And the nominees were ...
- John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- Anatole Litvak, The Snake Pit
- Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda
- Laurence Olivier, Hamlet
- Fred Zinnemann, The Search
... when they should have been ...
- Jean Cocteau, René Clément, Beauty and the Beast
- John Ford, Fort Apache
- Howard Hawks, Red River
- John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours
And the Oscar went to ...
This was, remarkably, Huston's first nomination and only win as director, though he also won for his screenplay. He had previously been nominated for the screenplays of Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, The Maltese Falcon, and Sergeant York, and would receive double nominations as writer-director for The Asphalt Jungle and The African Queen, a double nomination as director and producer of the 1952 Moulin Rouge, two more writing nominations for Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and The Man Who Would Be King, a supporting actor nomination for The Cardinal, and a final directing nomination for Prizzi's Honor. He would direct fifteen performances that received acting nominations, and four that won, including his father and his daughter. (The other two are Claire Trevor in Key Largo and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.) Is there a more impressive film career?
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Joanne Dru and Hawks take a smoke break |
Have I ranted enough about the Academy's neglect of Hawks? This seems to me the greatest of all Hollywood Westerns, with the finest performance John Wayne ever gave (with the possible exception of the one he gave in The Searchers). It has a fresh, vital, sexy performance from an actor who declined into neurosis, Montgomery Clift. And is there a greater dick-measuring scene in movies than the one in which Clift and John Ireland compare guns? It has Walter Brennan hamming it up, and a gallery of great Western supporting performers: Harry Carey Sr. and Jr., Noah Beery Jr., Hank Worden, Chief Yowlatchie, and even Richard Farnsworth in an uncredited role as one of Dunston's men. Joanne Dru is the Hawksian woman in the mix, and even if Pauline Kael has a point when she calls her "frantic" and says she "acts as if the Old West were Greenwich Village," she's still fun to watch. The cattle drive is exciting and Dimitri Tiomkin's score is stirring. What's not to like?
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| John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River |
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