ICYMI: the five films nominated for Best Actor Oscars from 1966 were The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming, A Man for All Seasons, Alfie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Sand Pebbles. The links provide the trivia write-ups on those films while this post discusses what else was happening in the movies that year.
1966 Best Picture winner: A Man for All Seasons. We actually watched all five of the Best Picture nominees—this was the first year the Best Actor and Best Picture films were identical. Typically, the Best Picture films overlap more with the Best Director category, but in 1966, three of those Best Director films (Blowup, A Man and a Woman, and The Professionals) were locked out of the running for the top prize.
1966 highest grossing film: a tie!
The Bible: In the Beginning… covers the first 22 chapters of the Book of Genesis. Look, I wanted to dismiss this movie out of hand since the Bible-adjacent epics we’ve watched (The Robe, Ben-Hur) have been terrible. But The Bible was directed by John Huston, so I watched an hour of it. It was…fine, I guess. Then I fell asleep, and that was good too.
I got all the way through Hawaii, though, and y’know what? That one was pretty good. It’s based on a James Michener work (we’ve discussed him before) and starred Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews. Those crazy kids go to Hawaii to convert the heathens, but they end up learning more from the heathens than the heathens learn from them.
Let’s talk about the orthography of the state of Hawaii and the island of Hawai’i. The big island is correctly spelled with an ‘okina (glottal stop) between the two “i”s. The name of the state doesn’t have the ‘okina, though, because the Statehood Act in 1959 didn’t include one.
Best Actress Oscar race: Elizabeth Taylor took home the prize for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Of the also-rans, two were Redgraves, echoing the time siblings Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland squared off for the 1941 Best Actress Oscar.
Lynn Redgrave was nominated for Georgy Girl. Georgy girl is pursued by her father’s employer (played by James Mason) and by her pregnant flatmate’s boyfriend. Its extremely twee theme song was a hit (and here’s your Simpsons parody).
Vanessa Redgrave was up for Morgan! Morgan, played by David Warner, is trying to win back his wife who’s in the process of divorcing his ass.
Ida Kamińska for The Shop on Main Street, a Czechoslovakian film.
Anouk Aimée for A Man and a Woman. Aimée died last year and her obituary referred to her as “enigmatic.” Beyond A Man and a Woman, Aimée also brought that enigmaticism to La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963), and her marriage to Albert Finney.
Relitigating the Best Actor race: I can go either way on this one. Paul Scofield is iconic as Thomas More. Richard Burton goes way outside of his comfort zone as the cowed George. I think Burton’s degree of difficulty is a skosh higher, so he’s my pick—but, unlike some others, I don’t think the Academy’s choice of Scofield is a historic blunder.
Quick Hits
The Professionals: Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin have to rescue a kidnapped woman. You know what? That sounds like a good movie.
Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie, which stuck Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau together for the first time. Lemmon’s character is a cameraman at a Browns game who gets trucked by a player. Matthau plays the crooked lawyer brother-in-law who wants to sue for millions.
Quicker hits: the early Francis Ford Coppola film You’re A Big Boy Now…musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum with Zero Mostel…John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, which might have invented the modern car movie…Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup…The Singing Nun, where Debbie Reynolds played the real-life singing nun who had a #1 hit with “Dominique”…four top-100 films in the “They Shoot Pictures” list that I’ve never heard of (Andrei Rublev, Au hasard Balthazar, The Battle of Algiers, and Persona)…Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, I guess…The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…Born Free, about a couple who raise Elsa the lioness…Paul Newman as the P.I. Harper.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as a refresher for some of the material covered in the five posts on 1966 films. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
This comedian created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and played Alan Brady on it.1
Many of the novels of Elin Hilderbrand take place on this Massachusetts island that may take its name from the Wampanoag for “far away island.”2
This cocktail, which takes its name from a peninsula, is cranberry juice and vodka.3
This wife of Henry VIII was the mother of Edward VI.4
This wife of Henry VIII was executed after her relationship with courtier Thomas Culpeper was revealed.5
Two people served as Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII. One was William Warham. Who was the other?6
This woman won Best Supporting Actress Oscars for roles in The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue.7
Vivien Merchant won a Tony for starring in “The Homecoming,” a play written by this man, her husband.8
This woman, considered the premiere interpreter of the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is known for the song “Walk On By.”9
This husband of Elizabeth Taylor was a Republican senator from Virginia from 1979 to 2009.10
Michael Cunningham’s novel “The Hours” takes its name from the working title of this Virginia Woolf novel.11
This Pulitzer-winning Edward Albee play features a retired couple on the beach who meet talking lizard creatures.12
This “king of cool” got his first starring role in the sci-fi B-movie The Blob.13
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s main sidekick was this monocled dummy, to whom Bergen left $10,000 in his will.14
Hong Kong and Macau are located in the estuary of what river?15
On to 1967!
Carl Reiner.
Nantucket.
The Cape Codder.
Jane Seymour.
Catherine Howard (though if you said Anne Boleyn, don’t worry, I feel you).
Thomas Cranmer (though if you said Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Becket, Thomas Aquinas, or any other dude named Thomas, don’t worry, I feel you).
Shelley Winters.
Harold Pinter.
Dionne Warwick.
John Warner.
“Mrs. Dalloway.”
“Seascape.”
Steve McQueen.
Charlie McCarthy.
The Pearl River.
While I agree that the commercial version of the song comes off very twee, the movie itself features a much more cynical take that is used quite bleakly. I wrote a bit about it here: https://harpo84.blogspot.com/2022/08/facts-of-day-83122.html