What Should Have Won, Part III: The 1950s

We are now entering Part III of our revisionist journey through the history of the Oscars. This time we deal with the 1950s.

First, a reminder of the rules: a given film has to have been nominated for at least one Academy Award in any category (not necessarily Best Picture) to be given the Oscar, and no foreign films are eligible.

Still with me? Then let’s move on to the 1950s:

1950

What film won Best Picture: All About Eve
What film should have won: Sunset Boulevard

Both the Oscars and the New York Film Critics agreed this year on Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s elegant and literate comedy about the theater, All About Eve. But I can’t help but think that they were both wrong and that the Golden Globes got it right. In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is the better film – from the dazzling cinematography of John Seitz to the gorgeously baroque performance of Gloria Swanson as the delusion silent film diva Norma Desmond, it teems with the larger-than-life excess of 20s Hollywood (which makes the workaday film industry of the late 40s seem pretty pedestrian by comparison).

1951

What film won Best Picture: An American in Paris
What film should have won: A Streetcar Named Desire

Musicals almost never win Best Picture, so why am I being so churlish in denying Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris the Oscar? Well, the fact is that An American in Paris is pretty much my least favorite MGM musical, and I’ve always found it particularly ironic that MGM made a film about an American going to Paris to become a painter at the very time that New York was supplanting Paris as the capital of the art world. It’s a little too arty and pretentious for my taste, and the ballet at the end butchers Gershwin’s music. My vote would have gone to Elia Kazan’s masterful adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play, with Marlon Brando immortalizing his Broadway performance as Stanley and Vivien Leigh deserving her second Academy Award for playing Blanche – which, as Brando once pointed out, wasn't much of a stretch for Ms. Leigh.

1952

What film won Best Picture: The Greatest Show on Earth
What film should have won: Singin’ in the Rain

It’s hard to believe that what most people think of as the greatest musical ever to come out of Hollywood wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture, but to give the Oscar to Cecil B. DeMille’s idiotic Ringling Bros. travesty, one of the worst films ever to win Best Picture, is adding insult to injury. Of the films nominated for Best Picture that year, John Ford’s The Quiet Man is easily the best, but I have to go with Kelly and Donen’s loving homage to 1920s Hollywood. In case you’re wondering, the New York Film Critics gave their award to High Noon, and while Singin’ in the Rain was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Comedy or Musical category, it lost to With a Song in My Heart.

1953

What film won Best Picture: From Here to Eternity
What film should have won: Stalag 17

Giving the Oscar to Fred Zinneman’s cleaned-up adaptation of the James Jones novel was a defensible choice (it was the choice of the New York Film Critics as well), but I would have gone with Billy Wilder’s taut P.O.W. saga, which includes William Holden’s definitive anti-hero as Sefton, and director Otto Preminger as the snarling Commandant who wishes that he could have given his prisoners a white Christmas: “Just like ze vonz you used to know.”

1954

What film won Best Picture: On the Waterfront
What film should have won: On the Waterfront/Rear Window

It’s pretty obvious that the Academy got it right when they voted for Elia Kazan’s noir-ish dockworker drama (which was the choice of the Golden Globes and the New York Film Critics as well), but I can’t help feeling that Hitchcock’s elegant study in voyeurism deserved the award just as much. So I’m calling it a tie.

1955

What film won Best Picture: Marty
What film should have won: East of Eden

Marty was the Rocky of its day – the little film about a lower-class guy that you rooted for in his quest for bourgeois domesticity, and the Academy went for it, as did the New York Film Critics. Oddly enough, the Golden Globes got it right, and gave their award to Elia Kazan for East of Eden. The mid-50s were definitely the Age of Kazan in Hollywood: he dominated the era as only Griffith had dominated it before, and as no director has dominated it since.

1956

What film won Best Picture: Around the World in 80 Days
What film should have won: Baby Doll/Written on the Wind

There are some years when I’m not sure the Academy should give out a Best Picture Oscar at all. Sometimes I wish they would take after the Pulitzer Prize, which in some years just doesn’t give out an award for drama if they don’t think the competition is strong enough. 1956 is one of those years where none of the nominated films really hold up (as we’ll see, 1988 is another such year). I don’t think I could have stomached voting for Mike Todd’s banal adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, but none of the other Best Picture nominees were much better. So I’m calling it a tie between Elia Kazan’s black comedy of pedophilic lust in the deep South (from a Tennessee Williams original screenplay), and Douglas Sirk’s scathing melodrama, Written on the Wind.

1957

What film won Best Picture: The Bridge on the River Kwai
What film should have won: Witness for the Prosecution

Not one but two of the best films released this year were not nominated for a single Oscar – Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success. Either one of them would be preferable to any of the films nominated in the Best Picture category, including the overrated David Lean film that actually won. But if I had to choose one of the films nominated for an Oscar that year to give the Best Picture award to, it would be Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution – a taut murder mystery with a plot that keeps you guessing until the very last minute and a bravura performance by Charles Laughton.

1958

What film won Best Picture: Gigi
What film should have won: Vertigo/Some Came Running

I have Vincente Minnelli beating himself this year, for while I have a fondness for Gigi (in particular because it spells the end of an era of musicals at MGM), I can’t help but thinking that Some Came Running, from the James Jones novel, is the better film. But along with that I have to give a nod to Hitchcock’s classic tale of obsessive love, Vertigo. This might have been a good year for a three-way tie, but Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil wasn’t nominated for a single Oscar. Both the New York Film Critics and the Golden Globes gave their Best Picture award to The Defiant Ones.

1959

What film won Best Picture: Ben-Hur
What film should have won: Some Like It Hot

Ben-Hur was the Titanic of the 1950s, winning just about every award in sight. But it’s clear, almost fifty years later, that its sword and sandal glories are a little faded, and the chariot race pales beside the silent version, where the Romans don’t speak with British accents. The film that should have won Best Picture that year was Billy Wilder’s cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot, with brilliant performances by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and a dazzling one from Marilyn Monroe.

That ends the 1950s. I’ll move on to the 60s in a few days.

Tom Moran