Awards presented March 15, 1945
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
If the film weren't such a sticky bit of sentimental claptrap, I wouldn't mind agreeing with the Academy's choice of Crosby. The Oscar has seldom gone to skilled, likable actors like Crosby, whose work is sadly underestimated in favor of the scenery chewers. Even then, his win was a mild upset: The smart money had been on Boyer for Gaslight, a scenery-chewing role if ever there was one. There is little in Crosby's Oscar-winning role that hadn't been seen in the dozens of movies he had made since his debut in King of Jazz in 1930: an easygoing manner, an ability to make singing look as natural as talking, and good comic timing. It had made him a box-office champ, and now it won him an Oscar.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Andrews in Laura |
McPherson, the obsessed detective, is Andrews's best-known role, and it might have earned him an Oscar nomination if 20th Century-Fox hadn't been so eager to push its flop biopic
Wilson and nominated the near-forgotten Alexander Knox instead. Andrews got his start at the Pasadena Playhouse, where a Goldwyn scout spotted him, but Goldwyn found little for him to do and he wound up doing most of his work at Fox, playing small roles and second leads in such films as
The Westerner,
Ball of Fire, and
The Ox-Bow Incident.
Laura offered a break into major leads, but his role in it has been underestimated partly because he had to play against such scene-stealing hams as Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson, not to mention Gene Tierney, whose Laura has been put on the edge of sanity by the manipulations of Webb. But Andrews, beautifully directed by Otto Preminger, is able to convey that McPherson, the most ostensibly normal person in the film is also, in his obsessive way, a little bit crazy, tamping down his obsession with a hand-held game that he constantly fiddles with.
Laura gave Andrews greater name recognition, and he returned to Goldwyn for
The Best Years of Our Lives and perhaps his best role, as the returning bombardier forced by the post-war economy to resume his old inglorious job as a soda jerk. But his later career was undistinguished, partly because of Andrews's descent into alcoholism -- he would later make a widely seen public-service announcement urging alcoholics to seek treatment -- and partly because the films of the 1950s and '60s were looking for younger leading men.
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| Clifton Webb and Dana Andrews in Laura |
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