25 Days Until Oscar...
Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 8:00AM 
Twenty-five days is not much. Are you ready? For today's special number, I thought we'd look back at the 25th annual Oscars, the first televised Academy Awards ever, but then I realized we'd already written a huge post about it with actresses falling on stairs and everything! So let's keep this simple. What's your choice for BEST of 1952 (beyond Singin' in the Rain)?
The nominees were:
- The Greatest Show on Earth
- High Noon
- Ivanhoe
- Moulin Rouge
- The Quiet Man
...and if there'd been three to five more nominees they would surely have included The Bad and the Beautiful which won 5 Oscars, the most ever won by a non Best Picture nominee), and Viva Zapata! which had 5 nominations, 3 of them major categories. If it had extended beyond 7 perhaps a combo of less loved or more divisive pictures like My Cousin Rachel (the remake is coming out this very year starring Rachel Weisz), Sudden Fear (4 noms and it's awesome), 5 Fingers (2 major nominations and British so prestige), or either of the traditional biopics like Hans Christian Anderson (6 nominations) or With a Song in My Heart (5 nominations). Famously they weren't into Singin' in the Rain at the time (2 nominations) which will always be a bonkers fact.
Reader Comments (28)
Of those nominees, I've always preferred The Quiet Man to High Noon. That both lost to the bloated Greatest Show on Earth has always flummoxed me. It wasn't like DeMille didn't already have an honorary award.
The Quiet Man, though that's probably cause my family watches it every St. Patrick's Day, so it's close to my heart.
Of the actual nominees I'd go with High Noon. But if we were looking at all the films from 1952 my winner would be the Robert Mitchum/Susan Hayward rodeo drama "The Lusty Men" that was directed by Nicolas Ray. A wonderfully spare film with what should have been a winning, or at least nominated performance by Mitchum.
I like The Greatest Show on Earth while being wholly aware that it is in no way worthy of winning a Best Picture Oscar. It is a big splashy overproduced spectacle that separated from its undeserved win has a quite a bit of entertainment value plus Gloria Grahame, Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Lamour to hold the interest.
So Jean Hagen's nomination for Best Supporting Actress is minor? This sounds weird coming from you, especially as you seem to consider Anthony Quinn's nomination (and win) for Best Supporting Actor major...
I actually like this group of nominees. "Moulin Rouge" is clearly a distant second in the "movies named Moulin Rouge that were nominated for Best Picture" category, but even it has its charms. My sentiments about "Greatest Show" are similar to joel6: it's not really a "Best Picture", but it is quite fun and ambitious for what it is.
As for my pick... I have a very soft spot for "Ivanhoe", but I'd have to go with "The Quiet Man", which is one of the more beautiful films ever made, and among my top 2 Ford/Wayne combos.
Beyond Singin' in the Rain, obviously I'd go with High Noon - a stone-cold masterpiece. Though Quiet Man and Bad and the Beautiful are also fabulous. I also have a soft spot for the great B-noir The Narrow Margin.
Otherwise, from what I've seen, all the best stuff made that year was foreign-language. This includes some of the best films ever made: the wrenching, formerly lauded, currently criminally underseen and undervalued Forbidden Games; Kurosawa's beautiful, meditative, magesterially crafted and profound Ikiru; and Umberto D - Vittorio de Sica's best film - beautifully free-floating from one jaw-dropping poetic sequence to another.
I know other people love The Life of Oharu but I need to see it again, I think. It didn't get to me the way Mizoguchi's other major films do.
Rashomon was also eligible (nomination for Best Art Direction). Maybe they would have had an "art movie" slot. And I'm with MrW - Jean Hagen's Supporting Actress nomination was "minor"? I also consider her loss to Gloria Grahame one of the greatest injustices ever in that category. But then again, Grahame was in EVERYTHING that year, The Bad and the Beautiful, Best Picture winner Greatest Show on Earth, most importantly, Sudden Fear (best of the 3 by me). The Quiet Man would have had my vote for Best Picture. Marlon Brando was also robbed for the second year in a row.
