Speakeasy: Oscar Version

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated five times for Best Director and once for Best Picture for his work with Rebecca, Suspicion, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window, and Psycho.

Gregory Peck was nominated five times in his career for Best Actor for his roles in The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement, Twelve O'Clock High,  and To Kill a Mockingbird. He won the Best Actor Award for Mockingbird.

James Cagney was nominated three times in his career for Best Actor for his roles in Angels with Dirty Faces, Love Me or Leave Me, and Yankee Doodle Dandy for which he won.

Burt Lancaster was nominated for the Best Actor award four times in his career for From Here to Eternity, Elmer Gantry, Birdman of Alcatraz, and Atlantic City. He won for his role in Elmer Gantry.

Gary Cooper received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning twice for Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Honorary Award in 1961 from the Academy which was accepted by his friend Jimmy Stewart.

Groucho Marx received an Honorary Academy Award in 1974 for his body of work.

Danny Kaye was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1955 for his humanitarian work.

Frank Sinatra won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity, and also had a nomination for Best Actor for his role in The Man with the Golden Arm.

At age 80, George Burns was the first oldest recipient of the Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actor) for his role in The Sunshine Boys.

Robert Montgomery earned two Academy Award nominations for Night Must Fall and Here Comes Mr. Jordan.  Sadly, Tallulah was overlooked.

Stars and Cars

Tallulah Bankhead

Fredric March and Florence Eldridge

Alison Skipworth

Clark Gable

Ida Lupino

Rita Hayworth

My Sin (1931)

My Sin begins in Panama nightclub where one patron muses on how hot weather and boredom can make a human go to seed. Two prime examples are then showed. First, there is the former lawyer, Dick Grady (Fredric March), a former Harvard man and who now wastes his talent on alcohol. Second is Carlotta (Tallulah Bankhead), the notorious hostess of the nightclub who is being stalked by her blackmailing husband. When Carlotta kills him in self-defense and is arrested for murder no one will take her case but Dick Grady. Proving his talent when he is sober, he proves Carlotta's innocence and again regains respect and employment. Carlotta however, is shunned by society despite the acquittal and forced to leave her apartment. When Dick goes to Carlotta's place to thank her, he arrives just in time to keep her from committing suicide.
They agree then that the persona of Carlotta must die, and that a new, more successful woman should start out fresh. Dick loans her money and together they create her new identity in “Ann Trevor”. Ann then moves to New York and becomes a successful interior decorator while Dick stays in Panama with his new job. Through various letters and repayment checks, Dick realizes that he is in love with Ann and comes to New York in search of her. Meanwhile, Ann becomes engaged to the wealthy socialite Larry Gordon (Scott Kolk). Though Ann is happy to see Dick, when she shares the news of her engagement, Dick disapproves of her not telling Larry about her past.
The next day Ann is introduced to Larry’s family and as fortune would have it, his uncle is the same man that met Ann in Panama as Carlotta, watched the trial, and offered Dick his current job. Will he expose Ann for who she really is? Will Larry’s love for her allow him to accept her past?
Though you can see that they both give it their best, My Sin has a very weak and trite plot that even two dynamic stars such as March and Bankhead could not do much with. The action is slow, the melodrama is too high, the coincidences too predictable. And there is the ever present double standard- man can triumph over a sordid past but never a woman. My Sin, was Bankhead’s second talkie and clearly Paramount was not sure what to do with her and as history shows, never quite figured it out. Though she looked beautiful in a sort of Joan Crawford way, big lips and heavily mascaraed eyes, and even successfully warbles out a tune in that seductive voice of hers, she seemed made more for the stage and not the screen. Her Briticized voice, most likely from years spent on the London stage, was out of place with her worn shop girl look. As for March, My Sin is another example of how the studio system could completely ignore an actor’s talent (this was after The Royal Family of Broadway and Laughter, after all) and further proof why March had every right to strike out on his own once his contract was up.

Die! Die! My Darling! (1965)

Mrs. Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead), is an aging religious fanatic who devotes her days to reading the Bible and mourning her son, Stephen, whom died in a crash and as later revealed, caused the crash on purpose. Trefoile companions are a sullen housekeeper, Anna (Yootha Joyce); Anna’s womanizing husband, Harry (Peter Vaughan); and a mentally challenged gardener, Joseph (Donald Sutherland). When Trefoile receives a visit from her dead son's former fiancée, Patricia Carroll (Stephanie Powers) she learns, to her horror that Patricia will not be “clean” enough to join her beloved son in the hereafter. With the help of Anna and Harry, who are companions against their will due to Trefoile threats to reveal a theft Harry committed over sixteen years ago, Trefoile locks Patricia up in the attic and prepares to "cleanse her soul". All of Patricia's efforts to escape are thwarted, even her attempt to lure Harry into releasing her through sexual favors, which ends up getting him killed by Trefoile in the basement of the house. Eventually, Patricia's fiancé, Alan Glentower (Maurice Kaufmann), becomes worried about her absence and comes after her. Despite Mrs. Trefoile telling him Patricia has already left, he discovers the truth in enough time to stop Trefoile from perform murdering Patricia. While Alan and Patricia escape, Anna discovers her husband's body in the basement and stabs Trefoile in the back. As she dies, she embraces her dead son's portrait and murmurs, "Stephen, they hurt me."

