A Drag: 1991, Part Four

Summer slips into Autumn at the 1991 multiplexes, with a legendary documentary, a hit for Terry Gilliam, and a backloaded September:

Blockbuster Summer: 1991, Part Three

Summertime is the season for blockbusters, has been since 1975. The biggest hit of 1991 came out Fourth of July weekend, a movie that didn't just spend four weeks at #1, but wound up the #1 movie of the year, the first of three times director James Cameron could claim the top spot of the year. Obviously, I'm talking about Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

After the success of 1984's The Terminator, a sequel may have seemed inevitable, but it was a process getting started. James Cameron didn't want to do one, and besides, he had had a falling-out with the production company that held half the rights (Cameron's ex Gale Ann Hurd held the other half). Arnold Schwarzenegger did want a sequel, and he convinced Carolco Pictures, which had produced Total Recall, to purchase the rights and move forward - they even set a release date for Memorial Day weekend, before a storyline was even set. So, Cameron came back, and soon, it was the typical stories for a James Cameron film: behind schedule, over-budget, with reports that it cost too much to ever see profit. They were finishing post-production all the way up until the star-studded premiere on July 1; two days later, it hit screens.

A juggernaut. Not only did it take the top spot at the box office for the weekend, it broke the record for Fourth of July weekend releases. And everyone saw it, men, women, and children. It held onto the top spot for the entirety of July, sticking around long enough to end the year as 1991's highest grossing film. Right below it? Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which had come out three weeks before...and which we'll also discuss below, alongside eleven others:

Guns Blazin': 1991, Part Two

The Silence of the Lambs continued its dominance for five weeks until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze debuted. Eventually, the #1 spot was taken by City Slickers, which ended the year as the #5 hit of 1991, and which we get into below. But one movie that never topped the box office still became not just an Oscar winner, not just one of the year's top earners, but a cultural moment, debated by critics, audiences, and scholars: Thelma & Louise.

The brainchild of writer Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise was born of her frustration with women's parts in cinema, and was originally set to be an indie film with Khouri directing. When the script got into Ridley Scott's hands, however, things changed: he came on as producer, and, after several others passed, eventually took on the directing reins, enticing actresses like Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Goldie Hawn before the final duo of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were cast. And when it finally did come out, oh my goodness, what a furor. Was it feminist? Was it anti-male? Khouri and critic Janet Maslin said people who were offended were mis-aligning their sympathies (a nice way of saying, "a hit dog will holler"). It's a conversation that's still being had as subsequent generations discover the film; that, and what happens after the fade to white in the final frame, a sequence parodied over and over again in films (Wayne's World 2), television (Family Guy), commercials, and beyond. It's also the movie that changed the fortunes of the ab-solutely hunky drifter Louise takes up with, one Brad Pitt. And, did you know, just 19 days ago, a musical version of the film premiered in London, written by Callie Khouri with original songs by Neko Case? The legacy continues...

And it all happened here, in 1991, just one among these twelve releases:

The Early Bird: 1991, Part One

We start 1991 not in January, but in February. Partly because it just happened to work out that way. And partly because 1991's movie year - full of legends, beauty and the Beast and Thelma & Louise and JFK and Paris is Burning and Soapdish - can be said to center around the February box office smash that became a home video sensation, with enough heat to win Best Picture a year and a month after its initial release. Yes, yes: The Silence of the Lambs.

The film has an interesting pedigree for a blockbuster and Oscar winner. Based on a pulp paperback thriller, The Silence of the Lambs follows FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she hunts down a serial killer who skins his female victims; in her mission, she consults with the imprisoned murderer-psychiatrist-cannibal-genius Hannibal Lecter, who plays his own mind games with her. The director is Jonathan Demme, who by this time had become more known for his critically-acclaimed comedies like Melvin and Howard and Married to the Mob, though he initially broke through with exploitation pictures for Roger Corman, such as Caged Heat and Crazy Mama. The stars are Jodie Foster, a former child star who, with her Oscar-winning turn in 1988's The Accused, graduated into Serious Adult Actor, and Anthony Hopkins, a Welsh actor more known to the US for serious prestige work like The Lion in Winter or 87 Charing Cross Road. Together with writer Ted Tally, they made what could have been a lurid thriller and turned it into a hit with critics and audiences - and an enduring cinema classic.

Oh, yes, classic. We don't like to think of anything made after the 1960s as a classic, but it's been 35 years, I think we can say it, and The Silence of the Lambs more than qualifies, if just for how ubiquitous the film's iconography has become. Yes, the book series by Thomas Harris was already popular, and Michael Mann adapted Red Dragon into Manhunter in 1986, but it's the success of The Silence of the Lambs that gives us a four-film franchise, two television series (Hannibal and the short-lived Clarice), a musical parody (Silence! The Musical), decades of references (Zootopia 2 just last year paid homage), and even an "unconventional biography" (Brian Raftery's Hannibal Lecter: A Life, published just this February). Even during the film's first month of release, you could feel it: Foster and Hopkins presented the writing awards at the Academy Awards for 1990, just one month after The Silence of the Lambs came our, and were introduced with great fanfare and greeted by loud applause. When the VHS came out in October, it became the most rented video in the country. When the Academy Awards for 1991 were held the next year, the film became the third (and, so far, final) to win The Big Five: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay (adapted, in this case). That's a lot of momentum to carry for a year, but it had the goods.

And to think, in some places it played alongside these films:

1991: Well, Why Not?

I got so far behind on 1960 I almost forgot I spent April, May, and half of June watching 75 films from 1991. These 75, in fact:

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:

Imitation Kurosawa: 1960, Part Eight

In October 1960, JFK floated the idea of a Peace Corps while Khruschev banged his shoe at the United Nations. And at the movies:

Got Me Feeling Like A...: 1960, Part Seven

In September 1960, OPEC is founded, The Flintstones premieres on ABC, and the first-ever televised presidential debate takes place between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. And there was much at the cinema, too, but the big story was Psycho.

Psycho was a bit of a gamble for director-producer Alfred Hitchcock, who insisted on making it, even when his parent studio Paramount balked. But Hitchcock loved a challenge, and making a commercial film out of a particularly nasty horror novel like Robert Bloch's was certainly one of his biggest. Ultimately, he filmed on the Universal lot, using the quick-acting crew from his then-popular television program, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, waving his usual fee in exchange for 60% stake, and financing much of it himself; Paramount would only have to distribute. He broke all the rules: the heroine was a criminal, the most sympathetic character is a serial killer, a toilet flushes on screen...he even broke the rules of exhibition, instilling a policy where, for fear of spoilers, no one was admitted into the cinema once the film had begun (at a time when people would wander freely once they bought a ticket - it's where the phrase, "This is where we came in," originated from). 

The film was, as you must know, a massive hit, which made Hitchcock's "deal" with Paramount a sound financial decision on his part. The sets used for the film are still on display and visited by thousands of tourists daily at Universal Studios Hollywood's Backlot Tour. Bernard Herrmann's iconic score and the shower scene it accompanies are recognizable even by people who've never seen the film, so often have they been referenced and parodied. But the original still entices, and there are retro screenings (like the one I attended back in 2000) all year round, all over the world . There are even action figures and computer games, three sequels and one remake, and a surprisingly well-received television adaptation. Psycho is its own economy, and it all started here, in September 1960 - among these films:

Roger Corman Double Feature: 1960, Part Six

August 1960 saw the continuing liberation of African colonies into their own nations - that was the theme of 1960, which was deemed the Year of Africa, but August saw the largest number: between August 1 and August 17, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Niger, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo (the great 2024 documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat gets into this), and Gabon all became liberated from France, and Dahomey from France and Portugal, joining seven other African nations that had decolonized earlier that year. Seventeen nations in all established independent governments by the end of the year. 

Meanwhile, at American cinemas...:

Genre Pics: 1960, Part Five

July 1960 saw the introduction of the 50-star flag of the United States of America, one year after Hawaii was welcomed as the 50th State. It ended with the Woolworth's counter officially serving its first Black customer and the Republicans naming Richard Nixon their nominee for President of the United States. Meanwhile, at the movies, one of cinema's greatest franchises began its eight-film, four-year run, cementing its star as the King of Horror...

Among other film releases, of course:

Delays: 1960, Part Four

Well, it's been a week, but things get busy in life. Let's return to Summer 1960.

In June 1960, two Best Picture nominees debuted in cinemas. One, The Apartment, would finish at #8 in the Top 10 Box Office Performers of the Year, win Best Picture, and inspire a Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical called Promises, Promises, which won many Tonys across the decades and gave us "I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love Again." The other, Elmer Gantry, so burrowed into my brain when I watched it in college that I then read the book, gave the book to my mother, got the opera on CD from the library, plotted out a remake, and still quote to this day.

They are but two of the ten releases I want to talk about today:

Eight Years Later, The Year After: 1960, Part Three

In April 1960, the United States launched the first weather satellite, and in May 1960, the Soviets shot down an American plane and captured its pilot, while Mossad tracked Adolf Eichmann to Buenos Aires and kidnapped him. But most importantly, the Oscars for the films of 1959 were held, and we've covered that year...gosh. I thought maybe five years ago, at most, but: turns out it was almost a decade ago. And eight years later, we're here at one year after.

 Here's a taste of what April/May 1960 had to offer: