The Oscar-winning Songs Countdown: 1958

A record was set in 1958, by the film with the most Orcar wins: 9. This record, however, was broken only a year later, by Ben Hur. Another record though, the film with the most Oscars and all of its nominations gained (9/9), wasn't tied until The Last Emperor 29 years later, and wasn't broken till Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (11/11) 45 years later. What did all three films have in common: no acting nominations. But more of that later. Let's begin our story at the beginning.

One of the most eagerly anticipated films of 1958 was Richard Brooks' version of Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof with its stellar cast - Paul Newman (Brick), Judith Anderson (Big Mama) and Burl Ives recreating his Broadway role as Big Daddy. In the role of Maggie was none other than Liz Taylor, who had just started filming when her husband, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash. MGM's publicity machine let it be known that Liz was acting with an unprecedented intensity, as a character who spends the whole movie begging her husband to have sex with her. But Taylor proved she didn't need studio publicity to attract attention - she created Hollywood's biggest scandal since the Ingrid Bergman-Roberto Rossellini affair.

The press was still portraying Liz as the grieving widow when she stopped in New York before heading on to Europe. Her constant companion there was singer Eddie Fisher, the best man at Liz and Todd's wedding. In fact, he and wife Debbie Reynolds named their son Todd, after Liz's husband. Their other child was Carrie Fisher.

After Cat On A Hot Tin Roof opened to great reviews for all involved, the paparazzi devoted even more attention to Taylor. When a Hollywood columnist asked Debbie Reynolds if something was going on, she replied: "Eddie and Liz are very good friends." Two days later, Reynolds announced her separation from Fisher and Liz canceled her European trip.

Taylor was no longer the widow Todd to journalists, but the-woman-you-love-to-hate. The National Association Of Theatre Owners had planned to name Taylor their Star of the Year, but changed their minds, explaining, "The movie industry is at the mercy of public opinion and to award Miss Taylor the honor at a time like this is out of the question."

The theatre owners decided to give their Star of the Year citation to Deborah Kerr, even though she, too, was involved in scandal. Her husband of many years, Tony Bartley, accused writer Peter Viertel of "enticing the affections" of his actress-wife. When they separated, the court awarded the father custody of the couple's two daughters. Kerr was heartbroken. She confessed to her Separate Tables' co-star, David Niven: "It's a good thing I'm playing a drab spinster role in this picture. I feel like one."

Separate Tables, based on a play by Terence Rattigan, was produced by the team that won the Best Picture for Marty 3 years before, while the director was Delbert Mann, who also won the Best Director Oscar for Marty. Contrary to Marty though, this film was star-studded. Except for Kerr and Niven (playing a pompous windbag who turns out to be a molester of women), there were also co-producer Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth as the tormented romantic ex-couple, Wendy Hiller as the hotel owner and Lancaster's current fiancee, and Gladys Cooper as a snobbish old crow. The critics approved, especially as far as the performances were concerned. In fact, David Niven received the Best Actor award from the New York Film Critics. The film's score, by David Raksin, was also noted:

... As well as the film's song, also called Separate Tables. Music: Harry Warren • Lyrics: Harold Adamson. Sung by Vic Damone:

In Some Came Running MGM had another movie starring gossip-column favorites. It was directed by prolific Vincente Minnelli (Judy Garland's ex-husband and Liza's father) and enacted by members of the town's ranking social club, the Rat Pack. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin got top billing, but the club's lone female member, Shirley MacLaine, got the notices. The Hollywwod Reporter felt that she "comes through with what is probably the most penetrating analysis of a good-hearted, hard-luck broad since Moll Flanders." Life magazine devoted a cover to her. The film's song, To Love and Be Loved • Music: Jimmy Van Heusen • Lyrics: Sammy Cahn was also favorably noticed.

Here's Frank Sinatra's version:

Warner's big Christmas release featured another good-hearted broad. She was higher up the social scale but no less uninhibited - Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame. Time magazine raved about "Rozamatazz" and the New York Herald Tribune admitted, "Nothing can really daunt the flamboyant Miss Russell." The film went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year.

Four-time Oscar loser Susan Hayward was seriously in the running this year, for her performance as a murderess in I Want To Live. The film graphically depicted her gas chamber execution - although the filmmakers maintained her innocense - and condemned capital punishment. The film had a major supporter in the shape of French celebrated existentialist author, Albert Camus. He said: "The story had to be told to the whole world; the world should see it and hear it. The day will come when such documents will seem to us to refer to prehistoric times and we shall consider them as unbelievable as we now find it unbelievable that in earlier centuries witches were burned or thieves had their right hands cut off." People still viewed the  future with hope then...

The film critics agreed. The New York Times' Bosley Crowther cried: "She had never done anything so vivid or shattering." The others agreed: Hayward won the Best Actress Award from the New York Film Critics.

The big winner of the New York Film Critics was, however, another film: Stanley Kramer powerful drama, The Defiant Ones, won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It also won the Writers Guild of America award, the Golden Globe for Best Picture-Drama, the Motion Picture Sound Editors award, while Sidney Poitier won the Best Actor award at the Baftas as well as at the Berlin Film Festival. The film was a plea for racial tolerance using the plot device of two escaped convicts - one black (Sidney Poitier), the other a white bigot (Tony Curtis) - handcuffed together.

The winning authors of The Defiant Ones were Harold J. Smith and Nathan E. Douglas, the latter a pseudonym for a blacklisted author named Ned Young. According to the Academy anti-Communist rule, the "Douglas" name could not be on the ballot, although his "clean" collaborator's could. "A lot of people on the Board are unhappy about it," whispered an unnamed Academy governor to Daily Variety. "The climate has changed a little. People realize how absurd this rule is." Six weeks before the nominations were released, the Academy announced it was revoking the law because "experience has proven the bylaw to be unworkable." Hedda Hopper was upset and wrote, "Since our Academy now makes it legal for Commie writers to receive Oscars, some past winners, who are bitter about this as I, tell me they'll return theirs." Nobody did.

Defying The Defiant Ones' claim on Oscar was Arthur Freed's musical production of Gigi, boasting the best credits that MGM's money could buy: with music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics and screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, designed by Cecil Beaton (all three fresh from their 1956 Broadway triumph, My Fair Lady), directed by Vincente Minnelli, and starring Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier. MGM treated the movie like a Broadway show and opened it in a legitimate theater on the Great White Way - the Royal - where it ran for six months and then moved on to a regular movie theater for close to a year.

The score was orchestrated by André Previn:

There were at least three Oscar-worthy songs. (Music: Frederick Loewe • Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner)

The song named after the movie's titular character, Gigi:

The naughty Thank Heaven for Little Girls:

Finally, my favorite film song of that year, the duet I Remember It Well. The extraordinarily witty and intelligent lyrics are about the different ways men and women recount important moments in their lives. She remembers every single detail of that night, He just remembers how beautiful she looked and how happy he was to be with her. Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold are killing it.

The Nominations

MGM's handling of Gigi paid off: the film received 9 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Costumes, Cinematography, Editing, Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Song). Surprisingly, none of the actors were nominated. Also surprisingly, for a multi-nominated musical, it was left without a Best Sound nomination.

The Defiant Ones also had a very strong showing: it also received 9 nominations (Best Picture, Director, 2 Actor nominations (Poitier, Curtis), Supporting Actor (Theodore Bikel), Supporting Actress (Cara Williams), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing).

Separate Tables received 7 nominations, but not for its director. (Best Picture, Actor (Niven), Actress (Kerr), Supporting Actress (Hiller), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Scoring for a Dramatic or Comedy Picture).

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof received 6 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor (Newman), Actress (Taylor), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography).

Auntie Mame also received 6 nominations (Best Picture, Actress (Russell), Supporting Actress (Peggy Cass), Art Direction, Editing, Cinematography).

I Want To Live also received 6 nominations, but not for Best Picture (Best Director, Actress (Hayward), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Sound).

Except for Minnelli, Kramer, Brooks, and Robert Wise (for I Want To Live) the fifth director-nominee was Mark Robson, for the Ingrid Bergman-starring exotic adventure, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

In the Best Actor category, except for Newman, Niven, Poitier, and Curtis we had Oscar perennial Spencer Tracy (his 6th nomination, on his way to 9) for the interesting adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

In the Best Actress category, except for Hayward, Russell, Taylor, and Kerr we had MacLaine for Some Came Running.

In the Best Supporting Actor category, except for Bikel we had Arthur Kennedy for Some Came Running, Burl Ives (not for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof but for a Western starring Gregory Peck called The Big Country), Gig Young (for Teacher's Pet, a romantic comedy that improbably paired Clark Gable with Doris Day), and Lee J. Cobb (for the Hollywood adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, starring Yul Brynner).

In the Best Supporting Actress category, except for Williams, Cass and Hiller we had Martha Hyer for Some Came Running, and Maureen Stapleton for the Montgomery Clift vehicle, Lonelyhearts.

Two movies that are among the best of all time didn't do all that well: Orson Welles' masterful A Touch Of Evil received no nominations, while Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the Best Movie of All-Time according to the recent international film critics' poll, had to be content with two minor nominations: Art Direction and Sound.

The nominations for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture were:

Separate Tables, score by David Raksin (see above).

The Old Man and the Sea, score by Dimitri Tiomkin:

The Big Country, score by Jerome Moross:

The Young Lions, a war film starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, and Maximilian Schell, score by Hugo Friedhofer:

White Wilderness, a Disney documentary about suicidal lemmings, score by Oliver Wallace:

The nominations for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture were:

André Previn for Gigi (see above).

Alfred Newman and Ken Darby for the Rodgers-Hammerstein smash hit musical, South Pacific:

Ray Heindorf for the Adler-Ross musical, Damn Yankees!:

Lionel Newman for the Fain- Webster musical, Mardi Gras:

Finally, Yuri Faier and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky for a filmed collage of performances by The Bolshoi Ballet. Here's the whole film:

What about the Best Song category? One song from Gigi was nominated, but it was the wrong song. However cute, the title song does not compare with I Remember It Well. Gigi should ideally have received three song nominations. Oh, well...

The song from Separate Tables wasn't nominated, but the song from Some Came Running was. We've heard this, as well as Gigi, so let's listen to the rest:

A Very Precious Love, from Marjorie Morningstar • Music: Sammy Fain • Lyrics: Paul Francis Webster. Sung by Gene Kelly:

Here's the Ames Brothers' version:

A Certain Smile, from A Certain Smile • Music: Sammy Fain • Lyrics: Paul Francis Webster. Sung by Johnny Mathis:

Almost in Your Arms from Houseboat • Music: Jerry Livingston • Lyrics: Ray Evans. Sung by Sam Cooke:

What about eligible songs that were left out? We've already heard the two from Gigi, as well as Separate Tables. Here are two more:

Hard Headed Woman, from King Creole • Music and lyrics: Claude De Metrius. Sung by Elvis Presley:

Teacher's Pet • Music and lyrics: Joe Lubin. Sung by Doris Day:

The Winners

It was a landslide for Gigi: it won all nine of its nominations, setting a new all-time record. (Previously Gone With the Wind, From Here To Eternity, and On The Waterfront had eight Oscar wins each). As for the perfect score, the 100% wins/nominations percentage, we have to go as far back as 1934 and It Happened One Night, which won five Oscars out of five nominations.

Separate Tables managed two acting wins (Niven and Hiller). Best Actress went to Hayward and Supporting Actor went to Ives. The Defiant Ones got Best Original Screenplay and Black & White Cinematography. Best Sound went to South Pacific. Best Special effects went to Tom Thumb. White Wilderness won Best Documentary, while the Jacques Tati comedy Mon Oncle brought the Best Foreign Film award to France.

The Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture Oscar, naturally went to Previn for Gigi, while the Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture went to Tiomkin for The Old Man and the Sea. Although The Big Country was a big contender, one can't argue with a Tiomkin win. Finally, the Best Song Oscar went to Gigi. I was very glad that the wonderful songwriting team of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner won Oscars, but I would be so much happier if they did so with I Remember It Well. That's the only reason that Gigi is relatively low in my list.