Best Actress, Pre-Code Edition: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Helen Hayes' Oscar-winning turn in THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET is the quintessential Pre-Code Best Actress vehicle, detailing the story of a "fallen woman" with a kind of candor that would be forbidden by July, 1934.

Last time in this alternative Oscar history, we looked at the first three seasons of the Academy Awards through my dream Best Actress quintets. They coincided with the last few years when American silent cinema was still produced stateside by the big studios in town.

The rise of the talkies meant a lot of things for the industry, drastic, often destructive changes that have been fictionalized in such Hollywood self-reflections as Singin’ in the Rain and Babylon. In terms of pure cinematic form, this transition imposed limitations aplenty, generally making movies more static, more awkward and less visually expressive. Not all of them, but a concerning number. In terms of acting technique, the advent of synchronized sound recording ignited a change of the guard that left many a former star in the past and brought thespians of the New York stage to the Hollywood soundstage and Silver Screen immortality – the ones starring in movies that haven’t been lost, of course.

It was also the start of a short period we retroactively call Pre-Code Hollywood. Let’s consider my Best Actress ballot in those years…

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Pre-Code Diva Smackdown

by Cláudio Alves

Though postwar film noir is de rigueur for Noirvember, the Criterion Channel prepared a nifty bit of counterprogramming with a program dedicated to Pre-Code Divas. Going back before 1934, when the second coming of the Hays Code went into effect, one finds that time when sound was new and moral standards were, if not low, more libertine than they'd become. It was a time for sex comedies and sad stories about fallen women, moralist shockers and amoral delights, starring a cadre of starlets who became synonymous with the era. Some would go on to thrive within the Code, while others fell to obscurity when their vehicles dried up under new norms.

Since we all had so much fun with the last readers' poll, let's do another one. This time, you'll be voting on your favorite Pre-Code Diva. After the jump, discover our contenders and their Criterion-selected titles…

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"TÁR" is an exceptional film with a terrible ending

By Ben Miller

I can't say I went into Todd Field's TÁR, only his third film, with any sort of expectations.  Rave after rave of Cate Blanchett's performance piqued my interest but I wanted to go in with fresh eyes so I didn't read them. The opening credits hit.  We're in for something different.  Then we get Lydia Tár's introduction and her interview with Adam Gopnik.  All the way on board. The next two hours were magical, transfixing.  This is a perfect film. It might be my new number one of the year!  Everything was working.  The tone, the supporting players, the drama, the comedy.  Nothing was missing.

But then we reached the last 15 minutes. SPOILERS AHEAD - READ ONLY IF YOU'VE SEEN TÁR...

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Horror Actressing: Glenda Farrell in "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933)

by Jason Adams

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away we once went to The Movies. Otherwise known as The Picture Show, it turned out in 2020 there was indeed, as the prophet Peter Bogdanovich foretold, a Last one for us all. The subject of what was everyone's Last Big Picture before the COVID quarantine shut movie-going down has been a popular one -- personally I've kept that information close to the vest because mine (sigh) was the godawful horror twist on Fantasy Island, and let us never speak of that again. 

Let's instead focus on one of my best big-screen cinematic experiences of the so-far short-lived year in such things, which was MoMA's January screening of the drop-dead-stunning restoration of the Pre-Code two-color Technicolor fright-flick Mystery of the Wax Museum. Michael Curtiz's 1933 film, was lost for decades until a pair of prints miraculously appeared and got cobbled together beautifully. Mystery stars Fay Wray (just a few weeks before her romantic wrangle with that big monkey) playing the love-struck, shriek-prone Charlotte Duncan. But even better as far as I'm concerned there's Glenda Farrell, the subject of this here week's episode in our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series...

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Norma?

So should we wish Norma Shearer a happy 114th in heaven or not? 

As I was prepping an "on this day..." post I discovered that the internet does not agree on the birth date of The First Lady of MGM, Norma Shearer. TCM and IMDb say August 10th while Biography and Wikipedia say August 11th. Biography goes one further and even says there's disagreement on the year with 1900, 1902, and 1904 all cited which is perhaps why the Encyclopeida Brittanica doesn't give her a birthdate, just a month. Didn't Canada keep records at the turn of the century? 

Nobody agrees on anything about Norma, including her Best Actress win for The Divorcée (1930) which I was alarmed to realize some time ago is not always held in high regard despite her being utterly fabulous in the movie.  Gotta love those Pre-Code movies. We should probably do a mini-series on them at some point.

Whatever her actual birthday, TFE often feels festive about her. Three cheers to Norma this morning (your Old Hollywood fix since Judy by the Numbers, our beloved Wednesday morning pick me up, is delayed for the time being).