Oscar's Honors... But Where is Mia Farrow?

Glenn here. First things first: let us congratulate the four people selected by the Academy to receive statues at their annual Governer's Awards in November. The names are screen (big and small) and stage legend Angela Lansbury, five-time costume design nominee Piero Tosi, actor and comedian Steve Martin, as well as Angelina Jolie who will be awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

I think we can all agree that the first three names listed there are bona fide deserved winners. Lansbury with her nominated screen roles in Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray (which I think made her the first person ever nominated for both their debut and sophomore performances?) and perhaps most famously as the wicked puppet master mother in The Manchurian Candidate, not to mention also appearing as the voice of sweet Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. She ranked #7 on The Film Experience's poll of women who deserve an Honorary Academy Award so there's one name we can strike off the list. It's hard to argue also with the selection of Steve Martin, and it's especially a breath of fresh air to see the Academy honour another comedian with their honorary award as if to say "Yeah, look, we know!" Such a shame audiences will be denied getting to see these two fabulous icons on stage at the Oscars.

And while his name may not be as familiar, Italian costumer Piero Tosi is no stranger to Oscar. He's been nominated five times including for such famed films as The Leopard, Death in Venice, La Cage aux Folles, and La Traviata. He has not worked since 2009 so it's now or never and we can all applaud the Academy's continued celebration of craftsman in these categories.

However, I'd really like to know what you guys think of the choice of Angelina Jolie. I don't think anybody would begrudge her her success in bringing the plight of refugees to the front page of national magazines and into movie cinemas (Beyond Borders and her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey both did this albeit to questionable success) as well as her many other humanitarian efforts alongside United Nations. Still, by the end of the year, Jolie will be a two-time Academy Award winner. She's only 38 and has plenty - plenty! - of time to win another (whether for acting or directing or whatever other forte she chooses to venture into). What next? George Clooney? Opra... Oh, wait.

Meanwhile, poor ("poor" in a metaphorical sense, obviously) Mia Farrow continues to sit there wondering what on Earth she has to do to get noticed by these people. She could easy be recognised with an honorary Academy Award for her acting (her years alongside Woody Allen as well as Rosemary's Baby attest to that) or for her humanitarian efforts of which there are many. Hell, her goodwill nature is so well known and so strong that she was immortalised on an episode of Laura Dern and Mike White's Enlightened! 

Given her lack of nomination to this day one has to wonder whether people within the Academy view her in a certain unflattering light. Why that'd be so, I have no idea. You'd think the fall out from her marriage to Woody Allen would have made them want to honor her even more, no? I guess not. Of course, I doubt Farrow is too bent out of shape over it: one doesn't commit themselves to activism in the hopes of winning an Oscar. But wouldn't it be nice to see them rewrite multiple wrongs instead of giving Jolie her second statue? And if not Farrow then surely there are still plenty of other worthy people who are Oscarless to this day that have done a lot for charity and the community. 

Nevertheless, congratulations to all the winners. May the brief montage they allow us to see of your ceremony be funny and enlightening and prove that y'all deserve to be on the main stage.

Team Top Ten: Women Who Deserve An Honorary Oscar

Amir here, to bring you this month’s Team Top Ten on a topic that remains one of our biggest collective pet peeves here at The Film Experience.

Every year when the Academy announces the list of recipients of the Honorary Oscar, we can expect only one thing: they will all be men. Sure, the odd woman wins the award here and there, but consider this: between 1993, when the honor was bestowed upon Deborah Kerr, until 2009, when Lauren Bacall shared the award with two men, not a single woman was deemed worthy of the biggest honor AMPAS has to offer. Apologists can point to the fact that men have run the industry at large since its inception. They would be right; the industry as a whole is equally at fault, if not more, but take a look at the list of women still awaiting their first statue – or *gasp* first nomination – and tell me they don’t deserve better than one golden man every sixteen years. If the drought is as depressingly long this time as it was between Kerr and Bacall, it can be 2025 before we see another lady take home an honorary Oscar!

