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

June 7

Jean Harlow dies at the age of 26 in Los Angeles, 1937. She had completed filming more than two-thirds of a horse-racing saga called Saratoga when she collapsed on the set and was hospitalized. A week later, she was dead of cerebral edema brought on by uremic poisoning. With a hefty chunk of the movie still to be shot, producers weighed their options: shelve the film, replace Harlow with Jean Arthur or Virginia Bruce or complete the shoot without her. Because of the overwhelming response from Harlow’s fans , MGM chose that last option, with Harlow’s stand-in Mary Dees shot from careful angles and her voice dubbed by Paula Winslowe. Interest from Harlow’s grieving fans helped propel the film, which also starred Harlow’s frequent costar Clark Gable, to the top of the box office in 1937.

November 3

Mary Martin dies of cancer in Rancho Mirage, California, 1990. We know her as a much-heralded stage performer—she was the critics’ darling, the star of many a Broadway smash and winner of four Tony Awards. She was, in fact, discovered onstage singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in the musical Leave It to Me, stopping the show cold. Paramount noticed and signed her up, putting her in The Great Victor Herbert (1939). Four years and eight films later, her movie career was essentially over. As author Jeanine Basinger observed in her book, The Star Machine, “If all we knew about Mary Martin were her lackluster screen appearances, no one would ever understand why she became a great star. She looks like a lesser Jean Arthur, without Arthur’s unique speaking voice and delicious warmth…Paramount spent 1940, 1941 and 1942 trying to turn her into what everyone logically thought she could be: a popular movie musical comedy star…Nothing really worked. The public didn’t buy.”

August 21

Shane, starring (left to right) Brandon De Wilde, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin and Alan Ladd, premiers at Radio City Music Hall in 1953. Shot during the summer and fall of 1951, the movie underwent extensive editing before director George Stevens was satisfied with it. It would be the last movie Jean Arthur made before she retired.