I think give Hagen the win in 1952, Grahame gets it five years earlier for her superior work in Crossfire, and Celeste Holm takes it for All About Even in 1950. Everyone's happy.
Except Josephine Hull.
I love My Cousin Rachel. It's another showcase for Olivia de Havilland's acting skills.
I'm still bewildered that Academy voters gave "Singin' in the Rain" only two nominations. To paraphrase the immortal Lina Lamont: "WAAAT'S THE BIG IDEA? What were they--dumb or somethin'?"
I haven't seen "Ivanhoe," but I'm not crazy about the other four Best Picture contenders. I'd say "The Quiet Man" is shot beautifully (though the color, if I remember correctly, could've been even more vivid) and is fairly interesting, so I'd choose that. But, like goran, I suspect that the more interesting films of '52 popped up overseas: "Ikiru," "Umberto D.," and "Forbidden Games." I'm also partial to Britain's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "The Lavender Hill Mob."
I think because "American in Paris" won Best Picture the year before, "Singin' in the Rain" suffered from inevitable Best Picture backlash. That and "Bad and the Beautiful" should definitely have been nominated for Best Picture--certainly over "Ivanhoe" and "Greatest Show on Earth". The snub for "Bad and the Beautiful" did allow it to set the record for most Oscar wins for a movie not nominated for Best Picture.
I'm quite fond of The Greatest Show on Earth, but even I'll admit that The Quiet Man would have been a better winner.
From this group of five, The Quiet Man is the best, and for me it's not even close. Ivanhoe is empty spectacle like the winner, and High Noon is lean and compelling but it isn't something I'd want to revisit more than a couple of times.
Reading some of the comments here made me think that a Film Experience Best Picture Smackdown, in the mold of the Best Supporting Actress Smackdown, would be fun to see sometime...
Greatest Show has a rep of being one of the worst BP winners and I honestly have to agree - it's somewhere in the bottom 10, I'd say, though I'd sooner sit through it again over the likes of say, Crash or The Great Ziegfield, to name a couple. Greatest Show has its moments but its bloat hasn't aged well. And wow, was Charleton Heston bad in it!
My personal favorite is Viva Zapata! TBATB is brilliant. I never liked High Noon, and I still need to see TGSOE and TQM. Two large gaps in my viewing history. But really, SITR should have won this.
Sudden Fear!!!!!!!!!!!
"Forbidden Games."
I'm enjoying this themed countdown to Oscar!
The Quiet Man is good - especially Maureen O'Hara and Victor McLaglen. But it's slow - and surely nowhere is that green? I like The Greatest Show on Earth quite a lot, but it shouldn't have won. I haven't seen Ivanhoe or Moulin Rouge. High Noon is my winner: it is tight as a drum and very skillfully done. And it has Gary Cooper and Katy Jurado in sublime form.
Also, I agree with joel6 about The Lusty Men, and I'd also put forward Bend of the River, one of the excellent Anthony Mann-James Stewart Westerns.
Among the five nominees I would have rooted for HIGH NOON
Yes, it's surprising how the Academy was cold with SINGIN'
OOOF. sorry people. i dont know how i forgot Jean Hagen since it's one of my favorite performances of all time.
They either must have really hated MGM or the Freed unit- "Singing inthe Rain" is such a perfect timeless film. You guys have to see Huston's " Moulin Rouge" great photography, costumes and Jose Ferrer amazing as Lautrec
In retrospect, there were a lot of bad nominees in 1952. I'd recommend looking at the James Stewart/Anthony Mann collaboration in Bend of the River with its incredible cinematography and tense storytelling. My Cousin Rachel is a very good film that could have been great with a better director, but Olivia de Havilland still expertly manages to walk the tightrope of Rachel being guilty or innocent. The British movies The Lavender Hill Mob, Hunted, and The Sound Barrier all feature great work by their leading men.
Oh boy, did you ask for it...
