Joan Crawford's long road to Oscar

by Cláudio Alves

I make no secret that I'm a Joan Crawford fan. After all, I've already waxed poetic about the star's stellar 1947 and her turn in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. However, I've never written about Crawford's career pre-Oscar win. Since we're celebrating 75 years since that victory, it feels like an appropriate time to examine the actress' long road to Oscar, the misconceptions about her legacy, the complexities of her contemporary popularity. If you want to read more about the 18th Academy Awards, check out Baby Clyde's wonderful overview of the ceremony and the race for gold. Now, it's time to focus solely on that year's Best Actress champion…

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Showbiz History: Grand Hotel's win, Robert Pattinson's Debut, Delroy Lindo's first Spike Lee joint

7 random things that happened on this day, November 18th, in showbiz history...

1932 The fifth annual Academy Awards are held at the Ambassador hotel honoring the films released between August 1931 and July 1932. Grand Hotel wins Best Picture. It's the only Best Picture ever to win the top prize that was only nominated for that one Oscar and won of only three top winners to win only one statue (the others were Broadway Melody at the 2nd annual Oscars and Mutiny on the Bounty at the 8th Oscars). As we've said multiple times, it's too bad there weren't supporting Oscars back then because Joan Crawford sure was more than worthy in the all star ensemble. The only film to win multiple Oscars that night was the pre-code relationship drama Bad Girl which took Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. (The next ceremony would have a long eligibility period because Oscar wanted to move to the full January to December calendar year system)...

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The 1932 Oscars, the last November Ceremony

The 5th Academy Awards were held on this day (November 18th) in history, 86 long years ago. I bring this up because it's quite a year in Oscar history full of firsts (and lasts!) and cool trivia. Let's recap, shall we?

Wallace Beery (left) and Fredric March (right) tied for Best Actor

First & Last Times For...

A Best Picture winner with only one nomination!
The soapy and delicious all star ensemble pic Grand Hotel won despite no other nominations, a figure that's often been cited as a dubious achievement but isn't unthinkable with actual context; there were only 7 regular categories a film could be nominated in back then, unlike 17 today (the number of categories currently stands at 24 but the others are for foreign/animated/doc/shorts and, of course, a film cannot be nominated in both screenplay categories). And there were less nominees in the categories, too. This made nomination counts for Best Pictures much smaller (there weren't even supporting categories yet where Grand Hotel surely would have been nominated -- hellooooo one of Joan Crawford's best performances!). Here was how it shook out...

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32 Days til Oscar. Have you seen "Grand Hotel"?

How will you spend those days? Since 32 is the magic number today, please spare a thought for the wildly undervalued Best Picture winner of 1932, Grand Hotel.

It only won a single Oscar, but that's all it was nominated for. There were no supporting acting categories just yet, as honors were given only to stars (same as now, basically, only with category fraud as the cause instead of no category at all) but, had there been, Joan Crawford would have certainly been deserving. She gives an unusually warm performance (for her) in this picture. 

This is also the film that gave us the image of Greta Garbo that stuck, as a solemn "I want to be alone" diva. More gorgeousity and a few gifs after the jump if you're so inclined...

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They a-link, damnit! It's a miracle.

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Empire Juno's mom and daughter Janney & Page reuniting for the comedy Tallulah
Antagony & Ecstasy shares a killer review of one of my fav Best Picture winners Grand Hotel - loved every sentence of this
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CHUD has an index of photo glimpses of Suicide Squad from Harley getting wet to the Joker at gunpoint 

Mad Mania
Gothamist the last scene of every Mad Men season. Matthew Weiner approached each season with its last visual in mind 
Slate 10 great images from Mad Men over the years - the show that always looked more like a great movie than "television" 
Film School Rejects where to see the Mad Men cast members next - new projects! 
AV Club an illustrated guide to Mad Max warlords from the Toecutter to Immortan Joe 
Jezebel offers up hilarious mocking of vulnerable masculinity in the face of Mad Max Fury Road

Charlize Theron menstruated all over my masculinity! 

....and finally the Imperator Furiosa tribute fans of both Mad Max Fury Road and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt didn't know they wanted but now can't live with out. 

They alive, damnit!