The 1936 Retro Hollmann Awards: And the Winners Are...

Meant to have this done on Thursday and Friday, but a fever struck, so instead, we're getting a Sunday Special. If you haven't, familiarize yourself with the full list of nominees, the unranked Top Ten, and the complete lineup of films screened. Then come back here and see my personal picks in 18 categories, starting with...

The 1936 Retro Nominees Are...

I've written a lot about these films by now. You've seen my write-ups of Oscar's nominees, you've seen the Top Ten, you've seen the full list of 71 films screened. Only 31 of those films are named here. In 18 categories, these are the nominees for the 1936 Retro Hollmann Awards:

My Top Ten of 1936

Yes, a day late, but I needed time to consider everything! It was difficult to narrow it down, and I had to sacrifice such treasures as Ah, Wilderness!, The Green Pastures, and Rose Marie. But I think I ended with a satisfying Top Ten of 1936.

In alphabetical order:

1936: Actor

Even with the addition of two categories for supporting actors, there were still some complaints from the acting branch after the 9th Academy Awards. W.C. Fields complained about the Academy's tendency to favor drama over comedy in the acting categories - yes, an issue even just nine years into their run, and one that is frequently brought up today. Just as much, in fact, as the tendency to award biopic performances. The Film Experience's Nathaniel Rogers just tweeted last week:

It wasn't always this way but it's getting harder and harder to remember a time when biographical performances didn't thoroughly dominate.

— Nathaniel Rogers ☮️ (@nathanielr) July 28, 2022

I replied that I blame Paul Muni. In 1936, he finally triumphed after three nominations (and one write-in), being named Best Actor for The Story of Louis Pasteur. 

And sure, he wasn't the first performer to win for playing a real person (that was George Arliss in Disraeli), but his Pasteur certainly set the template for burying a hot actor under makeup, letting them go nuts on an accent, and emphasizing the importance of the subject. The fact that his win this year was immediately followed by a nomination for The Life of Emile Zola, the 1937 Best Picture winner, further cements the Muni Method as the best way to impress the Academy into at least a nomination.

All that said, though...was it an undeserved win? Let's look at the lineup:

1936: Supporting Actress

Yesterday, we discussed - briefly - the origins of the supporting categories. Today, we discuss the greatest thing to come out of that process: the Best Supporting Actress category. Blogs have been dedicated to it, hours of online debate have been spent on it, great careers have been honored in it. It is, in my opinion, the best category at the Oscars.

Just as its male counterpart established its habit of honoring industry veterans with long CVs, the first Best Supporting Actress race established its traditional mix of old hands, newcomers, youths, and matriarchs. Broadway vet Beulah Bondi had been in films since reprising her stage role for the 1931 screen adaptation of Street Scene; frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if that performance also added to the formation of this category and her being among its first honorees. Alice Brady started in films in 1915, took a ten-year break to focus on stage work (during which she originated the lead role of Lavinia in Mourning Becomes Electra), and came back to play moms in 1933. Future Nancy Drew star Bonita Granville was a child star, making her debut at age 10 in 1932's Westward Passage. The two first-timers were hardly newbies. Sixty-year-old Maria Ouspenskaya was an experienced stage performer and acting teacher who brought the Stanislavski Method to the United States, while 36-year-old Gale Sondergaard had been on Broadway since 1928. Anthony Adverse was her movie debut, clearly an auspicious one: she became the first Best Supporting Actress winner.

Deservedly so? That's what we're here to discuss:

1936: Director

The second week of 1936 begins! Last week, we talked some nominees, specifically ones for Dance Direction, Original Song, Score, and the Writing Awards. This week starts with the nominees for Best Director.

In only its ninth year, Oscar showed it couldn't stop repeating itself. Already, two-time winners in this category were made up of Frank Borzage (1927/28, 1931/32), Lewis Milestone (1927/28, 1929/30), and Frank Lloyd (1928/29, 1932/33). Another Frank joined the ranks: having already won for It Happened One Night in 1934, Capra won his second Academy Award for directing Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Capra, by the way, was also the Academy president at the time, had expanded categories to appease the actors union, and was one of the newly-formed 50-person nominating committee allowing certain representatives of certain branches to decide the full lineup. But I'm sure the win wasn't all political - Capra's much-admired to this day, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was popular with critics (Graham Greene himself gave it a favorable review) and audiences (it was Capra's most profitable film up to the time, #7 at the int'l box office).

My thoughts on Capra's work, as well as that of his fellow nominees, after the jump:

1936: Writing Awards

The dance and music categories are done. We move on to the writing awards. One is Original Story, which honored the original concepts dreamed up by writers, not all of whom would get to translate their stories into script form. The other is Screenplay, honoring authors of scripts that were either based on pre-existing works, such as novels, plays, and short stories, or working off of one of the aforementioned Original Stories.

In 1936, the story of both categories was a single film. Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney were nominated both for their concept of how to depict the life of Louis Pasteur for film and for their script executing that idea. They won both. It was the first and last time either man would be nominated. Collings died of pneumonia in 1937, six months after winning his Oscars; it is believed he pawned one of them out of desperation, a nervous breakdown and descent into alcoholism having kept him from work. Gibney would later be blacklisted, though he served as president of the Writers Guild - twice!

Their winning work and the nominees they went up against after the jump.