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.
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 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 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
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
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.
Of Mice and Men is a pretty bleak film set in Depression-era California. It’s based upon the novel by John Steinbeck, and if you’re expecting a happy experience, you’ve clearly never read one of Steinbeck’s books from that era. Two migrant workers keep moving from one job to another, and it’s a tough existence, particularly since one of them suffered a brain injury as a child and cannot fully comprehend most of what people say to him. However, he’s astonishingly strong and a hard worker who listens to and does whatever his friend tells him to do.
The two friends are George (played by Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.), and they’ve been together for years. I think I heard George say they were cousins at one point early in the film, but that still doesn’t stop the questioning from everyone about why the two of them are together. It’s pretty simple, though. Lennie needs someone to keep him from using his brute strength to harm someone or something. At the start of the film, the two of them are escaping from Weed because Lennie did some act that upset the townspeople. We’re never told exactly what happened, but we start to imagine what it could be.
We quickly get introduced to a host of characters that will play important parts in the narrative. Curley and his new wife, for example, will keep getting involved in George and Lennie’s lives. Curley (Bob Steele) is the son of the owner of the barley farm the two men show up at. Curley is jealous of any attention his wife gets, and he’s quite hot-tempered, seemingly always up for a fight. His wife (Betty Field, fascinating in a small role) is bored and, to be fair, a bit of a tramp. She wants to see other people, to get out of the house from time to time, but Curley keeps leaving her alone to hang out in the nearby town with other men and, presumably, other women. Make of that sentence what you will.
Charles Bickford plays Slim, the most experienced and knowledgeable hand on the farm and someone who takes little guff from Curley. Roman Bohnen plays Candy, a farm worker who lost his hand in an accident and hangs around doing little odd jobs. He has an older dog that the other workers object to because it’s gotten weak and rather smelly. One of the first terrible incidents in the film is when several of the men convince Candy to let them kill the old dog and he would get a new puppy from Slim (like Curley’s wife has done). You can see from Bohnen’s face just how much it breaks Candy’s heart to let them kill his dog. It’s a tough moment in the film, one that will resonate all the way through until the ending.
Georgy and Lennie have a plan to earn enough money to buy a farm, a place where they can escape the constant difficulty of being someone else’s worker. Lennie will get to raise some rabbits, and he never stops talking about the rabbits. He really, really gets excited about them. That’s how Candy finds out about the farm and asks if he can join them. He has a lot of money, probably from being paid off after losing his hand on the job. Even Crooks, an African American farmhand who isn’t allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse with the rest of the men, asks to join them on the farm. It’s clearly meant as a representation of the American Dream, and it’s interesting to see that the downtrodden, the disabled, and the marginalized are the ones most invested in trying to escape their current situation and achieve that dream.
A series of misunderstandings leads Curley to attack Lennie, and the larger man breaks Curley’s hand even though he was just trying to stop the temperamental Curley from continuing to hit him. Lennie just cannot control himself; he doesn’t understand how strong he is and how dangerous he is as a consequence. Chaney was dismissed as a character actor and later as a horror film actor, but he’s very effective here. He is more expert at conveying someone with the lingering effects of a brain injury that a lot of other actors could muster.
The acting overall is particularly first rate. Several of the cast members came from the original Broadway production of the play adapted from Steinbeck’s novel, including Leigh Whipper who played Crooks and then went on to have a long career in Hollywood. Bohnen was also a stage actor, but he embodies Candy in a very naturalistic way here. Meredith had already performed in a few films, and Chaney had more than fifty film credits by the time he was cast as Lennie. Field was starring in just her second film here, but she brings a fitting sense of world-weariness to the role. She makes quite an impression in the few key scenes she has in the film.
It’s a sequence between Chaney and Field that serves as the climactic moment of the film. Curley has kicked his wife out of the house, so she goes to the barn to get the puppy that Slim gave her. She discovers Lennie there, sad because he’s accidentally killed his puppy by petting it too hard. Field makes the most of this scene, giving quite the monologue about how she wound up with Curley and how she’s going to Hollywood to be discovered. Lennie, of course, doesn’t follow most of this. He just keeps repeating the same lines, which prompts the rather low-class, rough woman to call him “goofy.”
Lennie talks about how much he likes soft things, perhaps the fur of the puppy or the fur of a rabbit, as examples. She talks about how soft her hair is and asks him to touch it to feel for himself. He hurts her because he doesn’t realize how strong he is and winds up killing her by accident. It’s a tragic moment in the film because we realize rather quickly that Lennie and George will have to leave again and keep looking for a new place.
When George and Candy discover the body, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the men on the farm to show up and figure out that Lennie is to blame. They form a search party, and it’s a race to see who can find Lennie first. This final sequence really allows Meredith to shine. He demonstrates the heaviness of the burden he’s been carrying trying to look out for Lennie all these years. It’s quite exhausting, so when he reaches a fatal decision that harkens back to an earlier scene in the film, the audience might be horrified, of course, but they will fully comprehend why he takes the action that he does. Meredith had a long and distinguished career in film, and this early role demonstrates how suited he was to the medium.
I don’t always talk about musical scores for dramatic films because, to a degree, they’re meant to serve as background music. However, Of Mice and Men features a marvelous original score by the great American composer Aaron Copland. This was only three years before he completed “Fanfare for the Common Man” and just five years before “Appalachian Spring,” two of his masterpieces. It’s tough to watch the film and not pay careful attention to the music that underscores the dramatic tension.
Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring, and Best Original Score
