Almost There: Cary Grant in "The Bishop's Wife"

by Cláudio Alves

Movie stars are not like us. Most people look perfectly banal when observed through camera lenses, but the stars are ravishing. When one appears, all eyes go to them, as if their mere presence is a gravitational hold. They are glamourous and awe-inspiring, terminally charming, and even more alluring. Idealized beyond humanity, those icons of the silver screen are the green light for which Jay Gatsby reached.

No matter the other sins of Old Hollywood, they were an exemplary movie star factory. The studios often knew just how to showcase the great stars to maximize their appeal. Or at least the finished product often suggests so. For a fascinating example of all of this look no further than Cary Grant in the 1947 Best Picture-nominee The Bishop's Wife…

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Loretta vs. Roz: A Surprise Best Actress Win

Please welcome first time contributor Baby Clyde, weighing in on 1947, the year we're celebrating this week... 

Rosalind & Loretta, friends and Best Actress rivalsSuch a forgone conclusion was the result of the final award at the 20th Academy Awards, that the audience at the back of the Shrine Auditorium had already started filing out as Frederic March rose to announce the Best Actress winner. They soon stopped in their tracks as a huge gasp swept around the room. No one was more surprised than the previous year’s Best Actor champ who is said to have started reading the name of the expected winner, Rosalind Russell for Mourning Becomes Electra, before stopping and declaring that the awards was, in fact, going to rank outsider Loretta Young for the comedic trifle The Farmers Daughter. The next day noted gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, sitting directly behind her, reported that Russell had already started rising from her seat when Young’s name was called, but styled it out beautifully to lead a standing ovation for her good friend...

Loretta swept up to the stage with all the poise and elegance for which she was famous, wearing a voluminous green gown that would still cause a sensation on any red carpet today...

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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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What's streaming from 1947?

We're having a 1947 sidebar party for the next two weeks as we build towards the Smackdown.

One of the great f***over moments in our world of sophisticated search technology is the lack of interest in content providers giving us extensive search options. Over the years we've watched the capacity to search by film year dwindle until its practically non-existent across the web. Netflix used to have it (many years ago) when they were a DVD company. Hulu has never cared about such things. Amazon Prime still sorta has time-interest searches but makes them very difficult to find and has altered their once somewhat easy "by decade" search into a clunkier system; they now only allow you to differentiate decades once you've hit 1960. This makes self-curated spontaneous movie-watches difficult if, say, you'd like to investigate a particular film year. And, you guessed it, that's something we here at TFE like to do. Criterion Channel, at least and bless them, has a way to search by exact year.

But, as ever, we're here to help. If you'd like to indulge in the 1947 film year before we reach the next Supporting Actress Smackdown here are a dozen noteworthy movies that are currently available to stream for free...

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1947: Kathleen Byron in "Black Narcissus"

by Nick Taylor

Ah, 1947. Back when the Golden Globes only announced their winners and neither NYFCC (age 12) nor NBR (age 2) had supporting acting categories. Searching for alternatives to Oscar’s lineup -- as we like to do when approaching a new Smackdown --  is appealingly open-ended. There are ways to find other options without awards bodies, though. The simplest is to call upon decades of film history to see which of any year’s most durable films have noteworthy female performances. For instance, has any other 1947 film so formidably established itself in the canon as Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus... particularly as an offering of great actressing?

Centered on a group of Anglican nuns instructed to open a school on a Himalayan mountainside already infamous for scaring off other settlers, the film maintains the directors’ penchant for overripe atmosphere and jaw-dropping spectacle... 

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