Oscars 1950: Upset Victory

“[T]his marvelously clever young actress so richly conveys the attitudes and the vocal intonations of a native of the sidewalks of New York that it is art,” New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote about Judy Holliday’s performance in Born Yesterday. “More than that,” he added, “she illuminates so brightly the elemental wit and honesty of her blankly unlettered young lady that she puts pathos and respect into the role.”

The casting for the part of Billie Dawn, the dumb blonde ex-showgirl who gradually wakes up to the corrupt doings of her boorish junk dealer boyfriend, was full of false starts and happenstance. Garson Kanin wrote the play with Jean Arthur in mind. When Arthur dropped out just prior to its Broadway opening, Holliday took over and became the darling of both critics and audiences. But Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn had other ideas and bought the property for Rita Hayworth. Hayworth had ideas of her own, preferring the real-life role of Prince Aly Kahn’s new wife over the role of Billie Dawn.

Cohn was finally convinced to put Holliday in the picture after Katharine Hepburn planted gossip column items that early footage of Adam’s Rib revealed that Holliday was stealing scenes from Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. On Oscar night, many camps were wondering which acting behemoth—All About Eve’s Bette Davis or Sunset Boulevard’s Gloria Swanson—would take home the Best Actress prize. When Broderick Crawford announced Holliday as the winner, Swanson (above, with José Ferrer and Holliday) reportedly gave her a hug and said to her, “Darling, why couldn’t you have waited until next year?” In her memoirs, Swanson reflected, “Judy Holliday, when she dared to look at me, seemed to be pleading forgiveness.”

BEST PICTURE
All About Eve

BEST DIRECTOR
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, All About Eve

BEST ACTOR
José Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac

BEST ACTRESS
Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
George Sanders, All About Eve

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Josephine Hull, Harvey

December 12

Anne Baxter dies of a brain aneurysm in New York City, 1985. Though she was lovely in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), heartbreaking in The Razor’s Edge (1946) and wickedly conniving in All About Eve (1950), we will always love her for “Oh Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!” Baxter’s utterance in The Ten Commandments (1956) is one of the most howlingly bad lines of dialogue in any of Cecil B. DeMille’s movies (which is saying quite a bit). Appearing opposite Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses, the actress throws herself into the role of Egyptian queen Nefertiri, a part for which Audrey Hepburn was initially considered, but passed over because of her waifish figure. If you’ve never seen the biblical epic, simply wait for Easter and then turn on the TV.

October 16

Angela Lansbury is born in London, 1925. In a career spanning eight decades, here what didn’t happen: She did not change her name, as MGM suggested, to Angela Marlow. She did not play Miss Caswell in All About Eve (1950), though she was briefly considered for the role. And she did not play Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), though she was offered the role.

Here’s what did happen: She received an Oscar nomination for Gaslight (1944), her first film, and another for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), her third film. She played mothers to men too young to be her actual son—Elvis Presley, ten years her junior, in Blue Hawaii (1961) and Lawrence Harvey, three years her junior, in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). And she balanced a wildly successful stage and television career with memorable performances in The Harvey Girls (1946), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Death on the Nile (1978) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).

We wish Angela Lansbury a most happy 86th birthday.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

His scripts were distinguished by wit, intelligence and no small amount of sarcasm. In the early 1950s, the Academy rewarded two of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s efforts—A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950)—with Oscars for writing (as well as directing). Here are 25 bits of smart Mankiewicz dialogue we wish we had written.

Birdie (Thelma Ritter): What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.
— All About Eve (1950)

Eleanor (Rosalind Russell): You worry more about something to worry about than you worry about an actual worry.
Mary Clay (Joan Crawford): Can you say that again?
— Forsaking All Others (1934)

Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart): Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies, when everything fits too well—the beginning, the middle, the end—from fade-in to fade-out.
— The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter): Get out.
Addison DeWitt (George Sanders): You’re too short for that gesture.
— All About Eve (1950)

Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain): Knowing Addie, I mean, why let her spoil our day?
Rita Phipps (Ann Southern): Not my day. Addie Ross never saw the day she could spoil my day. Did I put enough “days” into that?
— A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison): (after the execution of Pothinus) Return Apollodorus’s dagger to him, but clean it first. It has Pothinus all over it.
— Cleopatra (1963)

Miss Caswell (Marilyn Monroe): Tell me this, do they have auditions for television?
Addison DeWitt (George Sanders): That’s, uh, all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions.
— All About Eve (1950)

Eleanor (Rosalind Russell): I wish a man would marry me so I could wear a decent hat.
Shempy (Charles Butterworth): That’s the best reason for getting married I ever heard.
— Forsaking All Others (1934)

Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner): In Hollywood, it is not easy to become a star.
Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart): Ah, where is it easy?
— The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Mrs. Manleigh (Florence Bates): Sadie may not realize it, but whether or not she thinks she’s listening, she’s being penetrated.
George Phipps (Kirk Douglas): Good thing she didn’t hear you say that.
— A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Dolores (Marjorie White): Sing to me!
Willy Nilly (Bert Wheeler): How about “One Hour With You?”
Dolores: Sure! But first—sing to me!
— Diplomaniacs (1933)

Margo Channing (Bette Davis): Birdie, you don’t like Eve, do you?
Birdie (Thelma Ritter): You looking for an answer or an argument?
Margo Channing: An answer.
Birdie: No.
Margo Channing: Why not?
Birdie: Now you want an argument.
— All About Eve (1950)

George Phipps (Kirk Douglas): The purpose of radio writing, as far as I can see, is to prove to the masses that a deodorant can bring happiness, a mouthwash guarantees success and a laxative attracts romance.
— A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Eleanor (Rosalind Russell): Oh, I want to go to the bachelor dinner.
Shempy (Charles Butterworth): Can you do a fan dance?
Eleanor: I invented the fan dance.
Shempy: I saw one with electric fans once. It was awful.
— Forsaking All Others (1934)

Addison DeWitt (George Sanders): Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since.
— All About Eve (1950)

Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor): And I find what you’re wearing most becoming. Greek, isn’t it?
Antony (Richard Burton): I have a fondness for almost all Greek things.
Cleopatra: As an almost all-Greek thing, I’m flattered.
— Cleopatra (1963)

Jim Wade (William Powell): You know, I think those yes men would go to bed with me if they had a chance.
Eleanor Packer (Myrna Loy): Don’t worry, darling. They won’t have a chance.
— Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

Margo Channing (Bette Davis): Bill’s thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he’ll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.
— All About Eve (1950)

Chow-Chow (Hugh Herbert): I wish I were in China by my wife. Who I hate.
— Diplomaniacs (1933)

Rita Phipps (Ann Southern): People in show business, you know what I mean, those kind of people always drink scotch.
George Phipps (Kirk Douglas): Well, I know what you mean, but I wish you wouldn’t say it in radio English. “That kind,” not “those kind.”
Rita Phipps: There are men who say “those kind” who earn $100,000 dollars a year.
George Phipps: There are men who say "stick 'em up" who earn more. I don't expect to do either.
— A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Margo Channing (Bette Davis): Fasten your seatbelts—it’s going to be a bumpy night.
— All About Eve (1950)

Jim Wade (William Powell): I was born at home , because I wanted to be near mother at the time.
— Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill): Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would not be considered either queenly or motherly.
Margo Channing (Bette Davis): You are in a beehive, pal. Didn’t you know? We are all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night. Aren’t we, honey?
— All About Eve (1950)

Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens): You’ve never done an honest day’s work in your life!
Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring): I have never done a day’s work in my life, honest or dishonest, but neither have you. To make $100 into $110, this is work. To make $100 million into $110 million, this is inevitable.
— The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Sadie (Thelma Ritter): The cap’s out. Makes me look like a lamb chop with pants on.
— A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Ten Great Movie Posters

Here are some of our favorites—terrific one sheets that reflect vital elements of the movies they advertise, yet stand alone as works of art.

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