Vintage '47: What was going on in showbiz that year?

by Nathaniel R

Let's look at some cultural background on the year 1947 before we reach the new Smackdown event in exactly one week (have you voted yet?). Light entertainments were very popular but Post-War America and by extension Hollywood was feeling a dark undertow and anxiety. Cinema went deep into noir territory (men really didn't know who to trust or what to make of women after they'd becoming working girls during the War and the anxiety definitely showed onscreen) and offscreen things were treacherous. The infamous witchhunt for Communists began in Hollywood, cutting off the careers of many talented actors and filmmakers who wouldn't 'name names', beginning with "The Hollywood Ten". 

Great Big Box Office Hits:
A now long-forgotten picture, Welcome Stranger (reteaming the Oscar-winning stars of Going My Way) was one of the year's very biggest attractions. The best-seller turned rom-com The Egg and I was also a huge success. Other light entertainments that were audience favourites included all star comedies like Life with Father (currently streaming!) and The Bachelor and Bobby Soxer, and the Betty Grable musical Mother Wore Tights. But Oscar drifted towards more serious fare... 

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Gangster Chic & Patriarchy Toppling? Tell Me About It, Stud.

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1877 Edmund Gwenn is born. Wins the Oscar seventy years or so later as Kris Kringle, helping adults to believe in Santa Claus again in Miracle on 34th Street (and yes, that's one of the all time best wins in Supporting Actor. Do you agree?)
1888 T.S. Eliot, one of the 20th century's great poets, is born. Though few movies are made from his work he did lead to Cats on Broadway. He was played by Willem Dafoe in the movie Tom & Viv (1994)
1898 A true musical genius George Gershwin is born in Brooklyn. Movies and TV shows still use his music today.

gangsters and musicals after the jump

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The Honoraries: Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

In "The Honoraries" we're looking at the careers of this year's Honorary Oscar recipients including Maureen O'Hara. Here's Andrew on a holiday favorite...  

A common criticism meted out against Maureen O’Hara is that she’s often in good films but hardly ever the reason the films are great. In this vein, it’s almost wicked that I chose to write on her work in Miracle on 34th Street, in our celebration. Maureen O’Hara is probably not the first image that comes to mind when you think of this immortal Christmas classic. Your mind probably went instantly to holiday charm, Macy’s consumerism, Natalie Wood's lovely child star turn or Edmund Gwenn’s Oscar-winning Kris Kringle performance.

Still, I find Maureen's place in the movie significant.

A little background: before shooting Miracle on 34th Street, O’Hara had recently moved to Ireland and was essentially forced into taking the role of Doris Walker, the mother who encourages her daughter not to believe in Santa Clause. The film was called The Big Heart at the time and she was not enthusiastic about returning to North America to shoot it. However, once she read the script her sentiments changed and she was immediately keen to co-star.  Just what it was about the role that made Maureen so immediately enthusiastic to be a part of the project? [More...]

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Young Natalie: Thoughts on one of the great child performances of all time

Hi all, it’s Tim. With Natalie Wood Week upon us, there will be much talk of the actress’s run of films as a beautifully virginal ingénue, or her transition into roles as troubled adults and young women. But I want to pause on the threshold of all those Splendor in the Grasses and West Side Stories to pay tribute to the an earlier era in the Life of Natalie, when she became one of the best-loved child actors of the 1940s (and a good time it was for child actors, too).

The film that put her on the map was Miracle on 34^th Street, of course, released when the actress was a mere eight years old in 1947. It wasn’t her first credited role (that would be the Claudette Colbert/Orson Welles vehicle Tomorrow Is Forever, from 1946), nor even the first movie to showcase her to good effect; earlier that same year, she’d been a solid presence in the supernatural melodrama The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, though that film ultimately didn’t ask very much of her besides being cherubic and innocent (this would remain true of a frustrating number of her vehicles throughout her later career). Simple, even if the simple ability to be a dazzlingly cute kid without it spilling over into tackiness was already enough to mark Wood out as more than just one more saccharine little girl ready to fill the void left by Shirley Temple’s ascendance into her late teens.

Miracle on 34^th Street was something entirely different.

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