Almost There: Bette Davis in "Of Human Bondage"

by Cláudio Alves

Nowadays, Oscar snubs generate justifiable fire on social media and occassionally even get primetime attention. However, they're not huge stories that threaten the existence and validity of the Academy itself. It wasn't always like this. Back in the early days of the Oscars, some snubs were so outrageous they made fear blossom in the hearts of Academy members, threatening to invalidate the entire (new) institution in the eyes of the general public. So much so, that new rules were put in place to avoid similar outcomes, write-in votes were allowed and apologies were handed out in the shape of what we now call a career Oscar.

Such was the case in the mid-30s when Bette Davis made Of Human Bondage, defied Hollywood's expectations, became a sudden star and still failed to get the Academy Award nomination most thought she deserved…

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11 days til Oscar - Is Bette Davis a 10 or an 11?

The closeup changes everything. In 1934, Bette Davis became a STAR.

A very random question for you Oscar fanatics out there. Do you count Bette Davis as having 10 or 11 nominations? In other words, do you count her write-in nomination for Of Human Bondage (1934), her breakout star-making role which obviously led to her first win for the lesser performance in Dangerous (1935) the very next year, as one of her nods or do you go by the Academy's 'Of Human Bondage is not an official nomination' stance even though it's such an intrinsic part of Oscar lore of the 1930s?

On This Day: Basquiat, Last Temptation, Cleopatra

on this day in history as it relates to showbiz

30 BC  Cleopatra commits suicide, allegedly by purposeful snake bite. I don't remember that scene in Liz Taylor's Cleopatra but it might have been at the four hour mark and t'was possibly asleep

How to honor this day: play with someone's snake. In the absence of a suitable one, wink at someone as saucily as Liz

← 1915  "Of Human Bondage" by W Somerset Maugham published. 19 years later it becomes a movie and marks Bette Davis's ascent to superstar actress

How to honor this day: Let it all out like Bette in that performance that's pure 🔥

1927 Wings (1927) the first movie to win Best Picture has its NYC premiere. Five months later it will open in Los Angeles (things took longer to get around in those days) and four months after the LA premiere it will win the very first Oscars.

How to honor this day: Go see Dunkirk if you haven't which has good aerial sequences and be astounded that Wings set the bar so high for aerial sequences 90 years ago without the aid of current movie technology.

Jean-Michael Basquiat and Madonna in 1982, part of the East Village / Alphabet city scene that produced many legendary figures

1988 The modern artist Jean-Michael Basquiat dies of an overdose and Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ opens in theaters. 

How to honor this day: Watch either Scorsese's film or Julian Schnabel's Basquiat biopic starring a young Jeffrey Wright as the painter and David Bowie as Warhol (though sadly no one plays Madonna)

2016 Hell or High Water opens in theaters becoming a sleeper hit and eventually winning a Best Picture nomination.

How to honor this day: Read Daniel Walber's interesting column on its production design

Dana IveyHappy Birthday
Actors: LaKeith Stanfield, Cantinflas, Dana Ivey, George Hamilton, Dominique Swain, Cara Delevingne, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Krause, Jane Wyatt, John Cazale; Other crafts: director Ralph Nelson (Lilies of the Field), Bo-Derek-wrangler John Derek (Tarzan the Ape Man), writer William Goldman (The Princess Bride), rapper Sir Mix a Lot, and cinematographer Nelsson Lik-wai Yu (Still Life)

Oscar Winners Born on this Day:
Pioneer/producer/director/legend Cecil B DeMille (The Ten Commandments as epic finale to that career), actor/famous brother Casey Affleck, costume designer Ulla-Britt Söderlund (Barry Lyndon), and sound editor Mike Hopkins (King Kong) 

Beauty Break: Stars in Chains

I was all prepared to write a short and snappy post about Historical Inaccuracies via Hot Bodies when I saw Adrien Brody buffed and chained for Houdini. Only then I looked at photos of the actual Houdini and it wasn't such a stretch after all. He must have spent as much time in the gym as he did locked in vaults underwater. Houdini, a new two night miniseries about the famous magician and escape artist, premieres tomorrow on the Discovery Channel.

Let's ignore for the moment that Adrien Brody has had a very strange career post-Oscar (and pre-Oscar come to think of it). Can he get back in the awards game with this. Or, rather, does History Channel ever win Emmy attention? You tell me, Emmy experts.

And we thank Brody for the sudden beauty break inspiration. Let's ogle stars all chained up, some even voluntarily, with a gallery after the jump. I mean, can you guess who this is for instance?

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Seasons of Bette: Of Human Bondage (1934)

ICYMI - We announced last week that as a sidebar series to Anne Marie's "A Year With Kate", Nathaniel will be discussing each of the Oscar Roles of Bette Davis, 11 in total or 10 if you're a purist, as they appear within Kate's chronology. There will be spoilers.

You should know as we begin this new mini-series that I am not, like Anne Marie with Kate, a Bette historian. My knowledge of Bette Davis is something like the cliff notes version that most people who love movies absorb along the way. The earliest and only pre-Jezebel (1938) Bette Davis performance I had seen before beginning this series was Three on a Match (1932) which didn't, in any way, prepare us for the Bette we know; she's not the MVP of that racy pre-code girls-gone-bad drama. So I'm happy to report that Of Human Bondage (1934) gives us the Full Bette-of-Legend Arc. She goes from unsatisfying bit player to unforgettable star to terrifying disintegrating old harpy all in the space of 83 minutes! It's quite the retrospective ride. [More...]

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