Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962)

 

Billy Rose’s Jumbo doesn’t particularly break any new ground as a movie about a poor, small circus, but the depictions of everyday life among the circus performers and the performances themselves are stunningly shot and worth the couple of hours the story takes to unspool. “Pop” Wonder (Jimmy Durante, playing a usual Durante role) gambles away every day’s profits, leaving his daughter Kitty (a luminous Doris Day) to try keeping the circus afloat by asking for extensions from the many, many creditors the Wonder Circus has accumulated. Jumbo, an entertaining elephant, is the star attraction of the circus, and he’s wanted (very badly) by a rival circus. Enter Stephen Boyd, an enigmatic high wire acrobat who turns out to be the son of the owners of that rival circus. While he’s wooing Kitty (and having his singing voice dubbed in doing so), he’s also paying off the Wonder Circus’s rapidly mounting debts and acquiring larger and larger shares of its ownership. That’s really about it for the main plot, honestly, so the thinness of the story leaves generous amounts of time for watching the circus acts themselves. One of the centerpieces I especially enjoyed is a stunning number involving women dressed as butterflies. Unfortunately, a storm interrupts their part of the show, and the circus has to spend some time recovering and rebuilding from all the damage. The other highlight of the movie are all the lovely songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, most of which have nothing to do with the circus. Still, it’s hard to argue when you have Doris Day singing “My Romance” and “Little Girl Blue” and “This Can’t Be Love.” There’s even an astounding nine-minute musical number at the end entitled “Sawdust and Spangles and Dreams,” a sort of circus fantasia, if you will. Day, of course, sings beautifully, but the filmmakers do surround her in pink an awful lot. A less “girly” color palette would have suited her better. One of the other pleasures of the film is watching the great Martha Raye mugging her way through one of the broadest performances of her career – and that’s saying a lot. She plays a circus performer who’s in love with Pop Wonder, and watching her get shot out of a cannon is a sequence you won’t soon forget.

Oscar Nomination: Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)

 

The frame story of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, involving the writing of the family history of a local duke by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, is nowhere near as interesting as the three fairy tales that are presented and that make up a significant portion of the film’s plot. In essence, it’s like having three clever short films linked together by a rather weak and uninteresting story of the guys who collected them. They might have been more successful had they been released as separate short films. Wilhelm Grimm (Laurence Harvey, as unctuous as ever) keeps getting distracted from the work for which he and his brother are being paid and which is allowing them to live rent free. He only cares about the enchanting stories that he hears from local people. Jacob (Karlheinz Bohm, probably best known for his work in European films) is wooing (badly) the beautiful Greta Heinrich (Barbara Eden) and writing boring books about grammar and other dull subjects that no one really wants to purchase. By the way, it’s always a shock for me to see actors like Eden who are so identified with a particular role performing in a film or TV show that’s so vastly different from what they’re known for. The most interesting thing that happens to the two brothers is the loss of the manuscript of the duke’s history and Wilhelm’s subsequent illness that leaves him hallucinating that he’s being visited by various fairy tale characters like Rumpelstiltskin and the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood. Since the film is geared towards kids, it’s tough to imagine that this kind of stuff would hold their interest for the whole 135 minutes running time. The three stories, however, are delightful; they’re bright and colorful representations of the tales Wilhelm is collecting. The first one, “The Dancing Princess,” features Yvette Mimieux and Russ Tamblyn, a cloak that renders the wearer invisible, and one of the longest carriage rides in the history of film—no, really, it takes up a ridiculous amount of time. This segment also has Jim Backus and Beulah Bondi in supporting roles, just a couple the supporting players who make the film more watchable. “The Cobbler and the Elves” actually features Harvey as the shoemaker and George Pal’s Puppetoons as the elves. The story is a famous one about how the cobbler gets into trouble with everyone because he’s always late with their orders, but the elves save him by making all of the shoes in just one night. Watching the Puppetoons craft the shoes is a lot of fun, honestly, and you’re willing to forgive the inclusion of Harvey in this second role because he’s not always the main focus. This is the story that Wilhelm tells a group of kids and the patrons of a bookstore in order to see if there’s any interest in a book of these kinds of tales; I think we all know how that turns out. The final fairy tale is the strangely-named “The Singing Bone” starring Terry-Thoms and Buddy Hackett, a story of betrayal involving a knight and his squire, a very sparkly dragon, a miraculous return from the dead, and the most and best special effects of the movie. One of the few films to be produced in Cinerama, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm makes effective use of all that screen space. Most of the movie still makes for fun viewing, but I kept wanting to fast forward through all of the stuff involving the brothers’ personal lives and get back to the fairy tales.; that’s where the true fun is.

