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 skills will come in handy, 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.