Day Five: Supporting Actor, 1956

Although the Academy had been honoring supporting actors and actresses since 1936, other awards bodies were slower on the uptake. The Golden Globes followed the Academy's example from its very first ceremony, launched in 1943, but it took the National Board of Review another 11 years to do the same. The BAFTA Awards had no such category until 1968, but they had divided their acting categories between "British" and "Foreign" anyway, with a mix of lead and supporting performances in both; the NYFCC Awards had no supporting awards until its 35th ceremony in 1969.

So I don't quite know how they charted buzz or "surprises" back in 1956. What I do know is, of the five eventual Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees, only one had been cited by another major awards body. So it makes sense that he was the one who won the Oscar:

Day Four: Motion Picture Story, 1956

I went back and forth trying to decide what to do with High Society. Oh, not the 1956 Cole Porter musical remaking The Philadelphia Story, of course, but the 1955 Bowery Boys comedy about estate fraud and murder - the first and only film of the series to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Day Three: Actress, 1956

Sometimes, it really is a coronation with four also-rans. That certainly seems to be the case with Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar triumph for Best Actress, not insignificant considering seven years prior, she was denounced on the Senate floor for having an affair with director Roberto Rossellini, bearing his child, and leaving her own family to wed him in Italy. Hollywood turned its back on her; now, having seen her play a downtrodden woman who may be the Russian princess Anastasia, it welcomed her back with open arms. The premiere was the hottest ticket in town, says Inside Oscar, and she went on to win Best Actress honors from both the New York Film Critics' Circle Awards and the Golden Globes, two of the only three precursor awards of that era. (I would count the National Board of Review as the other; they awarded Dorothy McGuire in Friendly Persuasion). The Oscar? An inevitability.

Day Two: Musical Score, 1956

It's easy to underestimate just how prolific the musical genre was pre-1970s. Nowadays, we get a Disney movie, maybe a stage adaptation of a Broadway hit, every once in a blue moon an original like The Greatest Showman, and it's enough to make us go, "wow! The musical is back!"

But man, the way the studios just pumped these babies out in the '50s! The volume! The variety! Enough so that there sub-genres within sub-genres: jukebox musicals, bandleader bios, remakes of non-musical hits, ballets - all in addition to the standard Broadway adaptations, even re-workings of past stage hits (Anything Goes, for example, completely rewrites a book that had already been re-written). And how do I even categorize something like The Girl Can't Help It? Showcase musical?

Anyway, there are over a dozen musical or musical-adjacent films from 1956. These are the five that were nominated for their score:

Day One: Original Screenplay, 1956

Best Original Screenplay wasn't exactly a new category, but it had gone through enough iterations and name changes since its introduction in 1940 to feel like one. Basically, its intention was to honor a work where the story and screenplay were written by the same person or persons; a separate category was available for story writers who did not write the screenplay.

It's an eclectic mix, this class of '56. Consider what could have been, just from the films I saw: 

Movies and Memorial

This look back at 1956 is starting a week late because my father passed away. It is completely accurate to say that I would not be where I am today without him. He claimed that the first time I sat up was to get a better look at a movie on TV, and from that moment on he nurtured my passion for film. He had me watch Stripes and Young Frankenstein when I was way too young. He indulged my fascination with the Marx Brothers and Universal Monsters, often doing my makeup for my Halloween costumes referencing same. One Halloween in third grade, he took me to the local theatre to see the Lon Chaney version of The Phantom of the Opera, with live organist, instead of trick-or-treating. As I got older, he'd recommend The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (one of his favorite films of the 21st century) or Wendy & Lucy ("depressing, but real" was his review) or Wind Across the Everglades (as a Floridian, a blast for him and us to see the swamp in untouched color).

When I started this a month or so ago, I did not fully appreciate how much of my past would be part of it. Sure, The Ten Commandments, which my entire family watched annually on ABC, but I hadn't realized how many of these movies I had first seen with him: The Bad Seed, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Ladykillers, Moby Dick...and all before middle school! As a toddler, his mother had a blowup photo of The Creature Walks Among Us - large enough to scare the grandkids. He loved westerns like Stagecoach to Fury, noir like While the City Sleeps, and Bogart vehicles like The Harder They Fall. And I was excited as I watched The Searchers, knowing that once it was over, he'd be out of surgery and I could call him and tell him about how much I loved this classic of one of his favorites, John Wayne. Only 90 seconds were left in the movie when I got The Call.

I can't really dedicate The 1956 Retrospective to my dad - I was already 70% through my screenings when he died, and I know he'd rather talk b-flicks like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers than nominees like Around the World in Eighty Days or Anastasia. But in another sense, he's very much a part of my continuing affair with the movies, even in my laser-focus on the Academy Awards. He didn't like them after the one-two punch of The English Patient winning Best Picture ("boring!") and Kim Basinger winning Best Supporting Actress ("a nothing role!"), but we still watched them. He rooted for Toni Collette just based on her Oscar clip alone. He was with me when Crash won Best Picture ("is it over? can we go to bed?"). He recorded the 2010 ceremony for me when I was scheduled to work during it (I kid you not, it cut off during Best Picture, just as they said, "And the Oscar goes to..."). You could say this is all his fault.

So tomorrow, I'll carry on - watching movies, writing about movies, and telling the Academy where, in their long history, they've done wrong. Starting with Best Original Screenplay - The Bold and the Brave, Julie, The Ladykillers, The Red Balloon, and La Strada.


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Year Ahead: 2020 Oscar Predictions

In this time of self-isolation, I find comfort in continuing my routine where I can. Work is suspended, the library is closed, and going to the movies is completely out of the question - so I blog. I watch oldies at home, I make sandwiches, and I blog. On Sunday, I'm beginning a series on the films of 1956, but today, I'm looking at 2020, and films that could be up for next year's Oscars. I know the state of cinema is up in the air right now, but there is an international crisis about us, so why not escape for a moment, play the role of pundit, look into the crystal ball and see if we can foresee what titles will tale the stage of the Dolby Theater next winter?

I did take current events into account on a practical level, and so, with one exception, everything here is already listed as being in post-production. Too, I considered general tone: considering how dour this year's events have already been, expect a lot of Triumph of the Human Spirit.