Showbiz History: John Wayne's Oscar, Altman's Nashville, JLaw's Record

by Nathaniel R

John Wayne in "The Big Trail (1930)" and in "True Grit (1969)"

This day in history is a big one of Hollywood's most popular stars, John Wayne. His career began, as most did in the early days of Hollywood, with uncredited parts in silent films but he became a leading man once the talkies hit. Perhaps he needed that distinctive slow-crawl dirt road voice to stand out? He had his first leading role at just 23 years of age with The Big Trail. True stardom didn't hit, though, until Stage Coach (1939) after which, he was top-billed for the remainder of his career. On this very day in 1969 True Grit premiered in Los Angeles. The role of Rooster Cogburn would net him his third Oscar nomination and prove to be something of a career capper when he took home the Best Actor Oscar. (Jeff Bridges would later be Oscar-nominated for the same role in the 2010 Coen brothers remake). Not one to rest -- Wayne holds the record of most leading roles for an American movie star with *gasp* 142 of them -- the western icon kept right on working through The Shootist in 1976. On this same day in history in 1979, ten years after people first met Rooster Cogburn, Wayne died of stomach cancer. He remains one of the most iconic stars in Hollywood history.

What else was happening on this day in showbiz history? Find out after the jump...

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Visual Index ~ The Quiet Man's Best Shots

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!

One of the specific things the series Hit Me With Your Best Shot has taught me over the years is how great John Ford is as a director. When I was younger I never liked his films much but now I end up wanting to talk about every other scene in whichever film I'm watching of his; it's easy to marvel at the way he's staging and shooting his stories as an adult. His Ireland themed location-shot romantic dramedy classic The Quiet Man (1952) won the directing and cinematography Oscars in its year. It took the latter surely for those lush emerald landscapes and beautiful pops of color like blue dresses and flowers and The Queen of Technicolor's fiery mane. It inexplicably lost Best Picture in its year (to the oft-reviled The Greatest Show on Earth) but it obviously contributed to the decision to hand Maureen O'Hara's her recent highly deserved Honorary Oscar as its the movie most often cited when people talk about her gifts. But the movie sure is fun and sexy, too.

As usual the Best Shot participants wove interesting personal details and insights into their posts. We even have our first father & son article (!) as befits a film that's a clear family favorite in some homes.

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT ~ THE QUIET MAN (1952)
Click on any of the 10 images in rough chronological order to read the 14 corresponding articles at these fine blogs & pinterests.

Images that were made by an enormously talented pair of image-makers to be read as quickly and deeply as possible....
-Antagony & Ecstasy

 As if she's a forest spirit that has stepped out of Celtic folklore.
-The Film's The Thing (Son)

It’s thematically and technically effective, but it’s also a gorgeous and unusual shot. 
-Coco Hits NY 

There are plenty of images to pull from “The Quiet Man” that confirm the Academy’s judgement
- Nebel Without a Cause 

This may very well be the start of a new actressing obsession for me...
-A Fistful of Films 

I’m choosing this as my Best Shot because it reminds me that as husbands, we are called to scoop up God’s grace and bring it just a little closer to our wives.
-I/fwp 

They may have layers and layers of clothing on, but that is downright erotic. For 1952, it's practically porn
-Dancin Dan on Film 

'"a good Christian act.'"
- Sorta That Guy 

There's more to its cinematography than those outdoors scenes...
-Film Actually 

In every scene you can tell that they'd like to chuck the customs to get to the consummation. Except when it's time to get to the consummation...
- The Film Experience 

Ford was a master of filling every frame with visual information...
-The Entertainment Junkie

Unlike anything else in this particular film... 
-Dusty Hixenbaugh 

Imagine how an inhabitant from the fictitious 1920s Irish community of Inisfree might react to an episode of Fox’s EMPIRE...
-Paul Outlaw  

Although I respect any person’s right to say no—even married people c. 1950s rural Ireland—it really grinded my maidenly gears...
-Video Valhalla  

So, the story takes the same path as expected... the meeting, banter, spats and misunderstanding, conflict, and finally, reconciliation.
-The Film's The Thing (Father)

"Is this a courtship or a donnybrook?"

Top o' the morning...er... evening to you and a Happy St. Patrick's Day. To prepare for tonight's Hit Me With Your Best Shot we started the morning off right  by screening the John Ford classic The Quiet Man (1952). For those who haven't seen the film, it's about a rich American (John Wayne) who moves back to his ancestral homeland determined to settle down and immediately falls passionately in love with a fiery stranger (Maureen O'Hara) before he's even learned her name or bought that home which which to settle down into; O'Hara has that affect on people. One of the reasons I love watching old movies that I only have vague familiarity with (usually as a child) is that they're altogether different when you watch them as an adult. I've loved O'Hara since I was a child but I tended to avoid John Wayne movies (Red River is the only one of his films I've seen more than once, entirely due to Montgomery Clift). Which is why I was quite surprised to be drawn to John Wayne's stoic but expressive performance here and nearly chose this image as my best shot

I'm limiting myself to three images after the jump. It's so difficult because this movie is gorgeous. It won the Cinematography Oscar and its not hard to see why...

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The Honoraries: Maureen O'Hara in "The Quiet Man" (1952)

In "The Honoraries" we're looking at the careers of this year's Honorary Oscar recipients (O'Hara, Miyazaki, Carrière) and the Jean Hersholt winner (Belafonte). Here's abstew on an Irish fav...

 

I have often said that "The Quiet Man" is my personal favourite of all the pictures I have made. It is the one I am most proud of and I tend to be very protective of it. I loved Mary Kate Danaher.

-Maureen O'Hara 'Tis Herself

The making of John Ford's Oscar-winning film The Quiet Man was a labor of love for all involved. Despite having already won the Best Director Oscar three times, Ford found it difficult to get his passion project off the ground. As far back as 1944, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara had agreed to star in Ford's love letter to Ireland. And it eventually found a home at the most unusual of places. B-movie studio Republic only agreed to make the film (which they thought would lose them money) if Ford, Wayne, and O'Hara first made a guaranteed money-generating Western together first. After 1950's Rio Grande for the studio, they headed to shoot on location among the lush emerald fields of Ireland itself and the affection for the country and its people is apparent in every frame.

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A Year with Kate: Rooster Cogburn (1975)

Episode 42 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne star in The African Queen 2: This Time it's a Western!

Growing old in Hollywood sucks. To borrow a line from Goldie Hawn, “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.” And while Hollywood’s ageism is well-documented and well-criticized, for some aging actors, an equally tricky problem can arise: the trouble with becoming a Legend in your own time. What happens when the legend eclipses the actor?

In 1975, Hepburn was arguably more popular than she’d ever been. This was due in no small part to her friend Garson Kanin’s unauthorized, best-selling 1972 “tell all” entitled Tracy And Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir. Though shocked by the invasion of her privacy, Kate used the public interest that the book generated to fuel her career, appearing on talk shows and even the 1974 Academy Awards (in pants, of course). As a result, in the 1970s, while Bette Davis was taking guest roles, Joan Crawford had retired, and Barbara Stanwyck "slummed" it in TV, Katharine Hepburn was as prolific as she’d ever been, starring in seven movies total. However, her popularity came at cost. Kate became in effect the curator of her own legacy, more valuable as a symbol of the past than as a well-respected thespian in the present.

Certainly, it was Katharine Hepburn the Legend that director Stuart Millar and producer Hal B. Wallis had in mind when they paired her with John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn. Five years after Wayne won his Academy Award for True Grit, Wallis’s wife Martha Hyer penned a sequel designed to play to its two stars’ greatest strengths: take the American Odyssey outline for True Grit, fill it with details from The African Queen (including more white water rapids), add a few pounds of nitroglycerin and some extra genre cliches about the death of the American West, and voila! Rooster Cogburn is born.

Westerns, Oscars, and a comparison Meryl Streep after the jump.

I have the strangest sense of deja vu.

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