1938 Best Supporting Actor: My Choice

So, here we are, the first completed category of my project. I have now seen five classic movies I'd never watched before, become familiar with actors I'd only heard about up until now, and had a great time doing it. Don't ever let anyone tell you that old movies are boring or that it's hard to tell what's happening. Each film had its own quirks and pitfalls, but their own delights as well, and I greatly enjoyed the experience.

I'm also going to take a moment to talk about how nice it is to now be able to put a face and a role to the names and films I'd only ever seen as names on a stats list up until now. I've studied the Oscar nominees' names and years to the point where I can recite them from memory, but for various reasons (availability of the material, mostly) I'd watched so few of them, and almost none of those from this era. Now I have, and I feel the richer for it. I can't wait for the next set!

One perspective I've had about modern movies that I've consistently failed to apply to classics of the past is the idea that an Oscar nod isn't always earned. Sometimes it's as much of a shock to Academy members that a performance, film, directorial job, screenplay, etc. gets a nod as it is to us. Sometimes a nominee can thank a split vote or disqualification for getting them on the ballot! But whenever I looked at the nominees of the past (say, pre-1970), I assumed we must be looking at a list of the best of the best. This isn't the case now, and I'm forced to admit it might not have been the case then. I can see handicappers like myself in 1939 (the year these nominations were announced) scratching their heads and wondering how Ronald Colman could be snubbed for If I Were King or why Gene Lockhart managed a nomination for Algiers when Joseph Calleia didn't, or groaning when they heard that Walter Brennan had won a second Oscar just two years after winning his first, and all for a sappy horse movie. Or I might be wrong; It might have been more controversial that Basil Rathbone landed a nod for IIWK then that Colman didn't, or they might have fervently hoped Brennan wins all the Oscars. I wish I could have been around to see it.

The nominees, once again, for Best Supporting Actor, 1938:

• Walter Brennan as Peter Goodwin in Kentucky
• John Garfield as Mickey Borden in Four Daughters
• Gene Lockhart as Regis in Algiers
• Robert Morley as King Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette
• Basil Rathbone as King Louis XI in If I Were King

The Academy's Choice: Walter Brennan

Weighing the Performances: 

It's so difficult sometimes to look at films through a lens of history. It's tempting to want to judge performances based on more modern standards. The acting choices made by the five nominees here vary widely, and few, if any, would pass muster with a modern director. Theatricality was still the main goal, and all five performances here could be considered rather hammy and even a bit stilted by modern standards.

Walter Brennan in Kentucky

But I think I can see what each actor was actually doing here, and while I don't pretend to understand modes of acting from decades past, I see the goals in each performance, and I see the character that was trying to be portrayed.

As I have said above, and elsewhere, Walter Brennan was victorious that year, taking home Oscar #2 of three. His character in Kentucky is eulogized as "that grand old man of the American turf" and I think for a while Brennan was "that grand old man of the Oscars", because they seemed to love him; giving him an Oscar literally every other year for five years. The funny thing is...Brennan wasn't an old man. Not then, anyway. He was 44 when he made Kentucky, playing an 80-year-old and not missing a beat. His thin build, prematurely white, thinning hair, affected voice, stooped posture and missing teeth often had him playing characters old enough to be his father, and it works here, with, from what I can tell, minimal make-up. I didn't actually know how old he was until I looked it up (I knew he wasn't actually 80; he died at age 80 in the 70's), and it blew me away that he was a mere three years old than I am now. I believed him as a senior citizen with no trouble. But was that what won him the Oscar? Hard to say, because I can't imagine this role was much of a stretch or challenge for him. The role itself is essentially that of a grumpy old man, and he doesn't even get much of an arc. There's a scene toward the end where he appears to realize he was wrong about at least one thing, but mostly he spends the entire movie just being grumpy and giving advice about horses. He was entertaining and memorable, but Oscar-worthy? In the spirit of full disclosure I'll admit I've not seen his other two winning performances (yet!) so I don't know if this was any better or worse than the others, but that's not the point. I feel like awarding this performance with the highest honor an actor can receive would be like giving it to Jack Lemmon or Walter Matthau for Grumpy Old Men.

