38 days til Oscar nominations. 1938 favorites?
Saturday, December 16, 2017 at 11:09AM by Nathaniel R
While I update some Oscar charts, let's talk 1938. The first decade of Oscar was tumultous with rule changes and size changes in the Best Picture category but it settled at ten pictures in 1936 and stayed there for most of its second decade until five became the norm in 1944 and stayed there for decades and decades. Here's what we got in '38...
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
The whimsical family comedy You Can't Take It With You (7 nominations and 2 wins including Best Picture), the musical biopic Alexander's Ragtime Band (6 nominations and 1 win), the inspirational priest-saves-delinquents drama Boys Town (5 nominations and 2 wins), Bette Davis's star Southern Belle vehicle Jezebel (5 nominations and 2 wins), and the family of musicians drama Four Daughters (5 nominations) all had plentiful nominations. The swashbuckling classic The Adventures of Robin Hood was the favorite of the tech categories (4 nominations and 3 wins -- losing on its Best Picture bid).
Slightly less embraced but still nominated were the adaptation of Pygmalion (4 nominations and 1 win) starring Leslie Howard, the crusading doctor drama The Citadel (4 nominations. Though it might now be the least famous of these films, it was actually the NBR winner that year for Best Film), and the fast-living romantic drama Test Pilot (3 nominations) with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. The French classic La Grande Illusion was nominated for Best Picture only.
Got a favorite?
ALSO RANS
Notable films that missed the Best Picture list included the romantic comedy Merrily We Live (which, with five nominations, was the top film outside the top category; Oscar liked comedies a lot in the 1930s but soon got stuffy about them), as well as Algiers and Marie Antoinette (both with 4 nominations. Oscar was less noticeably enthused by enduring favorites like Angels with Dirty Faces, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Holiday, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They did give the massive hit Snow White a special Oscar but it would take another 53 years for them to actually take an animated feature seriously enough to nominate it in Best Picture.
1938, Best Picture, Oscars (30s)
Reader Comments (24)
Wait. I had no idea there was a movie not in English language nominated for best picture in the 30s. I though Z was the first one.
Jezebel is one of my all time favorite films. Davis is phenomenal and it's just such a beautiful picture to watch. The shock of the "red" dress entering the ball is so good.
La Grande Illusion should have won, though I enjoy You Can't Take It with You. Holiday is always a pleasure, even though it violates the rule (with no/little fallout) to never get mixed up romantically with sisters. And didn't Snow White premiere in 1937?
La Grand Illusion and Snow White are the only two I give a damn about from '38.
From 1938 to this week: The story of Ferdinand the Bull (love him) was a 1938 Disney short, and the 2017 full length version is in theatres this week.
This entire article does not mention Bringing Up Baby - !!! Clearly the best film, one of the best of all time and closely followed by another lovely Grant/Hepburn vehicle, Cukor's Holiday.
A really good year!
My top 10:
La Grand Illusion (1937) Jean Renoir
Angels With Dirty Face (1938) Michael Curtiz
You Can't Take It With You (1938) Frank Capra
Holiday (1938) George Cukor
Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
Jezebel (1938) William Wyler
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) Ernst Lubitsch
The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) Michael Curtiz & William Keighley
Merrily We Live (1938) Norman Z. McLeod
Pygmalion (1938) Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard
And my choices would be:
Jean Renoir (La Grand Illusion)
James Cagney (Angels With Dirty Faces)
Bette Davis (Jezebel)
Erich Von Stroheim (La Grand Illusion)
Fay Bainter (Jezebel)
eurocheese -- I AM A MONSTER.
Delighted to see my name above the title. And my face so big on the poster. We were great then, weren't we?
1. Grand Illusion
2. The Adventures of Robin Hood
3. Pygmalion
4. You Can't Take It With You
5. Boys Town
6. The Citadel
7. Jezebel
8. Four Daughters
9. Test Pilot
10. Alexander's Ragtime Band
It's a travesty that Angels With Dirty Faces, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse and Holiday were not nominated.
I agree with eurocheese. Bringing Up Baby is fantastic.
Hawks is one of the best director of actresses ever: Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, Stanwyck in Ball of Fire, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth in Only Angels Have Wings, Bacall in To Have and Have Not, Marilyn and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes...
No one mentioned three superb Soviet films from '38 - "Alexander Nevsky". "The Childhood of Maxim Gorky" and the wonderful musical "Volga-Volga". Although I imagine none actually qualified for Oscar eligibility . Also love the British import "Convict 99", starring priceless comic Will Hay, someone lots of vintage film fans in North America would fall in love with if they only took the opportunity to see him. I'm one of that aging breed - a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy fan. And I treasure both their 1938 films "The Girl of the Golden West" and "Sweethearts" (winner - I believe - of a color cinematography Oscar that year).
