Vintage '57 (and what if there had been 10 nominees)
Friday, June 26, 2020 at 1:00PM by Nathaniel R
The next Smackdown will be posted on Sunday July 7th. But first let's have a little context on the year that was: Dwight Eisenhower began his second term as President, an influenza epidemic that killed 1 million people worldwide began, Elvis Presley made his final appearance on the Ed Sullivan show (shot waist up only), and the Frisbee was introduced. here's more context for that year in a pop culture sense.
Great Big Box Office Hits: Bridge on the River Kwai, Sayonara, and Peyton Place were the top grossers (and competed for the Oscars). Other hits included Old Yeller, Raintree County, and Gunfight at the OK Corral...
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees: The Academy was obsessed with Japan / US relations that year. The top two contenders were The Bridge on the River Kwai (8 noms / 7 wins) which was nearly a sweeper and the interracial romance message movie Sayonara (10 noms / 4 wins). They were so dominant that the other three Best Picture nominees all went home empty-handed: Peyton Place (9 noms / 0 wins), Witness for the Prosecution (6 noms/ 0 wins) and 12 Angry Men (3 nominations).
...but what if there had been 10 nominees?
Surely An Affair to Remember (4 nominations) would have been been included. Les Girls probably would have made it since it was the Globe champ and had multiple nods. You should probably also assume Gunfight at the OK Corral (2 nominations) since it had that Editing nomination and was a big hit. That leaves two spots open but where do they go? PLEASE DEBATE. Five more possibilities. Only two slots!
- Epic pre civil war romance Raintree County (4 noms including Best Actress)
- Western marital drama Wild is the Wind (3 noms including both lead acting categories)
- War adventure Heaven Knows Mr Allison (2 noms including Best Actress)
- Musical drama Pal Joey (4 noms including Best Editing)
- Musical comedy Funny Face (4 noms including Best Screenplay)
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters
The prophetic A Face in the Crowd, Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, Mikhail Kalatzovo's The Cranes are Flying, Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, The Marilyn vehicle Prince and the Showgirl, Elvis vehicle Jailhouse Rock, noir favourite Sweet Smell of Success, and the musical remake of Ninotchka, Silk Stockings.
Foreign Film Nominees that Year
Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany), Gates of Paris (France), Mother India (India), Nights of Cabiria (Winner, Italy), and Nine Lives (Norway)
Magazine Covers for Context...
(Click to enlarge)
From left or right: MLK, Liz and her newborn, Tab Hunter, Diahann Carroll, Princess Grace, Kim Novak, Ricky Nelson, Charles Van Doren (this story became the film Quiz Show), soldiers in Little Rock, Eartha Kitt, Marilyn & Olivier, Lucille Ball.
TV: The biggest television event of the year was the live broadcast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella starring Julie Andrews which more than 100 million people watched worldwide. Wagon Train, Leave it to Beaver, Zorro, and Perry Mason all began their multi-season runs on TV while I Love Lucy aired its final episode. The Emmy Awards were then held early in the year (March) and hadn't yet separated into drama and comedy (they were then divvied up into "half hour" and "one hour"). Claire Trevor, Jack Palance, Pat Carroll (future Ursula!), Carl Reiner, Loretta Young, Sid Caesar, Robert Young, and Nanette Fabray all won Emmys.
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '57 to get you in the right headspace)
"Day-O" by Harry Belafonte, "Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds, "Wake Up Little Susie" and "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brothers, "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke, and "A Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" by Jerry Lee Lewis. It was also a huge year for Elvis Presley who starred in two movies (Loving You and Jailhouse Rock) and had multiple hit singles including "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock" and bought and moved into Graceland.
Literature
Book debuts: Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Robert Mason's the World of Suzie Wong; New plays: Tennessee Williams one act Orpheus Descending, and William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs.
Stage
The Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award both went to Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey Into Night. My Fair Lady won Best Musical at the Tonys. Later that year two more musical classics premiere on Broadway West Side Story and The Music Man. Here's a look back (from 1961) at the Tony winner of 1957 which premiered in 1956. We're all over the calendar with the time-travelling but My Fair Lady and Julie Andrews are timeless...
Reader Comments (22)
With 10 nominees, I would hope that a foreign film could slip in, and I would really really really hope it would be Fellini's masterpiece Night of Cabiria. And while I'm hoping, and with absolutely no evidence I would hope for Sweet Smell of Success. Other than being the best American film of the year, it really doesn't have much going for it.