Deborah Kerr in 1993 and Lauren Bacall in 2009 and a great chasm between them

We know all too well that complaining about the Academy’s decision doesn’t get us anywhere, but since we found recently that they do have a listening ear, we’ve decided to do our part and help them correct this injustice. Let’s give voters the benefit of the doubt and assume that all they really needed all these years was a list of suggestions. So, here is ours: the top ten women who most deserve an honorary Oscar, under the following three criteria: they need to be alive, above the age of 55 and Oscar-less.

 GIVE THESE WOMEN THE HONORARY! 

[tie] 10. Marni Nixon
You may not know what Marni Nixon looks like, but I guarantee you know what she sounds like. If you've seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Secret Garden (1949), The King and I, An Affair to Remember, West Side Story, or My Fair Lady, you have heard Nixon's golden voice coming from the mouths of some of Hollywood's most legendary actresses. As if it isn't hard enough work to try to make your voice sound just like someone else's, in some instances Nixon had to do so in secret, the studios wanting to hide the dubbing from their big stars. Nixon's onscreen credits may number only in the single digits (her role as Sister Sophia in The Sound of Music being the most famous by far), but had she actually performed the roles she dubbed onscreen, she would have had at least two Oscar nominations by now. She's an indelible part of film history, and she never received any onscreen credit for her most famous work. If that isn't cause to give someone an Honorary Oscar, then I don't know what is.
-Daniel Bayer

10 more legends to honor after the jump!  

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Oscar Horrors: "Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird"

In 'Oscar Horrors' we look at those rare Oscar nominated contributions in the horror genre. Daily all October long. Here's Andreas on an actress who is still very much with us and where is her Honorary Oscar, we ask?

HERE LIES... Angela Lansbury's chanteuse "Sibyl Vane," sent to an early grave by her love for Dorian Gray and trampled by National Velvet in March 1946

For The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Angela Lansbury received her second Best Supporting Actress nomination in as many years. (Her previous one was for Gaslight, another Victorian horror-melodrama. Talk about carving out a niche!) She plays a working-class British girl in both films, but Sibyl Vane is the polar opposite of her snippy maid in Gaslight: demure, wholesome, and tender.

These qualities captivate the still-redeemable Dorian, as does her signature song "Little Yellow Bird".

Good-bye, little yellow bird.
I'd rather brave the cold
On a leafless tree
Than a prisoner be
In a cage of gold...

Lansbury's delivery transforms the song into a leitmotif of innocence, a status it retains long after her character's death. For although the actress herself departs the film about 40 minutes in, she leaves a huge impression. This is a true supporting performance, affecting the whole rest of the film despite scant screen time. Dorian Gray is a chilly movie, preoccupied with the smooth surfaces of Dorian's mansion, and Lansbury supplies it with warmth. Her heartbroken face pierces Dorian's hardening soul, and her melancholy song haunts him all throughout his later debaucheries.

Even when he's corrupted through and through, Dorian Gray can't escape the "Little Yellow Bird." That's the lingering power of Angela Lansbury's onscreen vulnerability. With that gentle face, opening into a smile like a flower into bloom, she changes what could've been a throwaway ingenue role into something bigger—into the emotional core of the film. The Oscar may have ultimately gone to Anne Revere for National Velvet, but Sibyl remains unforgettable, a pure songbird devoured by Dorian's caprices.

