1937: Olivia de Havilland in "It's Love I'm After"

The 1937 smackdown late tonight. Before each Smackdown Nick Taylor suggests alternates to Oscar's Supporting Actress ballot. 

First thing’s first, everyone should run to see It’s Love I’m After, a romantic farce that pulls liberally from the tropes of stage comedies while staying as fleet and entertaining as the best screwball films. If you’re a fan of above-the-title players Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland, relish in their easy camaraderie and shimmering star turns (and look out for Eric Blore’s put-upon, bird-imitating manservant, who steals the film every chance he gets). If you’re not a fan of these three, take heed! It’s Love I’m After gives these famous dramaturgists a ripe outlet for prime Hollywood farce way outside their most famous, legacy-defining role (All About Eve being the big exception). De Havilland in particular shines. I’ve never seen her flex her comedic chops like this, and she excels marvelously as an engaged socialite with a puppy-love celebrity crush that’s got her man increasingly anxious...

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"The Awful Truth" about Irene Dunne

by Baby Clyde

I adore Irene Dunne. Who doesn’t? She great in everything. She’s great AT everything. So why is she so little known these days? How can a woman who was an A List Movie star for 20 years during the Golden Age of Classic Hollywood be so little remembered? Obviously, she’s a big deal to Old Hollywood loving cinephiles but to the public at large she’s a more or less forgotten. I think this mainly comes down to the fact that she doesn’t really fit in anywhere. She was a Jack of all Trades and consequently isn’t specifically identified with one genre. In many ways her versatility was her downfall (in terms of staying in the public imagination).

She started in movies quite late. Born in 1898 she was already a fair bit older than most of her contemporaries when she headed West, after a successful if unspectacular Broadway career. Making her first film in 1930 she was an immediate hit. Her second film, 1931’s Cimarron, won the Best Picture Academy Award and she received the 1st of her five Best Actress nominations...

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Revisiting the original "A Star Is Born"

by Cláudio Alves

As the next Supporting Actress Smackdown approaches, The Film Experience is celebrating the cinematic year of 1937. It was then that Hollywood consolidated its favorite myth about itself. While the story model had been making the rounds for ages, both in gossip and on-screen (check out What Price Hollywood?), William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born is the first movie of its name. The tale of Norman Maine and Vicky Lester, his downfall and her rise to fame, would be told three more times to great effect, but one should never forget the original. Not when the movie is this pristine, written to formidable effect by a team that included the legendary Dorothy Parker and performed with utmost conviction by Fredric March and Janet Gaynor…

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1937: Lucille La Verne in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

The 1937 smackdown arrives on Sunday October 3rd. Before each Smackdown Nick Taylor suggests alternates to Oscar's Supporting Actress ballot. 

by Nick Taylor

The Evil Queen of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first character in any animated feature to speak on screen. Her voice is provided by Lucille La Verne, a storied theatre actress who’d gone on to have a wildly successful career in silent cinema, and who would ultimately give her final performance for this film. It’s about as iconic a farewell as one could hope for. Her rendering of the Queen is one of the many achievements that would make Snow White an instant classic, and Walt Disney Animation into a medium-defining juggernaut. With so much of The Queen’s impact derived from Snow White’s groundbreaking visual elements, there’s a degree to which the character would shine even without such a commanding voice. Yet, by the same token, La Verne’s contribution would flourish even in a less auspicious version of this tale, endowing her Evil Queen with a ruthless, unrepentant menace and villainous glee. Her look is immortal, but where would she be without her laugh?

It’s almost beside the point to offer any kind of plot summary on Snow White, but allow me a brief retelling...

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1937: Fay Bainter in "Make Way for Tomorrow"

We're revisiting 1937 this month leading up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

We begin 1937 with Fay Bainter, the third-ever winner of the Supporting Actress Oscar for Jezebel in 1938 (you may have heard about it last year!) in Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow. McCarey viewed the film as his greatest achievement, to the point that when he received his Best Director Oscar for The Awful Truth the same year Make Way for Tomorrow earned no nominations, he opened his acceptance speech by saying he won for the wrong movie. We can discuss the considerable merits of both films about couples splitting up and staying together, along with how brilliantly they showcase McCarey’s skills with tone, blocking, performance shaping, scene construction, as well as its enduring legacy in films like Tokyo Story and Love is Strange. Bainter distinguishing herself with the best supporting turn in either McCarey film, taking on what might have been the film's most unsympathetic role and turning her into a thoughtful, utterly human figure...

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