Vintage '47: What was going on in showbiz that year?
Thursday, May 21, 2020 at 12:00PM by Nathaniel R
Let's look at some cultural background on the year 1947 before we reach the new Smackdown event in exactly one week (have you voted yet?). Light entertainments were very popular but Post-War America and by extension Hollywood was feeling a dark undertow and anxiety. Cinema went deep into noir territory (men really didn't know who to trust or what to make of women after they'd becoming working girls during the War and the anxiety definitely showed onscreen) and offscreen things were treacherous. The infamous witchhunt for Communists began in Hollywood, cutting off the careers of many talented actors and filmmakers who wouldn't 'name names', beginning with "The Hollywood Ten".
Great Big Box Office Hits:
A now long-forgotten picture, Welcome Stranger (reteaming the Oscar-winning stars of Going My Way) was one of the year's very biggest attractions. The best-seller turned rom-com The Egg and I was also a huge success. Other light entertainments that were audience favourites included all star comedies like Life with Father (currently streaming!) and The Bachelor and Bobby Soxer, and the Betty Grable musical Mother Wore Tights. But Oscar drifted towards more serious fare...
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
Two movies about Anti-Semitism were critical hits and Oscar darlings -- the magazine editorial drama Gentleman's Agreement (8 noms / 3 wins) beat the noir murder mystery Crossfire (5 nominations) to the big win. The three other Best Picture contenders were the British literary adaptation Great Expectations (5 noms / 2 wins), the angel-in-human-form comedy The Bishop's Wife (5 noms / 1 win), and inspirational Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (4 noms / 3 wins).
And also...? Just three years earlier the now teenaged AMPAS had reduced the number of Best Picture nominees to a permanent (well semi-permanent) five after years of fluctation (the early years of Oscar races featured as few as 3 and as many as 12 Best Picture contenders). Had the numbers not been reduced in '44 what would the other nominees for Best Picture have been? The Ronald Colman star vehicle A Double Life (4 noms / 2 wins) obviously would have been nominated and probably the big family hit Life with Father (4 noms / 2 wins), too.
Which other films among the following do you think came closest to securing space in the top category: Eugene O'Neill adaptation Mourning Becomes Electra (2 noms), boxing drama Body and Soul (3 noms / 1 win), hallucinatory nun drama Black Narcissus (2 noms / 2 wins), the noir Kiss of Death (2 noms), alcoholism melodrama Smash-up Story of a Woman (2 noms), historical drama Green Dolphin Street (4 noms / 1 win), musical Mother Wore Tights (3 noms / 1 win), Chaplin's film Monsieur Verdoux (1 nom), or the Italian drama Shoeshine (1 nom / 1 Honorary Oscar)?
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters:
The John Wayne western Angel and the Badman, the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and lots and lots of popular film-noirs including Born to Kill, Dark Passage, Dead Reckoning , Boomerang!, The Unsuspected, Quai des Orfevres, and the soon-to-be-remade Nightmare Alley.
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1947
- Black Narcissus
- Miracle on 34th Street
- Crossfire
- Nightmare Alley
- The Paradine Case
- Lured
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- Possessed
- Gentleman's Agreement
- [leaving this spot blank since...]
...The 1940s are my weakest decade in terms of film knowledge and amount of films screened. The Smackdowns help fill in blanks. There's still a lot more I need to see from this cinematic vintage and top of the list is the comedy The Ghost and Mrs Muir and particularly a handful of noirs: Odd Man Out, Out of the Past, Dark Passage, The Unsuspected, and Born to Kill. WHICH DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
Some popular covergirls of the year: Rita Hayworth, Lena Horne, Bing Crosby, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, baseball star Jackie Robinson, Greer Garson, Gene Tierney & Hedy Lamarr, teenage Liz Taylor, *the* male star of the Year Gregory Peck (headlining 3 movies including the Best Picture winner), Hayworth again, Joan Fontaine, and Lizabeth Scott.
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '47)
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" sung by James Baskett from Disney's Song of the South was a juggernaut hit and also won the Oscar for Best Original Song (in addition to a now rarely-discussed Honorary Oscar for James Baskett as "Uncle Remus"). Rock and roll had yet to arrive so popular singers and bands of 1947 included Frank Sinatra, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Frankie Lane, Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee, The Pied Pipers, and Dinah Shore.
TV
The three network channels were just about in place in '47 but television was still a brand new -- what will this become? --form of entertainment. The pioneering children's show Howdy Doody began and '47 also brought Americans their first chance to watch a live parade and the World Series from their homes.
Literature
The Diary of Anne Frank is first published, two years after its authors death in a Concentration Camp during World War II. Americans weren't yet aware of it though since the book wasn't translated into English for another five years.
