Smackdown '44: Agnes, Aline, Angela, Ethel, and Jennifer Jones

Presenting the Supporting Actresses of '44. A low class maid, a French baroness, a patriotic nurse, a weary shop-owner and a "Chinese" village woman battled it out for Oscar gold. We're here to re-judge that contest. 

THE NOMINEES 

from left to right: Barrymore, Jones, Lansbury, MacMahon, Moorehead

Oscar was still besotted with recent nominees Jennifer Jones & Agnes Moorehead (both on their quick second nominations) but joining the party were two veterans who'd never been honored (Ethel Barrymore & Aline MacMahon) and one very fresh face who would go on to an enviably long cross-platform showbiz career, now in its 73rd year (!) -- Angela Lansbury in her film debut! 

Notable supporting roles for women that the Academy passed over in 1944 were Mary Astor (Meet Me in St Louis), Shirley Temple (Since You Went Away), Dame May Whitty (Gaslight), and Joseph Hull & Jean Adair (Arsenic & Old Lace). Can you think of any others?

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS 

Here to talk about these five nominated turns, are: critic and writer Mark Harris (Five Came Back), journalist Loren King (The Boston Globe), critic and novelist Farran Smith Nehme (Self Styled Siren), cabarettist and actress Molly Pope, blogger and novelist Matthew Rettenmund (Boy Culture), and your host Nathaniel R (The Film Experience). And now it's time for the main event... 

1944
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN  

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Credit Where Credit is Due... 1944 Style

The Smackdown is just six days away so as the panelists finish their screenings, remember that your ballots are due Friday. After a few old movie screenings in a row I get nostalgic for those old school title cards. I hate that so many modern movies are skipping opening credits altogether and doubling up at the end to fulfill their star contracts. Anyway, let's look at the billing situation for the Supporting Actress nominees just for fun after the jump...

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1944: The Three Caballeros

by Tim Brayton

We're celebrating the cinema 1944 right now at the Film Experience, and as the resident animation lover, how could I pass up the chance to take a look at that year's most wonderfully bizarre cartoon? I'm referring to Disney's The Three Caballeros, the studio's second feature-length contribution to the United States government's Good Neighbor policy during World War II. That program involved goodwill tours and films tailor-made for Latin American audiences, and in Disney's case, a combination of both: a research trip to South America with Walt Disney and several of his most important artists result in the creation of 1942's Saludos Amigos, in which international icons Donald Duck and Goofy had fun visiting Brazil and Argentina, respectively, and learning all about the locals.

Saludos Amigos is a charming, slight movie (at 42 minutes, it severely tests the definition of the term "feature film"), and exactly what you'd anticipate from the description "the U.S. government paid Disney to make a film about how great people in South America are, in the fumbling, patronizing manner of 1940s Hollywood".

Its quasi-sequel is not that at all... 

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Joan Fontaine Centennial: Jane Eyre (1943)

Part two of our Joan Fontaine celebration. Here's Tim Brayton...

Joan Fontaine's reign at the top of the Hollywood pyramid was short and intense: three out of four movies made in three out of four years netted her Oscar nominations, with a win for the second, Suspicion. We come now to the film made immediately after this golden run: the second talkie adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 classic Jane Eyre, released in the United Kingdom at the very end of 1943, but held back from the U.S. until February, 1944.

By the time the film arrived at 20th Century Fox, it had already passed through the hands of super-producer David O. Selznick, who had assembled all of the main components in an apparent bid to replicate his Oscar-winning Rebecca. Fontaine appears once again as a delicate, innocent ingénue dropped into a rambling Gothic mansion where a bullying man falls in love with her, in a story whose horror-film atmosphere (courtesy, in both cases, of cinematographer George Barnes) could be given the gloss of prestige and class thanks to the material's literary origins. I will commit an act of grave apostasy by suggesting that Fontaine is better here than she was in that 1940 film; there's a certain toughness in her posture and facial expressions that hadn't much appeared in her screen acting prior to this, and which considerably deepens the "meek virgin" trope she's once again saddled with.

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What's Streaming from 1944?

Not too damn much, that's what! 

Whenever we prep for a Smackdown The Film Experience becomes newly alarmed at how scarce the availability of 20th century film titles actually is online. Streaming culture has somehow convinced people that everything you might ever want to see is easier to access than it's ever been. Alas, the further back in time you go, the less there is for your eyeballs as we move away from analog. Of course streaming is more convenient so we hope Hollywood will magically decide to make all their vaults available. We can dream!

Laura dear, I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me this instant, I shall run amok.

But if you want to steep yourself in 1944 beyond the 5 films featured in the next Smackdown, here's what you can stream should you have any of these memberships...

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