The Oscar-winning Songs Countdown: 1941

Many interesting things happened in the 1941 Oscar race: the boy genius who made what is considered by many as the best movie of all-time fought against the Hollywood system - and lost. The most famous Hollywood sibling feud originated here. Bette Davis tried to bring the common people to the Oscars - and failed. There was a controversy over the Best Song Winner. And it was also the year that the US joined World War II.

Bette Davis was the recently elected Academy president when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She proposed that instead of the usual glitter and pomp, the Oscar ceremony should take place in a theater and be open to the public. She suggested that Rosalind Russell, a whiz at arranging charity events, be in charge of the procedings, with the money earned from the tickets going to the British War Relief. The Board of Governors sat in stunned silence. Finally, former Academy president Walter Wanger asked: "What have you got against the Academy, Bette?"

Bette insisted,  but still the Academy wouldn't go along with her idea to invite the public to the party. Rumors began to circulate that Davis was about to resign in protest and Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century-Fox told the actress: "If you resign, you'll never work in this town again." Now, if it's one thing I know, you don't threaten Bette Davis. The feisty rebel disregarded the threat and duly offered her resignation. She was temporarily replaced by her predecessor.

As well as being Academy president, Davis also had two movies in the Oscar mix. The Little Foxes was based on Lillian Hellman's celebrated play, that starred the legendary Tallulah Bankhead and ran for 410 performances on Broadway. Tallulah was incensed that Bette was given the part of Regina Giddens, as she believed that it rightfully belonged to her. However, Bette made the role her own. Assisted by her favorite director, the masterful William Wyler, who had already directed her to great success (and an Oscar) in Jezebel and The Letter.

Four members of the original Broadway cast repeated their roles in the film: Dan Duryea, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid, and Patricia Collinge. They were joined by Davis' regular co-star, Herbert Marshall, and by a young actress in her first role ever, Teresa Wright. The film was a hit and the reviews were great. Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times: "Thus the test of the picture is the effectiveness with which it exposes a family of evil people poisoning everything they touch. And this it does spectacularly. Mr. Wyler, with the aid of Gregg Toland, has used the camera to sweep in the myriad small details of a mauve decadent household and the more indicative facets of the many characters. The focus is sharp, the texture of the images hard and realistic." As for Bette, he says: "And Miss Davis's performance in the role which Talluluh Bankhead played so brassily on the stage is abundant with color and mood."

The other Davis' vehicle was a drama called The Great Lie, where Davis has to fight for the affection of George Brent with Mary Astor. Davis' gave a solid performance as usual, but it was Hollywood veteran Mary Astor, who had been making movies since 1921, that received the most attention.

Mary Astor would also star in a film that would soon become an all-time classic, a movie that practically invented the Film Noir genre. It was also the movie that made Humphrey Bogart an a-list star and John Huston a renowned filmmaker: The Maltese Falcon. Based on the novel written by Dashiell Hammett (Lillian Hellman's lifelong partner), the film presented the public with a world where the hero was more cynical than virtuous, and the rest of the characters were non-redeemable low-life motivated by their flaws.

John Huston, son of famous actor Walter Huston (and father to Anjelica), began performing on stage with his vaudevillian father at age 3.  A frail and sickly child, he was once placed in a sanitarium due to both an enlarged heart and kidney ailment. Making a miraculous recovery, he quit school at age 14 to become a full-fledged boxer and eventually won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California, winning 22 of 25 bouts. His trademark broken nose was the result of that robust activity.

John married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and also took his first professional stage bow with a leading role off-Broadway entitled "The Triumph of the Egg." He made his Broadway debut that same year with "Ruint". John soon grew restless with the confines of both his marriage and acting and abandoned both, taking a sojourn to Mexico where he became an officer in the cavalry and expert horseman while writing plays on the sly. Trying to control his wanderlust urges, he subsequently returned to America and attempted newspaper and magazine reporting work in New York by submitting short stories.

During this time he also appeared unbilled in a few obligatory films. By 1932 John was on the move again and left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching. The promising artist became a homeless beggar during one harrowing point.

