What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1956

The Year: 1956
What the Nominees Were: Around the World in 80 Days, Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, The Ten Commandments
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: The Court Jester, John Ford’s The Searchers, Hitchcock’s experiment with true-crime The Wrong Man, Elia Kazan’s demented movie of Baby Doll, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Douglas Sirk’s greatest film Written on the Wind

What Did Win: Around the World in 80 Days
How It’s Aged: This is also frequently cited as the worst Best Picture of all and I don’t have much defense for this one. Overlong, unfunny, and badly aged (Shirley MacLaine plays an Indian princess), this is a pretty terrible movie. Very happy to take this one away.

 
What Should’ve Won: The Court Jester
How Hard Was the Decision: This is a ridiculous decision on my part. The obvious choice is The Searchers, which is far more universally acclaimed than The Court Jester. But I don’t like The Searchers. John Wayne gives a great performance, and John Ford never made a more beautiful movie, but Wayne’s young compatriot Jeffrey Hunter is not up to the challenge of the material, and the movie has wild tone problems. The comedic material feels painfully out of place in this grim story of racial hatred and revenge. So I’m giving it to one of my favorite movies, even though it would be a stretch to say it could have won.
Written and Directed by: Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, with songs by Sylvia Fine and Sammy Cahn
Stars: Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone and Angela Lansbury

The Story: In a medieval forest, a clown does what he can to help a Robin Hood type outlaw who is trying to restore the true king. He gets his big chance when they replace the usurper king’s jester and infiltrate the castle. Once inside, he has to court a princess, fight off a mesmerizing lady-in-waiting, and duel a duke.

 
Any Nominations or Wins: Nothing at the Oscars, but Danny Kaye received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor – Comedy/Musical
Why It Didn’t Win: The bias against comedy no doubt sunk this one. Even jewels that sparkle as brightly as this could be ignored.

 
Why It Should Have Won:

1. Kaye’s movies were popular at the time, and he’s vaguely well-regarded today, but for some reason he lacks the reputation of other great clown-geniuses of the talkie era, such as the Marx Brothers. This is right up there with the best of their movies. It’s a masterpiece. Why don’t all critics embrace Kaye today? Partially because he indulged so much in no-longer-fashionable puns and linguistic gymnastics, especially the fast-talking songs written by his brilliant wife Sylvia Fine. (“Those who try to tangle with my derring-do/ Wind up at the same angle as herring do!”) But Kaye could make a tongue-twister as elegant as a Buster Keaton flip.
2. We all know Angela Lansbury and you may recognize Glynis Johns from movies like Mary Poppins where she played the mom. What a treat here to see these two great comediennes before they were consigned to matronly roles, busting out of their bodices, flirting up a storm, and generally kicking ass.
3. People cut spoofs a lot of slack, which make the magnificent production values here all the more impressive. This movie works as a comedy and as a worthy follow-up to movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood—it even has its own final duel with Basil Rathbone that’s just as thrilling. The impressive castle scenes rival big-budget medieval hits of the time like Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table, which seem tacky and stagy today.
4. One thing that this movie proves is that comedies are funnier when the hero isn’t completely incompetent (as they tend to be in movies today). Kaye finds himself in a situation over his head, but it’s not one that he is totally unprepared for. We understand his strengths and his weaknesses and we anticipate which situations he might be able to get out of and which ones we know he can’t. A clown who can’t cut it as a revolutionary becomes a jester/spy. His clown skills will come in handy in his new role, but they will be insufficient until they are pushed to the limit. That’s so much more interesting than a movie about, say, a drunken stable boy who has to pretend to have jester skills, and just fakes it all.
5. The story becomes very complex but the screenplay is a masterpiece of clarity. We know what every character wants and how their goals conflict, and our brain does somersaults in advance whenever we see that two conflicting agendas are about to collide. We know what will go wrong whenever someone snaps their fingers. We know when Kaye’s gotten the rhyme wrong. (Say it with me now: “The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!”)

