1946: Olivia & Joan's feud goes public

Team Experience is revisiting 1946 in the lead up to this week's Smackdown.

by Baby Clyde

As she triumphantly left the stage of the Shrine Auditorium after winning a long awaited Best Actress Oscar for To Each His Own, Olivia De Havilland was approached by a very familiar figure offering congratulations. 

I don’t know why she does that when she knows how I feel...” 

...Olivia muttered as she turned away from her equally famous sister, the 1941 Best Actress winner Joan Fontaine. Unfortunately for all involved it was captured on camera, which lead to the infamous picture above. It's one of my favourite snapshots in Hollywood history. The look of genuine delight on Joan’s face, the look of pursed lipped distaste on Olivia’s. You could write a book about it; I’ll try and stick to a few hundred words...

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Anthony Hopkins' shocking win shouldn't have shocked anyone.

by Baby Clyde

Thank you all very much. I really did not expect this.

I watched the last 20 minutes of the 93rd Academy Awards with a sense of impending doom. The disastrous decision to cynically rearrange the final awards in the hope of ending the night on a contrived ‘high’ immediately struck me as problematic. Whilst back in the day Best Picture wasn’t always given out last, it’s been that way for nearly 50 years and changing the order this year was clearly done for one and only one reason. The emotional finale meant to honor Chadwick Boseman with a posthumous award was something the hapless producers couldn’t resist, and it infamously backfired. A slow moving, gold plated car crash ensued as Sir Anthony Hopkins was declared the winner. With no back up plan, no Zoom speeches allowed and no host to close the show the evening ground to an unceremonious halt. If only they’d asked me, the day could have been saved.

I’m not a great Oscar predictor. Every year I seem to get 17 or 18 right. Usually tripped up by the Shorts, even if I’ve watched them all --no, especially if I’ve watched them all! But this year I did manage to successfully predict both Lead acting races, despite them both supposedly being "shocks".  Best Actor was less clear, yes, but I put Hopkins in the #1 spot back in September and never moved him. I’ve been Oscar watching a VERY long time (When I started Glenn Close only had Supporting noms) and sometimes you just get a feeling about a particular race. For example, I never once thought Stallone was winning back in 2015 and I’m still puzzled when people insist Meryl’s third was a surprise as it was inevitable. I felt exactly that way this year and as the season went on (and on and on) there was plenty of evidence, I present six pieces, pointing in that direction...

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75th Anniversary: The 1945 Oscars Revisited

by Baby Clyde

Bob Hope and the 1945 winners

The war was over and finally Hollywood could get around to more important matters like giving Joan Crawford an Oscar.

It had been a pared down ceremony for the preceding few years with tuxes and ballgowns discouraged. Even the statuette itself had been made from plaster rather than gold plated bronze but at the 18th Academy Awards, which took place at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre 75 years ago today, the glamour was back and there was no one more glamorous in town than 20 year veteran Joan. She skipped the ceremony...

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Streaming Revisit: Pauline Collins in "Shirley Valentine"

by Baby Clyde

These days Driving Miss Daisy’s multiple wins for the 1989 film year are seen as a low point in Oscar history. Not only that the film itself is often criticised for its naïve take on race relations, but especially because 32 years later movie goddess Michelle Pfeiffer is still without a Best Actress award. Whilst no one critizes Jessica Tandy’s performance the win is viewed as a career award for someone who’s film career didn’t warrant one. Combine this with Pfeiffer losing for what is probably her most legendary part and no one’s happy. Especially me as I don’t sign up to either of those interpretations!

In my eyes there is only one possible winner in this contentious race...

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Lana @ 100: Love Has Many Faces

Celebrating Lana Turner's Centennial. Here's Baby Clyde...

1965 was the year Martin Luther King marched on Selma, The Civil Rights Act was signed and Malcolm X was assassinated. The Vietnam War was raging, London was swinging, The Beatles played Shea Stadium and Dylan went electric. The times they were a changing, but some things stayed the same because this was also the year Lana Turner starred in the trashiest of all her tawdry melodramas, the Acapulco-set potboiler Love Has Many Faces or as it should have been called ‘Lana Has Many Costume Changes’.

In it she plays Kit Chandler a rich, international glamourpuss, with luxury apartments around the globe, who chooses to reside in the luxury Mexican resort with her estranged husband Pete (Cliff Robertson). When a dead body washes up on the shore it transpires that the deceased beach boy was one of Lana’s many conquests and she's the main suspect in the murder investigation....

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