John Garfield in Four Daughters

John Garfield was the youngest of the nominees this year, and Four Daughters was his film debut. As
I said in the review of the film, at first I was annoyed with his character's constant whining about his poor luck, but having thought about it more I think it was a layered performance, a man who's genuinely lived a hard life and doesn't see it getting any better who's gotten good at masking real pain with gallows humor. He's a sort of proto-Brando; burying a ton of anger and projecting an air of the disaffected loner, happy in his misery, but miserably longing to be happy. He perfectly delivers a speech about how the Fates have been screwing him from birth: "They've been at me now for nearly a quarter of a century. No let-up. First they said "let him do without parents. He'll get along." Then they decided "he doesn't need any education. That's for sissies." Then right at the beginning, they  tossed a coin. "Heads he's poor, tails he's rich." So they tossed a coin...with two heads." You laugh...and then you really think about what he's saying. I was impressed with Garfield's ability to say something that sounds carefree and flippant until you back up and think about what he just said, and what undertones you hear in his voice. Very nice work for such a young actor at the very start of his career.

Gene Lockhart in Algiers

Gene Lockhart...man, I just don't know what to tell you here. Algiers has many smaller roles, as the Casbah has all sorts of colorful denizens, each their own level of shady, but few shadier than a rat, which is what Lockhart's Regis is. I couldn't get a real handle on his deal; what was his motivation for informing? Why, if he was generally known as an informant, did members of Pépé's gang seem to trust him, or at least follow his advice? And just what made Lockhart's performance stand out? Was he appreciably better than Alan Hale as Pépé's fence Granpere, or Stanley Fields as Carlos the hilarious thug? Or Johnny Downs as his heir apparent Pierrot? I can say with certainty that he wasn't better than Joseph Calleia as Inspector Slimane, who could sit and calmly talk with the man he's tasked with hunting down, and still have you convinced he's a competent professional. Calleia should have been the nominee from this film. Lockhart just wasn't anything special, and in fact he was kind of annoying. He would repeatedly launch into a rambling speech about nothing, and each of his sentences would carry the same inflection. It sounded like he was reading lines off a cue card, and it didn't help that his accent was uneven at the best of times. Lockhart was a Canadian actor who made a name for himself in America and here he's playing a...what? I don't know. He's as white as a sheet but wears a fez like a local. Sometimes he sounds like he's trying to do an accent, sometimes he sounds fully American. I don't see the nomination potential here. I have a feeling his nomination caused people to go "what?" when it happened, sorta like no one expecting James Cromwell's nearly silent, expressionless performance in Babe scoring a nod against all odds.

Robert Morley in Marie Antoinette

Two different French monarchs were honored in this category this year, and they couldn't have been more different, even if they were both named Louis. Robert Morley and his multiple chins played
King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette's hapless husband; the king who would have preferred to be a locksmith. I admit, I kind of liked this role because I saw a lot of myself in his desire to stay away from public gatherings and just spend time doing things he loved. I mean...I don't know why he was so obsessed with locksmithing, but whatever floats your boat, Lou. But it's hard to deny that this poor sap was a pathetic king and seemed poor at whatever he tried to do...mostly. It was very touching that immediately before he's led off to his execution he's shown playing with his children and we see that whatever other faults he has, he's a loving, attentive father who might not have deserved to keep his throne, but didn't deserve to die. Speaking of, this is four performances discussed so far and, SPOILERS!!!...the fourth character not to survive the events of the film. But one man was lucky enough to escape this fate.

Basil Rathbone in If I Were King

Basil Rathbone gave a truly magnetic performance as King Louis XI in If I Were King, playing an older, much cannier, perhaps slightly insane monarch. Whatever he was, he was no hapless idiot like his poor eventual successor. Rathbone portrays him as a sharp and prudent man who only seems like a cackling fool. But is he a bit cracked? Maybe. In the middle of a siege, he suddenly decides to appoint the commoner, poet and thief François Villon to the position of Grand Constable, and then, after letting him settle into the role, gives him a week to end the siege, promising that at the end he'll hang for his crimes. I mean...what kind of bargain is that? But Rathbone makes him a joy to watch, and he dominates every scene he's in. I've seen Rathbone in other roles, and he's mostly remembered for playing Sherlock Holmes, but to me he'll always be Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood, released the same year as this performance and as different as night and day, so I know that Rathbone has some real range in him and unlike the feeling I got from Brennan, and maybe even the other three, he's not just playing to type.

My Winner: Basil Rathbone

And next up; time to choose another category and another year!