Oscar Win: Best Color Costume Design

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment 

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated for Best Picture of 1962, one of the more noble choices the Academy has made over the years. So many people have read the miraculous book on which this film was based, and the movie version itself is frequently cited as one of the best ever made. It's almost as if watching this film has the power to ennoble a viewer through its message. This film should almost be required viewing, and the book should certainly be required reading.

You're probably already familiar with the story. Lawyer Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck (who was always good but never better than this), defends a wrongly accused black man against charges of raping a white woman. He and his family, a boy named Jem and a girl nicknamed Scout, then must face the consequences of Atticus' bravery. The courtroom scenes, in particular, are tense; you can feel the heat in that stuffy room as each witness seems to bring a new, heightened level of intensity to the story. Certainly, we as viewers know how the trial should turn out, yet we also know that this is Depression-era Southern justice at work, so we aren't surprised by the verdict or what happens after everyone leaves the courthouse.

This is a film about childhood, really, about the ways that we arrive at an awareness of the world while we are children. Much of the early part of the film is devoted to games and play and to the stories that kids tell, the legends and myths that they pass along; it's also about those seminal moments of childhood, like the first day of school. Scout, as the narrator of the movie, seems to understand some things well beyond what her age would suggest. She's played by Mary Badham, who brings out the tomboyish aspects of the character to full effect; whatever the boys do, she wants to join them. Badham has gotten much critical attention for her performance, and rightly so, particularly for the tenderness of the scenes between her and Peck.

However, I think Badham is matched if not exceeded by the acting of Phillip Alford as Jem. He portrays a young man just becoming conscious of the world in which he lives. His facial expressions as he watches his father shoot a mad dog or deliver a closing argument or even walk away after a man spits in his face: they're all revelatory. Alford is almost a blank slate emotionally at the beginning of the movie, but by the end, he has gotten so much wiser just through his observations. By the way, I also enjoyed John Megna's job as "Dill," the young boy visiting his aunt (my beloved Alice Ghostley) for a few weeks each summer; he's very funny, particularly when he's telling the stories (perhaps lies?) about his father.

In a way, we really watch all of the events of the movie through the children's eyes. I know that the grown-up Scout is the narrator, and all of the events are retrospective in nature. However, Scout and Jem are really the characters whose actions propel the story forward. It it through them that we learn about the trial and about "Boo" Radley (a young Robert Duvall), who plays a pivotal role in the outcome of the movie. The film itself reinforces this focus in the opening credits, as a child opens a cigar box with a watch, a medal, two carved soap figurines, and a few other items. That cigar box, we later learn, is Jem's, and it's where he keeps his most prized possessions, many of them left in the hollow of a tree by Boo. The film keeps returning to the two of them (and their summertime friend Dill) and how they react to the events they are watching unfold. In the hands of two less capable child actors, this film could have been less successful, but in their film debuts, both children (natives of Alabama) shine.

I also want to point out the quiet dignity that Brock Peters brings to his role of the accused Tom Robinson. Peters was always a reliable actor, good in every part. He's so effective in To Kill a Mockingbird because he lets you see a man who knows that the truth is unlikely to help him. The sweat that forms on his forehead during his testimony gets me every time. He struggles so to speak the words that he knows won't prevent him from being condemned to death. It's a small role, to be sure, but pivotal to the movie. Peck wouldn't be as powerful as Atticus if not for Peters' strength as Tom.

I need to discuss Peck's performance as Atticus Finch, certainly one of the most understated yet strong roles ever committed to film. Peck's Atticus is everyone's notion of the ideal father, and who wouldn't want him to be your lawyer if you had to go to trial? He's a widower forced to take care of his two children with only a housekeeper's help. Still, he manages to stay up late each night to read with his daughter, and he never leaves Jem's bedside when the boy's arm is broken. The summation he provides in court always makes me cry; it's a powerful statement of what justice should be. Even though, as I stated earlier, you know the outcome of the trial is predetermined, you still hope that the twelve white men on the jury will take heed. The other great male performance that year was given by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, and I only wish that the Academy could have given both men awards. I love O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence, and I still cannot believe he's never won a competitive Oscar, but how could anyone deny Peck the award for Best Actor after watching him in To Kill a Mockingbird?

I've never known anyone who's seen this movie who doesn't love or at least admire it. Even Charlene on Designing Women described it as her favorite movie. That's pretty high praise, even if it is from a fictional character. If you've never watched it, you should, just to see if you agree with the consensus. The college where I teach produced a theatrical version of To Kill a Mockingbird a few semesters ago, and you'd think that a live performance would bring a sense of immediacy to the proceedings. However, as good as the production was (and my college has a reputation for doing some fantastic work), it just couldn't compare to the book or to this film.

Oscar Wins: Actor (Peck), Adapted Screenplay, and Art Direction (Black and White)

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Supporting Actress (Badham), Cinematography (Black and White), and Substantially Original Music Score