I like to save some of the best for last.. Here again are the Academy Award Nominees for Best Short Feature, Cartoon, for 1943. Enjoy!
Yankee Doodle Mouse – The winner!
Director: Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
Metro-Goldwyn Mayer
Tom and Jerry do battle with ordinary household items like lightbulbs, eggs, a cheese grater, … and dynamite!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU5A8-aUFvA
The Dizzy Acrobat
Walter Lantz Productions
Woody Woodpecker creates havoc at a circus.
Can be seen here (dubbed into Portuguese but give it a try, it’s mostly sight gags):
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
Directed by George Pal
Paramount Pictures
The Dr. Seuss story told with Puppetoons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvT27WKBhQk
Greetings Bait
Directed by Friz Freleng
Warner Bros.
This looks like it would be pretty good but I can’t find a full-lenghth version. I don’t get the connection with a draft notice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJKhSxr3dNk
Clip
Imagination
Directed by Bob Wickersham
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Screen Gems
A little girl’s ragdolls defeat a roly-poly masher in her imagination.
Reason and Emotion
Walt Disney Studios
Disney explains that, in war time, we all need to get our emotions under control. An example is made of Nazi Germany where Hitler played on the people’s emotions.
Hud Directed by Martin Ritt Written by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. from a novel by Larry McMurtry 1963/USA Paramount Pictures/Salem-Dover Productions Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video
#419 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] Alma Brown: No thanks. I’ve done my time with one cold-blooded bastard, I’m not looking for another.
Hud Bannon: Too late, honey, you already found him.[/box]
From the spare, stunning black-and-white photography to the pitch-perfect performances, it is hard to imagine how Hud could possibly be improved.
Orphan Lonnie Bannon (Brandon De Willde) has been raised by his grandfather Homer (Melvyn Douglas) on a cattle ranch in Texas. Housekeeper Alma (Patricia Neal) does the family’s cooking and cleaning. Homer is feuding with his son Hud (Paul Newman), whom he sees as an irresponsible, amoral embarrassment. Hud continuously proves that Homer is absolutely right.
Despite all his faults, or maybe because of them, Lonnie kind of looks up to the hard-drinking Hud, who is handy at stealing wives and winning fights. Lonnie starts tagging along with his uncle to town and enjoys his first hard liquor and bar fight. But Lonnie is a dreamy, introspective teenager to whom riotous living does not come naturally. Both Lonnie and Hud lust after Alma. Hud is constantly making lewd remarks and crude propositions to Alma but she is having none of it.
Disaster, in the form of hoof-and-mouth disease hits the ranch. Hud wants his father to get rid of his cattle before the diagnosis is proved but Homer refuses. He also refuses to sell oil leases on his land. Hud starts talking about incompetency proceedings. Lonnie must decide his future for himself.
Paul Newman is so dynamic (and sexy) as the title character that it would be easy to see Hud as the (anti-) hero of this story. On this viewing, it seemed clear to me that this film is actually Lonnie’s coming-of-age story. I had also forgotten how bleak the film is. It gets even more bleak with age when we ponder the work of a lifetime – here gone in an afternoon. I like the fact that, while Hud is shown to have reasons for his rebellion, the writers make no excuses for him in the end. He just doesn’t care about other people.
I had not been so familiar with Melvyn Douglas’s work of the 1930’s when I saw this before and it was extra fun to see the leading man in his old age. He richly deserved his Academy Award. Patricia Neal is incredible. She is so strong and vulnerable at the same time and has such great chemistry with Newman. Highly recommended.
Hud won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (Douglas), and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (James Wong Howe). It was nominated in four additional categories: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay based on material from another medium; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.
Clip – Paul Newman and Patricia Neal – acting at its finest
Holy Matrimony Directed by John M. Stahl Written by Nunnally Johnson from a play by Arnold Bennett 1943/USA Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/20th Century Fox Film Archives DVD
[box] Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony. — Jane Austen [/box]
I enjoyed this oft-made story about a reclusive artist who finds love when he poses as his own valet. I preferred His Double Life (1933), starring Roland Young and Lillian Gish, however.
Priam Farll (Monty Woolley) is a world-renowned artist who, scorning publicity, has lived in the most remote parts of the world with his faithful valet Henry Leek (Eric Blore) for 25 years. He reluctantly returns to London to receive a knighthood. Shortly after he arrives, Leek contracts pneumonia and dies. The doctor assumes the man he treated was the painter and Farll does not disabuse him of that notion. Farll plays along and even watches “his” funeral followed by a burial in Westminster Abbey from the organ loft.
Leek had been corresponding through a matrimonial bureau with Alice Chalice (Gracie Fields). She locates the false Leek and they fall in love and marry. Farll continues to paint for his own pleasure. The jig could be up when Alice surreptitiously starts selling the paintings for a song. With Laird Cregar as an art dealer, Una O’Connor as Leek’s estranged wife, and Franklin Pangborn as Farll’s cousin.
This film is amusing, if not laugh out loud funny, with some good performances. I thought Monty Woolly was miscast. The part requires someone that is reticent with people. Woolly’s painter likes nothing better than to boss them around. Roland Young was perfect. I can also imagine Charles Laughton in the part.
Holy Matrimony was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
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