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 film debut, 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!