Best Picture Winners and Some They Beat: 1935-1964 Quiz

Answer: Top Hat

"Mutiny on the Bounty" was based on a true story from the late eighteenth century. It starred Charles Laughton as Captain William Bligh of the Royal Navy, whose ship, The Bounty, was subject to a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian (played by Clark Gable). In the middle was Midshipman Roger Byam, played by Franchot Tone. All three were nominated for Best Actor, but missed out to Victor McLaglen in "The Informer".

Also nominated that year, "Top Hat"'s plot of mistaken identity and confusion was a perfect vehicle for Astaire and Rogers' song and dance numbers such as "Isn't This a Lovely Day?" and "Cheek to Cheek" by the great Irving Berlin.

Other movies nominated in 1935 included "David Copperfield", starring W. C. Fields, and "Captain Blood", starring Errol Flynn, who had appeared in an earlier film treatment of the story of The Bounty in 1933.

Answer: The Awful Truth

"The Life of Emile Zola" was a film biography of the great nineteenth century French novelist and campaigner. Paul Muni played the title role and the movie was directed by William Dieterle. It told the story of Zola's life from struggling in a garret with Paul Cezanne, through to his hard-hitting stories of the underbelly of French society. It featured Zola's brave campaign to clear the name of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, who had been convicted of treason and imprisoned on Devil's Island. Despite this being a notorious example in the history of antisemitism, it is noticeable that no reference was made to Dreyfus's Jewishness in the movie.

"The Awful Truth" is a screwball comedy about a married couple set on divorce due to mutual distrust, who proceed to sabotage each other's attempts to find romance elsewhere, and end up reconciling in the nick of time. Director Leo McCarey won an Academy Award. Irene Dunne, some say Grant's best movie partner, with whom he made two further movies, as the wife, and Ralph Bellamy as her new love interest, were both nominated for Oscars. Cary Grant, the husband, missed out on Academy recognition. Mind you, the competition that year was fierce: Spencer Tracy ("Captains Courageous") won ahead of Paul Muni ("The Life of Emile Zola"), Fredric March ("A Star Is Born"), Charles Boyer ("Conquest") and Robert Montgomery ("Night Must Fall").

Other 1937 Best Picture nominations included: "Lost Horizon" and "A Star is Born".

Answer: The Wizard of Oz

1939's Best Picture Academy Award winner, "Gone with the Wind", was an epic movie based on Margaret Mitchell's novel from the point of view of the American South during the Civil War era. It followed the story of its feisty protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara and her three marriages against the backdrop of the defeat of the Confederacy and the fall of Atlanta. Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett, won the Best Actress award, and other winners included director Victor Fleming and supporting actress Hattie McDaniel. Clark Gable was nominated for his role as Rhett Butler, but missed out to Robert Donat ("Goodbye Mr Chips").

Also nominated that year, and also primarily directed by Victor Fleming, "The Wizard of Oz" was a musical based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland starred as Dorothy, a girl from black and white Kansas taken by a tornado to the Technicolor land of Oz, where she and her dog, along with three odd companions, have to go on a trek and face danger in order to achieve their hearts' desires. Songs by Harburg and Arlen included the Academy Award winning "Over the Rainbow", which was nearly dropped because the movie was overlong! Other "what might have beens": MGM had desperately wanted Shirley Temple to play Dorothy, but they failed and they got the brilliant Garland instead. Buddy Ebsen - a fantastic song and dance man - was originally going to be the Scarecrow, with Ray Bolger as the Tin Man. Bolger desperately wanted to swap, and Ebsen was a gentleman about it and agreed, only for the metallic makeup to make him ill and cause him to withdraw.

Other great movies nominated for the Academy Award were: Wood's "Goodbye, Mr Chips" starring Robert Donat; Capra's "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" with James Stewart; Lubitsch's "Ninotchka", starring Greta Garbo and Ford's "Stagecoach" with John Wayne. And that is just scratching the surface of this annus mirabilis for Hollywood.

Answer: The Philadelphia Story

"Rebecca" was based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier. Joan Fontaine starred as the (unnamed) woman who became the second wife of Mr de Winter (played by Laurence Olivier). His house, Manderley, with its strange housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) seemed possessed with the spirit of the late first wife, Rebecca, and suspicion about the story of her death. Alfred Hitchcock missed out on the Best Director award to John Ford ("The Grapes of Wrath").

"The Philadelphia Story", directed by George Cukor and starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart, was one of Hollywood's spate of sparkling comedies about broken marriages that get fixed. Grant and Hepburn played a divorced couple, and the story centred around Hepburn's planned nuptials to someone new that end up with her remarriage to Grant. Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress and James Stewart won Best Actor for playing a reporter from a gossip magazine who covers the wedding. He always modestly maintained the Oscar should have gone to Henry Fonda in "The Grapes of Wrath". Grant? Not even nominated.

Also in the frame in 1940 were Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath", and Chaplin's "The Great Dictator".

Answer: Citizen Kane

1941's Best Picture winner was John Ford's adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's novel of the coal-mining valleys of south Wales: "How Green Was My Valley". Due to the war, he ended up filming in Santa Monica with a cast that, while only containing one Welshman, was strong - including Maureen O'Hara, Roddy McDowall and Donald Crisp. The story covered all you might imagine: grinding poverty and hard labour, strikes and disasters.

Also nominated was a movie by a 25 year old first-time director by the name of Orson Welles: "Citizen Kane". Welles also co-produced the movie, co-wrote, with Herman J. Mankiewicz, the Academy Award-winning screenplay, and starred in the title role as Charles Foster Kane, a leading light in the yellow press. The movie followed the investigation of his enigmatic life by a reporter played by William Alland. Original and vibrant, the movie has been acclaimed by many critics as one of the high points of the art form.

Also in the fantastic 1941 list of Best Picture nominees were: Huston's "The Maltese Falcon", with Humphrey Bogart and Hitchcock's "Suspicion" starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.

Answer: It's a Wonderful Life

"The Best Years of Our Lives" was a great critical success, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director - William Wyler and Best Actor - Fredric March. It was also a huge box-office hit. It dealt movingly with the difficulties of adapting to "normal life" of three returning WWII veterans - one from each of the services - played by March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell.

An equally worthy winner would have been "It's a Wonderful Life", starring James Stewart as a man who put others first and was saved from suicide by the intervention of an angel. Massively popular and influential as it later became, on release the movie wasn't the great post-service kick start to Stewart's career that it was intended to be.

Other nominees included Olivier's "Henry V" and Goulding's "The Razor's Edge", starring Tyrone Power.

Answer: A Streetcar Named Desire

"An American in Paris" was one of the sequence of great MGM musicals featuring Gene Kelly. Inspired by the symphonic poem of the same name by George Gershwin, it featured songs by Gershwin and his brother Ira, and dance numbers around Gershwin tunes choreographed by Kelly. The A-list talent involved included producer Arthur Freed, director Vincente Minnelli and writer Alan Jay Lerner. The plot was one of romantic confusion, with Kelly as an artist based in Paris, Oscar Levant as his concert pianist friend and Leslie Caron as the young love interest.

One of the other nominated movies in 1951 was "A Streetcar Named Desire", directed by Elia Kazan with a screenplay by Tennessee Williams, adapting his own play, set in New Orleans, about a vulnerable woman and a brutal brother in law. The stellar cast included Vivien Leigh (Academy Award, Best Actress), Karl Malden (Best Supporting Actor) and Kim Hunter (Best Supporting Actress). Marlon Brando's landmark performance was somehow snubbed by the Academy who awarded Best Actor to Humphrey Bogart for "The African Queen".

Also nominated for Best Picture were LeRoy's "Quo Vadis", and Stevens's "A Place in the Sun".

Answer: High Noon

Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth" was a movie based around a circus - its troubles and rivalries, dangers and secrets. The cast included James Stewart, Betty Hutton and Charlton Heston. Some cite it as one of the worst movies to win the Best Picture Academy Award.

You could make a strong case for one of the defeated nominees, Fred Zinnemann's masterly "High Noon", filmed almost in real time and starring Gary Cooper as a sheriff who must face a dangerous gang alone. Other actors included Grace Kelly as the sheriff's wife, Lloyd Bridges and Ian MacDonald. Cooper won the Best Actor Academy Award, and Dimitri Tiomkin picked up two, for his music and the song "The Ballad of High Noon" (aka "Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darlin'").

Also nominated that year was Ford's "The Quiet Man", starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

Some might say the greatest movie of the year was not even nominated: "Singin' in the Rain", which could have provided Freed and Kelly with a notable double after their previous year's triumph with "An American in Paris".

Answer: To Kill a Mockingbird

David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" was a ravishingly beautiful biopic about the self-mythologizing British military hero of Middle Eastern battles against the Ottoman Empire in WWI, T. E. Lawrence. It won Academy Awards for Picture, Director, Art Direction, Cinematography, Editing, Sound and Score (Maurice Jarre). Peter O'Toole had his first nomination for Best Actor in the lead role, but the Academy started as they went on six subsequent times by giving the award to someone else. Omar Sharif was nominated for Supporting Actor. The movie had no speaking roles for women.

Also nominated that year was "To Kill a Mockingbird", the adaptation of Harper Lee's novel of rape and racism seen through the eyes of a child in Alabama. Gregory Peck (Academy Award) was never better as Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer. Also good were Mary Badham as Finch's daughter, Scout, and Robert Duvall as the troubled and mysterious "Boo" Radley.

Other nominated movies included Lewis Milestone's "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard and Richard Harris, and Darryl Zanuck's epic WWII production, "The Longest Day", starring Richard Burton, John Wayne, Henry Fonda and many, many more.

Answer: Mary Poppins

"My Fair Lady" was an adaptation of the phenomenally successful stage musical by Lerner and Loewe. Its story of a professor of phonetics who transforms a working class woman into someone fit to be seen in polite society was a wonderful vehicle for Academy Award-winning Rex Harrison, who reprised his stage role. Dropped for the movie was Julie Andrews in favour of Audrey Hepburn, whose singing voice could not be coached and so was dubbed by Marni Nixon. George Cukor picked up the Academy Award for his direction.

You could make a strong case for the Robert Stevenson-directed Disney movie "Mary Poppins" being a better candidate as a cinematic work of art. A dazzling mixture of live action, music, the Sherman Brothers' songs, and animation, this story of a mysterious umbrella-transported nanny blown to London to perform ad hoc family counselling for a banker, his suffragette wife and their unruly children, would have been enough to make Disney legendary if he had done nothing else. The cast included Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson and Glynis Johns. It must have been sweet for Andrews to pick up her Best Actress statuette.

Also nominated that year - Burton and O'Toole were in Glenville's "Becket". Both were nominated for Best Actor and they must have both realised they would never win an Oscar when they lost out to Harrison. Peter Sellers burned up the screen in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove", and Anthony Quinn stole the show in Cacoyannis's "Zorba the Greek".