Let me chime in with my thanks, too, Damien. I had actually printed out copies of what you posted back in 2000 (though for some reason I only began with '37, and skipped '38), and had been looking at them just a week or two ago. I'm glad to have the missing chapters; only wish there was info from the later years.
Seeing these inspired me to look through the clippings I have for the 70s/80s results -- up till about '83, close-to-full voting totals were routinely reported. It's rather amazing to look at, for example, 1974's statistics: Amarcord topped Scenes from a Marriage 43-38 (it was the peak of NY's foreign-love), with Godfather II (17), The Conversation (12) and Chinatown (10) following. Can you imagine a year where the competition held Chinatown to 10 points?
In some ways, I find the history of NY even more interesting than the Oscars -- though this was more true in the days you referenced in the critics' award thread, when their personality was more clearly defined, and they didn't make capricious, Cameron Diaz choices.
New York Film Critics Awards
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Mister Tee
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1938
For 1938, I have accounts from the Times and the Herald-Tribune. Although they do not give a lot of details about the balloting, they do provide some interesting opinions. By the way, the Times reported that the newspaper reviewed an incredible 611 movies in 1938 (270 of which were foreign).
Best Picture
The Citadel received the necessary 2/3 of the votes on the 4th ballot. Other films that received votes over the course of the balloting were The Lady Vanishes, To The Victor, Sing You Sinners, In Old Chicago, The Sisters, Blockade and Three On A Weekend (sorry, but that's as specific as the reporting got.)
Special Award
There was a brouhaha over whether Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs should be eligible for Best Picture. After an apparently contentious debate, it was decided the full-length cartoon was not eligible. But the critics decided it could receive a Special Award to be given to achievements not covered by any of the other categories. This wasn't an open-and-shut case, though -- although it won on the 1st ballot, Snow White faced competition from Pare Lorentz's documentary, The River.
Best Actor
It took 9 ballots from James Cagney to be named Best Actor for Angels With Dirty Faces. Also receiving consideration over the course of the voting were Spencer Tracy in Boys Town, John Garfield in Four Daughters, Will Fyffe in To The Victor, Franchot Tone in Three Comrades, Robert Morley in Marie Antoinette, Edward Ellis in A Man To Remember, Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber, Gene Lockhart in Algiers, Robert Montgomery in Yellow Jack, Ralph Richardson in The Citadel, and John Barrymore who, in 1938, was in Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge, Romance in the Dark, Bulldog Drummond’s Peril, Spawn of the North, Hold That Co-Ed and Marie Antoinette (I assume he was cited for the latter).
Best Actress
Margaret Sullavan won for Three Comrades on the 4th ballot. The other women receiving support were Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion, Alice Brady in In Old Chicago, Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet and, of course, William Boehnel's girl, Katharine Hepburn in Holiday (not Bringing Up Baby)
Best Director
Alfred Hitchcock was named best director for The Lady Vanishes on the 1st ballot. Also named were Frank Capra for You Can't Take It With You, John Cromwell for Algiers, Julien Duvivier for The Great Waltz, Michael Curtiz for Four Daughters, and Garson Kanin for A Man To Remember.
Foreign Film
Surprisingly enough, considering that it is in the canons as one of he all-time official classics and was the first foreign film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, Grand Illusion had to go 7 ballots before winning Best Foreign Film. Its competition was Professor Mamlock (USSR), Ballerina (France) and Un Carnet de Bal (France, directed by Julien Duvivier)
The voters were: Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and R.W. Dana of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick and Regina Crewe of the Journal-American; Archer Winsten and Irene Thirer of the Post (I see that the Times neglected to include them in 1937); Frank S. Nugent, B. R. Crisler and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram; Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Herbert Cohn of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker.
The awards were presented at the Rainbow Room, with Writers Guild president Dudley Nichols serving as emcee. NBC broadcast the ceremony, which contained cutaways to Hollywood, London (presumably for Hitchcock) and Paris (presumably for Grand Illusion). The Citadel received a bronze plaque (as opposed to the gold one given last year to Emile Zola) and the other winners received scrolls.
HERE’S WHAT FRANK S. NUGENT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE PROCEEDINGS:
"To say that these awards represent final truth and final justice is as absurd as attributing those qualities to any or all lists of the best ten. The verdict of eighteen newspaper critics is no more reliable than the verdict of one of them, although it may carry more authority . . .There were valiant challengers in each competitive class and the log-rolling, lobbying and vote-trading that went on in the traditional smoke-filled room were shameful and very funny.
"But compromise is the mainspring of democratic procedure and The Gang [Nugent's pet name for the Critics] is a democratic group. We vote as we like, The New York Times and The Daily Worker, and occasionally we find ourselves sitting on our neighbor's fence. No critic could claim the election of his entire slate; every critic voting had the satisfaction of seeing at least one of his first choices s. Mr. Barnes of the Herald-Tribune was crushed when Snow White did not win the Best Picture Award. Mr. Boehnel of the World-Telegram fought his annual losing battle for Katharine Hepburn and sneered that Miss Sullavan had won only because she had a consumptive death scene to do in Three Comrades. (Garbo's Camille had won the year before.) Mr. Crisler of The Times was white-faced and thin-voiced pleading for Will Fyffe."
"Any of the [Best Actress contenders] might have been named with honor, just as the award could have gone with equal cause to Beulah Bondi for her frontier mother in Of Human Hearts or to Fay Holden for her Mrs. Hardy in that friendly series. Still, one had to be selected and Miss Sullavan easily earned her scroll. It was a deserved award--even though The Gang is to be twitted by Mr. Boehnel for its susceptibility to tuberculosis.