Ah, 1956: No. Because you’re terrifying.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1955

The Year: 1955
What the Nominees Were: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, Marty, Mister Roberts, Picnic, The Rose Tattoo 

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: In America, Night of the Hunter and Kiss Me Deadly were too bleak for the Academy. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly took a darker turn with It’s Always Fair Weather, John Sturges denounced racism in the gritty little thriller Bad Day at Black Rock, and Nicholas Ray gave us James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Overseas, this became the first year in which foreign films, as a whole, began to surpass the quality of Hollywood fare. In Sweden, Ingmar Bergman turned out his first masterpiece, Smiles on a Summer Night. In India, Satyajit Ray burst onto the scene with Pather Panchali, and in France the “French Hitchcock,” H. G. Clouzot, made Diabolique.

What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Marty
How Hard Was the Decision: Extremely hard. Marty is frequently cited as one of the weakest Oscar winners, and indeed one does wonder while watching it if this is a movie anyone would remember today if it hadn’t won. …But there were no stronger options. I considered these three to overturn it:

• Rebel Without a Cause sizzles with a white-hot star turn from Dean, but it’s a little too overwrought and dated in its “juvenile delinquency” theme
• Bad Day at Black Rock is magnificent but equally small and doesn’t feel any more like an Oscar film than Marty
• As for It’s Always Fair Weather, I passed over Singing in the Rain and so considered giving one to this follow-up, which I prefer, but this movie is just too damn odd for Oscar

But what about the smorgasbord of excellent foreign films? I decided that none of them could have won, and certainly none of them got any nominations, despite being among the best of all time. So that left Marty, a movie I have a stubborn affection for.

Director: Delbert Mann
Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
Stars: Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair

The Story: A mopey butcher, self-described as “stocky,” is under pressure to get married after his final younger sibling is married off. He has no luck at a ballroom until he sees a plain-jane schoolteacher named Clara get ditched and swoops in to offer some sympathy. They talk all night, then he takes her home and drops her off. The next day, he has to decide whether or not to call her.

Any Other Nominations or Wins: It won Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay. It lost Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Art Direction and Cinematography
How It Won: It certainly was considered a shocking win at the time, being such a small movie, remade and barely expanded from a teleplay (starring Rod Steiger in the lead) that had aired a few years before. The movie’s co-producer, Burt Lancaster, no stranger to big swings, leapt into action when the movie started getting Oscar talk, launching the first Oscar campaign that ever outspent the movie itself ($400k vs $340k) and it worked.

Why It Won:

1. Movies had discovered widescreen and color had roared back into style, so how did this barely-different-from-TV movie stand out? Moviegoers sometimes, especially in times of bombast, crave the shock of verisimilitude. Startlingly humdrum dialogue (“I dunno, what do you wanna do tonight?” is repeated many times), documentary-style filming on the streets of New York, a low stakes finale. Sometimes we just want to say, “This is real.”
   
2. Society shifts back and forth on its opinion of supposedly “nice guys” who can’t find love. In 2025, they’re widely despised as merely creeps in disguise, but this movie takes a more sympathetic view. That said, Marty is certainly far from blameless in his loneliness. He keeps unintentionally calling Clara a “dog,” oblivious to the hurt it’s causing her. We (and he) can tell he’s falling in love because he keeps talking about himself uncontrollably and forgetting to ask about her, which is a nicely ironic way to show it.
3. The movie prefigures Scorsese in its faithful recreation of lower-class Italian-American men hanging out shooting the breeze. The funniest discussion is of the supposedly monumental literary powers of Mickey Spillaine.
   
4. Betsy Blair is great as Clara. My favorite line reading is when Marty takes her back to his house and says “This is the kitchen,” and she responds “Yes, I know,” a line that sounds derisive on paper, but she manages to deliver it as mostly vulnerable but slightly amused at the same time.
   

Ah, 1955: I’m not even going to ask what the “S” stands for

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1954

The Year: 1954
What the Nominees Were: The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, On the Waterfront, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Three Coins in the Fountain
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Hitchcock turned out a masterpiece with Rear Window. George Cukor delivered the first of many remakes of A Star is Born, giving Judy Garland her best showcase. Disney’s great live action version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was worthy of consideration. Over in Italy, Fellini topped himself with La Strada.

What Did Win: On the Waterfront
How It’s Aged: On its own merits? It’s clearly a great film. As a historical artifact? It’s terrible. Its writer and director had shamefully named names in the witch hunts, and made this movie to defend their position. Once you know that, it poisons the whole thing, and you realize there are some places where characters act a little unnaturally in order to make the filmmakers’ larger political point. Still well worth watching for Brando’s stunning “coulda been a contenda” performance, but a movie with dubious motives.

What Should’ve Won: Rear Window

How Hard Was the Decision: A very hard choice. I was very tempted to go with A Star is Born, which is classic Oscar Bait that somehow failed to catch its prey. The “Born in a Trunk” musical number is Best-Picture worthy all by itself. But Rear Window, while less Oscar-y, is one of the all-time great films and it was impossible to pass it over.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: John Michael Hayes, based on the short story “It Had to Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich
Stars: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr

The Story: A daredevil photographer gets injured on the job and laid up in his apartment with a broken leg. He begins spying on his neighbors, ands comes to suspect one of them of murdering his wife. He eventually convinces his society girlfriend (who wishes he would marry her) to break into the man’s apartment, but that gets them both in danger.

Any Nominations or Wins: It was nominated for Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Sound, but won nothing.
Why It Didn’t Win: When Hitchcock first arrived in Hollywood, the Academy loved him, nominating his first three American films for Best Picture, giving the prize to Rebecca, and giving Suspicion Best Actress. But then they inexplicably soured on him, passing over masterpiece after masterpiece, never giving him a Directing award even as he reached new artistic peaks. They seemingly decided that he was “just” a suspense director after all, and it was quite unfair of him that he had initially convinced them otherwise.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Of course, the really unconvincing thing about this movie is that anyone would not want to marry Grace Kelly. Her comet burned across the face of Hollywood for less than ten years, but she sure turned out a lot of great films in that time. Her incredible poise and presence had a lot to do with that. She won Best Actress for another movie this year (The Country Girl), infamously beating Garland’s superior performance in A Star is Born, but it’s hard to begrudge Kelly any award they wanted to give her, just to have some testament to her brief but amazing career.
   
2. It’s one of my favorite movie trivia questions: What movie released in 1954 had the largest indoor set that had ever been built at the time? The answer is of course Rear Window and the fact that you wouldn’t have thought of it is a testament to the potent “movie magic” on display here. The massive set is totally convincing as an outdoor courtyard inside a Manhattan block, and we never think about the fact that they were shooting this movie from 9-5 on a Hollywood soundstage then going home to their families promptly in time for dinner.
   
3. More films noir were based on Woolrich’s writing than any other author, and one of the best assignments from my hapless screenwriting career was getting hired by his estate to adapt one of his short stories, but alas, like everything else I wrote, it never got made. Maybe the time for Woolrich has passed, but, for a time, he and Hollywood were perfectly in sync, scratching the itch of postwar paranoia.
4. This isn’t the only Hitchcock film about voyeurism I’ll be awarding, so I’ll talk more about that later, but I love one aspect I’ll point out here: The shape of windows on the facing building look like the view through a movie camera with the new wider film aspect ratio plus lines for the TV-safe aspect ratio.  One form of voyeurism you engage in with the public, and another kind you engage in in the privacy of your own home.  Hitchcock is exploring them both.    
   
5. How do you build suspense? Through skillful editing, right? But Hitchcock frequently proved he didn’t need editing, such as in the long static shot of Kelly breaking into the killer’s apartment. As viewers, we desperately long for cut aways that we don’t get, keeping our hearts in our throats.
   