Yep, count me in for Bringing Up Baby (hilarious, love drunk Hepburn and sexy/nerd Grant) and Jezebel (love Davis when she combines her fierceness with vulnerability).
I liked You Can't Take it WIth You but couldn't tell you much about it after seeing it just a couple years ago.
1. Jezebel
2. Pygmalion
3. You Can't Take it With You
4. The Adventures of Robin Hood
5. Bringing Up Baby
6. White Banners
@Jorge. I always wondered how La Grande Illusion got in. After Z there were The Emigrants, Cries and Whispers, Il Postino, Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Letters from Iwo Jima and Amour. Did I miss one?
PS: I swear I could never understand Norma Shearer's Oscar win and nominations. She was an awful actress. Just look at the bit from Marie Antoinette!
3 words:
BRINGING
UP
BABY!!!
In my all-time top 10. Grand Illusion would be up there too but in my brain that's a 1937 release.
Back to Baby though, it makes non-stop genius comic buildup look so damn easy. I always wondered why so few other comedies managed to achieve that same madcap invention. Then I realised: because it's damn hard.
Peak Hepburn and Peak Grant and Peak Hawks and oh my god I just love it love it love it.
As for Grand Illusion, it's sad how little it - and Renoir's mind-blowing, soul-expanding oeuvre in general - get talked about. It's one of the finest, deepest, wisest screenplays ever written, and it's all just so elegantly put together.
As for a Top 10 list: (again - with the caveat that Grand Illusion is 1937 for me)
1. BABY!!
2. The Adventures of Robin Hood - again: films like this make this whole movie-magic thing look so deceptively easy
3. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife - Lubitsch is one of my favourite humans that ever lived. This is meant to be one of his minor films and still it packs in so much wit, sex, sophistication and just plain fun.
4. The Lady Vanishes
5. The Childhood of Maxim Gorky
6. Holiday
7. You and Me - even by Fritz Lang standards, this is one of the weirdest, most shape-shifting Hollywood films I've ever seen. And Sylvia Sydney was something really special
8. Le Quai des Brumes/Port of Shadows - you can almost feel "European modernist cinema" being invented frame for frame. Just beautiful
9. Carefree - apparently B-grade and Astaire/Rogers but a delight from start to finish
10. Alexander Nevsky
Honourable mentions: Hotel du Nord, Angels with Dirty Faces, Pygmalion, The Mad Miss Manton (because no 1930s - or 40s or 50s - list is complete without a Barbara Stanwyck reference)
I'm also yet to see the French film The Baker's Wife. And I very much look forward to it.
Although they gave Walt Disney a special award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938, the movie was considered a 1937 release, when it was nominated for Best Scoring. My favorite movie of 1938 is Adventures of Robin Hood. Just perfection, especially the entire cast, never bettered. My second favorite movie is Blockheads, which still makes me laugh helplessly after umpteen viewings (Why didn't you tell me you had two legs?)
My choice would be The Adventures of Robin Hood but it's a tough call between that and Grand Illusion both utterly brilliant films.
I have a real soft spot for Holiday though, beautiful movie.
My top 10 of the year:
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Holiday
Grand Illusion
The Sisters
Sidewalks of London
The Mad Miss Manton
Marie Antoinette
Vivacious Lady
A Man to Remember
Bringing Up Baby
with a couple of runner-ups:
The Ingrid Bergman version of A Woman's Face
Paradise for Three
Four's A Crowd
Carefree
Jezebel
The Shopworn Angel
@goran hell yeah Bluebeard! Claudette Colbert is AMAZING in it.
The Citadel is exactly what the title states. Incredible. Robert Donat slays and got ready for his deserved Best Actor win the next year. Jezebel is masterful and Bette gives the first salvo in her legendary career.
I like...
1. FOUR DAUGHTERS
2. HOLIDAY
3. KENTUCKY
4. THE SAINT IN NEW YORK
5. JEZEBEL
6. YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
7. BRINGING UP BABY
8. THE DIVORCE OF LADY X
9. MERRILY WE LIVE
10. WHITE BANNERS
Holiday > Bringing Up Baby
Although I'm all about THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD in '38.
As much as I adore Bringing Up Baby, #1 for 1938 will always and forever be The Adventures of Robin Hood. It's one of those films that I absolutely never tire of, no matter how many times I watch it. Pure movie magic from first frame to last.
I've never even HEARD of Merrily We Live or Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, so I really appreciate these lists. I have seen all ten of the nominated pictures though. I return to Jezebel and Grand Illusion the most, but dare I say that Robin Hood should have won Best Picture? It's both classic and forward at the same time.