Bad Girl (1931-32)

The title character of Bad Girl, Dorothy Haley (played by Sally Eilers), isn’t truly a bad girl at all. She’s tough, certainly, but she’s living in a city (New York) and a time where she and all other women are constantly the target of men’s attention, mostly unwanted and often repugnant. She and her friend Edna Briggs (a tough-talking Minna Gombell) are models for a store, and we get to see them displaying bridal gowns in the opening sequence, only to face the stares and leers and harassment by the men who are watching them. It begs the question of why the men are looking at women’s bridal gowns, but perhaps that’s to demonstrate just how tough it was for a single woman in the early 1930s.

Dorothy and Edna like to have a good time, so they head off to Coney Island after a tough day on the job. The scenes there have a lovely documentary feel, and it’s always fun to see footage from those earlier times and learn how people enjoyed themselves. Dorothy would like to meet a nice guy, but she thinks every man is going to be problematic. When she meets Eddie (a terrific James Dunn), he turns down her advances initially but starts to warm up to her. He lets her know quickly, though, that he wants a serious relationship, not a so-called “good time girl.” Dorothy and Ednar aren’t really those kinds of women, but what’s wrong with them going out and having some fun after work? Oh, that’s right. It’s 1931. I momentarily forgot.

Eddie walks Dorothy home, but he’s rather critical of the tenement life she lives. The movie isn’t clear on this, but she likely has no other choice than to live with her terrible brother in their small apartment. The tenement dwellers waste no time in demonstrating the full range of human experience in just a few minutes. There’s been a death and a birth and even a couple fighting over the husband smelling of limburger. You know, it’s a regular place, in other words. Eddie and Dorothy start to see each other regularly, and you can sense that they’re probably heading for a more permanent relationship.

However, Dorothy is quite tough, and when Eddie is late for a date one night, she shows up at his place to find him caught up in his work repairing radios. She tells him off pretty directly, but he begs her to stay with him and talk. Just talk. The movie doesn’t show anything more than that, and people do sometimes talk into the late hours when they’re falling in love. Unfortunately, she’s worried that being out so late will ruin her reputation and likely upset her controlling brother. She’s right, naturally, even though her brother has been staying up late with his girlfriend, Dorothy’s co-worker Edna. So… hypocrisy, unsurprisingly, shows up early in the film.

The plot then asks us to accept a series of rather silly misunderstandings between Eddie and Dorothy. He asks her to marry him and then can’t be reached for a day or so. Her brother has kicked her out and she has gone to stay with Edna, who is a widow with a young son who seems oddly interested in talking to Dorothy while she’s still in bed. Dorothy tries to call Eddie, but he’s moved out of his old place and apparently lost his job. When he shows up, he explains that he’s found them a new home, one that’s a bit bigger and more appropriate for a couple. They marry, and their relationship crisis seems to have been averted—temporarily.

Eddie has always wanted to own his own radio store, and he finds a nice location just when Dorothy finds out she’s pregnant. She’s frightened because her own mother died giving birth to her, but she won’t tell him that she’s expecting, which I suppose makes sense to her and no one else, including Edna. She seems frustrated about where they live (because it’s going to be too small to raise a family), but he misinterprets her emotions as displeasure with how small their apartment is. She wants to go back to work to earn some money for the baby, but she doesn’t tell him the reason, and he says he doesn’t want her to work because he feels like the husband should pay for everything so that his wife can stay home. Again, what year is this? 1931? You could still live on one person’s salary then?

He takes the money that’s he’s saved to open his own store and buys a new apartment and lots of new furniture because he thought she wanted a new place. She’s upset that he spent his money when she was probably hoping that it could be used, in part, to pay for the baby. It’s really quite silly that they both somehow wind up thinking that neither one wants to have a baby when it should be apparent that both of them are very excited. They clearly love each other; they’re just horrible at communicating their feelings.

The misunderstandings just keep piling on. Again, none of them make Dorothy a “bad girl.” She just doesn’t communicate clearly with her husband, and he doesn’t communicate clearly with her, so they’re always talking and acting at cross purposes. (Does this mean he is also a “bad boy”?) She’s worried about the delivery and mentions this expensive society doctor who would perhaps be more helpful. Eddie starts taking up boxing matches for extra cash and goes to visit this fancy obstetrician and breaks down asking the doctor to help him and his wife. Dunn is particularly effective in this scene, and you can understand why the doctor agrees to take the case.

On the day that Dorothy is supposed to go to the hospital, Eddie takes another match, and it’s quite brutal. He’s left bruised and bandaged, and she is upset when he shows up at the hospital, thinking he didn’t want to be there to see his own son being born. He just can’t seem to say the right things, and neither can she. If it weren’t for Edna’s interference at times, they might have separated or divorced before they could have their happy reconciliation. It is a Hollywood movie, after all, so you expect them to figure out how each other feels at some point before “The End” appears on screen.

The film was adapted from a book that was apparently much more scandalous in terms of what happens to Dorothy. This version, however, seems relatively tame to me. Dorothy and Eddie don’t really do anything that would cause their reputations to tarnish, and most of the plot complications are easily fixable, you know, if they just talk to each other honestly. It is interesting to see the difficult situation that women of that time were in. It’s certainly a professionally made film with some solid performances by the leads and major supporting characters. I’m not just certain that I would consider it to be Best Picture material.

Oscar Wins: Best Director (Frank Borzage) and Best Writing/Adaptation

Other Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

Best Picture of 1930-31

 

The Winner: Cimarron, surely one of the worst films ever to be chosen for the Academy’s highest honor

The Other Nominees: East Lynne, The Front Page, Skippy, Trader Horn

My Choice: The Front Page, but just barely over Skippy. Both films feature great performances from big casts, but I’d give the edge to The Front Page for its skill with dialog and for the moments when it shows a real fluency with camerawork.

The Front Page (1930-31)

  

A lot of the action in The Front Page takes place in a news reporters’ room at a courthouse. The reporters banter with each other and discuss various news events, and from time to time, they seem to write actual articles. Of course, most of their articles seem to be fictions rather than fact, and perhaps that’s part of the central joke of this film. Keeping most of the action restricted to one room is perhaps a holdover from the movie’s origins as a play, but what makes it stand out (and perhaps got it nominated for Best Pictures) is the fast talking and sharp, overlapping dialog. The characters sure say a lot in the film’s brisk 100 minutes.

The central character is “Hildy” Johnson (played by Pat O’Brien with his usual charm), a reporter for the Morning Post who is leaving his job to move to New York and become an advertising man. He’s also marrying his long-time girlfriend, Peggy (Mary Brian), and he’s starting to realize that perhaps he’s devoted more time to his job than to his relationship with Mary. The problem is that a really intriguing news event happens, and his instinct is to write about it. You know, just-one-more-before-I-leave-for-good kind of thinking.

His boss/editor, Walter Burns (played by the Oscar-nominated Adolphe Menjou), also schemes to keep Hildy on the job instead of letting him go easily. Menjou always has a sly look on his face, and his Burns is always scheming to get what we wants, which is usually for his paper to get the scoop. However, just when you think you’ve detected some trend in his behavior, Menjou’s Burns takes a sharp, surprising turn. It’s quite a vehicle for a good performance even though it might be considered a supporting role nowadays.

The plot concerns the impending hanging execution of a prisoner named Williams. It’s set for the next morning, and the sequence of events involving Williams borders on the farcical at times. The sheriff (Clarence Williams) and the mayor (James Gordon) want the hanging because it will help them with the black vote in the upcoming election. (Williams is accused of murdering a black policeman). The sheriff also warns of possible communist rallies at the execution even though Williams is a self-professed anarchist rather than a communist, as the sheriff falsely claims. There’s also a prostitute named Molly (an appropriately acidic Mae Clarke) who witnessed the alleged crime and is angry at the reporters because none of them is printing the truth of what happened.

In an odd turn of events, an alienist asks Williams to help reenact the crime, allowing the convicted man (George E. Stone, funnier than you might expect him to be) to steal a gun and escape captivity. It happens to be the sheriff’s gun, which is certainly an embarrassing detail that the sheriff tries to conceal. It’s little wonder that the reporters mock the sheriff through the film; he really doesn’t seem very competent at his job. The film offers quite a subtle commentary on the corrupt nature of politicians like the mayor and sheriff.

