Best Supporting Actor 1937: Results

5. H.B. Warner in Lost Horizon- Warner is perfectly fine in his role as the knowledgeable mysterious man, but it never makes a memorable impact on the film.

4. Roland Young in Topper- Young is okay throughout the film and except for an occasional moment here or there Young never finds just the right way to be a straight man.

3. Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Truth- Bellamy unlike Young does find the right way to be the straight man in his film, and gives a fairly enjoyable performance.

2. Joseph Schildkraut in The Life of Emile Zola- Schildkraut's role is exceedingly limited but he always does make an impact with his passionate and moving performance.

1. Thomas Mitchell in The Hurricane- Good prediction moviefilm. Mitchell wins this year, and yes my first five wins are shared among only two actors. Mitchell gives a strong performance where he is always an energetic, entertaining and charming presence as well as really brings the tragedy at the center of the film to life.

Deserving Performances:
Jean Hersholt in Heidi

Best Supporting Actor 1937: Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Turth

Ralph Bellamy received his only Oscar nomination for portraying Dan Leeson in The Awful Truth.

The Awful Truth tells about the madcap actions two soon to be divorced spouses Lucy and Jerry (Irene Dunne, Cary Grant) commit during their waiting period before the divorce is finalized.

Ralph Bellamy portrays Dan Leeson a man from Oklahoma visiting New York with his mother attempting to be a suitor to Lucy. Bellamy portrays himself as basically a straw man for Cary Grant to burn down, as Dan is just a man who can't keep up with Jerry's antics. He is a relatively simple man in his attempts to romance Lucy in a rather simple fashion. His simple ways, and simple methods just don't stand a chance in the face of Jerry's mad cap behavior. Bellamy portrays the part as he should as he makes Dan a likable straw man. Bellamy does bring a small simple charm fitting of the simple Dan.

Bellamy's whole point is to be sort of a straight man foil to the wackiness of Dunne and particularly Grant. In this end Bellamy is pretty good at it actually. He does not overplay the simpleness of his part, and the best comparison can be made is with Roland Young in Topper from this same year. Young failed to be that great of a straight man, because he played it a little too straight actually, but Bellamy knows how to balance the act to far greater effect. He is believable in his portrayal of that Dan is never in on the jokes of the film, but Bellamy manages to still get in on the humor of the film at the same time.

There is always just something funny about how out of his element Dan is. He really fits well in the mix of things as the wrong end of jokes between the characters. What makes Bellamy's performance work is because he always is quite earnest as Dan, he desperately does want a romance with Dunne's character, and he genuinely has no idea that everyone is making a bit of a fool of him. His dancing scene pretty much sums it up is all there to funny as he stumbles around the dance floor, yet Bellamy never for a minute shows that Dan thinks this is anything but some great dance moves he knows.

I would say my only problem with the performance is just how short lived is, he only has a few scenes and disappears far before the end of the film. I would say that I preferred Bellamy's performance as a very similar character in His Girl Friday but than again he was given far more to do in that film. Also He most certainly does not override either Dunne or Grant as the best part of the film by any means but he does serve his purpose well. Bellamy though is enjoyable whenever he was on screen though, and gives a performance that adds well to the film.

Best Supporting Actor 1937

And the Nominees Were:

Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Truth

Thomas Mitchell in The Hurricane

Joseph Schildkraut in The Life of Emile Zola

Roland Young in Topper

H.B. Warner in Lost Horizon

059. Sunrise at Campobello

059. (19 Feb) Sunrise at Campobello (1960, Vincent J. Donehue) 36



Vincent J. Donehue seems painfully reverential toward his Broadway staging of Sunrise at Campobello. FDR's battle against polio as he pursues politics is far less dramatically compelling than you'd think. The problem's amplified because the film very rarely feels cinematic, confining itself to flat-looking interiors while all the performers shamelessly chew the scenery.

Ralph Bellamy and Hume Cronyn are in especially bad form, boisterously enunciating like they're trying to be heard in the last row of the theater. Greer Garson seems more comfortable, though her voice and prosthetic teeth never seem less than gimmicky. She has a powerhouse crying scene at a pivotal point in the film, giving her an impressive Oscar clip in an otherwise middling performance.

The Art Direction and Costume Design nods are a bit strange (though some others from 1960 are as wacky) since this monochromatic 1920s look has rarely looked so dull. The Sound nomination is insane; there's almost nothing here beyond dialogue.

Picture Snatcher

I would imagine that most 1933 audiences found themselves mightily entertained by “Picture Snatcher.” It holds up very well today, as most 1930s James Cagney pictures do.

A lot of the credit goes to Cagney of course, that most dynamic of actors. But much of it has to with the Warner Bros. house style. It doesn’t let up for a minute and one scene leads logically to the next. Reliable director Lloyd Bacon sure knew how to keep things hopping.