Her last leading role in a film, Tallulah Bankhead stands out in this film mostly due to her restrained performance, her complete refusal to be seen as another Bette Davis (Whatever Happen to Baby Jane?) or Joan Crawford (Straight Jacket) despite acting in a film that sought to cash in on just such movies and performances. Instead of being over-the-top, Bankhead resolves to have Trefoile unravel slowly as she peels away the layers that make up Patricia and realizes she does not like what she sees within- a reflection of herself. Die! Die! My Darling! had the ability to be much more psychologically thrilling had it been given the attention. Unfortunately it sought to be another camp classic complete with its glamour star cum horror queen so very popular in that era of horror films. There is a deep irony in her role as Mrs. Trefoile, a former actress turned religious fanatic- the polar opposite of Bankhead’s off screen persona- it lends more sadness than camp to the film. A horrid and depressing swan song for Bankhead as the film ends with her expiring amongst her photos, costumes, and sets of a bygone era.

Tonight on TCM!

The Informer (1935) An Irish rebel turns in his best friend to earn passage money to America, then has to dodge the suspicions of his cohorts. Cast: Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster, Margot Grahame Dir: John Ford

Depression Diary: Faithless (1932)

Carol Morgan (Tallulah Bankhead) is a woman who values money over everything, even love. Though she loves Bill Wade (Robert Montgomery), they bicker and separate because he wants to marry her but have her live off his yearly salary of $20,000.00. Unaware of her true financial position, she thinks his $20,000 a year salary is an impossible amount on which to live. A few weeks later when she learns that all her money is gone, she runs to Bill, but learns that he has lost his job because his company is bankrupt. Despite being faced with the possibility of poverty, she still refuses to marry Bill. While he goes to Chicago for another job, Carol goes to Florida to live off some of her rich friends, eventually settling in Chicago as Mr. Blainey’s (Hugh Herbert) mistress which she is completely disgusted by.. One night, while she and Blainey are drinking, Bill comes to see her, and Blainey lets him know what their relationship is prompting Carol leave. After desperately trying to find work, Carol runs into Bill at a cheap diner, she hasn’t eaten for days and has truly learned that love is more important than money. Bill forgives her and they marry. After months in and out of work, Bill finally gets employment at a trucking company but is injured on his first days in an accident caused by strikers. On the brink of death, Carol must take care of Bill and needing money for medicine, she turns to prostitution when she can find no job. One night she runs into Bill's younger brother Tony, who yells at her for being a tramp which catches the attention of a policeman. Instead of taking her to jail not to take her to jail, the kind-hearted man gets her a job as a waitress when she tells him of her husband’s illness and promises not to hustle again. Several weeks later, after Bill has regained some of his strength, Tony comes to see him and tells him about that night, unaware that Bill and Carol are married. Though Bill is shaken by what has happened, he realized she did it to save him and loves her all the more for it. The movie ends with Bill getting a new advertising job for $60 a week.

This film had some teary moments for me. Though it falls under the usual conditioning of pre-code films with the stilted scenes and ambiguous actions, I thought Bankhead did a really wonderful job of portraying a woman in dire straights. As a viewer I could see in her face how disgusted she was with what she had to do to survive- it's especially poignant in the drinking scene between her and Herbert as he tells of his future plans for her. As for Montgomery, the typecasting he was subjected to prior to this film made it hard to place him as the working man and not the rich bon vivant/playboy he usually played. Overall, I liked the film and got a sense (maybe with a little help with today's economy) of how desperate things were for people then.

Sidenote:
One of Bankhead's most notorious events was an interview that she gave to Motion Picture magazine in 1932, in which she ranted wildly about the state of her life and her views on love, marriage, and children prompting several viewers to see her upcoming film Faithless. However, this did nothing to help Bankhead's movie career. Faithless would be her last film until over a decade when she appeared in Stage Door Canteen in 1943. She was always more successful onstage.

Tonight on TCM! My favorite Hitchcock Film!
Vertigo (1958) A detective falls for the mysterious woman he's been hired to tail.
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore Dir: Alfred Hitchcock