The cast is filled with some other first-rate character actors besides those I’ve already mentioned. Edward Everett Horton plays a news reporter named Bensinger who works for a rival paper. He’s obsessed, weirdly, with smells and illnesses. He also has an old-fashioned rolltop desk that plays a pivotal part in the plot, but more on that later. Slim Summerville shows up as an envoy from the governor, who has granted Williams a reprieve. The sheriff and mayor attempt to bribe him with money and a night at a whorehouse to keep him silent. Clearly, they’ve never seen Summerville’s other movies.

Williams actually never makes it out of the courthouse. He uses a drainpipe to reach the newsroom, where Hildy and Burns and Molly try to help him hide. He winds up in the rolltop desk, and given how many people come and go through that room, it’s crazy that no one suspects he’s hiding there. It’s something of a running gag, and even though the film is sometimes described as a black comedy, it reached slapstick proportions at times like this. The resolution at the film’s ending is quite preposterous, honestly, but it’s a comedy after all, so some creative liberties fit right in.

I’d like to point out a couple of clever decisions the filmmakers have made. One is the opening credits sequence. Since the film is about reporters, we get to watch as someone flips through a series of newspaper pages, including ones that introduce the cast by having their images on the page with a caption about the actor and their character. It’s pretty cool to watch. The other happens near the end of the film, and it demonstrates some sharp editing skills. We again get a series of images, close-ups of the different reporters calling in to their papers with stories.

The Front Page is now in the public domain, so copies can be easily made and distributed. It’s been preserved by Library of Congress, and I do hope that the print they have is one of higher quality both visually and auditorily. I saw a pretty murky and fuzzy version. Let’s hope someone cleans up the film for a future release.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Adolphe Menjou), and Best Director (Lewis Milestone)

Skippy (1930-31)

 

Skippy is probably easily dismissed by many viewers as a children’s movie. Its hero is a young boy who leaves his prominent family’s home to play almost every day in the shantytown (called, literally, “Shantytown” here) because it’s more exciting and more fun than the boring, staid environment where he lives. However, the film subverts our expectations about the concerns of children, placing the issues that the poor young people face squarely at the center of the narrative. Yes, most of the characters are kids, but they’re living in the Great Depression and facing some very systemic obstacles to survival and happiness.

Jackie Cooper, still the youngest ever nominee for Best Actor, is marvelous as the lead character of Skippy. He’s a mischievous kid whose stern father, a doctor with the Board of Health, tries to teach him manners and the concepts of right and wrong (from the dad’s narrow perspective, of course). Skippy just wants to have fun, and Cooper is quite funny in the scenes where he’s looking for an angle to circumvent his father’s (and mother’s) expectations. Watching him trying to avoid getting ready in the morning is a master class in physical comedy. Skippy just wants to stay in bed, but that’s not permitted in his home, so he finds some shortcuts, such as wetting his hair rather than combing it and making sure that the toothbrush is wet without brushing his teeth.

He likes hanging out in Shantytown across the tracks because there are seemingly no rules there. He defies his father’s order not to cross over the tracks by crawling through a pipe under them, adhering to the so-called letter of the “law” if not the spirit of it. The kids of Shantytown are a diverse group. There’s a bully named Harley Nubbins (played by Donald Haines), a young black boy named Snowflake (which is supposed to be funny, I guess, but it certainly raises a lot of questions), and a new kid named Sooky (Robert Coogan) who befriends Skippy after almost fighting over some wood he’s collected from the boys’ clubhouse so that his mother can have firewood to keep them warm.

The film was based upon a comic strip and novel by Percy Crosby, and it retains a bit of the episodic flavor of a comic strip. The film takes on a very serious subject, though, with its examination of what happens when a child learns a truth about grown-ups and adult life. Sooky’s dog, Penny, doesn’t have a license because it costs $3, money he and his mother don’t have. Skippy’s father, played by Willard Robertson, is trying to raze Shantytown because of concerns about disease and crime in the area. Of course, the residents struggle to survive and have no alternatives to their run-down homes, but that’s not how Dr. Skinner and his colleagues see the place.

