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:

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:

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:

Summer in Atlanta: June 2000

June was the most important month of my year 2000. This was the month my mom and I went to Atlanta for a week, staying with my Aunt Jenny. And boy, did we keep busy!

This was the trip where I made my first appearance on television! 

Mind, it was the closed-circuit Emory University station, as part of the sketch show created and produced by my cousin. It was a good show. Past episodes included a Blair Witch Project spoof (the movie was the sensation of 2000) and a prescient sketch called Homoerotic, Or...? wherein two men were presented with a video or photo - of three guys clad only in swim trunks being hosed down, for instance - and debated whether it was clearly homoerotic or just "good clean fun," which just demonstrates how old those debates are. Anyway, I was there when they filmed a "behind-the-scenes" sketch on the making of the show, and was of course cast as the Godfather of Comedy (see above), the ultimate decider of what was or wasn't funny enough to make it to air. The two jokes I remember: a Gladiator reference (see how popular it was?) wherein I gave my approval through the old emperor's thumb technique...

...and me flipping through a script until a tired Tom Green reference (see how popular he was?) made me hurl it across the room. That didn't make it the final cut. The entire episode is here, my bit is at 18:26, that's my cousin Clay hosting the segment.

This was also the trip where my fascination with Ancient Egypt (borne of my love for The Ten Commandments) came to its zenith with a look at the Fernbank Museum's Mysteries of Egypt exhibition. What I remember most is the IMAX film of the same name, where Omar Sharif tells his grandson ofthe native boy who really discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, and who, despite the legend of a curse, lived to a ripe old age; and the journals of Napoleon's Egyptian exhibition, with richly detailed drawings of the French taking obelisks "home".

This was the trip where I saw the original Psycho at the Fox Theater. Sponsored by TCM, the entire program was a throwback to cinema days of yore. There was live organ accompaniment as we sang old tunes for the pre-show: "Yes, sir, that's my baby / No, sir, I don't mean maybe..." There was a short before the main feature - coincidentally, the Looney Tunes "What's Up, Doc?", a snippet of which I had watched just the previous night when my aunt introduced me to Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?. And let us not forget: Janet Leigh herself was there, live, on stage, for an introduction and Q&A (oddly, what I remember most is not just her talking about how sweet and easy Alfred Hitchcock was to work with, but how her co-star and Hitch's daughter, Pat Hitchcock, would tell her how frightened classmates and teachers looked when he picked her up from school). Then, the film itself, a masterpiece. I had seen it a couple times before at home, but you truly have not lived until you've seen it on the big screen. Everything is more horrifying. Did I skip a shower that night? Of course I did. Did I hesitate before going up the stairs, sure that Martin Balsam's fate also awaited me? Baby, I had to turn on all the lights before mounting the first step. And this was before digital projection was a thing, so the silver screen was truly silver.

Naturally, there were other movies and television shows. No Time for Sergeants and the aforementioned What's Up, Doc?; Auntie Mame, which became a perennial for me, one I introduced many friends to, I've even seen some revival screenings in cinemas, it is one of my all-time favorite movies; a glimpse at a VHS cover at the video rental store turned me on to Freaks, which I found and rented and fell in love with when I got back to Florida.

Honestly, my auntie did

And then there was Daria, which had its season premiere the same night as the Psycho screening. Aunt Jenny, helpfully, recorded the whole thing, including the two-hour marathon that played beforehand and half of the follow-up program: Making the Video for Janet Jackson's "Doesn't Matter" from The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. I still have the VHS. Very gracious when one remembers this was Aunt Jenny's birthday weekend. To celebrate, we had tea at a traditional tea room - was it Mary Mac's, or am I misremembering? - friends of hers visited, and the day ended with a (homemade by one of the said friends?) coconut cake. I know she had fun doing the rest of it, too, but one can't overstate how much thought she put into making this trip meaningful and enjoyable for me and my mother.

Our last night, the moms went to bed while my cousin Carl and I stayed up late in the basement and read out loud Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital. We stopped when 11-year-old me came upon the phrase, "It is nipple-clear that she is braless." Did we move on to Marty, or did we just chat about the Beatles, or both? I think both. We then listened to a Jesus Christ Superstar highlights CD featuring Claire Moore. Then dawn broke and it was time to leave...

Elsewhere at the movies...

The Sincerest Form of Experimentation

Well, it took long enough but I finally finally started to watch some flicks for Shocktoberfest! The first film was one I'd never seen before, a divisive film that's been praised and damned equally, though one can't say it didn't take risks. From 1998, I give you...