Day 18- Actor or Actress who should have won an Oscar

Uhm, before I start rambling about the many Oscar injustices, let me say that I finished my internship and I'm officially a journalist. So, I'm officially a journalist.

Ok, now let's see...

People who should have won a real non-Honorary-Oscar but sadly didn't because life generally isn't fair...or because their contenders were too good 

(The titles below the pictures correspond to the best movies I've seen of each actor and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are Oscar-nominated roles.)

CLAUDE RAINS: Hello? Mommy's boy in "Notorious", the cop from "Casablanca"?

WILLIAM POWELL AND MYRNA LOY: Together: The Thin Man? Libeled Lady? Separated:  The Best Years of Our Lives? My Man Godfrey?

EDWARD G. ROBINSON: Key Largo? The Whole Town's Talking? Double Indemnity?

GLORIA SWANSON: Sunset Boulevard???

IRENE DUNNE: I remember mama??? The Awful Truth? Show Boat? My favorite wife? Penny Serenade?

JEAN ARTHUR: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town? The more the merrier? History Is Made at Night?

MARLENE DIETRICH: Witness for the Prosecution?? Morocco? Shanghai Express? Der blaue Engel? Blonde Venus??

CARY GRANT: WHAT?????

GRETA GARBO: Camille? Anna Christie? Ninotchka?

ROSALIND RUSSELL: His girl Friday? Auntie Mame? Picnic?

BARBARA STANWYCK: WHAT?????????????

CAROLE LOMBARD: My Man Godfrey? In Name Only? Nothing Sacred? To Be or Not to Be?

ORSON WELLES: Citizen Kane? The Third Man? Touch of Evil?

ROBERT MITCHUM: The Night of the Hunter??? Out of the Past? Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison? The Sundowners? 

MAUREEN O'HARA: The quiet man? How Green Was My Valley? 

MONTGOMERY CLIFT: A Place in the Sun?? From Here to Eternity? Suddenly, Last Summer? The Heiress??

DEBORAH KERR: SIX nominations and NO Oscar??

AVA GARDNER: The Barefoot Contessa? The Night of the Iguana?

LAUREN BACALL: To have and have not?

OMAR SHARIF: Doctor Zhivago? Funny Girl?

Day 15- An Actor or Actress you’ve been meaning to give a chance, but haven’t gotten around to it yet

Greer Garson. Seems that she is a lovely lady and a great actress. The only movies I've seen from her are "Random Harvest" and "Mrs. Miniver". I liked them. Fell asleep watching "Julius Caesar" so I couldn't tell (I was sleepy that day).

Bob Hope. Because everyone is talking about him these days and I just have seen him in "I love Lucy".

Orson Welles.  I loved him in "The third man" & "The long hot summer". Saw "Citizen Kane" and it was good. I know he was a very creative guy. But for some reason I avoid movies starring him. Maybe because some of his movies were too dark and depressing ("Touch of Evil" and my-god-that-obscure-film "The process"). He was darkish even as a guest in "I love Lucy".

Hedy Lamarr: I've read tons about her beauty AND brains. "Comrade X" is the only movie I saw from her. Any recommendation?

 Stars from silent films. Soundless movies give me the creeps. Someday I'm gonna develop that point. Saw "It", it was good, but silent. Etc.

Sense of time, passage of time, nostalgia & movies

(Warning: post written in a nostalgic mood).

According to Gloria Swanson' father, life is 95% anticipation. She developed her dad's idea (1) saying that you work, you try hard in everything, you dream with your first car. The next month you want another, bigger, faster. According to her, romance, flirting is gone, you want to get everything soon. Gloria was talking about the post war youth, but her diagnosis, I think, is still right.

But incomplete.

I think about time too much. I waste time thinking about time. I've always wondered why when you were a kid a day was a eternity. You didn't know what was going to happen next. Everything surprised you and there were no strict routines. Life waited for you.

But now tempus fugit. Time flies.

You don't remember clearly what happened each year, Christmas goes one after the other, birthdays, all the celebrations. People around you evolve, get older. The day you left school is far behind.

Is it because when you grow up your mental map becomes clearer, schematized? Is it because now, with all the technology, you're always connected, always anticipating events, avoiding waits, therefore living faster?

Yes, Gloria's dad had a point. Anticipation is a great part of life.

But I would say it's a 50%.

Or isn't it also true that most people spent time thinking about the good old days with nostalgia (and sorrow)? Isn't it true that when people talk about past times the tone of their voices change? Because time steals youth and moments. Time steals the way people were. When you appreciate old films, when you watch old videos and see old pictures, you worsen this feeling (2), adding a yearning for a past that is not really yours. Because you see these faces, these smiles, these beauties, these talents, these moments, these ways to live...and the next moment you realize they're gone. They're gone because they died, they're gone because they aged, they're gone because the world evolved and they no longer truly fit. It's Lauren Bacall receiving her Honorary Oscar earlier this year. It's Norma Desmond —Gloria Swanson, what an irony— trying to revive her glorious past. It's a Nat King Cole song. It's Elli Wallach's character in "The Holiday". It's the couple in the movie "Make way for tomorrow".