It’s a little complicated to explain what happens with Penny, but Harley takes Skippy’s yo-yo and accidentally breaks the windshield of his father’s car. His father just happens to be the dogcatcher, and soon Penny is missing from Sooky’s home. They don’t have the money to pay for the license and when they do obtain it from Skippy’s bank, the dogcatcher takes it to pay for his windshield instead. What follows is a series of frantic and, at times, funny escapades. The boys try to sell glass bottles, run errands for cash, sell lemonade made from a single lemon, and even put on a show to raise the funds. The show is very similar to the ones you’ve seen in the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies, with a terrible magical act where Skippy tries to saw a box in half that has Sooky in one end and Snowflake in the other. It culminates in the reading of a truly awful poem by Eloise, Skippy’s annoying neighbor.

Penny is a mutt, to be sure, but she’s Sooky’s dog, and he describes her as an “all-around thoroughbred,” and his reasoning has to be heard to be understood. It certainly represents the way a child could rationale something like a thoroughbred designation. When the boys fall a bit short in collecting the necessary amount, they try to bargain with the dogcatcher, only to learn that Penny and all of the other dogs have already been euthanized. It’s so eerie to watch them walk past all of the silent cages, quite the contrast from all of the barking dogs seen there earlier in the film.

How do you console a child with a broken heart? Skippy tries to get Penny’s body so that they can bury her, but all of the dogs have already been disposed of. It’s when he sees his father’s name on the orders for catching dogs that Skippy realizes how complicit his father is in the death of his friend’s beloved pet. He tries to distract Sooky as they walk back to his shack, but Sooky runs to his mother’s arms and says he wants to die now that his dog is dead. It’s heartbreaking to watch this sequence, and Coogan (the younger brother of the great Jackie Coogan) is exceptional here.

Skippy has learned that adults are unconcerned about what children are dealing with, and he returns home so sad that he won’t eat dinner and goes straight to bed. He prays to God to help Sooky and keep him alive. His father overhears the prayers but doesn’t understand the context, and Skippy won’t tell him or even let his father try to comfort him. Cooper secured his Best Actor nomination with this scene, no doubt. The next morning, Skippy cannot even take any joy in the new bicycle his father purchases as a means to cheer him up.

The ending is perhaps not all that surprising. Through a series of odd events, Sooky winds up with two new dogs, including one that Skippy got by trading away his bike. Dr. Skinner changes his mind about Shantytown and decides to help them get rid of the dangers of contagious diseases in the homes there. He also manages to get into a fight with the dogcatcher after accidentally breaking the man’s car windshield himself. It’s quite a turnaround for a man so conservative and limited in his thinking earlier in the film, but I suppose when grown-ups realize that children are dealing with serious concerns too, maybe they can step up to do the right thing.

Norman Taurog won the Oscar for Best Director, no doubt for his ability to wrangle so many child actors and capture such moving performances from them. However, I think he also delicately balances the tone of the film, mixing comic moments with a very serious subject. Taurog was the youngest winner for Best Director until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016). He was also Cooper’s uncle, and if the story is true about how he made the young boy cry by pretending to have Cooper’s dog shot by a security officer, then I’m not sure he should have kept his Oscar.

Oscar Win: Best Director (Norman Taurog)

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Jackie Cooper), and Best Writing, Adaptation

Trader Horn (1930-31)

  

Trader Horn is based upon the real-life adventures of Alfred Aloysius “Trader” Horn and was reportedly the first non-documentary film to be shot on location in Africa. Horn was one of those white guys who traveled the rivers and jungles and plains of Africa trading goods like salt for treasures like ivory, and he certainly must have had some fascinating encounters. The film reportedly took six months to make as the crew went to the countries of Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and the Belgian Congo with the help of “white hunters” who are thanked by name in the opening credits.

It’s best to state up front that the film represents the colonial attitude that many white explorers had towards the continent of Africa and the African people there. Horn (played here by Harry Carey) thinks all of the native tribespeople, including the bearers who do all the work on his expeditions, are savages. It’s Peru (Duncan Renaldo, years away from his performances as the Cisco Kid in the movies and on the TV series) who corrects Horn and says they’re just “happy, ignorant children.” That certainly isn’t helpful since it’s just a different form of condescension. It also isn’t helped any that this line follows Peru looking at a series of African women with bare breasts.