Back in the 1930s when big cities like New York and Chicago had five, six or more daily papers the competition was fierce, and “Picture Snatcher” captures those days well. A flurry of bodies moving to and fro, the noise of the typesetters, editors barking into phones and drinking from bottles in the bottom desk drawer. If this wasn’t how newspapers were back then, it’s how they should have been.

In “Picture Snatcher”, Cagney plays Danny Kean, recently released from prison. He’s met by his old gang, but is determined this time to go straight. He goes to the Graphic News, the daily rag with the worst reputation in the city, to get a job. City Editor McLean (Ralph Bellamy) would like to give him a job, but can’t. Cagney decides to make them give him a job by getting a picture of a fireman who is holding off the cops, and the press, at bay in a burned out apartment building after the fireman found his wife and her lover in bed together. He torched the place and won’t come out.

Cagney succeeds in getting the interview in a very funny scene by pretending to be an insurance adjustor and getting an estimate on the damage. He gets the story and the picture, which nabs him a job on the Graphic News as a photographer, aka picture snatcher.

There’s really no plot, but a series of sequences where Cagney gets photos that the other news photographers can’t. One sequence, based on fact, has him sneaking a camera into an execution chamber and getting a photo just as the juice is turned on.

This being a 1930s Cagney picture, there has to be a doll to trade insults and kisses with and this time its not Joan Blondell, but Patricia Ellis, playing a college cutie who wants a job in journalism. She’s also the daughter of a cop who put Danny away years ago. The cop is played by Robert Emmett O’Connor, who played the befuddled cop in the Marx Bros. classic “A Night at the Opera” (1935) and he’s still befuddled here, thought less so. He likes Danny Kean and wants to see him go straight, but not with his daughter.

Alice White plays Bellamy’s girl who is not above batting her eyes at Danny. There’s a couple scenes where he slaps her around in the best Cagney style. Has any actor ever gotten away with smacking women around without losing sympathy as Cagney did? I don’t think so.

The film concludes with a mass gunfight when the police are out to get Jerry the Mug, an old comrade of Danny’s. (I like that name, Jerry the Mug. So gloriously Warner Brothers). Of course, he knows where Danny’s is holed up, and if Danny can sneak in, he can maybe get some photos of Jerry the Mug’s final minutes. The cops fire enough bullets into Jerry the Mug’s apartment for a small war. I’m not sure “The Longest Day” (1962) fired as many bullets as the cops do here.

I wonder if contemporary audiences would find the Danny Kean character unlikeable? He’ll do anything, or trick anyone, to get that front page photo. However, it’s likely Depression-era audiences, not knowing when the next bomb was going to drop, was cheering him on the whole way.

Rating for “Picture Snatcher”: Three stars.

Below the Sea

What movie was released in 1933 and featured Fay Wray threatened by a giant, monstrous creature? If you guessed “King Kong” you would be correct.

But if you guessed “Below the Sea” you would also be correct.

Produced by Columbia Pictures, “Below the Sea” is one of those long-forgotten gems that TCM has been showing of late, thanks to their acquisition of rights to air Columbia titles.

I had never heard of “Below the Sea” before, but thanks to TCM I got to see it. It was a lot of fun.

“Below the Sea” tells of an expedition to search for a sunken, gold-laden World War I German submarine seven years after the war. Ralph Bellamy, in rare leading man status, heads the expedition, quickly butting heads with the expedition’s financial backer, the delectable Ms. Wray. Of course, they take an instant dislike to each other, but we know that won’t last long.

The first eight minutes or so of the movie are very interesting, being set during World War I on the submarine. All the dialogue is in German and there are no sub-titles. That struck me as a pretty modern touch for a 1933 movie.

The submarine’s commander is also along for the expedition, to show them where the submarine sank, but you just know he’s up to no good.

The film’s climax is pretty darn exciting as Fay and a crewmember are trapped in a diving bell that is attacked by a giant octopus. Good special effects are on display here as one of the giant tentacles snaps the diving bell line, causing the diving bell to sink to the ocean floor. Not only that, but the diving bell’s oxygen supply is slowly running out. Bellamy puts on a diving suit to dive down and re-hook the bell line; hard to do when he’s also fighting the octopus with an acetylene torch. The big drawback to the scene is lack of music. Composer Max Steiner demonstrated in “King Kong” how effective music can be to make fight scenes more exciting, but no matter. It’s still a marvelous sequence, and I was pretty amazed to watch it unfold.

It left me to wonder how many other B movie gems are out there that haven’t been shown in decades. Thanks to TCM, we’re able to see some of these jewels.

“Below the Sea” won’t re-write the history of movies, but it’s a very pleasant way to spend 75 minutes.

Rating for “Below the Sea”: Two and a half stars.