The 1960 Retro Hollmann Awards

1960 took me a long time to sit back and consider. I started with this year because it was the last of Alfred Hitchcock's Best Director nominations; I wrap it up with an abundance of outstanding films of every genre, the beginning of a new decade heralding the coming of a new sensibility. The variety is evident in the number of nominees I wound up with: 38 different films are named within the 18 categories, 

The 1960 Retro Hollmann Awards:

The Top Ten of 1960

Here are my Top Ten films of 1960, with apologies to The Facts of Life (my #11), Hiroshima mon amour, Jazz on a Summer's Day, Lola Montès, Our Man in Havana, and Spartacus. Beginning with #10…

Hitch's Last Chance: Best Director, 1960

Here we come to the final Oscar category we're covering for 1960, the nominees for Best Director:

Jack Cardiff, Sons and Lovers

Jules Dassin, Never On Sunday

Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho

Billy Wilder, The Apartment

Fred Zinnemann, The Sundowners

Now, this would not be Hitchcock's year at the Oscars, though he didn't leave 1960 without some honors: when the Walk of Fame officially opened in early 1960, Hitchcock was among the first honorees, with two stars, one honoring his film work, the other honoring his television work. And as we discussed before, Psycho itself was a major hit, breaking box office records all around the world, with Hitch himself raking in over $15 million. It was a great year for the director, the year that, I would argue, made him the legend he is today. The Oscar nomination was the capper. Unfortunately, it wasn't a win, and it was his final nomination; he would finally get an Oscar seven years later ... an honorary award.

The night's big winner was Billy Wilder. Hitchcock had five Best Director nominations, Wilder had seven Best Director nominations, and four times - 1944, 1945, 1954, and 1960 - those nominations were against each other. This was the second time Wilder triumphed. It was also his last nomination, in this category, at least. Worth noting, too: this was also the third match-up between Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

And how do I rate them? From fifth to first, here we go:

An All-Timer: Best Picture, 1960

Tomorrow we close out the 1960 Oscars with Best Director, since this 1944/45/60 run began with the nominations for Alfred Hitchcock. That’s the marquee category this time around. Which means today, we get into the Big Prize. The nominees for Best Picture are:

The Alamo

The Apartment

Elmer Gantry

Sons and Lovers

The Sundowners

My rankings, from fifth to first:

At Death’s Door: Best Actress, 1960

These are the 1960 nominees for Best Actress:

Greer Garson, Sunrise at Campobello

Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners

Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment

Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday

Elizabeth Taylor, BUtterfield 8

What a storied race this was! Melina Mercouri made a splash for a Greek film but refused to "campaign", saying the publicity from the nomination made her miserable. Greer Garson, absent from the ceremonies since her neat five-in-a-row run in the 1940s (I didn't realize when I chose Hitchcock nominations I'd be getting Garson history, too!), got a final nod (and a Golden Globe!) in a biopic. Deborah Kerr believed she should have won the Oscar this time around. And Shirley MacLaine had as good a chance as any, with her Golden Globe win and the lead role in a Best Picture nominee.

Then there's Elizabeth Taylor, in a huge moneymaker that received good enough notices. And more to the point, she was at death's door. While filming Cleopatra in Europe, Taylor fell ill with a number of issues, with pneumonia finally delivering a near-fatal blow that had the world holding its breath. When news broke that she received an emergency tracheotomy and made a miraculous recovery...everyone else declined their invitations. Watch her category at that year's Oscar ceremony, she's the only nominee who showed up...or had reason to:

And did she deserve it, whatever the quality of the film itself? My rankings, from fifth to first:

His Turn: Best Actor, 1960

The nominees of 1960 continue with Best Actor:

Trevor Howard, Sons and Lovers

Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry

Jack Lemmon, The Apartment

Laurence Olivier, The Entertainer

Spencer Tracy, Inherit the Wind

All five performances are stellar, all five performers among the best to ever do it; only Howard was a one-and-done, the rest had been here before and would be again. Hell, three of them - Lemmon, Olivier, Tracy - already had gold, so it's no wonder that the Academy went for someone they knew and already liked, but hadn't yet awarded: Burt Lancaster.

Ironically, Lancaster said it was the easiest role of his career, basically playing himself, he said. A helluva thing to say when you've seen the movie. Here are my rankings, from fifth to first:

Chill Wills’ Big Blunder: Best Supporting Actor, 1960

The 1960 nominees for Best Supporting Actor:

Peter Falk, Murder, Inc.

Jack Kruschen, The Apartment

Sal Mineo, Exodus

Peter Ustinov, Spartacus

Chill Wills, The Alamo

Peter Ustinov won, but that win has been overshadowed by Chill Wills’ infamous awards campaign. Wills, who’d been in the business a good long time and figured this was his one short at the gold, hired a publicist named W.S. Wojciechowicz, aka “Bow-Wow”. Apparently, he did not consult with Wills, the actor trusting the professional to know his business. So Wills was blindsided when an ad appeared in the Hollywood Reporter purporting to be from the cast and crew of The Alamo: We of The Alamo cast are praying harder - than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo - for Chill Wills to win the Oscar…” 

Tacky! Tasteless! And, for some I’m sure, proof that every element of this film was just ego and Oscar-hunting. The Alamo’s director-producer-star John Wayne condemned the ad, Wills sent Bow-Wow to the doghouse, and Ustinov went home with the gold. 

My rankings, from fifth to first:

Shirley Jones Has Range: Best Supporting Actress, 1960

We finally begin our 1960 Oscars coverage with Best Supporting Actress:

Glynis Johns, The Sundowners

Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry

Shirley Knight, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Janet Leigh, Psycho

Mary Ure, Sons and Lovers

All five were first-time nominees; three came from Best Picture nominees, including the eventual winner, Shirley Jones:

At this point, Jones was best known as the heroine of Rodgers & Hammerstein: as the first - and only - singer ever under a personal contract for the famous songwriting duo, she was hand-selected by them to lead the film adaptation of Oklahoma! when she was but 20. That was five years ago, and now, in her sixth movie role, Jones finally got to quit playing the good girl and start being bad. In Elmer Gantry, she plays Lulu Bains, a prostitute who learns of the growing fame of traveling preacher Elmer Gantry...and remembers his younger days when he used his charms on her and, as she says, "rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps!" Now she has a way to pay him back...

That's the kind of narrative that gets you an Oscar: young up-and-comer established in one kind of role gets to flex her acting muscles with a "de-glammed" one. And in a Best Picture nominee! And a prostitute, Oscar's favored profession for women! And you can't say she didn't make good on it: while she was never nominated again, she did achieve pop culture immortality - and a Grammy nomination! - as the momma behind The Partridge Family. 

Her competition? Golden Globe winner Janet Leigh in Psycho, who dominates the first half-hour before taking the most legendary shower in movie history; Mary Ure in Best Picture nominee Sons and Lovers, as a married yet liberated woman in turn-of-the-century England; Glynis Johns in Best Picture nominee The Sundowners, as a pub owner who entertains romance with Peter Ustinov; and Shirley Knight as the daughter in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the only nominee here who was nominated a second time.

Did the performances merit their nominations? My thoughts, from fifth to first:

Florida Winter: 1960, Part Nine

By the end of 1960, the United States of America had elected a new President, John F. Kennedy. At the cinemas, meanwhile, we were obsessed with sex and the mythologizing of nations. As witness: