114 days until Oscar
Friday, November 10, 2017 at 2:30PM This season's Oscar ceremony, the Academy's 90th annual shindig, is on March 4th, 2018. Did you know that only two Oscar ceremonies have ever happened on a March 4th? Late February, Late March, and early April have been the most frequent time frames over the decades.
the acting winners of '42: Van Heflin, Greer Garson, James Cagney, and Teresa Wright
Both of the March 4th ceremonies were very early in Oscar history:The 1936 Oscars honoring The Great Ziegfeld (March 4th, 1937 at the Biltmore Hotel) and the 1942 Oscars honoring Mrs Miniver (March 4th, 1943 at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel). I was delighted to realize that we've written about a few of the winners from those years in the past: the dance direction in The Great Ziegfeld, My Gal Sal's Art Direction, Mrs Miniver as Best Picture, The Great Ziegfeld as Best Picture, and Black Swan's Cinematography.
Reader Comments (3)
The World War II wasn't a beautiful, romantic war as everybody thinks and says. And that world wasn't gentle or honored - not more than today. The movies of that age make us think it was. They glamoured everything: women, men, love, relationships... Even pain, death and diseases. And the movies are not only pretty, are engaging. Hard not to believe when they say that Hollywood won the war. And everybody's mind. Mrs Miniver was considered exaggerated at the time; if so, a pleasant one, with a great cast leaded by a charming and sexy actress playing older than she is, Greer Garson, with her soul mate on screen Walter Pidgeon, who resembles jon hamm. Pidgeon is the only case that I know of an actor nominated to the Oscar in the best actor category two years in a row playing the husband of the leading actress and title character: Mrs Miniver(1942) and Madame Curie(1943). Both movies were nominated for Best Picture. The two are great. I prefer Madame Curie, would cut 20/30 minutes of Mrs Miniver. Walter played Garson's husband seven of eight times they worked together in film.
Great picture but why is poor Van (SO young!) stuck back there all by himself? What an odd collection of films they won for as a group-a stiff upper lip war weepie, a sentimental morale booster of a musical and a hard edged gangster flick. All good films though.
I hope for the 90th they do the bleacher seating of past winners again. And hopefully more show up!