ICYMI: the five films nominated for Best Actor Oscars in 1959 were Ben-Hur, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, Room at the Top, and The Last Angry Man. The links provide the trivia write-ups on those films while this post discusses what else was happening in the movies that year.
1959 Best Picture winner and highest grossing film: Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur also set the record for most Oscar wins, with eleven (later tied by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Sigh. Maybe you just had to be there.
Best Actress Oscar race: Simone Signoret (Alice from Room at the Top) emerged the winner of a Best Actress free-for-all. Besides beating out Doris Day in the trifle Pillow Talk, she also vanquished three heavy hitters:
Audrey Hepburn in A Nun’s Story. It’s about the daughter of a surgeon who becomes a nun and moves to the Belgian Congo to work in a hospital. This film rules: not only should Hepburn have won Best Actress, but the film shoulda won Best Picture and Fred Zinnemann shoulda won Best Director.
Both Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn were nominated for their work in Suddenly, Last Summer, an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play. In the film, Violet Venable (Hepburn) tries to get a neurosurgeon (Montgomery Clift) to lobotomize her niece (Taylor), who witnessed her gay cousin get eaten. Wait, what??
Relitigating the Best Actor race: Charlton Heston won, but he’d be tied with Paul Muni at the bottom of my ballot. Of the five nominees, I’d give the trophy to Jack Lemmon—but the most deserving actor of ‘59 was actually Lemmon’s co-star, the un-nominated Tony Curtis. Curtis was incredible in Some Like It Hot and he should have some Oscar hardware to show for it.
Quick Hits
The Disney film Sleeping Beauty. It’s the one where Maleficent curses Princess Aurora (AKA Briar Rose, it’s complicated) to die from the prick of a spindle of a spinning wheel. The music for the film came from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet, just with lyrics layered over it.
The 400 Blows, the first effort from director François Truffaut. The film, which is considered one of the defining works of French New Wave, just sounds like Parisian Rebel Without a Cause.
Gidget. The titular Gidget (Sandra Dee) loves surfing and surfer boy Moondoggie (James Darren). Gidget is a portmanteau of “girl” and a word the Little People of America is seeking to abolish. Two sequels—Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)—were made, along with a TV show that starred Sally Field.
A Summer Place. The movie isn’t well-remembered, but the instrumental “Theme From A Summer Place” was a #1 hit and is, by Billboard’s chart metric, the most popular instrumental in history. Here it is with lyrics.
Quicker hits: Hitchcock directed Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason in North by Northwest…Tony Richardson directed an adaptation of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger…John Wayne starred in Howard Hawks’ Western classic Rio Bravo…novelist Nevil Shute’s On the Beach was turned into a “message film” by Stanley Kramer (the message is “nUcLeAr wAr bAd”)…The Diary of Anne Frank, from director George Stevens, lost out on Best Picture but got Shelley Winters a Best Supporting Actress statue.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as an opportunity to highlight some of the material covered in the five posts on 1959 films. They’re meant to be somewhat difficult, you-either-know-it-or-you-don’t questions. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
Gore Vidal wrote this novel, which was scandalous for the gender-affirming surgery its titular character undergoes.1
Henry Wirz was executed for war crimes committed while in charge of this POW camp during the Civil War.2
Pat Garrett is one of the roles in “Billy the Kid,” a ballet written by this man.3
Seven Sisters question #1: these daughters of the Titan Atlas were transformed into stars by Zeus to escape the pursuit of Orion.4
Seven Sisters question #2: this college’s name means “high hill” in Welsh.5
Seven Sisters question #3: the Seven Sisters of Oil once controlled 85% of the world’s oil reserves. Nowadays, though, the largest oil company (and fifth-largest company in the world) is this state-run one.6
Duke Ellington became famous playing at this club in Harlem on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue.7
In one account, this song began as directions written out for composer Billy Strayhorn to Duke Ellington’s home in Harlem.8
This aide to Joseph McCarthy is a character in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”9
Not including the cue ball, how many balls are used in snooker?10
This highest U.K decoration for valo(u)r was created in 1856 for extreme acts of bravery in the face of the enemy.11
This oldest and highest U.K. order was created by Edward III in 1348.12
What’s the SI unit for electrical current?13
In apothecary weights, one ounce is equal to eight of this unit.14
This 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner opened a hospital in Gabon.15
One decade and forty-seven movies down! For a bit of metadata, below is a histogram of the scores I assigned each of those forty-seven movies.
Good news, though: the 1960s are going to contribute many more 8s, 9s and 10s to that chart, and we’ve got plenty more trivia to learn.
“Myra Breckinridge.”
Andersonville prison camp in Georgia.
Aaron Copland.
Pleiades.
Bryn Mawr College.
Saudi Aramco.
The Cotton Club.
“Take the ‘A’ Train” (this was a Final Jeopardy question from 2019).
Roy Cohn.
21: 15 red balls and 6 colored balls.
Victoria Cross.
Order of the Garter.
Ampere.
Dram.
Albert Schweitzer.