Picture:
1. Singing in the Rain (dir. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
2. The Golden Coach (dir. Jean Renoir)
3. The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford)
4. Forbidden Games (dir. Rene Clement)
5. Bend of the River (dir. Anthony Mann)
6. The Importance of Being Earnest (dir. Anthony Asquith)
7. Casque d'Or (dir. Jacques Becker)
8. The Narrow Margin (dir. Richard Fleischer)
9. The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton)
10. Pat and Mike (dir. George Cukor)
Lead Actor
1. Robert Mitchum, The Lusty Men
2. Gene Kelly, Singin' in the Rain
3. Laurence Olivier, Carrie
4. Kirk Douglas, The Bad and the Beautiful
5. Alec Guinness, The Lavender Hill Mob
6. Spencer Tracy, Pat and Mike
7. James Mason, 5 Fingers
8. James Stewart, Bend of the River
9. Cary Grant, Monkey Business
10. Ray Bolger, Where's Charley?
Lead Actress
1. Anna Magnani, The Golden Coach
2. Ethel Waters, The Member of the Wedding
3. Jean Simmons, Angel Face
4. Julie Harris, The Member of the Wedding
5. Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain
6. Simone Signoret, Casque d'Or
7. Maureen O'Hara, The Quiet Man
8. Judy Holliday, The Marrying Kind
9. Barbara Stanwyck, Clash by Night
10. Katharine Hepburn, Pat and Mike
What's amazing is that I didn't make a conscious effort to omit the year's lead acting winners - Gary Cooper & Shirley Booth, who are both good. '52 is just a crazy rich year for great perfs.
...I know I'm hogging this thread, but now that I've completed the previous exercise, it occurs to me how badly The Academy botched the Best Actress category in '52.
Booth is good, although a tad on the stagy side, and the perf has too many clever tricks for her to be entirely convincing as the dim-witted, dumpy hausfrau.
Harris is great, and deserved her nomination - although, if only one person was going to be nominated for Lead Actress for The Member of the Wedding, it shoulda been Ethel Waters.
Bette gives her all, revving up her hyper-intense, balls-out routine in The Star ("Come on Oscar...let's get drunk!") and no one ever did it better, but the effort feels wasted on an inferior vehicle, perilously close to camp.
Sudden Fear is a silly hunk of junk - essentially, a poor man's Gaslight (but not especially suspenseful) with a lot of florrid, hamfisted heaving and swooping by La Joan. I don't get it.
With a Song in My Heart is as corny as its title, and credulity really is strained to the breaking point by asking an audience to believe that Jane Froman's bright, pristine soprano is coming out of Susie Hayward, she of the whisky-soaked alto. Hayward does respectability - virtuous heroines who suffer and overcome - fairly well, but it's sort of like defanging a wolf, putting a bow on its head, and making it do cute tricks at a children's party. She was so much better - so much more alive and visceral - in roles that unleashed her ferocity, rasping out insults with a glass of scotch in her hand. Give the woman a glass of scotch!!!
So, I found 9 performances that I found more deserving of consideration than 4 of those that were nominated, and I haven't even seen My Cousin Rachel (I aim to get to it before the remake lands.) But I wanna recount on Best Actress 1952!
I do believe that Jean Hagen should've won BSA for Singin' In The Rain. As much as I admire Grahame, it just seems that her work in 4 films that year was the result of her winning.
As for Best Picture - with Ringling's Barnum & Bailey announcing the end of their touring this May, the bloated junk food of GShowOnEarth makes me appreciate this film more. I'd hate to be a child where you grow up not knowing what a circus is.
Professor Spouse will kill me for not loving Quiet Man, but I'm voting for High Noon.
Josh R - It really was a weak year for actresses. This field may be least impressive ever. But then again, how many deserving performances were left out? The only ones I can think of offhand are Olivia deHavilland in My Cousin Rachel and Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike.
Ken - I found several - I did rankings! It's above the post you responded to.