   
   

Ah, 1954: Those baked beans are going to go flying everywhere as soon as you bite into that thing.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1953

The Year: 1953
What the Nominees Were: From Here to Eternity, Julius Caesar, The Robe, Roman Holiday, Shane
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: America was still producing great noirs like The Big Heat and Pick-Up on South Street, but the Academy wasn’t noticing. Overseas, Federico Fellini turned out his first masterpiece with I Vitteloni, but it’s not the sort of movie that would have caught Hollywood’s fancy.

What Did Win: From Here to Eternity
How It’s Aged: Montgomery Clift is good as always, and Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr making out in crashing waves is a lot of fun, but ultimately this is a little too soapy for my taste. I rewatched it just to be sure and wasn’t very impressed. The overwrought deaths just got an eye-roll from me.

What Should’ve Won: Roman Holiday
How Hard Was the Decision: I’m always somewhat reluctant to take it away from a serious movie in favor of a more frivolous picture, but this is a shockingly good piece of fluff, so it wasn’t that hard.

Director: William Wyler
Writers: Dalton Trumbo and John Dighton. Story by Dalton Trumbo. Originally, credit onscreen was given to Ian McLellan Hunter who was acting as a “front” for the blacklisted Trumbo. McLellan’s Oscar was finally handed over to Trumbo’s widow in 1993.
Stars: Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn and Eddie Albert

The Story: A princess visiting Rome decides to run away and explore the city, not realizing that she’s been given a sleeping draught by her doctor. Passing out, she is taken in by a reporter, who soon realizes who she is and takes her around the city for adventures with his photographer pal, planning to sell the story for a fortune. When she realizes she must return home, he decides to kill the story and return the photos.

Any Nominations or Wins: It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography and Editing. It won Actress, Story, and Costume Design for Edith Head’s gorgeous gowns.
Why It Didn’t Win: This is my third pick in a row with a newly-blacklisted screenwriter! I guess I just like commies. Yet again, that hurt this movie’s chances, but it was more likely that this was a light romance, which the academy has never approved of very much.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. The studio, of course, wanted to shoot it all on the backlot (“What, that was good enough for Casablanca, so why is it not good enough for you??” they probably asked), but Wyler fought to shoot in Rome, which accounts for a huge amount of the movie’s appeal. It’s hard to tell what’s more charming, Hepburn or the city itself.
   
2. Peck’s agent insisted on his client being the only one billed above the title, as you would expect any agent to do, but Peck told him to lay off. When asked why, Peck responded “Because she’s going to win Best Actress for her first movie.” He was right and it is to his enormous credit that he realized it ahead of time, and let Hepburn be the star she was destined to be. What makes her performance so great is her mixture of lovely vulnerability with just enough willpower to get herself into trouble (and out of it).
3. The best scene in the movie is when Peck encourages Hepburn to stick her hand in the Mouth of Truth, and it’s all down to Hepburn’s performance. When you’re living a lie, you become irrational in fear of exposure, and Peck is having a fun time teasing her about that. When Peck reveals his hand hasn’t been bit off, Hepburn and the audience both explode with delight.
   
4. Over the course of this project, I’ll be taking away all three of Wyler’s Best Picture wins (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur), but I’m more than happy to give him this one to make up for it. This film is not as capital-I important as those three, but his famous perfectionism was just as valuable in service of this airier fare. He proves to be equally adept at a light touch as he was with a heavy hand.
5. Every single book published in the “romance” genre ends with the couple happily united, but almost every movie we think of when we hear the words “romance movie” ends with the lovers separated, permanently or not (Casablanca, Love Story, Titanic). Why did the screen decide it was more romantic to separate lovers but the print genre exclusively decree that lovers must end up together? (The fact that the lovers do not end up together in this one, I would say, puts it more in the “romance” than “romantic comedy” genre, where the lovers do end up together.)
   
   
   

Ah, 1953: What Could Go Wrong?

