ICYMI: the five films with performances nominated for Best Actor Oscars at the 35th Academy Awards were To Kill a Mockingbird, Birdman of Alcatraz, Lawrence of Arabia, Days of Wine and Roses, and Divorce Italian Style. In this post, we discuss what else was happening in the movies in 1962.
1962 Best Picture winner and highest grossing film of the year: Lawrence of Arabia. Is this the most epic epic ever? The epic-est epic? Well, it was sufficiently epic to take home seven Oscars and make all the money. The also-rans in the Best Picture category were To Kill a Mockingbird and the three movies below:
The Longest Day. This ensemble film was an epic about the D-Day invasion, though it was only 79% as epic as Lawrence of Arabia. The film’s name came from a quote from Erwin Rommel: “The first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive…it will be the longest day.” 1970’s Tora! Tora! Tora! (which is different from band Tony! Toni! Toné) is a companion piece to The Longest Day, shot the same way but focusing on Pearl Harbor.
The Music Man. Con man Harold Hill (Robert Preston) tricks the citizens of River City, Iowa, into buying musical instruments for a marching band. He also falls in love with Marian the librarian (Shirley Jones). The Music Man is filled with banger songs, including “Ya Got Trouble” and “Seventy-Six Trombones.” Two other notable performers are Ron Howard (who sings “Gary, Indiana”) and Buddy Hackett (who does “Shipoopi”).
Mutiny on the Bounty. We’ve covered the story of the HMS Bounty before. In a 1935 telling of the tale, the roles of mutineer Fletcher Christian and mutinee William Bligh were played by Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. In the 1962 edition, Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard took over.
Best Actress Oscar race: Anne Bancroft took home the Oscar for playing Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. Or, wait, maybe Anne Sullivan played Anne Bancroft. Wait, is that not it? Sullivan Bancroft won for playing Anne Anne? Dammit, fine. Mrs. Mel Brooks won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller’s teacher. (Patty Duke played Helen Keller.) Bancroft beat out Lee Remick in Days of Wine and Roses, along with:
Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She’s Baby Jane, an aged former child star. Joan Crawford played her sister, once a bigger star but now stuck in a wheelchair being tortured by Jane. Davis and Crawford feuded during the filming of the flick, giving it some notoriety.
Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth. You know the rules: Tennessee Williams film adaptations get Best Actress nods. Count ‘em: A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo (1955), Baby Doll (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer (1959, two noms). Page actually went back-to-back with Williams, as she scored a nom the year before for Summer and Smoke (1961).
Katharine Hepburn in Long Day's Journey into Night. Fine, you can also get Oscar nods for being in Eugene O’Neill adaptations.
Relitigating the Best Actor race: Look, I gave To Kill a Mockingbird a 10. I did nothing but praise Gregory Peck, who’s note-perfect as Atticus Finch. But let’s talk degree of difficulty: anchoring a movie like Birdman of Alcatraz is much, much more challenging than just playing “good dad.” Gregory Peck is banging doubles off the Green Monster while Burt Lancaster is watching his hard-hit balls die on the warning track in Petco Park. Given the context, I’d give the Oscar to Burt.
MORE BASEBALL STUFF: Oh, we’re still contending with the idea that Peter O’Toole’s performance in Lawrence of Arabia is the greatest of all time? Nah, I don’t think so. Call Lawrence of Arabia the Big Red Machine and consider O’Toole’s role like Pete Rose’s 1973 MVP season—super high volume, but look at the talent around him! Former MVP Johnny Bench (that’s Alec Guinness), future MVP Joe Morgan (Anthony Quinn), another future MVP in George Foster (Omar Sharif), and stars-masquerading-as-role-players Tony Pérez, Davey Concepción, César Gerónimo, and Ken Griffey Sr. (David Lean, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Hawkins, and Anthony Quayle, respectively). All I’m saying is that context matters.
Quick Hits
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In this John Ford Western, Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) needs shootin’. Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) goes to do it, but during the standoff Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) actually does it. Years later, when Ranse tells the truth to a newspaperman, the newspaperman replies, “this is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
John Frankenheimer directed Birdman of Alcatraz but had another hit with The Manchurian Candidate. In that, Laurence Harvey’s been brainwashed into killing the president and Frank Sinatra’s gotta stop him.
WARNING: FRENCH FILMS.
Jules et Jim (directed by François Truffaut). Jules and Jim are in a love triangle with Catherine (but not one of the cool Challengers love triangles).
Cléo from 5 to 7 (directed by Agnès Varda) is about a singer waiting to hear back about a cancer diagnosis. Since it’s in real time, it’s basically the “24” of French New Wave.
La Jetée is about going back in time to stop nuclear war; it was loosely adapted into 1995’s 12 Monkeys.
Along with The Music Man, we got two other noteworthy musicals.
One was Gypsy. It was based on the memoirs of Rose Louise Hovick (played in the film by Natalie Wood) who became famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. It focused on Louise’s showbiz mother Rose, played by Rosalind Russell.
The other was a remake of R&H’s State Fair. José Ferrer directed, but it’s way worse than the original film since this one starred Pat Boone.
Quicker hits: the original Cape Fear…Harakiri, a Japanese film about samurais, and Hatari!, an American film about game catchers in Tanganyika (“Hatari” means “danger” in Swahili)…the first James Bond film, Dr. No…William Shatner in The Intruder, about a guy trying to incite racial violence…The Trial, a Kafkaesque Orson Welles picture starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K…Lonely Are the Brave, which has the same plot as the TV show “Prison Break”…Knife in the Water, Roman Polanski’s first film…Otto Preminger’s whiny D.C. film Advise and Consent…Taras Bulba…Requiem for a Heavyweight…The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner…Kubrick’s Lolita, with James Mason as Humbert Humbert and Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze…Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, about a dinner party that will. not. end…How the West Was Won and The L-Shaped Room, both nominated for Oscars next year.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as a refresher for some of the material covered in our last five posts. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
What was the name of the 2015 novel billed as a sequel to “To Kill A Mockingbird”?1
This screenwriter of Tender Mercies (1983) adapted “To Kill A Mockingbird” for the screen.2
What is TASER an acronym for? The first three letters are the initials of a boy from a series of novels published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate.3
What was the real name of the prisoner called the Birdman of Alcatraz?4
This man, who received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Birdman of Alcatraz, starred on the ‘70s procedural “Kojak.”5
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at this prison, called “the castle on the Hudson.”6
This Egyptian actor, who starred in Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Funny Girl (1968), played Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia.7
This secret treaty, negotiated during WWI by a namesake British and namesake French civil servant, determined how their two nations would divide the Ottoman Empire after the war.8
In 1932, these two kingdoms were unified into Saudi Arabia.9
These two actors starred in TV’s “The Odd Couple” (1970-75).10
These two men, a composer and a lyricist, wrote the theme to Days of Wine and Roses.11
What poem does this line come from? “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”12
This man directed the Italian Neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948).13
This man was the composer for Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name trilogy.14
Dario Argento, “master of horror,” directed many films in this genre, whose name comes from the Italian for “yellow.”15
We’ll be back next week with 1963’s Tom Jones.
“Go Set a Watchman.”
Horton Foote.
Tom A. Swift Electric Rifle.
Robert Stroud.
Telly Savalas.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Omar Sharif.
Sykes-Picot agreement.
Hejaz and Nejd.
Jack Klugman, Tony Randall.
Johnny Mercer (lyrics) and Henry Mancini (composer).
Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
Vittorio De Sica.
Ennio Morricone.
Giallo.