In the foreign film category, the Academy chose to ignore The Seventh Seal, for Nights of Cabiria and four films that are pretty much forgotten (in the USA, at least). In the case of Mother India, that's unfair, it's nowhere near as good as Nights of Cabiria, but still well worth seeking out. And the astonishing little kid in the movie, billed as "Master Sajid" grew up to be Sajid Khan, a teen idol of the late 60s, even in America. The Devil Comes at Night is a good, but unexceptional, film. Gates of Paris is by Rene Clair, and not one of his best efforts, except for a stunning sequence where some boys act out a bank robbery while an old man is reading about it aloud from a newspaper. Nine Lives is of no interest whatsoever, and how it beat out its Nordic rival is a total mystery.
ken s: Sweet Smell of Success would have been a WEIRD nominee at the time. It's a very talky, not especially well edited, deeply cynical acting exercise of a thing. AND it was a box office failure. It deserved to get some kind of nomination (Supporting Actor for Lancaster...?), but I'd say calling it the "Best American Film of the Year" is a stretch.
Crazy to think that Bergman and Kurosawa both had movies that year and neither made the foreign language shortlist. At least Fellini got through.
I haven't seen most of the movies mentioned as potential contenders to make that hypothetical expanded Best Picture list, but it's hard to imagine that there would be ten better than Sweet Smell of Success!
Justice for Tony Curtis! Best Actor of the year! (OK, I promise to sit down and shut up on this thread now)
Methinks AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, FUNNY FACE, GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON and RAINTREE COUNTY would fill out the top 10. Golden Globe win aside, the three tech noms for LES GIRLS (a box office flop) don't much impress me.
I loved this year for a lot of reasons. The movies were great too
Some weird errors in this one. Somehow you listed the TV section twice, and then giving The Bridge of the River Kwai one extra nomination and win is strange.
I can see the two musicals taking the last two slots. They had some pretty prestigious nominations such as Editing for Pal Joey and Writing for Funny Face. Musicals will be in vogue the next couple of years so why not start early?
Paths of Glory and Nights of Cabiria are both top 10 films for me so it'd be nice to think one of them could've eked its way in. Probably Cabiria, due to the emotional wallop of its ending.
I suspect the urban drama A Hatful of Rain would have been nominated for Best Picture with five additional slots. The Fred Zinnemann directed tale of a Korean War hero hiding a disturbing secret was a gritty and hard hitting depiction of drug addiction. Well received by the guilds, the film starred Anthony Franciosa w who earned an Oscar nomination for his riveting performance
My personal top 10:
1.The bridge on the river Kwai
2.The seventh seal
3.Sweet smell of success
4.Throne of blood
5.12 angry men
6.I vitelloni
7.Kanal
8.Witness for the prosecution
9.Paths of glory
10.Nights of Cabiria
Sayonara and Peyton Place are very dated, but with decent acting, nothing special.
I really, really LOVE this look back at a particular year in all these categories! Keep doing these please!!!
Great recap!
For those extra two nominations I'd say Paths of Glory and A Face in the Crowd which would be my choice for Best Picture.
An Affair To Remember being a best picture nominee would have been so deserving and wonderful. I do think one of the foreign films would slip through.
Thanks for all your hard work with this post, it's so much fun to see the films in context. Love the pictures.
ajnrules -- fixed
lady edith, joel6, billybil -- thank you so much.
I have no doubt that Raintree County would have been nominated. It's in that same boring, prestige category as Sayonara and Peyton Place, plus it has great period costumes. Of course it's unwatchable really today, but Elizabeth Taylor and Eva Marie Saint (criminally underused by Hollywood) look gorgeous. And of course you have the icky fascination with Montgomery Clift's car accident and "before and after" scenes in the movie. That could have been spun into a lot of sympathy.
But justice for Kay Thompson and Funny Face which would get my vote.
Something I have wondered about. Why was William Holden’s spectacular chest frequently shaved? Thoughts?
I love how both "Peyton Place" and "Sayonara" are sold as sensation sex pictures!
@Jimmy, I read somewhere that shaving Holden's indeed spectacular chest made him look "younger" in Picnic. Insert Eyeroll here. I don't get it either.
Watching Mexican Ricardo Montalban in his natural accent as a Japaanese Kabuki actor is a very strange choice, when Director Logan allowed Nebraskan Brando use a Southern accent in the same movie.
Sayonara is, sadly, still relevant today.
Can you imagine horny bored teenagers going to see Sayonara because they think they'll see some hot passionate sex scenes and getting a travelogue-y message movie instead?
Another film that dealt with interracial romance in '57 was 'Island in the Sun.' Based on a strong novel by Alec Waugh, Darryl Zanuck made a big screen soap opera of it for Fox., Starring: Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Dorothy Dandridge, James Mason, Michael Rennie, Stephen Boyd, AND Joan Collins. Sadly, the suds aren't very sexy and the interracial romance timid.
Still, interesting as a time capsule and I plan on writing a review about 'Sun.'
Cheers,
Rick