Directors with the (Oscar) Golden Touch, and More Questions
Clint Eastwood courtesy Warner Bros.
What does Prison Break owe Sometime a Great Notion, and more questions.
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in
Movie Talk!
Question: I was wondering which director has "coached" the most actors to Oscar nominations and/or wins? I'm thinking it's Clint Eastwood. - Diane
FlickChick: Nowhere near. Five actors have earned best actor/actress Oscar recognition after appearing in
Clint Eastwood movies:
Hilary Swank won for
Million Dollar Baby and
Sean Penn and
Tim Robbins for
Mystic River, respectively.
Marcia Gay Harden and
Meryl Streep were nominated for
Mystic River and
The Bridges of Madison County. In addition, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman won supporting Oscars for
Unforgiven and
Million Dollar Baby.
That's a nice track record, but pales next to that of
William Wyler, whose collaborators racked up a whopping total of 36 acting nominations, some of them - notably
Bette Davis - for more than one film. The winners are bracketed by Walter Brennan in
Come and Get It (1936) and
Barbra Streisand in
Funny Girl (1968). In between, these actors all walked away with Oscar statuettes for performances Wyler directed: Davis and
Fay Bainter for
Jezebel (1938), Brennan for
The Westerner (1940),
Greer Garson and
Teresa Wright for
Mrs. Miniver (1942),
Fredric March and
Harold Russell for
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946),
Olivia de Havilland for
The Heiress (1949),
Audrey Hepburn for
Roman Holiday(1953), Burl Ives for
The Big Country (1958), and
Charlton Heston and
Hugh Griffith for
Ben-Hur (1959).
The nominees were
Walter Huston and
Maria Ouspenskaya for
Dodsworth (1936),
Bonita Granville for
These Three (1936),
Claire Trevor for
Dead End (1939),
Laurence Olivier and
Geraldine Fitzgerald for
Wuthering Heights (1939), Davis and
James Stephenson for
The Letter (1940), Davis,
Patricia Collinge and Wright for
The Little Foxes (1941),
Walter Pidgeon,
Henry Travers and
Dame May Whitty for
Mrs. Miniver (1942),
Ralph Richardson for
The Heiress (1949),
Eleanor Parker and
Lee Grant for
Detective Story (1951),
Eddie Albert for
Roman Holiday (1953),
Anthony Perkins for
Friendly Persuasion (1956), Bainter for
The Children's Hour (1961, a remake of These Three),
Samantha Eggar in
The Collector (1965) and
Kay Medford for
Funny Girl.
To be fair, Wyler was the product of another time: Filmmakers - in front of and behind the camera - worked constantly, sometimes making two or three films a year. They had a lot more shots at hitting the golden combination of great script, great cast and whatever that ineluctable something is that makes everything come together than even the most prolific members of today's Hollywood community, who can go years between realized projects. That said, the sheer variety of Wyler's work - his good work, films that got their stars noticed - is pretty astonishing. Actors won and were nominated for their work in Wyler Westerns, melodramas, thrillers, romantic comedies, crime pictures and historical epics.
Elia Kazan, who specialized in socially conscious dramas, guided his actors to 24 and one-third nominations and nine and one-third wins: James Dunn for
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Celeste Holm for
Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter for
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Anthony Quinn for Viva Zapata (1952), Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint for
On the Waterfront (1954) and Jo Van Fleet for
East of Eden (1955) - plus child actress Peggy Ann Garner's special juvenile Oscar (a half-sized statuette the Academy no longer gives out) for her work in three 1945 films, including
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
George Cukor, another golden-age generalist, directed actors to 21 nominations and five wins:
James Stewart for
The Philadelphia Story (1940),
Ingrid Bergman for
Gaslight (1944), Ronald
Colman for
A Double Life (1947),
Judy Holliday for
Born Yesterday (1950) and
Rex Harrison for
My Fair Lady (1964). Interestingly, Cukor was famous as a women's director, but the men in his films fared just as well when Oscar time rolled around.
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Question: I don't know if I'm making this up, but I have a movie in my head that came out in the 1980s/90s about a societal role reversal where African Americans were the majority. Was this a real movie, or am I delusional? - Lauren
FlickChick: Rest assured, Lauren, you're not delusional. The movie you're thinking of is writer-director
Desmond Nakano's
White Man's Burden (1995), a
Twilight Zone-ish parable about racism starring
John Travolta and
Harry Belafonte.
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Question: I was watching
Prison Break on DVD, and in the scene where Sucre gets trapped under a log in a river as the water rises around him reminded me of a movie I saw part of on TV when I was a kid. The only thing I remember is Paul Newman - I think, but not sure - is trapped the same way in a river or lake and is slowly going under the water. Does this sound familiar? - Karen
FlickChick: You're on the right track. The movie you saw was
Sometimes a Great Notion (1971), a drama about a logging family in the Pacific Northwest.
Paul Newman starred and also directed most of the film, taking over mid-production from
Richard Colla. But it's actually
Richard Jaeckel, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Newman's brother, who gets trapped under a log in a rising river. Unlike Sucre, Jaeckel's character drowns despite his brother's desperate efforts to save him, and the scene is often referred to as one of the great deaths in movie history.
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
