Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 52: My Day with Katharine Hepburn

So far I've encountered a lot of the great female icons of the era during this search - Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford in Grant Hotel, Bette Davis in Jezebel, Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express and Claudette Colbert in a number of films. However one star has eluded me so far so I decided to watch all three of her nominated films from that decade in one day, that star is Katharine Hepburn.

Although Katharine Hepburn won her first Best Actress Oscar for only her third performance in Morning Glory. The first film that she was in that was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar was George Cukor's adaptation of Little Women that was up for Best Picture at the 1934 ceremony. Most people already know the story of Little Women but if you don't it basically concerns four sisters as they grow up and become women by finding love and independence. In this version it is Hepburn who plays second eldest sister Jo an aspiring playwright who meets the shy Laurie and they begin to fall in love however she rejects his advances and goes to New York to work as a nanny and to concentrate on her writing. Meanwhile of her other sisters Meg gets married, Amy goes off with her auntie and Beth contracts and eventually dies of Scarlet Fever. The end of the film comes full circle as Beth's death reunites the family and Jo discovers that Amy and Laurie have fallen in love and are about to be married so she accepts the proposal of the German linguist who works with the children that she nannies. Approaching this film I only had a smattering of what the story was about, mainly from that episode of Friends where Rachel gets Joey to read it. At first I found this a little hard to grasp and at times I mixed up the non-Hepburn sisters but once it found its stride and the male characters were introduced I really started to enjoy it. Hepburn's regular strong female stance was on display here as Jo, here she never lets her guard down till the very end and anchors the film from beginning to end however I also thought Jean Parker as Beth was particularly compelling and older character actress Edna May Oliver did a good job of portraying the wealthy but harsh aunt of the girls. Overall this was a good literary adaptation and as so won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar and Cukor was nominated for his strong direction. This probably would've made it into the list of nominees had it been five strong but it just wasn't as different and challenging as that year's winner Cavalcade.

Two years later at the 1936 awards Hepburn was nominated for her second Best Actress Oscar for her titular performance in the film Alice Adams. Hepburn here would be unsuccessful losing to Bette Davis for the film Dangerous but for me Alice Adams marked a departure for Hepburn in terms of character, Alice displayed little in terms of bravado and instead was quite weak and understated. The film is all about class as Alice and her mother hope to rise above their lower-middle class status. The family's father is ill in bed and, even though his job at the glue factory has been left open, they have little money. Alice goes to a party and unable to find a job has to go with her smart Alec brother. While there she meets and dances with the dashing Arthur however her lowly class means that she feels she isn't good enough for him. Alice's mother convinces her father to sell an invention for a new type of glue without consulting his business partner and boss essentially meaning he gets called a thief. The finale of the film sees the Adams family host a dinner party with Arthur which is awkward as Alice struggles to make conversation with Arthur while the rest of the family is worried about the consequences of the father's actions. However just when everything seems lost Alice's father and his business partner make up and Alice gets her man, something I found a little far-featched. Despite that finale, Alice Adams was a charming enough picture with another great little performance from Hepburn who is ably supported by Fred MacMurray as Arthur and Frank Albertson as her brother. Again not a film that was ever going to hold a candle to that year's winner Mutiny on The Bounty but again there was nothing particularly wrong with the film.

Hepburn's final Best Picture nominated film came two years later and this time she shared the headline status with Ginger Rogers. This film was Stage Door about a group of aspiring actresses who share a boarding house together with Rogers playing the street-smart dancer and Hepburn the haughty rich-girl newbie who puts everyone's noses out of joint. As well as Hepburn and Roger's characters is Kay Hamilton played by Andrea Leeds a young actress who had won rave reviews for her first performance but was struggling to find enough work to pay for rent and meals. Hamilton's chance comes when she auditions for a show directed by Anthony Powell, a respected director who is pompous and arrogant and refuses to see Hamilton leading to her fainting and Powell getting a tongue-lashing from Hepburn's Terry Randall. However eventually Terry's rich father agrees to finance Powell's show but only if his daughter in the lead role which again means that Randall is an outcast in the boarding house once again. In the end Kay dies and Terry dedicates her performance to her and is eventually forgiven by the rest of the inhabitants. The final scene sees yet another aspiring actress enter the boarding house and life goes on as normal. Out of these three films I think I enjoyed Stage Door the most, the mainly female cast do a great job of everyday banter and you can really believe that they are struggling actresses. Hepburn returns to her strong nature playing the posh girl in a house full of down-to-Earth characters but she really has some good chemistry with Ginger Rogers. Even though Rogers played a small grittier role in 42nd Street this film sees a complete departure from the work she did with Fred Astaire and is great. But it is Andrea Leeds as Kay who was nominated for Supporting Actress that year and that was rightly deserved. Rounding off the cast was Adolphe Menjou again playing a little bit of an unsavoury gentlemen, while some of the smaller parts were taken by actresses who would find fame later on including Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and Ann Miller. Despite this being my favourite of the three films it did the worst at the Box Office and by the end of the 1930s Hepburn along with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were considered Box Office poison and weren't getting the roles that they once got.

