The 1952 Retro Hollmann Awards: Nominees

Following my Top Ten, I took a few days to consider, very carefully, what I consider the best in 1952 cinema. Here they are, 32 films across 18 categories, the nominees for the 1952 Retro Hollmann Awards:

My Top Ten of 1952

Wish I could get these posts done on time, but one does have a full-time job and a social life. Anyway, A few days later than I wanted, but here we go.

Anyway, here are the 77 films I watched for 1952:

Actor's and Sin

Affair in Trinidad

The Atomic City

The Bad and the Beautiful

Because You're Mine

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

Bend of the River

Big Jim McLain

The Big Sky

The Black Castle

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Brighton Rock

The Browning Version

The Bushwhackers

The Card (aka The Promoter)

Caribbean

Carrie

Clash by Night

Come Back, Little Sheba

Cry, the Beloved Country

Deadline - U.S.A.

Five Fingers

Flat Top

A Girl in Every Port

The Greatest Show on Earth

Hans Christian Andersen

The Harlem Globetrotters

High Noon

Ivanhoe

Jack and the Beanstalk

Japanese War Bride

The Jazz Singer

Just for You

The Las Vegas Story

The Lavender Hill Mob

Lure of the Wilderness

The Lusty Men

Macao

Man Bait

The Man in the White Suit

The Medium

The Member of the Wedding

The Merry Widow

Million Dollar Mermaid

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima

Monkey Business

Moulin Rouge

My Cousin Rachel

My Six Convicts

My Son John

Navajo

The Narrow Margin

O. Henry's Full House

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

Park Row

Pat and Mike

Plymouth Adventure

The Pride of St. Louis

The Quiet Man

Rancho Notorious

Rashomon

Red Planet Mars

Road to Bali

Scandal Sheet

Singin' in the Rain

The Sniper

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Son of Paleface

The Star

Stars and Stripes Forever

Steel Town

Sudden Fear

The Thief

Viva Zapata!

Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie

What Price Glory

With a Song in My Heart

Ironically, given the delay, this was one of the quickest Top Tens I've ever made. With apologies to the briefly-considered The Bad and the Beautiful, The Black Castle, Brighton Rock, Million Dollar Mermaid, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Rashomon, and especially the two that did almost make it, My Cousin Rachel and Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, here are my ten favorite films of 1952, in alphabetical order:

Oscars 1952: Best Director

This is the last of the Oscar Retrospectives in the mini-series "The Winner Is John Ford," focusing on the cinematic years for which John Ford won three of his four Oscars for Best Director (we already looked at 1935, the year he won his first for The Informer).

The Quiet Man was John Ford's passion project. It's the movie that he'd been wanting to make since 1933, constantly researching, rewriting, and re-developing. First, it was a politically-tinged drama, something more akin to The Informer; by the time it hit the big screen, it was a fish-out-of-water romantic-comedy; in every iteration, however, it was a valentine to his parents' homeland, Ireland. Ford was born in Maine, but his parents were both Irish (his mother, according to Searching for John Ford, only really knew Gaelic). Throughout his life, he clung to his heritage and gave time and attention to Irish causes and stories. His Westerns and war films would usually have at least one "stock" Irish character - Barry Fitzgerald dependably on hand, as he is in The Quiet Man; an admirer of the playwright Sean O'Casey, he directed an adaptation of the work The Plough and the Stars and produced a biopic, Young Cassidy; and any criticism people have of How Green Was My Valley is usually directed at how the Welshmen are written as, played by, and treated like Irishmen. But that was Ford. The Quiet Man was finally, finally, his chance to tell an Irish story in an Irish setting with Irish actors - and in color, showing off the beauty of the land. They say passion projects can be doomed to failure, but not only has The Quiet Man maintained its status in cinema - it won Ford his record-breaking fourth Oscar:

It is a feat not likely to be bested any time soon. Only two other directors have even won three, and both of them - Frank Capra and William Wyler - are long dead. Another interesting point: Picture-Director splits are rare, but How Green Was My Valley is the only time Ford won Best Director and the movie Best Picture. The Quiet Man, as we know, lost the big honor to The Greatest Show on Earth, produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

DeMille was also up for Best Director. In 1950, he was given an Honorary Oscar for "37 years of brilliant showmanship"; if the intention was to salute a man at the twilight of his career, it was premature. That same year, his Samson and Delilah became the highest-grossing film; two years later came The Greatest Show on Earth, again, the highest-grossing film of its release year. So, finally, the brilliant showman became a Best Director nominee for the first and only time. He joined a slate that included not only his old friend Ford, but John Huston, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Fred Zinnemann. 