It is nostalgia. The old houses you see on the road, falling apart, once embraced laughs, lively lunches, brightness, dreams. It's a part of what you feel when you see old magazine adds, old objects. And if you think about it, you don't really want to live in a time when these objects where new. You find them interesting because they're just a reflection of former times.

Life is 30% yearning for the past.

And you don't really live the rest. You witness great moments through a camera lens, you take everything for granted, you forget that you have to appreciate every moment. Our society imposes that you must study and then have a career or a job in order to make money and survive. Obligations and habits make you forget what's really important, what life should be: to live the present. Now.

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(1) Interview included in "People will talk" by John Kobal. 
(2) I have to add that films, as recordings of image/audio, are a way to preserve moments, so they work as a double vehicle of time: they combat the passage of time by stopping it, freezing it, but they also become a trigger of memories, making clear that what you're watching is gone, that there was a past before your present. I don't know if I explained myself.

PS. Your thoughts on the matter are welcome.  

Coming around again...

...after committing one of the most terrible sins in blogging: not posting in ages (well, it was like a week and a half). Let me start by telling you that —just like Regina Lampert said—I'm not a lady of leisure anymore. I got that good journalism internship offer that I told you about, so I'll be very busy from 9.30 am to 19 pm starting tomorrow and ending in September.

So this is gonna be the last long post that you read in my blog in months (I've planned to answer a survey that will provide me an easy to make post per day for a month). And this last long post it's gonna be very random, since I'm gonna try to cover all the things I didn't wrote about last week. So fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy post.

Finished "The secret lives of a princess" by James Spada and I tell you, I wouldn't trade my life for Grace's. I mean, she had an awful family, her father was obsessed with success but never said something nice about her little girl, even when she won an Oscar; her sisters were abusive when she was a kid, and her mother sold stories about Grace to the press! Had lots of famous lovers but couldn't settle down with any of them, mainly because of her family opposition. Loved to act, was great at it, but her studio (when it didn't lend her to others) just gave her stupid parts. Then she marries the Prince —who had a list of possible Hollywood actresses to wed just to improve Monaco image— in a ceremony paid by MGM. She has to suffer all the archaic customs of the palace, but she was prohibited to make another movie, even when Hitch offered a role in "Marnie". The only escape she found was raising her kids the better she could, but the girls turn out to be rebels and had dissipated lives. AND then she died in a car accident. So, no thanks, poor Grace.

This knowledge increased my inner debate about whether is good or not to classic film fans to investigate the private lives of performers and directors. I mean, sometimes you really loved someone's work, but then you read something bad about their behavior, something sad about their lives, or you realize that they beliefs are very very different to your own, and then what was more important —the films— are kind of overshadow to your eyes by this knowledge. Anyway, it doesn't happen to me frequently, one of my cases is Norma Shearer (I've been avoiding watching more of her movies) because I read somewhere that she got the parts mostly because she was married to Irving Thalberg.  And of course, it does happen the other way around, for example, I appreciate the work of Myrna Loy even more since I learned about her fight for human rights. 

Anyway, been reading "People will talk" by John Kobal, and I want to read more of his work. It's like any of us, classic movie lovers, have had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the stars. Loved his interviews with Gloria Swanson, Ingrid Bergman, Mae West and other famous actresses and professionals related to movies. Loved the way he describes the way the stars treated him (like Marlene Dietrich putting him up in her hotel room, since he had traveled a long distance and didn't have a place to stay). Or the way the stars of silent films described their work, so vividly...If you find this book, buy it, I'm loving it.

Well I saw a lot of movies in May, I talk about the most of them in previous mini-reviews. But the last two weeks a saw three great films:

a) I remember mama: Irene Dunne was a great actress. When you see her in this film, you forget who she is, you forget the other roles she played, because she really is the Norwegian immigrant mother. There are some scenes that break your heart, especially when she goes to visit her little girl at the hospital.

b) Witness for the prosecution: I love Billy Wilder, I just had forgotten how much I loved him. My Film Review teacher always said that we should avoid treating the subjects as masters, but he was one. Laughton was terrific, Marlene was terrific, Tyrone Power was great, and Agatha Christie did it again.

c) Three Comrades: Maybe the movie written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald is the weakest of the three, but I liked it very much. Saw it last night and I couldn't sleep well. Saw the scenes over and over in my mind. Robert Taylor is #7 in my top 25 favorite classic actors (someday I'm gonna update and translate that post), and I don't care if his characters are pretty much the same in every movie I've seen him in, I always enjoy his presence on screen. I just had seen Margaret Sullavan in the "Shop around the corner" but her performance is really heartbreaking, her character seem so defenseless, but at the same time strong minded and generous. 

Well, I can't write more, because we're too many in this house using one computer, but let me finish this post with this picture I captured from "Stardust, the Bette Davis story" I saw today. Don't you think that the classic stars can look even more modern than modern actors? I want to see this picture in the next Everlast campaign :) 

Well, see ya tomorrow with the first post of this meme.