However Hepburn would turn that around and still holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscars but most of those would be awarded in the 1950s and 1960s so for now its goodbye to Miss Hepburn.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 50 and 51: Making a Song and Dance Of It

As I'm trying desperately to get through the 1930s as I realise I'm way behind schedule I'm starting to group films together, the first four films are all musicals or related to musicals in a certain way.

First up another one starring frequent Maurice Chevalier contributor Jeanette MacDonald, who would later get her big break in San Francisco, here she plays the heroine but not exactly the title role in Naughty Marietta. MacDonald's character is in fact Princess Maria who, to escape a marriage to elderly statesman, swaps places with her uncle's servant Marietta and boards a boat bound for New Orleans. The boat is in fact full of women who are about to be wives to the men of New Orleans but en route the boat is captured by pirates before the pirates are challenged and defeated by a group of vigilantes lead by Nelson Eddy's Captain Warrington. To avoid being married off Maria/Marietta pretends to be a courtesan and is exiled and moved into a house looked over by Warrington. Soon Warrington and Marietta fall in love but things are complicated when her true identity is revealed. She is then taken back to her own palace and the wedding is to go ahead once again however Warrington dupes the nobility and is able to steal away with Maria. Naughty Marietta is an amiable enough film even though it does feel a bit dated in its portrayal of the sexes. Sure Maria is a pretty strong heroine in that she is able to fool most of the male characters, but at the same time she is defined by her relationships. Essentially the film is part screwball comedy part musical and the songs are always well performed if a little overly-theatrical at times, especially those involving the sailors and the pirates. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald make a very believable couple, and have better chemistry than MacDonald ever had with Chevalier. But like with a lot of the musical entries this seems like an odd choice to be an Oscar contender, although it did win an award for its sound direction, it lost out on Best Picture to the far superior Mutiny on The Bounty.

One musical that didn't lose out on Best Picture was The Broadway Melody, which was in fact only the second film in history to win that accolade and the first sound film to do so. The story concerns The Mahoney Sisters Queenie and Harriet the latter of whom goes by Hank for most of the film. Hank also is accompanied by Eddie her romantic interest who soon falls for younger sister Queenie. Both sisters audition together but it is Queenie who the director is interested but she convinces him to take both of them. The rest of the film sees Eddie torn between his commitment to Hank and his burgeoning feelings for Queenie. Queenie meanwhile is courted by the well-off Jock who treats Queenie as just a plaything to pick up and use when he feels like it. Meanwhile during the show Hank feels that Queenie is holding her back and is jealous of the attention she is getting. Eventually Queenie and Eddie realise that they are in love and get married while Hank takes on one of the other dancers and tours The Mahoney Sisters act. For one of the very first talking pictures this was very interesting and was ultimately a combination of involving drama and traditional musical theatre. Some of the combinations feel a little jarring the transposition between some of the sisters more dramatic moments and the comedy lisping uncle doesn't really seem to make sense. But the Best Picture award certainly does with competition like The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and the patchy In Old Arizona, the all talking, all singing, all dancing Broadway Melody shed a light on the harsher elements of show-business.

As did one of the nominees for the Best Picture prize in 1934, that being 42nd Street. This film sees several different plot strands colliding. The first one involves Dorothy Brock, a star whose Sugar Daddy is financing a production of the show Pretty Lady, however Brock's real love is her old vaudeville partner Pat. The second story follows Julian Marsh, an extremely talented but harsh director whose manner has meant he has no friends, he is also dying and has lost a lot of money in the Wall Street Crash. The third and final strand looks at the fortunes of Peggy Sawyer a newcomer to Broadway who is cast in the show and after being teased initially by the other chorus girls soon becomes one of them. As the plot goes on Brock's Sugar Daddy learns of her infidelity and goes to confront her and she ends up spraining her ankle. Peggy eventually steps into the breach and one of the film's best sequences sees Peggy being trained by Marsh and later comforted by Dorothy. The last twenty minutes or so of the film is completely song and dance as three Busby Berkley numbers are played back to back among them the film's title track as well as Shuffle onto Buffalo and I'm Young and Healthy. The final scene sees Marsh leave the theatre with a smile on his face and slump outside on the pavement presumably to die. I have to say it took me a while to get into 42nd Street because of the many characters that we had to follow and some of the quick-talking banter, but once I did get into the action I really enjoyed it. This was mainly due to Warner Baxter's performance as Marsh, he really matured as an actor since his Oscar winning performance in In Old Arizona. Although here he, along with the rest of the cast, failed to get a single nomination and as well as Best Picture the film only received one other nomination, in Sound Recording, which is a big shame. I would certainly class 42nd Street as the Best Musical that I have watched to date. And I have to say as well there was a nice little supporting performance from Ginger Rogers which is different from anything I've seen her do with Fred Astaire.

Although to round things off we do have a film featuring Fred and Ginger although the topic matter is a little more racy in 1935 nominee The Gay Divorcee. In the film Fred bizarrely plays an American dancer who journeys to England with a friend where he briefly meets Ginger's character. She has come with her auntie to arrange a divorce from her boring husband. Her aunt brings her to see a sleazy lawyer who just happens to be Fred's friend. They arrange for Ginger to meet up with an Italian gigolo so it seems like she is having an affair and she will be able to get the divorce. However Ginger mistakes Fred for the Italian and ends up going up to her room with him. When the other characters realise the mistake they decide to keep Fred and Ginger locked in the room together and as always they fall in love and dance a bit. As with all their films, Fred and Ginger do have a special kind of chemistry. While this film might not be as famous as Top Hat it still has one iconic sequence which sees the couple dancing to Night and Day on a balcony. This film also has more elements of screwball comedy in it, although some of the comedy does fall flat. The film actually did do pretty well at that year's Oscar ceremony picking up an award for Original Song as well as several other nominations for its sound and score. However the coupling of Fred and Ginger in this particular film didn't match up to the coupling of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in that year's winning effort It Happened One Night.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 49: The Bad Girls are always catching my eye

More from Frank Borzage with the 1932 nominee Bad Girl, an interesting film in that it doesn't deal with Borzage's regular themes of war and doomed relationships. Instead it follows an almost mundane relationship between a shop girl and a radio repairs man. Initially Dorothy is interested in Eddie as he doesn't seem to be interested in her and makes a bet with her friend that she can bed him, so that's where the title of Bad Girl comes from. Eventually Eddie and Dorothy do fall in love and he proposes marriage but on their wedding day he gets fired and then aims to set up his own business but at the same time Dorothy finds out she is pregnant so Eddie can't use the money he'd put away for his new business and instead buys an apartment for them. The story turns again when Dorothy wants to hire a private doctor but Eddie doesn't have the money so begins prize fighting and getting himself knocked out in order to look after his wife eventually begging the doctor to work before he is paid. In the end the doctor does the work for free and Eddie and Dorothy are united with their new baby.

For a film that was released in the first few years of sound, Bad Girl seems extremely talky and many scenes feature two people in a room. This would've seemed quite revolutionary at the time when films were full of big action or large blown romantic tales this is just a simple piece of real life drama. For a film ahead of its time it was rightly given the Best Adapted Screenplay award as well as a second Best Director Oscar for Borzage. Of the cast Sally Ellers probably deserved a Best Actress nod for her portrayal of the multi-layered Dorothy whose character changes drastically as the film continues. James Dunn as the hapless Eddie was also fairly compelling but I don't think it was up to the standard of Best Actor. Overall a competent and original picture but not one that could touch that year's eventual winner - Grand Hotel.