Johnson: Who’ll be victors in film poll?
Here’s a forecast on winners of the ‘Oscars’
By Erskine Johnson
Hollywood, California – (Feb. 19)
Hollywood has named its best as candidates for Oscars in this year’s 16th annual voting of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and today we’re going to stick out our neck and tell you who will pick up the blue chips on March 2. Here are the final results as we see them:
The best motion picture of the year: The Song of Bernadette.
The best feminine performance of the year: Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette.
The best male performance of the year: Walter Pidgeon in Madame Curie.
The best performance by an actress in a supporting role: Katina Paxinou as Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The best performance by an actor in a supporting role: Akim Tamiroff as Pablo in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The best direction of the year: Henry King for The Song of Bernadette.
Maybe we’re wrong – but it’s our neck.
Hope vs. bear!
Any time you can get Bob Hope to clown around with a 400-pound bear, something’s bound to happen. Even if the bruin is trained and docile as a kitten. Paramount dreamed up the idea for a scene in The Road to Utopia. Seems Hope mistakes the critter for Dorothy Lamour, who has been wearing a bearskin coat. The scene takes place in a darkened cabin and Hope thinks the bear is Dorothy.
“Why didn’t they just drop my option?” moaned Hope as he started to film the scene. When the bear growled, Hope looked forlornly at director Hal Walker and said, “This is the way they weed out stock players in Paramount.” And when the bear lightly cuffed him on the arm, Hope crackled: “I’m glad we have a direct line to the county morgue.” They finally got the scene – and some of the year’s best adlibbing.
Boy meets girl
RKO’s new find, Kim Hunter, met her husband-to-be, Capt. William Baldwin of the Marine Air Corps, on the set of Tender Comrade. She was posing for still pictures with Ruth Hussey and the captain was properly thrilled when he was introduced to Ruth, but remarked, “I never heard of Kim Hunter.” Kim overhead him, came back with, “But you will.” He did.
Pat O’Brien’s youngsters have instructions not to telephone their mother while she is working at the AWVS, or the treasury office, except in an emergency. Other day, daughter Mavourneen dialed the number and on being told her mother could not be disturbed, insisted: “But it’s a matter of life or death.” The switchboard operator immediately put her through. Little brother Sean was so impressed that a few minutes later he called and said to the operator, “I must speak to my mommy, dead or alive.” Mommy got the call.
For a dining room scene in National Velvet, director Clarence Brown insisted on having real British cooking for the table. An English cook prepared the meal, including Yorkshire pudding. Brown himself sampled the pudding.
He said:
Hmmmmm. I never tasted anything like it.
Mickey Rooney spoke up:
I did. We used to paste kites together with it.
Butler type
Ask almost anyone about Alan Mowbray and they’ll say, “Oh, yes, he plays those funny butlers on the screen.” It’s strange the way one or two roles will type an actor in the minds of moviegoers. Mowbray, a very versatile gent, has played 160 roles in pictures, but only five were butlers.
He’s played George Washington, and Metternich, the Premier of Austria. He’s played the Grand Duke of Russia, the King of England, de Sarnac of France and a Roman senator. A week after playing Vivien Leigh’s husband in a film, he went to another studio and played an American Legionnaire in a two-reel comedy called French Fried Patootie, in which he played two scenes with a monkey and got hit in the face with a custard pie.
Alan isn’t worried about being typed, yet to moviegoers he’s a butler. Sometimes, he admits, it worries him.