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.