I suppose it would be interesting to know if the filmmakers were truly depicting the native villages with any measure of accuracy. There’s an early sequence involving daily life where we see people getting their hair braided, playing games, and talking with others. We get close-ups of their faces and hairstyles and clothing, and we can only hope that these were all correct depictions, but that does seem rather unlikely. At times, I thought that perhaps some of the rituals performed during the movie might actually be a mixture from different tribes. What could have been an intriguing ethnographic film instead becomes a template for a lot of later movies set in Africa and the continuing misrepresentation of the people of Africa.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is the footage of the various animals Horn and Peru and their company encounter. It’s quite a list, and I’m not even sure I was comprehensive in my accounting: hippos, crocodiles, various birds, monkeys, giraffes, lions, Thompson’s gazelles, waterbuck, hyenas, leopards, impala, buffalo, baboons, warthogs, eland, and many, many more. It must have been like being on safari for the audiences in 1931, and I guess the commentary as these men travel (almost a voiceover) is helpful in identifying and describing the various animals. A bit of editing might have helped, though, so we aren’t just cataloguing every creature they meet. By the way, the threat of crocodiles seem particularly constant. Perhaps it’s because the men travel by water, but you see a lot of crocodiles jumping off the shore into the water as the film progresses. The Africa in Trader Horn is just overrun with crocodiles. Again, a little more editing would have made the film more interesting.

Other than introducing audiences to a lot of African animals, the film concerns itself with the slimmest of plots. Horn and his company meet a missionary named Edith Trent, whose baby daughter was kidnapped by a tribe many years earlier. Her husband was also taken, but he was killed, so now Mrs. Kent devotes her time to searching for their daughter. She doesn’t get much time in the film, though, as she’s found dead herself in the next scene. Horn and Peru decide that they must find the now grown daughter, so they begin a trek across Africa to find the tribe that took the child.

They themselves are captured after the halfway mark of the film and taken to a village controlled by Nina, the White Goddess (played by Edwina Booth with wild eyes and a lot of frantic aggression and quite a cascade of long blonde hair). She’s the daughter, of course, but now she’s in control of a tribe and seems to maintain her power by beating people. She even beats Peru at one point—right after he tells her “white people must help each other”—but he just takes it, an act that intrigues her a great deal, but more on that later. They’re forced to watch at the bearers are killed, and then they’re tied to crosses and hoisted upside down and about to be lit on fire when Nina finally stops the villagers. Even though she doesn’t speak any English, she’s decided to escape with them across a lake. How she figured out who they are and where she came from and what she has in common with them is all very mysterious.

The film then proceeds to put everyone in the cast in danger. Horn, Peru, Nina and Horn’s most loyal bearer, Rencharo (Mutia Oomulu, giving the part more dignity than it truly deserves) take a wooden canoe across a lake filled with hippos, some of the most aggressive and dangerous animals in the water. They later try to take some meat away from a pack of lions and almost get Nina killed. Horn had already pointed out about the wilds of Africa: “When you're not eating somebody, you're trying to keep somebody else from eating you.” That certainly seems to be the case for most of the film.

The cinematography for the film is quite lovely, but it is rather dark at times so that can make it tough to see all of what’s on the screen. The scenic vista shots are beautiful, and the sequence by a waterfall is quite breathtaking. But the film cannot seem to pick a rhythm to go with the action. At times, it cranks up the movement via fast motion, but why? We’ve had a long, languid walk across the veldt, but now that something exciting is happening, we need to speed it up? I realize it’s not a key plot point, but I was also fascinated by the enormous pith helmet Peru wears throughout the film, and it’s looking pretty rough by the end. Is it meant to be symbolic? Of what exactly?

Nina’s old tribe shows up to scare everyone into running, splitting up into pairs to be more efficient. Ranchero dies by Horn’s side, allowing the film to superimpose his image over the African skyline at the film’s end in one of the most maudlin moments I’ve seen in a while. Nina and Peru get rescued (if that’s the word for it) by a group of pygmies, who take then safely to a village and then to a trading post to be reunited with Horn just before he puts them both on a ship to leave. You see, Nina has to be educated so that she can be her true self; that means she’ll be white again according to the racialized thinking of the movie. Horn will stay behind in Africa and see Ranchero’s face in the sky.

The novelty of the film’s subject matter and the images of Africa must have been the key aspects that got it nominated for Best Picture. Carey plays a crusty old adventurer with a lot of gusto, certainly, and Renaldo makes for a handsome “love interest.” Seeing the two men side-by-side does make a viewer wonder how they both thought that Nina might pick them. Isn’t it clear that she’d choose the good-looking younger man with the impressive sideburns (not to mention the size of his pith helmet)? Then again, watching this movie nowadays raises so many questions. How staged were the animal attacks? Why are there drums in the background for so much of the film? Were there not other, better movies in this year that were eligible for awards consideration?

