Judy Holliday @ 100: The Oscar Winner's Fascinating Career

by Brent Calderwood

I’m just going to say it. I’m glad Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar for the 1950 comedy Born Yesterday. I’m not saying she should have won—I’m not even saying I would have voted for her if I’d been a member of the Academy. But if I could have been there when the winner was announced on March 29, 1951, I would have been cheering the loudest.

Today—100 years after Holliday’s birth and 56 years and two weeks after her untimely death—Holliday’s Sea Biscuit victory over frontrunners Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard is still a topic of discussion and debate...

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On the Globes cancellation

You probably heard the news today that NBC has cancelled the Golden Globes for January 2022. The past couple of days have been a flurry of stars and distributors and PR firms condemning the Globes and boycotting them. Or 'stepping back from' to use Scarlett Johansson's gentler euphemism. But we find the timing of this sudden wave of condemnation to be suspicious and more than a little hypocritical of the industry given their own ethics problems and systemic racism and sexism. First and foremost, it's all happening three whole months after the Golden Globes exposé in the Los Angeles Times which touched a nerve with its revelation that the organization, which is made up of 87 people, had no black members. (Exacerbating that particular problem -- though nobody likes to try to understand structural problems as it's easier to simply condemn and move on -- is that they only allow one member to represent each "foreign" country and many aren't as diverse as the US; that 'per country' rule, at least, will have to go.)

Did Hollywood rise up against the Globes after that expose? Nope. They went right on courting their favor until awards season had entirely played itself out! There were awards to be won and films and tv shows to promote. No stars boycotted the ceremony and neither did any studios. But now, everyone is in the clear for another year. Distributors don't have to think about campaigning for awards or promoting their films and television shows in that particular way for a while now...

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The Most Confusing Acting Categories of the Past

by Eurocheese

NINE women have received mainstream precursor support this year for Best Supporting Actress. Somethings gotta give.

If anyone you know is telling you they know exactly what will happen when the nominees for Supporting Actress are announced on Monday, you should also ask them for a set of winning lottery numbers. You want to know how many actresses have scored the complete quartet of Golden Globe, SAG, Critics Choice and BAFTA nominations in Supporting this season? That would be zero. Maria Bakalova showed up at all four awards for a raunchy comedy, arguably the least Oscary of all genres, but even she landed in lead at the Globes. I honestly have no idea who’s getting in or who’s winning the category… and I love the confusion.

For everyone trying to put together their predictions for nomination morning, let’s look at how some other bizarre precursors shook out, choosing one year to represent each of the four categories. Maybe this will give us a clue as to the current Best Supporting Actress race...

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Showbiz History: Buffy, Muriel's Wedding, and the most Glamourous Globes night?

9 random things that happened on this day, March 10th, in showbiz history...

1938 The 10th annual Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1937. The Life of Emile Zola wins Best Picture, the second consecutive biopic to win, cementing the agonizing fact that Oscar then and now obsesses over the snooziest of all film genres, the biopic, more than any of its far more interesting cousins. It beat screwball classic The Awful Truth, the actressexual bliss of Stage Door, the non-musical Janet Gaynor version of A Star is Born, and other superior films. Meanwhile Luise Rainer became the first actor in movie history to pull off a two consecutive year Oscar coup with her second win for her yellowface performance in The Good Earth...

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Oscar Race: Best Actress won't settle!

by Nathaniel R

The Golden Globes threw a molotov cocktail at the Best Actress race last night. Pundits have mostly agreed that four spots were cemented with Viola Davis, Carey Mulligan, Frances McDormand, and Vanessa Kirby as the leaders. The fifth spot was deemed up for grabs with some growing sentiment that it would be Sophia Loren (The Life Ahead) emerging from behind (without precursors) to score that contentious final seat in the throne room. But last night the Globes did some very loud FYCing for both Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot) and Andra Day (United States vs Billie Holiday), both of whom starred in 2021 pictures vying for the "best of 2020" honors due to the extended eligibility period. In other words, it paid to wait until the last second with the Globes this year.

Will these two wins affect the Oscar ballots which go out this Friday? Let's discuss after the jump...

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