More Oscar Horrors 
Monster's Inc - Animated Feature
Pan's Labyrinth - Art Direction
Them! - Visual Effects
American Werewolf in London -Makeup
Addams Family Values  -Art Direction

8 Degrees of Linking

/Film Angela Lansbury wanted for Wes Anderson's next film? Gah!
My New Plaid Pants JA delights me when he reorganizes the world. #TeamCharbender ! 
Oscar Metrics returns (yay Mark Harris!) with a conversation about 2012's first ½
Low Resolution thinks Salma Hayek is g-r-e-a-t in Savages and that the movie isn't so bad either 
Hollywood Reporter Channing Tatum's next two projects are lined up: Foxcatcher for Bennett Miller and another filmed version of daredevil Evel Knievel's life, both true stories.
Daily Mail ...and Chan is also interested in a Magic Mike sequel and has made a not-very-serious offer to play the male lead in the erotic drama 50 Shades of Grey. 
Guardian Chris Nolan is suggesting that someone make a Catwoman spinoff for Anne Hathaway. "She deserves it." 
Empire Josh Trank will helm the Fantastic Four reboot as expected (that's one reboot we'll be happy to see -- bad movies deserve to be rebooted, not good ones!) but Daredevil has lost its director. The rights to Daredevil may shift back to Marvel if the film isn't in production by the fall. Please let Fox biff this one. Marvel is better at this now! Keep them all in the same universe.

Have you picked up the Margaret Blu-Ray yet to see what #TeamMargaret was all about last Dec/Jan? I'll discuss it soon if you want. Here's an 8 Degrees of Separation Infographic detailing the various cast connections. I love that Ladyhawke is mentioned. So very random!

Judy Fest: "The Harvey Girls"

Silly me. I had the greatest time at the Judy Garland festival at Lincoln Center this week and the movie I didn't write about Presenting Lily Mars was probably my favorite viewing experience. Rent it! Judy was just so funny in it, it was really charming and I liked her chemistry with Van Heflin (I confess I had to look him up since Shane had slipped my mind and I'd never seen his Best Supporting Actor Oscar performance for Johnny Eager (1941). Have any of you seen that one? Is it worth checking out?

But enough about Lily Mars... on to Judy in another incarnation. The Lincoln Center portion of the festival ends tomorrow though the celebration continues at the Paley Center for Television (since Judy did a lot of variety work on TV in the 50s). The last two films I caught were period musicals and here's the first of them.

The Harvey Girls (1946)
I always forget that Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury were contemporaries. They were just three years apart in age (Angela is younger) though in this western musical, Lansbury is clearly meant to be the older woman. Or at least the more experienced one, if you know what I'm saying. Angela is a hardened showgirl (i.e. prostitute) at a rowdy saloon (i.e. casino/brothel) and she's just about the only person in the frontier town who isn't thrilled when Judy Garland arrives "On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe".

In fact, that first big ensemble musical number hilarious stops halfway through just so everyone can gawk at Judy as she steps off the train, like she's the most famous beloved celebrity in the world. The showstopping entrance makes no narrative sense whatsoever -- Judy's "Susan Bradley" being a nobody who is about to start work at Harvey's restaurant -- but it makes perfect movie-movie sense because Judy Garland IS famous and beloved. And if there's a musical number already in progress when Garland arrives at the scene it's basically the Red Sea to her Moses.

The town is divided too, right down the middle, between the wild saloon and the proper restaurant. It's basically a battle for both the soul of the town and the town's most powerful man (John Hodiak) with Lansbury and Garland representing for either side. Guess who wins: The good girl or the bad one? The headliner or the newbie (this was only Lansbury's fourth picture)? I'll give you one guess.

The Harvey Girls hasn't aged as well as some of Garland's output. It's pretty creaky and I don't think it's only due to the print we saw that badly needed some restoration and color correction. Part of the problem is that the film grinds to a halt whenever the typically able Garland isn't front and center. Plus, the songs aren't as memorable as those from her other films. Though the young Cyd Charisse is all porcelain loveliness and Angela Lansbury's perma-scowl is amusing the plot points connecting their numbers and several other characters feel insufficiently developed to hold interest in The Harvey Girls as an ensemble piece. It's always "Can we please get back to Garland?" Still, you can't beat that rare opportunity to see Dorothy dance with her Scarecrow again (Ray Bolger). I think she had missed him most of all. B-