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

The White Parade (1934)

 

It would be unfair to call The White Parade a “lost film” since there is one print that survives. It’s housed at the UCLA Film Archive, and you can watch it if you make an appointment and agree to follow the rules the archive has. Of course, that means a trip to Westwood for what will likely be a full day if you don’t live in Los Angeles, so I’m not likely to make the trek until I reach a point of desperation I’m not currently feeling. It might not be truly lost, but it’s certainly not readily or easily available to very many people if it’s locked away in an archive.

The plot, according to IMDB, concerns “the hopeful, ambitious students at a hospital training school and is primarily a story of the stern discipline and laborious physical and mental toil they endure in order to become nurses and join the White Parade. It is told mainly through the character of June Arden, who finds romance with Ronald Hall III along the way, with side stories of the other girls who find failure, success, laughter, and tears along the way.” By the way, IMDB’s description includes the following sentence which really isn’t about the plot: “The forerunner of umpteen dozens of TV series over the past 40 years.” Well, someone or something has to be the starting point, doesn’t it?

The film is based upon a novel by Rian James, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jesse Lasky Jr., Sonya Levien, and Ernest Pascal. (Only James and Lasky received credit, though. Such are the vagaries of Hollywood.) The film is dedicated to Florence Nightingale, arguably the most famous nurse in history, a woman who inspired many people to join the profession of nursing to help others. Apparently, she’s referenced many times during the film itself.

The main character of June Arden is played by Loretta Young. June is an aspiring nurse at the Mitchell-Reed School for Nurses, and the film follows her and several of her classmates as they undergo the rigorous preparation they need to begin their practical training at a hospital. John Boles III plays June’s love interest, Ronald Hall III, a wealthy polo player. I guess at one point you could have a job as a polo player, and it was quite lucrative. I suspect that Boles’ character is not as charming throughout the film as might be initially assumed. Rich polo players with a Roman numeral at the end of their names don’t tend to be pillars of compassion and understanding in the movies.

Much of the plot involves the process of becoming a nurse, but there’s enough interaction between the different nursing students to suggest that they are jealous and underhanded and perhaps prone to being unable to keep their work and personal lives separate. There’s also a conflict between June and Ronald over the amount of time she’s spending at her job, but wasn’t that a likely source of disagreement at a time when many women were not expected and certainly not encouraged to have careers of their own? And who couldn’t see this coming from Rich Polo Player III?

Interesting bit of Oscar trivia: Young also starred in The House of Rothschild the same year as The White Parade, and both films were nominated for Best Picture. That is not a particularly common occurrence for the Academy Awards. Young would win an Oscar for Best Actress of 1947 and was one of the most reliable and well-like stars of her era.

Rumor has it the print at UCLA is in pretty bad condition, most likely a result of having just one option for preservation. Maybe the film can be and will be restored some day, especially since it will be in the public domain within the next few years.

By the way, I’m married to a nurse, and he’s never heard his occupation called “the white parade.” Neither has anyone else in nursing that I’ve ever met. Was this perhaps a nickname that was in favor for a very short period time? Or maybe it was a regional designation that never gained widespread favor? Or maybe James just made it up for his novel?

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture and Best Sound Recording

Best Picture of 1939

 

Oscar Winner: Gone With the Wind

Other Nominees: Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights

My Choice: The year 1939 is often referred to as the “greatest year in Hollywood” because of the astonishing number of quality films that were released that year. It’s tough to argue with the list of nominees for Best Picture even if it fails to include some other classics from that same year. However, it’s also tough to argue with the Academy’s choice of Best Picture. I’ve already discussed the complications that come with the film Gone With the Wind, but when you consider the sheer scale of filmmaking involved and you watch the iconic performances by everyone in the cast and you think of the lasting impact that it has had (good and bad, I suppose), it’s the most obvious and deserving choice.

If I’m allowed to pick a runner-up, it would be The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the second most influential film from that year, and it too represents filmmaking on a grand scale and features great performances from everyone in the cast. Why wouldn’t I be allowed to pick a runner-up? It’s my blog, after all.