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2001 |
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DARK CORRIDORS |
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 Wonder why Alfred Hitchcock seems perturbed? Read on... |
Hitch spanned nearly 50 years of Oscar history, but never won one
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
IF
YOU WANT proof the Motion Picture Academy usually doesn't get
it right, here it is: Alfred Hitchcock, one of the immortals
of the cinema, never actually won an Oscar.
"Wait a minute!" you may be thinking. "Didn't
they give him a special Oscar?"
Well, the answer is: "No, they didn't!" They gave him the Irving Thalberg Award, perhaps the most prestigious prize a filmmaker can earn from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. But that award, which fellow director Robert Wise presented him with at the 1967 Oscar show, doesn't look like an Oscar and it doesn't count as one.
You also may be thinking: "Wait another minute! He directed Rebecca and it won the Oscar as best picture of 1940, so..." I don't fault you for making that mistake. I made it myself in a most awkward place--during an interview with Hitchcock himself in his office at Universal City. He quietly corrected me, saying "they gave it to somebody else that year." Because he was a very nice man, Hitch didn't add, "you peabrain!"
The "somebody else" who won in 1940 was John Ford, who got it for The Grapes of Wrath. Hitch didn't even get to take home the Oscar his picture won. The Best Picture trophy goes to the producer, who happened to be David O. Selznick.
Hitchcock was nominated for the directing Oscar five times: First in 1940 for Rebecca. Then in 1943 for Lifeboat, which most Hitch fans don't consider one of his best pictures. He lost that year to Michael Curtiz, whose Casblanca also won the Best Picture Oscar. Hitch was nominated again in 1945 for Spellbound, but lost to Billy Wilder, whose The Lost Weekend also won Best Picture. His fourth nomination came in 1954 for Rear Window, but he lost to Elia Kazan, whose On the Waterfront also won Best Picture. Finally, he was nominated in 1960 for Psycho--and lost again to Wilder, whose The Apartment also won Best Picture.
In other words, Hitch was one of those precious few directors whose film was considered best of the year, but his direction of it wasn't. How one of the greatest directors in movie history could fail to ever win an Oscar in competition with his peers is beyond me.
Though Hitchcock was making movies in 1926, before Hollywood started giving out Oscars, the Academy didn't start paying attention to him until he came to America to work just as World War II was getting started. Consequently, none of his films earned any nominations until Rebecca in 1940.
His last film, Family Plot, was released in 1976. If you count his Oscar years as being those between 1940-1976, then you'll see that his Oscar batting average was sort of minor league. His films earned only six Oscars in 30 years. When you think of the amazing durability of those films and all the great talents who worked for him to make them classics, that record is appalling. Here's the whole list:
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| 1. Rebecca: Best Picture of 1940 |
| 2. George Barnes: Cinematography for Rebecca. |
| 3. Joan Fontaine: Best Actress, 1941, for Suspicion. |
| 4. Miklos Rozsa: Best Musical Score, 1945, Spellbound. |
| 5. Robert Burks: Cinematog., 1955, To Catch A Thief |
| 6. Jay Livingston, Ray Evans: Best Song, 1956, "Whatever Will Be, Will Be" (Que Sera, Sera) from The Man Who Knew Too Much. |
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In the category of Oscar nominations, Hitchcock's films did much better, but that only underscores how infrequently the Academy voters actually favored his films with the real prizes.
Here's how they did in the major categories:
Best Picture: Only two other nominations after Rebecca--for Suspicion in 1941 and Spellbound in 1945. Neither his favorite among his films, Shadow of A Doubt, nor my favorite Hitchcock film, Strangers on A Train, were nominated.
Acting: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson all were nominated for Rebecca, but lost. Claude Rains earned a supporting nomination for Notorious in 1946 and Ethel Barrymore earned one in 1947 for The Paradine Case. The only other acting nomination went to Janet Leigh for Psycho in the supporting category.
Writing: Playwright Robert Sherwood and Joan Harrison were nominated for the Rebecca screenplay. Gordon McDonnel was nominated for the original story of Shadow of A Doubt in 1943. John Steinbeck was nominated for the original story of Lifeboat in 1944. Ben Hecht was nominated for his original screenplay for Notorious in 1946. John Michael Hayes earned a screenplay nomination for Rear Window in 1954. Ernest Lehman was nominated for the North by Northwest screenplay in 1959.
Music: Franz Waxman's scores for Rebecca and Suspicion both were nominated. Ironically, Bernard Hermann, who wrote so many memorable scores for Hitchcock, including Psycho, never was nominated for a Hitchcock film--but was nominated for Brian De Palma's 1976 Hitchcock-style homage, Obsession.
Cinematography: Before his 1955 win for To Catch A Thief, Robert Burks was nominated for Strangers on A Train (1951) and Rear Window (1954). Glen MacWilliams was nominated for Lifeboat (1944). After his win for Rebecca, George Barnes was nominated for Spellbound (1945). John L. Russell was nominated for Psycho (1960).
HOW DID Hitchcock wind up so overlooked by the Academy? I'm guessing he was hurt by being considered a "genre" director whose films weren't serious enough for the Academy members who favor stuff like Gandhi or The Life of Emile Zola. When I did my interview with him, I was still in college and he was editing Psycho for its upcoming premiere. Though he had many adherents who already knew he was perhaps the most brilliant of all instinctive filmmakers, his true genius hadn't really been pronounced enough by the right people. It took Francois Truffaut and the French New Wave to really make Americans aware of what a master of cinema we had working in our midst.
I'm also certain that Hitchcock's TV series, which was still wildly popular at the time of my interview, added to the notion that he wasn't a real "serious" director. After all, he went on TV and goofed around doing the introductions to his TV episodes. You didn't catch Robert Wise or Elia Kazan doing stuff like that.
But the public loved Hitchcock and his films--and they still flock to them in revivals, rent them and buy them by the hundreds of thousands each year--long after so many of the films by much more highly-regarded Oscar winners have been forgotten.
© 2001 by Ron Miller.
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You can contact Ron Miller with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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