This slate, in fact:

Oscars 1952: Best Supporting Actor

Supporting Actor. What a funny category, always. In 1952, neither the BAFTAs nor the New York Critics nor the National Board of Review had gotten on board with an award the Academy had been handing out since 1936. The Golden Globes had, but none of their three nominees were nominated at the Oscars: not The Happy Time's Kurt Kasznar, not The Bad and the Beautiful's Gilbert Roland, and not the winner, My Six Convicts' Millard Mitchell. Given that, who could be said was the favorite to win among these five?

I'm not sure how Arthur Hunnicutt came to his nod. I can guess that Sudden Fear's great reception pulled Jack Palance along for the ride. And with The Quiet Man once planned as John Ford's followup to The Informer, it seems good and proper that both the director and the star, Victor McLaglen, of that 1935 film would both end up nominated. But all were considered also-rans compared to Richard Burton, a leading man campaigned as supporting by his studio, for his star-making performance in My Cousin Rachel. Like Gary Cooper's second Best Actor Oscar, this was a foregone conclusion.

So everyone was surprised when Mexican actor Anthony Quinn, who'd been playing gangsters, Indians, and other supporting baddies for over a decade, won for playing a genuinely supporting part. He couldn't make it, but his wife accepted on his behalf:

...she being Katherine DeMille, daughter of none other than Cecil B. DeMille. It really was DeMille's night, huh?

Here's how I look at this lineup: 

Oscars 1952: Best Picture of the Year

How often does the biggest moneymaker of the year win Best Picture of the Year? Rarer than you think. Wikipedia's records only go back to 1948 while the Oscars themselves date back to 1927-28; within that narrow timeframe of 76 years, only 12 times has the Academy's choice and "the people's" choice aligned. The last time it happened: 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The first time it happened - again, according to Wiki info - was 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth! And if cinema about the circus wasn't cross-pollination among the showbiz mediums enough, it was declared the winner in the first-ever Oscars to be broadcast on television:

Yes, this was the 25th Anniversary of the Academy Awards, held at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Honestly, marking those 25 years by honoring not just the year's biggest hit but one of the Academy's original founders, the greatest showman cinema saw up to that point, makes a lot of sense. It's a great honor for a man without whom the town and the industry would not be what it was - for better and worse. 

The behind-the-scenes circus epic was up against four other films that found themselves in the Top 10 box office hits of the year (honestly, rare that all five would be there, but they are all entertaining). There's Ivanhoe, the Medieval romantic swashbuckler; High Noon, the Western drama about a lawman standing alone against outlaws; Moulin Rouge, a biopic of artist Toulouse-Luatrec; and The Quiet Man, John Ford's romantic-comedy about an American returning to his roots in Ireland. Presented here are my takes on them, in ascending order of how I'd rank them.

1952: Quiet Man, September Cinema

September's here, bringing a bouquet of solid cinema - among them, the Best Picture nominee The Quiet Man. 

Long in development, The Quiet Man started life as a short story by Maurice Walsh, published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933. Director-producer John Ford originally envisioned it as a more dramatic story with the Troubles and the IRA firmly part of the story, as in The Informer. By 1952, we'd had a World War and were in the middle of a Red Scare; except for two joking references, the Troubles and the IRA were no longer part of the picture. Instead, what we get is the story of a man escaping his past by following an ideal of someone else's memory, the Ireland his mother told him about. Indeed, what we get is a love story between an American and an Irishwoman, each learning how to adjust to the other's culture.

The film was a hit with audiences and the Oscars, and was one of six or seven exceptional films released that September: