The nominees were ...
- Clark Gable in It Happened One Night
- Frank Morgan in The Affairs of Cellini
- William Powell in The Thin Man
... when they should have been ...
- John Barrymore in Twentieth Century
- Clark Gable in It Happened One Night
- William Powell in The Thin Man
And the Oscar went to ...
Clark Gable in It Happened One Night.
Nothing wrong with this, really. Gable gives a great comic-romantic performance in a role for which he wasn't the first choice -- Robert Montgomery was -- and for which it's said that MGM loaned him out as a punishment for refusing a role they wanted him to play. In 1934 he was just one leading man among many in Hollywood, having begun his screen career as an extra and in small roles in 1923. He first attracted real notice as the villain in A Free Soul (1931), with Lionel Barrymore, who had seen him on stage and arranged for him to be cast in the role. It soon became clear that Gable was a good screen partner for Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow, both of them tough-girl types who needed a strong masculine presence opposite them. The Oscar helped him earn the publicists' title "King of Hollywood." But since I think he should have won the award a year earlier, I have another choice for the 1934 Oscar.
Nothing wrong with this, really. Gable gives a great comic-romantic performance in a role for which he wasn't the first choice -- Robert Montgomery was -- and for which it's said that MGM loaned him out as a punishment for refusing a role they wanted him to play. In 1934 he was just one leading man among many in Hollywood, having begun his screen career as an extra and in small roles in 1923. He first attracted real notice as the villain in A Free Soul (1931), with Lionel Barrymore, who had seen him on stage and arranged for him to be cast in the role. It soon became clear that Gable was a good screen partner for Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow, both of them tough-girl types who needed a strong masculine presence opposite them. The Oscar helped him earn the publicists' title "King of Hollywood." But since I think he should have won the award a year earlier, I have another choice for the 1934 Oscar.
... when it should have gone to ...
 |
| Carole Lombard and John Barrymore in Twentieth Century |
 |
| Carole Lombard and John Barrymore in Twentieth Century |
The other great screwball comedy of 1934 got no notice from the Academy -- not for Barrymore, not for Lombard, not for director Howard Hawks, not for the screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, adapting their own play with the help of Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges. Go figure. But the Library of Congress added the movie to the National Film Registry in 2011, noting among other things that it was the "last great film role" for Barrymore. They might have said, "the greatest."
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