Stage
Arthur Miller's All My Sons was the rage on Broadway but the Pulitzer Prize committee didn't name a recipient for 1947. Coincidentally '47 was the inaugural year for the Tony Awards... though the categories weren't yet as we now know them. Three stars who already had Oscars on their mantle (Fredric March, Ingrid Bergman, Helen Hayes) made up 50% of the first Tonys for acting. The other three were future Emmy nominee David Wayne and future Oscar winners Patricia Neal and José Ferrer.
Ingrid Bergman, never one to not be working, took that Tony winning performance and quickly preserved her Joan of Arc for 1948 cinema.
At the end of the year Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway though that wouldn't win prizes until the next year.
Showtunes to Go
Classic musicals Finian's Rainbow and Brigadoon were both unleashed upon the world in 1947 and many of their songs became standards. Brigadoon, the mythic Scottish town, only materializes once every 100 years but its songs in particular have never gone away. Here are four of Broadway's best voices Patrick Wilson, Kelli O' Hara, Kate Baldwin, and Cheyenne Jackson for beautiful exit music to this post.
Reader Comments (28)
Out of the Past is my favorite movie from 1947. I also really enjoyed Mourning Becomes Electra. Highly recommend watching both.
From what wasn't mentioned in this article I'd highly recommend:
Daisy Kenyon (the better Crawford picture from 47)
T-Men
I Know Where I'm Going (Powell/Pressburger film that made it to states in 47)
The Woman on the Beach
Desert Fury
The Man I Love/Deep Valley (double bill for Lupino lovers)
Brute Force
Nora Prentiss
Panic
There are so many more I could recommend also. A major positive about a lot of films from this year is they run between 75 and 90 minutes the perfect film length
Great choices. Nathaniel
Out of the Past and Odd Man Out are not only major omissions, but so good you'll kick yourself for waiting so long to catch up. My favorite movies of the year, besides those two are Great Expectations and Shoeshine, and one of Hollywood's nuttiest, most deliriously campy whatzits -Green Dolphin Street, with two hours of goofball melodrama leading up to a totally bitchin' earthquake!
It was really thoughtful of the Academy to give an Oscar to Santa Claus. That was nice.
Dark Passage and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir are worth checking out.
ken s -- the thing i find interesting about the 40s and film noir, IN TERMS OF MY UNFAMILIARITY, is that whenever I ask people to name their favourites no film is a wild consensus pick. Everyone seems to love a different noir.
@Nathaniel R -- Of the movies you haven't seen, I recommend Snow Trail, Shoeshine, One Wonderful Sunday, Odd Man Out, Born to Kill, and Brute Force.
I would have loved to see a few more titles before the smackdown, but so many relevant to Oscar and otherwise recommendation are not streaming or available in those antiquated red envelopes that still come to my house.
Kelly -- ah red envelopes. Embarrassing confession. i pay for them every month but i long since stopped watching and returning the discs (because of time constraints and so many things being rentable -- i was like "what's $3?" but now that i've been doing that for awhile i know i lost a lot of money. (sigh)
These recaps must take a lot of time on your part -- thank you for pulling this together! It really helps lay the scene for the upcoming smackdowns.
You must see "Out of the Past" (1947) classic film noir with a hot cast Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and gorgeous Jane Greer. Stylish direction by Jaques Touneaur. It was remade as " Against All Odds" (1984) with James Woods, Rachel Ward and smoking hot Jeff Bridges.
All those noirs that you haven't seen are really worth catching up with but I'd say Out of the Past and Born to Kill are the 'most' noir but you can't go wrong with any of them.
This is such a great year in cinema I had to do a top 20 (and it could have included many others)
The Man I Love
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
Dark Passage
Good News
They Won't Believe Me
Lured
The Web
Out of the Past
Born to Kill
Repeat Performance
The Macomber Affair
Nightmare Alley
Desert Fury
Miracle on 34th Street
The Devil Thumbs a Ride
Welcome Stranger
Ride the Pink Horse
Hue & Cry
Crossfire
Dancing with Crime
Out of the Past has Kirk Douglas in a supporting role, and he's electrifying.
"Dark Passage" is a favorite of mine. "Great Expectations" is a smartly rendered adaptation and elegantly photographed. I recently watched "Nightmare Alley" and found it really compelling and disturbing. Another film noir, "Kiss of Death," features a stunning performance by Richard Widmark as the villain--the laugh that he created for his character actually scares me, and he laughs throughout the movie. It's especially scary when I watch him and I know the laugh is coming; it's like slowly walking into a particularly creepy nightmare.
I'm eager to watch "Out of the Past."