Returning again to America in 1933, John made a new resolve to hone in on his obvious writing skills and began collaborating on a few scripts for Warner Brothers. Warners was so impressed with his talents that he was signed on as both screenwriter and director for The Maltese Falcon. It was the first film that he ever directed. His father, already an established Hollywood leading man, did an uncredited cameo as a good luck gesture for his son.

Walter Huston's big role for 1941 was, however, that of the devil in The Devil and Daniel Webster aka All That Money Can Buy. Huston’s exceptional performance as an impish, ebullient Mephistophelian figure, whose roguishly expressive features and gestures somehow manage to be disarming and sinister at the same time was applauded, giving him the National Board of Review award for Best Acting.

The big story of the year came from another first-time director: RKO was hurting for money and it couldn't attract the top names in Hollywood because it couldn't afford them. So the studio began to hunt for new talent. It didn't take long for the company to find twenty-five-year-old Orson Welles; in fact, it would have been hard to overlook him. The young man had already made history with the Mercury Theatre broadcast of The War Of The Worlds on Halloween night, 1938. Luckily for RKO, the Mercury Theatre was short on funds, and Welles consented to come to Hollywood to make a movie.

For his film debut, Welles settled on a script by Herman J. Mankiewicz about an eccentric publishing tycoon, and recruited actors from the Mercury Theatre to interpret it. RKO gave him total artistic control because, after all, how much trouble could the tyro get into on such a small budget?

Gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who was employed by William Randolph Hearst, was originally supportive of Orson Welles. After all, they both came from neighboring towns, and Louella had known his family: "I was delighted to give a boost to a local boy made good." Then she heard that his film was about Hearst. She called and asked him: "Take my word for it," he said, "it isn't. It's about a completely fictional publisher."

"I took his words, and so informed the Hearst editors... Then Orson pulled one of the classic double crosses of Hollywood. He arranged for Hedda Hopper to see parts of the picture."

Hedda, Louella's nemesis, couldn't wait to get on the phone to tell Hearst that Louella hadn't told him the truth, Citizen Kane was indeed about him... As Louella boasts in her autobiography: "I believe I have carried only one grudge for any length of time and that was against Orson Welles."

When Hearst had realized that a lawsuit against RKO would be groundless, he retaliated by ordering his publications to omit all references to RKO and its films. He also let it be known that he wouldn't look too favorably upon any theater chains that saw fit to book Citizen Kane; subsequently, the major theater chains told RKO they wanted nothing to do with the movie. He then offered RKO to pay for the production cost himself and throw in a bonus of several thousand dollars, if the studio would burn the negative of the film. RKO said no.

Meanwhile, Orson Welles was busy alienating people in Hollywood. He wanted to take Mankiewicz's name off the film's writing credits and keep only his (he failed). He called film producers "stupid" and scoffed at Gone With The Wind.

When Citizen Kane premiered in New York at an independently owned venue, the press (not owned by Hearst) raved: "The interlocking jigsaw puzzle of human personalities and their relationships to each other simply doesn't appear in other American motion pictures. Citizen Kane has the field to itself." Sidney Skolsky wrote that "William Wyler, Leo McCarey and other great directors claimed that Welles, in his first effort, had given them all lessons." But Welles biggest booster in Hollywood was Louella's rival, Hedda Hopper, who went right ahead with her six-part radio program glorifying Welles' life and accomplishments. Though a cause célèbre, Citizen Kane was a failure to Hollywood's way of thinking - it didn't make money.

What was making money was Sergeant York, a patriotic tribute to a hillbilly sharpshooter who became one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI despite being a pacifist, when he single-handedly attacked and captured a German position. The real-life Sergeant Alvin York insisted on Gary Cooper portraying him when he sold the film rights to his life - and he got his wish. The War Veterans were so moved by the film, that they gave Cooper their "Distinguished Citizenship Medal."

When he wasn't shooting Germans onscreen, Cooper was romping with Barbara Stanwyck in two other hits, Frank Capra's Meet John Doe and Howard Hawks' Ball Of Fire. Stanwyck also scored with Henry Fonda in Preston Sturges' sex farce The Lady Eve. Daily Variety commented: "The Hollywood contingent is already nominating Stanwyck for a 1941 Oscar."

Stanwyck was indeed a betting favorite for a Best Actress nomination. The other possible nominees were Bette Davis for The Little Foxes, Joan Crawford as an ugly crook who reforms after having her face remodeled in A Woman's Face, Greer Garson as a woman who opens up an orphanage in Blossoms In The Dust, and Olivia de Havilland as a plain spinster who ends up with Charles Boyer in Hold Back the Dawn.

At literally the last minute, Olivia's sister, Joan Fontaine, also found herself a Best Actress favorite for Suspicion, in which she played her second shy Hitchcock heroine. The movie was not scheduled to play Los Angeles until late January, but after Fontaine won the New York Film Critics prize, RKO wised up and got Suspicion into the Pantages theater for one day, the last day of Oscar eligibility. Which meant that now Fontaine figured heavily in the Oscar race, especially since the general concensus was that the previous year she unjustly lost the Oscar for her performance in Rebecca to Ginger Rogers. Fontaine's partner in Suspicion was Cary Grant, the actor with the great comic timing, once again impressive, succeding in keeping us guessing about his character's true nature until the very end of the film. Grant also had another film in 1941 and there was certainly no comedy in it: Penny Serenade partnered Grant with another master of comic timing, Irene Dunne. It was a true tear jerker, about a couple falling apart after losing their child. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote: "But some very credible acting on the part of Mr. Grant and Miss Dunne is responsible in the main for the infectious quality of the film."

The New York Film Critics threw another curve ball in the Oscar game. They chose Citizen Kane for Best Picture, but passed over Welles for Best Director. They chose instead their old favorite, John Ford, who won his fourth New York Film Critics award for Fox's expensive family drama set in a Welsh mining town, How Green Was My Valley, which Zanuck had intentionally opened on the last day of Oscar eligibility in order to keep it fresh in Academy members' minds. The movie was also the biggest grossing film of 1941. The New York Film Critics gave their Best Actor award to Gary Cooper for Sergeant York.

Columbia's horse in the Oscar Race was a fantasy / comedy called Here Comes Mr. Jordan. It was originally to be titled Heaven Can Wait, which was the title used by Warren Beatty for his very successful 1978 remake. Which caused some confusion, because the title Heaven Can Wait was also used in 1943 for an entirely different Ernst Lubitsch movie.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan starred Robert Montgomery and was supported by very able character actors: Claude Rains, James Gleason, and Edward Everett Horton all shone in their parts. The film smashed it at the box-office.

The Nominations

There were 10 Best Picture nominees, and most of the ones expected to make it, got in; leading the pack with 11 nominations was Sergeant York: Best Picture, Director (Howard Hawks), Actor (Cooper), Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan), Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Sound, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Max Steiner).

Next came How Green Was My Valley with 10 nominations: Best Picture, Director (Ford), Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Sound, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Alfred Newman).

Citizen Kane was there, despite Hearst's war, with 9 nominations: Best Picture, Director (Welles), Actor (Welles), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Sound, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Bernard Herrmann).

The Little Foxes also had 9 nominations: Best Picture, Director (Wyler), Actress (Davis), two nominations for Supporting Actress (Wright, Collinge), Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Editing, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Meredith Willson).

Next up, with 7 nominations, was Here Comes Mr. Jordan: Best Picture, Director (Alexander Hall), Actor (Montgomery), Supporting Actor (Gleason), Adapted Screenplay, Story, Cinematography.

The directors of the five movies above complete the Best Director category.

Hold Back the Dawn had 6 nominations: Best Picture, Actress (de Havilland), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Victor Young). I could only find Bert Kaempfert's version, so here it is:

Blossoms In The Dust had 4 nominations: Best Picture, Actress (Garson), Cinematography, and Art Direction.

The Maltese Falcon had 3 nominations: Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Sydney Greenstreet, a British stage actor, in his first film part, at 61-years-old), and Adapted Screenplay (Huston).

Suspicion also had 3 nominations: Best Picture, Actress (Fontaine), and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Franz Waxman).

The tenth Best Picture nominee was One Foot in Heaven, an episodic look at the life of a minister (Fredric March) and his family as they move from one parish to another. It was the film's only nomination.

In the Best Actor category, joining Cooper, Welles, and Montgomery were Cary Grant for Penny Serenade (the film's only nomination), and Walter Huston for The Devil and Daniel Webster, which also had one more nomination for Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Bernard Herrmann's second nomination for 1941).

Fontaine did join her sister de Havilland in the Best Actress race, along with Davis and Garson. Crawford was out, and Stanwyck was in for Ball of Fire, which was also nominated for Story, Sound, and Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (a second 1941 nomination for Alfred Newman).

Walter Brennan's fellow nominees in the Supporting Actor race were concerned that Brennan had already collected 3 Oscars out of 3 nominations in the 5-year-existence of the Supporting Award. They were Crisp, Gleason, Greenstreet, and Charles Coburn for The Devil And Miss Jones, a comedy starring Jean Arthur, which also received an Original Screenplay nomination.

Allgood, Wycherly, Collinge, and Wright were joined (in the Supporting Actress category) by Mary Astor for The Great Lie.

We've already met Franz Waxman, nominated for Best Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture for Suspicion. He competed against himself with the score of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner remake, which was also nominated for Cinematography and Editing.

The category Best Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture had 20 (!!!) nominees that year. We've already presented Sergeant York, How Green Was My Valley, Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes, Hold Back the Dawn, Suspicion, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Ball of Fire, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Before presenting the rest of the nominees, let me just note that in the recent international film critics poll Vertigo and Citizen Kane were voted best and second-best movie of all-time respectively. The music in both was written by Bernard Herrmann. Also, let's not forget his definitive score for Psycho.

Here are the rest of the nominees (accompanied by excerpts, when available):

Sundown, original score by Miklós Rózsa:

Lydia, original score also by Miklós Rózsa:

That Uncertain Feeling, original score by Werner R. Heymann:

King of the Zombies, original score by Edward J. Kay:

Ladies in Retirement, original score by Morris Stoloff, Ernst Toch:

So Ends Our Night, original score by Louis Gruenberg:

Back Street, original score by Frank Skinner.

Cheers for Miss Bishop, original score by Edward Ward.

Mercy Island, original score by Cy Feuer, Walter Scharf.

Tanks a Million, original score by Edward Ward.

This Woman Is Mine, original score by Richard Hageman.

The category Best Music: Scoring of a Musical Picture had "only" 10 nominees. These were:

Dumbo, score by Frank Churchill, Oliver Wallace:

All-American Co-Ed, score by Edward Ward:

Birth of the Blues, score by Robert Emmett Dolan:

Buck Privates, score by Charles Previn:

The Chocolate Soldier, score by Herbert Stothart, Bronislau Kaper:

Ice-Capades, score by Cy Feuer:

The Strawberry Blonde, score by Heinz Roemheld:

Sun Valley Serenade, score by Emil Newman:

You'll Never Get Rich, score by Morris Stoloff:

The tenth nominee was Sunny, score by Anthony Collins.

Which were the Best Song nominees? They were the following nine:

The Last Time I Saw Paris from Lady Be Good • Music: Jerome Kern • Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II. Sung by Ann Sothern.

Here's a cover version by Julie Andrews in 1973:

Blues in the Night from Blues in the Night • Music: Harold Arlen • Lyrics: Johnny Mercer. Sung by William Gillespie.

Here's a cover version by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald:

... And here's a cover version by a contemporary great voice: Katie Melua.

Chattanooga Choo Choo from Sun Valley Serenade • Music: Harry Warren • Lyrics: Mack Gordon. Performed by Glenn Miller And His Orchestra, and sung by Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, The Modernaires, Dorothy Dandridge & the Nicholas Bros .

Here's a cover version by the great Carmen Miranda:

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Buck Privates • Music: Hugh Prince • Lyrics: Don Raye. Sung by the Andrews Sisters.

Here's the most successful recent version, by the inimitable Bette Midler.

... Because I can't get enough of the Divine Miss M's panache, here she is in another gaudy and wonderful choreography:

Baby Mine from Dumbo • Music: Frank Churchill • Lyrics: Ned Washington. Sung by Betty Noyes.

Here's a great cover version by Alison Krauss.

Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye from You'll Never Get Rich • Music and lyrics: Cole Porter. Sung by the Four Tones.

Here's a cover version by Wilfried Van den Brande & Dirk Baert:

Dolores from Las Vegas Nights • Music: Louis Alter • Lyrics: Frank Loesser. By Tommy Dorsey & his Orchestra, vocal by Frank Sinatra and The Pied Pipers.

Here's the cover version by Bing Crosby with The Merry Macs and Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats, which reached #2 in the US singles chart.

Be Honest With Me from Ridin' on a Rainbow • Music and lyrics: Gene Autry & Fred Rose. Sung by Gene Autry.

Out of the Silence from All-American Co-Ed • Music and lyrics: Lloyd B. Norlin. Sung by Frances Langford.

My favorite of these are Blues In The Night, with Chattanooga Choo Choo a close second. Then, practically in a tie, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Baby Mine, to be followed by The Last Time I Saw Paris and Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye.

The Winners

The biggest excitement of the ceremony was over the competing siblings. As Harold Heffernan noted: "1,600 sets of eyes shifted curiously from the entertainment above to the sisterly drama below." Convinced that one of the two sisters would win, the other nominees stayed at home... They were right. The winner was Fontaine. A reporter for Life magazine heard Olivia whisper to her friends: "If Suspicion had been delayed just a little, I might have won..."

Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar, as expected. The film was also awarded for Best Editing. Brennan wasn't named Best Supporting Actor for the fourth time; the honor went to Donald Crisp for How Green Was My Valley. The film also won Best Black and White Cinematography and Art Direction. The Color Cinematography went to the Tyrone Power/Linda Darnell/Rita Hayworth bullfight drama Blood And Sand, while the Color Art Direction award went to Blossoms In The Dust.

The Great Lie managed to win its only nomination, Supporting Actress for Mary Astor. Here Comes Mr. Jordan won both Adapted Screenplay and Story, while Best Sound went to That Hamilton Woman, in which real life husband and wife Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh portrayed real-life lovers Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton. Best Special Effects went to I Wanted Wings, a film about the training and personal lives of three recruits in the Army Air Corps.

It was, however, Walt Disney's night: he won the cartoon award - for the tenth time - and Dumbo won the Award for Best Music: Scoring of a Musical Picture. There were more Oscars to come for Disney; Fantasia, although it was a box-office flop, received two special awards, while Disney was also the receiver of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. Disney began weeping during his acceptance speech for the latter.

The winner for Best Music: Scoring of a Dramatic Picture rightfully was Bernard Herrmann for The Devil and Daniel Webster. When The Last Time I Saw Paris was awarded the Best Song Oscar, some of the losing songwriters complained that the song shouldn't have been eligible, since it wasn't written expressly for a movie; the song had been publisshed in 1940. Even its composer, Jerome Kern, had questioned its qualifying for an Academy Award and said he had voted for Blues In The Night. Daily Variety theorized that the extras, who could once again vote for Best Song, had been responsible for electing the popular ballad.

The Original Screenplay Award went to Citizen Kane, however both writers were absent from the ceremony: Welles was in South American location-scouting, while Mankiewicz had stayed home because, as his wife later said: "He did not want to be humiliated." This, unfortunately, was the only Oscar for Citizen Kane. The two big awards of the evening, Best Picture and Director, went to How Green Was My Valley. It was John Ford's third Best Director Oscar, equalling Frank Capra's record. 21 years later he would receive a fourth. No other director has ever received four Oscars for his craft. The Daily Variety blamed this to the extras as well: "The extras took care of him (Orson Welles) - to vent their wrath or their distaste of him. To them a genius is someone who can't be a good guy."

For producer Darryl Zanuck, this was his first Best Picture Oscar. He was rather surprised and said: "When I think of what I got away with... and won the Academy Award with this picture, it is really astonishing. Not only did we drop five or six characters, we eliminated the most controversial element in the book, which was the labor-and-capital battle in connection with the strike."