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1952

Our third yellow-red-and-black poster in a row!  I don’t find this color combo attractive!

The Year: 1952

What the Nominees Were: The Greatest Show on Earth, High Noon, Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: The Bad and the Beautiful feels like Oscar-bait at its best, so I’m very surprised it wasn’t nominated.

What Did Win: The Greatest Show on Earth
How It’s Aged: Cecil B. DeMille’s love letter to the circus is generally considered one of the all-time worst Best Pictures, but I have a stubborn affection for it. Trading in the Old Testament for the big top, DeMille brings the same epic spectacle, but he balances it out with an affecting subplot featuring Jimmy Stewart as a fugitive turned clown.

What Should’ve Won: High Noon
How Hard Was the Decision: Not hard. High Noon is the only universally acclaimed American release of 1952. The only competition I considered was The Bad and the Beautiful, which would have been a worthy winner, but can’t live up to this.

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Writer: Carl Foreman, based on the short story “The Tin Star” by John W. Cunningham
Stars: Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Grace Kelly

The Story: Old West town marshall Will Kane retires to marry a Quaker, but then finds out that a killer he arrested has gotten pardoned and is arriving on the noon train. His new wife says she’ll leave him if he stays and fights, but he defies her. He tries to recruit help, but everybody in town refuses, so he faces the bad guys single-handedly …or so he thinks.

Any Nominations or Wins: It lost Picture, Director and Screenplay, but won Actor, Editing, Scoring and Song
Why It Didn’t Win: A lot of people in Hollywood hated this movie, and Foreman was in trouble for his Communist Party connections around the same time it was released. John Wayne refused the part because of the political connotations, then got Foreman blacklisted for good measure, saying he would “never regret having helped run Foreman out of the country.” It’s amazing that such a hated film got so many nominations, but it’s not surprising that a film from pro-blacklist Cecil B. DeMille beat it.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Everyone understood that this movie was about how Foreman felt as the McCarthyite wolves circled him and friends wouldn’t back him up, which is why some people hated it and some people loved it. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said “It bears a close relationship to things that are happening in the world today, where people are being terrorized by bullies and surrendering their freedoms out of senselessness and fear.” Great movies always speak to real life national pain, and this one exemplifies that.
2. Zinneman was too glossy for the French auteurist critics, but his films had plenty of personality and grit. I’ll be taking away the Oscar Zinneman actually won, but I’m happy to make up for it by recognizing his achievement here.
3. Grace Kelly is impressive in her debut as a leading lady, but her best decision is to let Katy Jurado steal their scenes together, as the Mexican-American shopkeeper who was romantically linked to Kane, Miller, and Kane’s no-good deputy. It is her speech that inspires Kelly’s dramatic final act.
   
4. Lee Van Cleef also makes his memorable-but-wordless film debut, as one of Miller’s confederates. Rumor has it that Zinneman offered him the larger deputy role on the condition that he get a nose job to look less menacing. Van Cleef wisely said no, and committed himself to a lifetime of villainy (including some title-character roles, as we’ll see many years from now.)
   
5. The movie takes place (in real time) on a Sunday morning, when half the town is in church and the other half is already drinking at the bar, but both layers of society turn out to be equally cowardly, in Foreman and Zinneman’s estimation. Ironically, only the Quaker picks up a gun. (My favorite little scene is when Cooper is confronting the churchmen and women and they decide to send the children away, then we cut to the children hooping and hollering in joy as they get to run outside, oblivious to the seriousness of the situation.)
   
6. Just as It’s a Wonderful Life always makes me want to see the Saturday Night Live skit it inspired, this movie always makes me want to rewatch the SNL “Josh Acid” skit, but it has unfortunately been completely scrubbed from the internet. Maybe because it starred Mel Gibson?

Ah, 1952: See Scenic Korea!