Out of The Past is gonna beat Black Narcissus in your top ten, Nathaniel. It's that great.
My top 5 films of '47 so far are...
1. Black Narcissus
2. Monsieur Verdoux
3. The Lady from Shanghai
4. Record of a Tenement Gentleman
5. Fun and Fancy Free
Noirs were coming into their own in a very big way in '47. Most of the best have been mentioned in the comments. But I'd single out some specific performances. Claire Trevor does career best work in "Born to Kill:. I'm oddly resistant to much of the wildly praised "Out of the Past". To my mind, it's awkwardly overplotted. But there's no denying the complex allure of Jane Greer's stunning femme fatale. And Kirk Douglas is also terrific in an early role. "Nightmare Alley" is never more fascinating than when Helen Walker's onscreen as a cool and devious psychiatrist. Cate Blanchett's playing the part in the upcoming Guillermo Del Toro remake. And for all that lady's expertise, she'll have her work cut out for her equalling Walker's impact. You must see Joan Bennett and Robert Preston' - devastating as a pair of cruelly bickering Hemingway characters in the African safari noir "The Macomber Affair". Aside from the noirs, I'd pitch a couple of '47 swashbucklers. "Captain from Castile" (about conquistadors in Mexico) may be non PC but the 20th Century Fox production values are to die for, the story's a juggernaut and Jean Peters (in her film debut) is the most wonderful surrogate audiences ever had in the "I'm achingly in love with Tyrone Power" sweepstakes. Max Ophuls' "The Exile", set in 17th century Holland (and originally screened in sepiatone) is a masterpiece of poignant romance and exquisite design. The director also demonstrates his skill with actors, keeping Douglas Fairbanks Jr. at just the right level of poetic flourish and extracting delightful work from Maria Montez. At least one reader has previously extolled Rene Clements's Nazis fleeing to Brazil on a U boat piece "Les Maudits" aka "The Damned". It really is marvelous. I'm with Nathaniel in admiring Hitchcock's mordantly lovelorn "The Paradine Case". Film-makers pursued Greta Garbo to play the enigmatic female lead but the ultimately cast Alida Vallii is sheer perfection in the part. Pushed to pick my favorite film of '47, I'd probably go for "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir". Give me a movie that stars Gene Tierney, has a Bernard Herrmann score and climaxes in crashing waves of impossibly romantic ecstasy. And I'm in.
"Captain From Castile" also has Power's "best friend" Cesar Romero is very tight pants
Out of the Past! I find it odd I learned of it in another medium (it’s a big part of a Paul Auster story) but yeah that - and cool to see so many appreciate it here. Also, much lighter fare but I think The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer is delightful.
Ozu's "Record of a Tenement Gentleman" is a highlight of the year. "Shoeshine" is heartbreaking and one of De Sica's best.
Great write-up Nathaniel! I think 1947 is a really underrated year. There are so many gems longing to be discovered.
I wouldn't call "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" a comedy at all. It's more of a romantic drama...and an excellent one at that! I think you should see it, Nathaniel. You'd love it! Your love for actresses will be fueled by a great performance from Gene Tierney! Between this and "Leave Her to Heaven", it might be her greatest performance!
Out of the Past is one of my all-time favorites. If you google “All Time Best Film Noirs”, it’s a guarantee it’s gonna be there near the top. Robert Mitchum plays the coolest PI with consistently the best line deliveries in cinema history. Jane Greer is right up there with Double Indemnitys Barbara Stanwyck for greatest femme fatales ever. Director Jacques Tormerr, of Cat People fame, brings his same visual and dramatic mastery here, with incredible chiaroscuro lighting and the harsh confused sense of masculinity coming out of the war. The plot is pretty tricky to keep up with in the second half on your first watch, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s almost impossible not to get sucked into it’s smoky atmosphere and romantic fatalism.
All I can do is echo what everyone else has said. I bet Out of the Past and The Ghost & Mrs. Muir will knock a couple of your top ten out of their slots. You'll really wonder why Jane Greer didn't become a bigger movie star. Oh, and try and see both in excellent prints. I have seen some muddy versions of Out of the Past before. Don't do it, just hold out for the best version.
Warner Archive put out an excellent looking blu-Ray for Out of the Past not too long ago.
"The Ghost and Mrs Muir" is one of those classy supernatural romances that were popular in the 40's think "Portrait of Jenny" - it also has a great score by Bernard Herrman
This was the year in the 40s that Jennifer Jones did not make a picture after her Oscar win.
Possession & Daisy Kenyon, both starring Joan Crawford, are so good, highly recommend!
Daisy Kenyon is one of my favorite pictures, period.