ICYMI: the five films nominated for Best Actor Oscars in 1960 were The Entertainer, Inherit the Wind, Sons and Lovers, The Apartment, and Elmer Gantry. The links provide the trivia write-ups on those films while this post discusses what else was happening in the movies that year.
1960 Best Picture winner: The Apartment. It beat out two other films we watched (Sons and Lovers and Elmer Gantry) along with two other films:
The Alamo, directed by and starring John Wayne. He played Davy Crockett, backed up by Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie and Laurence Harvey as William Travis. We talked a bit about that period of history in our post on Giant, but if you’d just prefer to watch some dudes shoot each other, here ya go.
In our last wrap-up post, we discussed director Fred Zinnemann’s stellar A Nun’s Story getting jobbed out of Best Picture by Ben-Hur. Well, Zinnemann notched yet another nomination with The Sundowners, a flick with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr about the Australian outback.
Highest grossing film: Spartacus. This one’s like Ben-Hur if Ben-Hur didn’t suck. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, it starred Kirk Douglas as the titular Spartacus. It’s based on a true story: the former gladiator Spartacus led a rebellion (called the Third Servile War) against the Roman Republic that was eventually put down by Crassus (played by Laurence Olivier). The cast is rounded out by a phalanx of stars, including Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis, and Peter Ustinov. The film was adapted from a novel by Howard Fast and the screenplay was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo.
Best Actress Oscar race: Elizabeth Taylor, getting her fourth consecutive Best Actress nomination, finally walked home with the trophy for her role in BUtterfield 8. Taylor almost died from pneumonia before the voting and there’s some thought that the award was out of sympathy, rather than for her performance. Who cares, Elizabeth Taylor rules. She beat out Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, Kerr in The Sundowners, and two other women:
Greer Garson playing Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. This is the last of Garson’s seven (!!) Best Actress nominations, though she only won once, for Mrs. Miniver (1942).
Melina Mercouri in Never on Sunday. Mercouri played a Greek prostitute that American classicist Homer (Jules Dassin) does a My Fair Lady to. The song from the film became a hit, despite being played on the bouzouki, a Greek instrument that, uh, isn’t usually popular in America.
Relitigating the Best Actor race: Burt Lancaster’s charlatan preacher was the winner, and man, I love that role. Lemmon, Olivier, and Tracy would all be worthy victors any other year. As for Trevor Howard…well, we’ll always have the barrel.
Quick Hits
La Dolce Vita. Fellini’s most famous flick won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1960. It’s about a journalist trying to find love and happiness over a few days on Rome’s Via Veneto.
Psycho. This Hitchcock film has the surprise where star Janet Leigh gets offed midway by Bates Motel proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). A similar film from the same year, Peeping Tom, is considered a progenitor of the slasher genre.
In our previous wrap-up, we discussed The 400 Blows, the François Truffaut French New Wave film. 1960 brought another film from that genre: Breathless, from Jean-Luc Godard. It’s about a criminal and his girlfriend; that girl is played by Jean Seberg.
In previous wrap-ups, we’ve covered Come Back, Little Sheba (1952); Picnic (1955); and Bus Stop (1956). Well, 1960 brought an adaptation of one more notable William Inge play: Dark at the Top of the Stairs. It starred Robert Preston as Rubin Flood, who loses his job and hits his child and is having marital problems. It sounds…well, just as Midwest bleak as all the other Inge plays.
Quicker hits: the original Ocean’s Eleven, with Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack friends…The Magnificent Seven, a flick we’ve mentioned a few times in this column…Exodus, based on the Leon Uris novel, starring Paul Newman and directed by Otto Preminger…B movie Little Shop of Horrors, which was remade as a musical in the ‘80s…Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn in the Western The Unforgiven…Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning…Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as a refresher for some of the material covered in the five posts on 1960 films. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
Said Pasha gave this former French diplomat the concession authorizing the construction of the Suez Canal.1
He was Prime Minister of the U.K. during the Suez Crisis.2
This namesake of a Toronto airport and former Prime Minister of Canada received a Nobel Prize for his work negotiating a cease-fire to the Suez Crisis.3
This woman founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).4
This state has the nickname “The Equality State.”5
After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Carrie Chapman Catt founded this organization.6
Give the names of both the prosecuting and defending attorneys in State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. (They were played by Fredric March and Spencer Tracy, respectively.)7
These two men were the authors of the play “Inherit the Wind.”8
Named for a lake in Western New York, this early 20th c. movement’s traveling lecturers often spoke in tents.9
She played a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry, but is better known as the female lead in Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962).10
This 1922 work by Sinclair Lewis is about a titular real-estate broker who discovers emptiness at the heart of both the American dream and non-conformity.11
In 1891 he gave up baseball to become a YMCA worker; 5 years later, he began conducting religious revivals.12
This dance instructor’s 1950s TV show told us that “to put a little fun in your life, try dancing.”13
This Cuban president-slash-dictator was forced out of power by the Cuban Revolution.14
This man, born in Richmond, was the first elected Black state governor.15
We're taking this Tuesday off, but we'll be back next week to start tackling the films of 1961.
Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Anthony Eden.
Lester Pearson.
Emmeline Pankhurst.
Wyoming.
League of Women Voters.
William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
Chautauqua.
Shirley Jones. (She was also on “The Partridge Family.”)
Babbitt.
Billy Sunday.
Arthur Murray.
Fulgencio Batista.
Douglas Wilder.