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1951

The Year: 1951

What the Nominees Were: An American in Paris, Decision Before Dawn, A Place in the Sun, Quo Vadis, A Streetcar Named Desire
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Over in England, Alexander Mackendrick delivered a devastating social satire called The Man in the White Suit

What Did Win: An American in Paris
How It’s Aged: It’s okay. Gene Kelly is a great dancer, and director Vincente Minelli shows an impressive visual skill, but the story is so slight as to be virtually invisible.  Everyone involved would make better movies.  

What Should’ve Won: A Place in the Sun
How Hard Was the Decision: Hard, because A Streetcar Named Desire is such a great movie, and would have been a very deserving winner, especially for the smoldering star turn from Marlon Brando. Ultimately, I chose this movie because Streetcar merely lives up to the greatness of its source material, where A Place in the Sun surpasses its source.

Director: George Stevens
Writers: Michael Wilson (right before he was blacklisted) and Harry Brown, based on the novel “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser
Stars: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters and Raymond Burr

The Story: A young man from the poor end of a wealthy family is belatedly given a chance to join the family business, but he impregnates an employee he has no intention of marrying, instead pursuing a beautiful debutant. Eventually, there’s nothing to do but to kill the pregnant one on a deserted lake, but before long, he is arrested and tried.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Black and White Costume Design, Editing, and Score. It lost Picture, Actor and Actress (Winters got a nomination but Taylor didn’t. Eventually they would each wind up with two.)
Why It Didn’t Win: Clearly, with all those Oscars, it almost did win. Everyone at the time thought it would be Sun or Streetcar, but then presenter Jesse Lasky gasped and said, “Oh my! The winner is An American in Paris!” Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said it was unbelievable that there were “so many people so insensitive to the excellencies of motion picture art that they would vote for a frivolous musical picture over a powerful and pregnant tragedy” (apparently referring to Sun, not Streetcar.) The Academy gets points for reaching out into other genres, and for finally rewarding another color movie, but I would say that this was not the right year for that.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. How do you cut an 800 page novel down to a two hour movie? Most obviously by cutting out the first half (involving the protagonist’s first, equally tragic attempt to make it in a different big city), but beyond that, by casting great actors who can summarize reams of text by putting it all on their faces. More about them:
2. This movie would seem to suffer from a frequent problem plaguing Hollywood movies: Our hero is supposed to be awkward around women, but they cast a strikingly handsome young actor to play him. But Clift makes it work by being so self-conscious, awkward, and flat-out neurotic. He convincingly portrays a young man very uncomfortable in his own skin, so much so that you’re left with the impression that it might not have been very fun to be Montgomery Clift, either.
   
3. Elizabeth Taylor has it easier because she gets to play what she really was: an ethereally beautiful young debutant. But she does what few actresses could have done in the part: have her character be just broken enough inside that she’s compulsively drawn to a totally twisted up male. (“Tell mama, tell mama all.”)
   
4. But as good as those two are, Shelly Winters steals the movie as the frumpy-but-just-pretty-enough-to-get-herself-in-trouble first girlfriend. Winters is plenty attractive in real life, but she deserved an Oscar for doing the opposite of Clift and Taylor, radiating anti-glamor from every pore. Every look on her face breaks your heart.
   
5. This movie was even harder to watch than All the King’s Men, given what’s happened to America. The real American tragedy here is the lack of access to safe and legal abortion (Winters begs a doctor for one, but he refuses), a tragedy that was alleviated, and then came crashing back down on us. Watching this movie today hits differently than it would have hit ten years ago.
   
6. To what degree is Clift’s George Eastman an evil man? It’s easy to sympathize with him even at his worst, partially because of his background: homeschooled (really unschooled) by sidewalk preachers, then finally forced by the government to go to school for just a few years before he had to drop out and go to work at 13, but never stops believing that he can have it all. Perhaps Dreiser was right: Perhaps there is something particularly American about this tragedy. (Charlie Chaplin called it “the greatest movie ever made about America”)

Ah, 1951: “It’s Digestible!” was the best tagline you could come up with for your food product?