My Oscar Picks, Part 3: 1945-1949

In this post I'm continuing the process of comparing my own Oscar picks from among the nominees with the real winners. As before, the opinions expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and are not intended to be taken as objective judgments.

1945

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: The Lost Weekend
My Pick: The Lost Weekend

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend
My Pick: Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend

BEST ACTOR:
The Winner: Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend
My Pick: Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
My Pick: Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: James Dunn, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
My Pick: Robert Mitchum, The Story of G.I. Joe

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Anne Revere, National Velvet
My Pick: Eve Arden, Mildred Pierce

This wasn't a particularly strong year in American movies, so the best were pretty easy to identify. Both Milland and Crawford got the roles of their careers and made the most of them. Interestingly, neither was the first choice for the role. Milland got the part after Paramount rejected Wilder's first choice, Jose Ferrer. Crawford was cast only after Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, and Ann Sheridan turned down the part. I departed from the Academy's choices only in the supporting actor and actress categories, awards that seemed to me based on the sentimental nature of the parts. This was the only nomination Robert Mitchum ever received, for what at the time was his most noticeable part in a major picture. (In the New York Film Critics Circle awards, Mitchum was the runner-up to Milland for best actor.) As well as Eve Arden, Ann Blyth was also nominated for Mildred Pierce, and at this time it was rare for a nominee to prevail when more than one actor was nominated for the same picture. Blyth's role was showy but her acting awfully unsubtle in comparison to Arden, one of the great supporting performers. This is for me her best work, a distillation of her screen essence. Biggest omission: John Ford, best director for They Were Expendable.

1946

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: The Best Years of Our Lives
My Pick: The Best Years of Our Lives

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner, William Wyler, The Best Years of Our Lives
My Pick: Robert Siodmak, The Killers

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Fredric March, The Best Years of Our Lives
My Pick: James Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Olivia de Havilland, To Each His Own
My Pick: Celia Johnson, Brief Encounter

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Harold Russell, The Best Years of Our Lives
My Pick: Claude Rains, Notorious

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Anne Baxter, The Razor's Edge
My Pick: Anne Baxter, The Razor's Edge

The Best Years of Our Lives was not only timely but also an excellent movie. Wyler was such an impeccable craftsman that he was incapable of making a sloppy film. But The Killers, which wasn't nominated for best picture, is not only an essential film noir but also a real director's movie, so I went with Siodmak for best director. I'm a great fan of Fredric March, but I think Dana Andrews gave the better performance in The Best Years of Our Lives, the best of his career, and he wasn't even nominated. James Stewart in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life—one of the greatest, most moving screen performances of all time. It would be impossible for me even to consider any of the other nominees for best actor. Best actress was the weakest it had been in years. The two best performances of the year—Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (directed by Siodmak) and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious—weren't even nominated. Olivia de Havilland took best actress for her performance in the soapish To Each His Own. (That Oscar might also have been a reward for her courage in standing up to Jack L. Warner even if it meant not working for a couple of years. A second good performance playing good and evil twins in The Dark Mirror, again directed by Siodmak, probably helped too.) For the first time I went with a British actress, Celia Johnson, in Brief Encounter. Teresa Wright wasn't nominated as best supporting actress for The Best Years of Our Lives, so I stuck with Anne Baxter, the best of those who were nominated. Harold Russell's win was plainly a sentimental one, especially in view of the special award he also received from the Academy for his brave and heartfelt performance. I chose instead Claude Rains, nominated several times before but always bested by someone else. Who else could have actually made you feel sorry for such an unrepentant villain? Biggest omission: Notorious—for picture, director, actor, or actress.

1947

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: Gentleman's Agreement
My Pick: Great Expectations

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: Elia Kazan, Gentleman's Agreement
My Pick: David Lean, Great Expectations

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Ronald Colman, A Double Life
My Pick: John Garfield, Body and Soul

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Loretta Young, The Farmer's Daughter
My Pick: Susan Hayward, Smash-Up

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street
My Choice: Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Celeste Holm, Gentleman's Agreement
My Choice: Celeste Holm, Gentleman's Agreement

I disagreed with most of the Academy's selections this year. Gentleman's Agreement is another of those noble but dull pictures chosen to show Hollywood's endorsement of Right Thinking. Who today would seriously consider it a significant film? Great Expectations, on the other hand, is to my mind the best movie version of a Dickens novel ever, and also one of the best movies of any kind ever made. Oscar went with sentiment over merit and adhered to the Career Achievement concept with its award of the best acting prizes to Colman for his flashy performance and Young for her earnest one, two respected veterans who finally got a role that justified honoring their entire body of work. I went instead for two younger actors who both gave bold, intense, and exciting performances. I did agree, though, with the Academy's choices in the supporting categories. The supporting actor field was especially strong this year—any of the five nominated performances would have been a worthy choice—but I stuck with Edmund Gwenn's Kris Kringle. Biggest omission: Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past.

1948

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: Hamlet
My Pick: The Red Shoes

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
My Pick: John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Laurence Olivier, Hamlet
My Pick: Laurence Olivier, Hamlet

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda
My Pick: Olivia de Havilland, The Snake Pit

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Walter Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
My Pick: Walter Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Claire Trevor, Key Largo
My Pick: Claire Trevor, Key Largo

For the second year in a row, I went with a British film for best picture. Michael Powell, who was never nominated for best director, is in my directors' pantheon, and The Red Shoes is my favorite of his many fine movies. (Anthony Lane recently wrote a loving review of this film in the New Yorker, well worth checking out.) This was a great year for John Huston, who directed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the finest American film of the year and arguably the first revisionist Western—although the location was transplanted to Mexico—in which he grafted his noir sensibility onto that most American of genres. In addition, he was responsible for my picks for the two best supporting performances of the year as well as two notable performances—Humphrey Bogart in Sierra Madre and Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo—either of which would have been worthy of a best actor nomination. I concurred with the Academy's award to Olivier for best actor for his Hamlet, but I don't see how they failed to give the best actress award to Olivia de Havilland. Jane Wyman's award would have been understandable in another year but not in this one, in which de Havilland gave the best performance of her career and one of the very best of the decade by any American actress. The reason de Havilland lost was likely that just two years earlier the Academy had given her a premature Career Achievement Oscar for To Each His Own. Oscar doesn't tend to repeat itself that soon if it can be avoided. Biggest omission: John Wayne, Red River.

1949

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: All the King's Men
My Pick: The Heiress

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives
My Pick: Carol Reed, The Fallen Idol

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Broderick Crawford, All the King's Men
My Pick: Gregory Peck, Twelve O'Clock High

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
My Pick: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Dean Jagger, Twelve O'Clock High
My Pick: Ralph Richardson, The Heiress

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Mercedes McCambridge, All the King's Men
My Pick: Mercedes McCambridge, All the King's Men

All the King's Men strikes me as an uneven picture that plays like a superficial condensation of the 464-page long Pulitzer Prize-winning novel it's based on, carried largely by the strength of the performances. The movie's deficiencies in both narrative and character development are all the more surprising given the screenwriting experience and proven ability of its writer-director, Robert Rossen. A much better movie about the contemporary South—Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust, based on the novel by William Faulkner—didn't receive a single nomination. I went instead with yet another literary adaptation directed by William Wyler. While Mankiewicz's winning picture is quite enjoyable, it has nowhere near the gravity and artistry of Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol, the reason I chose Reed for best director. Gregory Peck did what to my mind is the best work of his career in Twelve O'Clock High, and I chose his rounded and subtle performance as the best of the year by an actor. The Academy's choice, Broderick Crawford, was certainly striking as Willie Stark, but I found his performance compromised by the opacity of the character, whose transformation from idealist to corrupt demagogue (the gruff Crawford is much more convincing as the latter) is presented as a fait accompli rather than explained. De Havilland gave another brilliant performance in The Heiress, easily outacting any of the other nominees. For supporting actor, I went with Ralph Richardson as de Havilland's cold father in The Heiress. Biggest omission: James Cagney's unforgettable Cody Jarrett in White Heat.