What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1938

“Matt,” you might say, “what the hell are you doing?? You can’t just pick up a series from May of 2012 as if you hadn’t missed a day! And aren’t you just repurposing a post you wrote for Underrated Movies, an even older series??” Yes, I can and yes it is. Well, folks, here it is, the 91-part series I promised: I’m finally going to finish “What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won”! And unlike “37 Days of Shakespeare,” I don’t want to spend several years doing it. I intend to do two a week every week and get this series done within a year. It occurs to me that I should finish this series and turn it into a book timed to the 100th anniversary of the awards, so here we go!

The Year: 1938

What the Nominees Were: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Boys Town, The Citadel, Four Daughters, Grand Illusion, Jezebel, Pygmalion, Test Pilot, You Can’t Take It With You

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Bringing Up Baby and our winner

What Did Win: You Can’t Take It With You
How It’s Aged: It’s a perfectly delightful little movie, and a worthy winner, but, in retrospect, a minor Capra film and not the best movie that year.

What Should’ve Won: Holiday
How Hard Was the Decision: It was tempting to stick with the actual winner and Grand Illusion is a great film, which clearly could have won since it was nominated, despite being a foreign film. But Holiday is one of my favorite films, and ultimately it was an easy decision.

Director: George Cukor
Writers: David Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, based on the play by Philip Barry
Stars: Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Doris Nolan

The Story: Free-thinking Johnny Case finds himself betrothed to a millionaire’s daughter. When her family, with the exception of black-sheep Linda and drunken Ned, want Johnny to settle down to big business, he rebels, wishing instead to spend the early years of his life on “holiday.” With the help of his friends Nick and Susan Potter, he makes up his mind as to which is the better course, and the better mate.

Any Nominations or Wins: It was just nominated for Best Art Direction.
Why It Didn’t Win: Katherine Hepburn was lucky to get the role because she was tarred as “Box Office Poison” at the time, and unfortunately this movie didn’t do great and didn’t break the streak, so the studio didn’t put any oomph behind it.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Nobody had more charm than Grant. He was so good at bowling audiences over with his talent that he was reluctant to let his persona slip and show more vulnerability, but this is one of his most raw and heartfelt performances. We get to see him waver between rich and poor, lover and clown, the witty sophisticate Cary Grant and the cockney acrobat Archie Leach. Like his character, Grant is negotiating onscreen the bargain between who he was and who he wants to be.
   
2. The central conflict of the movie—society pressures vs. bohemianism in a rich family—is not a big worry anymore. The stuffed shirts have been long since unstuffed themselves and nobody fashions themselves more “wild” and “independent” than the upper classes. These kids would all have piercings today and the parents wouldn’t mind a bit. But the underlying question still resonates: How do you get locked into a life you don’t want? That’s something you have to worry about even if you don’t drink champagne for breakfast.
3. And it’s fascinating to see the hints here of more serious trouble on the horizon. Grant is quickly made aware of the opportunities for stock manipulation that his new connections can provide. He's told that he could make a million in two years, or even quicker “if we had the right kind of government.” Grant’s bohemian friend asks suspiciously: “Like which country?”, but the question goes unanswered. Within a few years everyone would try to forget the appeal that Hitler had to American elites, but this movie was still willing to ring that bell in 1938.
4. I love that the gowns are by somebody simply named “Kalloch”, presumably after his plans to conquer America with a robot army were foiled.

How Available Is It?: When I last did this series 13 years ago, I would talk about whether the movie was available on disk, but these days we just watch everything on Amazon, so I’ll stop doing this.

Ah, 1938: