The 1941 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominees

After 82 films and my Top Ten, here are my nominees for the 1941 Retro Hollmann Awards - 34 films across 18 categories:

My Top Ten of 1941

I watched 82 movies for 1941:

All That Money Can Buy

All-American Co-Ed

Aloma of the South Seas

Appointment for Love

Back Street

Ball of Fire

The Big Store

Billy the Kid

Birth of the Blues

Blood and Sand

Blossoms in the Dust

Blues in the Night

Buck Privates

Cheers for Miss Bishop

The Chocolate Soldier

Citizen Kane

The Devil and Miss Jones

The Devil Pays Off

Dive Bomber

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dumbo

Fantasia

The Flame of New Orleans

Flight Command

The Great Lie

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

High Sierra

Hold Back the Dawn

Hold That Ghost

How Green Was My Valley

Hudson's Bay

I Wanted Wings

Ice-Capades

The Invisible Woman

King of the Zombies

Ladies in Retirement

Lady Be Good

The Lady Eve

Las Vegas Nights

The Little Foxes

Louisiana Purchase

Lydia

Major Barbara

The Maltese Falcon

Man Hunt

Meet John Doe

The Men in Her Life

Mercy Island

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Moon Over Miami

Night Train to Munich

One Foot in Heaven

Penny Serenade

Pépé le Moko

The Reluctant Dragon

Ridin' on a Rainbow

The Sea Wolf

Sergeant York

Shadow of the Thin Man

Sis Hopkins

Skylark

Smilin' Through

So Ends Our Night

The Son of Monte Cristo

The Strawberry Blonde

Sun Valley Serenade

Sundown

Sunny

Suspicion

Swamp Water

Tall, Dark and Handsome

Tanks a Million

That Hamilton Woman

That Night in Rio

That Uncertain Feeling

This Woman is Mine

Tobacco Road

Topper Returns

When Ladies Meet

The Wolf Man

A Yank in the R.A.F.

You'll Never Get Rich

And now I finally give you a Top Ten. A hat tip to the movies that almost made this list: Blues in the Night, Dumbo, Fantasia, Major Barbara, and my #11, That Hamilton Woman.

In alphabetical order:

Oscars 1941: Best Actress

Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were sisters. They were also rivals. Things didn't get as bad as Cain and Abel, but they were notoriously prickly about each other, and by the time De Havilland won her first Oscar for 1946's To Each His Own, they were barely on speaking terms. Fontaine frequently blamed jealousy, especially since the two were nominated against each other in 1941, each for their second nomination...and Joan won:

Apparently, Olivia was less offended by that and more offended by an insulting (but pretty funny) remark Fontaine made about her sister's new husband ("He's had four wives and written one book. Too bad it isn't the other way around."). And one doubts Olivia could have been too shocked by her sister winning: Joan had just starred in the previous year's Best Picture winner and she had won the New York Film Critics' Circle prize. 

But then, who knows? Maybe De Havilland was rooting for Bette Davis or even someone else. It is, after all, a lineup full of rich performances:

1941: Men and Monsters

What was it about How Green Was My Valley that spoke to Oscar voters? The genuine quality of the film itself? Was it that it was the last of the Best Picture nominees to come out, recency bias doing its thing again? Maybe both - maybe, too, its story of a boy growing up in a close-knit family in a close-knit town learning that the world can be cruel and home was being wrecked in a way that wouldn't make it home ever again struck a chord with a country that just found itself thrust into the war they'd all been watching.

One watches all the movies from this year and last and figures America was gearing up anyway. All the films about our heroic Navy men, our pilots, the comedies about registering for the draft or being enlisted, the brave pseudo-comedies about rebels who went overseas, the imports about our British cousins fighting the good fight. But it is one thing to make movies about how we'll enter the War on our terms, to watch movies about other people's war; it is quite another thing altogether to wake up to an attack - one that, even at the time, people spoke of being preventable, had the government actually paid attention and acted on its suspicions and intelligence.

And so this December, the cinema is full of meditations on the end of innocence, alienation, government nincompoopery...there's even a ball of fire, though that one's a much more fun one to consider than the infernos that were to come: