still nascient clout probably accounts for the failure of The African Queen to be nominated the year before. With all the other strikes against it--the Carl Foreman controversy, the fact that Westerns were rarely considered Best Picture calibre--there was probably just too much studio resistance. The Greatest Show on Earth was the year's only blockbuster (unless you count This Is Cinerama, which played only in NY and LA in '52, but was so big there that tourists were actually journeying to New York, reportedly, just to see it), and voting for it was a kind of fallback. The other factor is that High Noon is a bummer, a bitter, almost despairing film. It is easily the best of the BP nominees this year; it holds up really well, and its great historical interest just makes it richer and more fascinating.
The Quiet Man, Ford's paeon to Irish whiskey, wife-beating, and men slugging each other silly as a form of male bonding becomes more and more queasy-making as the years go on.
I've always adored Singin' in the Rain, catching it at just the right time--in 1973, when I was 19 and Cahiers, Pauline Kael, etc., had lionized it. It was considered little more than a routine musical; it played off, made its money, and little was thought of it.
The odd duck of the '52 Oscars is The Bad and the Beautiful, which opened in LA just in time for Oscar consideration, might not have been widely seen at the time of the nominations, yet won five Oscars including Supporting Actress and Screenplay (beating High Noon by the blacklisted and self-exiled-to-England Foreman), despite not being nominated for Best Picture. Its unfortunate title, which Minnelli and John Houseman, its producer, both hated might have impeded it. (The working title, from the short story it's based on, was Tribute to a Bad Man, which must have given the marketing dept. at MGM the willies). When the voters finally saw it, they embraced it more enthusiastically than they had that better-known and more acid Hollywood-on-Hollywood film from the period, Sunset Blvd.
Like most of the important films in 1952--Singin' in the Rain, High Noon, The Quiet Man--it's a film that looks back at Hollywood's myths about itself and, unlike High Noon at least, ultimately conservative. It's beautifully directed by Minnelli who found his stride in melodrama with this film. It contains career-high performances by Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, and Dick Powell. The Oscar to Gloria Grahame always confused me; I'm glad she had an Oscar, but why for this, which she is hardly in and has little screen time? And of course, she beat out Jean Hagen who might be the most undeserving loser ever in this category.
But clearly, MGM backed the wrong horse; if it had pushed TBATB for BP instead of the clunky Ivanhoe, Minnelli's melodrama could have been the compromise studio winner instead of DeMille's circus thingie and would have been a choice halfway acceptable to posterity.