“The Cagney selection was perhaps the most surprising of the lot, even to the voters, for on the first ballot – which had ten candidates submitted – Mr. Cagney received just one vote. Nine ballots later he had the required two-thirds, with Spencer Tracy and Will Fyffe as runners-up. It is not quite as upsetting as it sounds. Mr. Cagney has the faculty of being taken for granted. Although he is not in the least public-enemyish off the screen, he has done so well in the role that producers have entered a happy conspiracy to keep him there. His few breaks for freedom -- Boy Meets Girl among them -- have not been successful, whether through Cagney’s fault or through our inability to adjust ourselves to seeing him without an armpit holder.
“Maybe that proves he is not a great actor, but it does not prevent him from giving a great performance – and ‘best performance’ is what the scroll calls for. His Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces was as lusty and real and sustained performance as any contributed by a Hollywood actor last year. Mr. Tracy, who deserves an award and will get one some fine season, had no role of comparable stature. Mr. Fyffe will have to try again, in spite of his delightful share in To The Victor, and John Garfield of Four Daughters has time and many more pictures ahead. The Cagney award was surprising, it is true, but I had no qualms about swinging my vote that way; it was time the critics placed a wreath at the feet of the screen’s best public enemy.
“Mr. Hitchcock’s selection for The Lady Vanishes was no surprise. The only shock that one ballot provided was that none of the six dissenting votes went to any of the three directors I should have placed directly beneath Hitch’s name: . . . Michael Curtiz for Robin Hood, Four Daughters and Angels With Dirty Faces (three splendid films in a year), Frank Borzage for Three Comrades and King Vidor for The Citadel. “
“[T]he best foreign-language film . . . saw my favorite, Un Carnet de Bal, trailing hopelessly from the start and completely out of the running on the last ballot. Unquestionably, Grand Illusion was a good picture, but I confess I was never able to decide exactly what its director was trying to say -- neither, for that matter, has anyone been able to explain its message satisfactorily to me. Possibly it is jut a personal blind spot. I mean to see it again.”
AND HOWARD BARNES OF THE HERALD-TRIBUNE WEIGHED IN WITH:
“I still think that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a motion picture, I still think it should have been selected as the best production of 1938 by the New York Film Critics. Otherwise the awards find me in complete agreement with my colleagues. With the Disney masterpiece ruled out of the voting as something other than a feature film, I cannot see how there van be much quarrel with choosing The Citadel for top honors. Nor can I see how any one can put up much of an argument against our picking of [the other winners].
“As a matter of act, the awards, in spite of the inevitable compromises which occur when eighteen professional film-goers get together and pool their likes, dislikes and prejudices, strike me as particularly happy. It should be no secret that 1938 was far from a glorious year of motion picture achievements [Editorial Comment: He’s lucky he didn’t have to endure the 1980s and 90s]. There were pretentious shows aplenty, but very few which had tenable claims to artistic distinction. At such a time, I believe it is extremely important for critical cinematic opinion to separate gold from dross and put a finger on genuine quality. To my way of thinking, the above awards have singled out the gold to a remarkable degree in each instance. The screen as an industry may not pay much heed to the honors bestowed, but they should gratify those who seem something besides business in motion picture entertainment.
“At the voting of the New York Film Critics . . . I was provoked, as Mr. Winsten of the Post has put it, when Snow White was considered ineligible for the production award. Actually, I could use a much stronger term for my feelings. Once the cause was lost, though, there was no question in my mind that The Citadel deserved the laurels. Directed with consummate skill by King Vidor, this saga of a doctor, with its challenging treatment of the whole problem of medical practice. Is a stirring and moving film. In a year when provocative ideas were generally taboo on the screen, it has proved rather triumphantly that they still have a place there. In addition, it is a photoplay which is graced with eloquent writing and acting of a rare sort, even though it is essentially a director’s picture.
“It is still a bit baffling to me that the Soviet film, Professor Mamlock, should have given Grand Illusion as close a run as it did in the selection of the best foreign-language screen offering. The former production is an impassioned and persuasive anti-Nazi tract, making its points with brutal effectiveness, but I do not think it is one of the first-rank Soviet films. Grand Illusion, in spite of its lack of formal unity, is a truly distinguished motion picture, superbly directed and acted and as full of ideas as any you will witness for a long time. I should have been genuinely disappointed if it had not won our award. The French have sent us a series of films in recent months and Grand Illusion is the best of the lot.
“Having participated for three years in the voting of the NY Film Critics, I can assure you that Mr. Hitchcock’s winning of the vote for the best directorial job of the year in one ballot was something of a distinction in itself. At the same time, I can’t very well see how he could have failed to win hands down for his stunning staging of The Lady Vanishes. If he is not the greatest director alive, he can give anyone else an excellent battle for that distinction. In The Lady Vanishes, his extraordinary talents are in full flower. Working always in straight motion picture terms, he has put together a screen melodrama of such suspense, terror and excitement that you will have to back to his own The Man Who Knew Too Much to find its equal.
“So far as the best performances are concerned, there was a marked lack of unanimity in the voting of the critics. I must admit that I had few enough strong convictions myself. My private opinion is that 1938 was a director’s year. While there were fine performances, they were usually shaped to the larger pattern of the production in which they occurred. So long as best performances had to be adjudged, though, I believe we did very well in picking those of Miss Sullavan and Mr. Cagney. In the case of Miss Sullavan, she dominated and made convincing a none too convincing show for me, with a powerful and poignant characterization. Alice Brady and Wendy Hiller both gave such vivid impersonations that they both very rightly were runners-up in the voting, but my vote was for Miss Sullavan.
“So was I for Mr. Cagney . . . A few of my colleagues argued that Mr. Cagney was playing a type gangster part in Angels With Dirty Faces and was lacking in versatility, but it seemed to me that it was the performance that was concerned. From that standpoint, his terrifying portrayal of a hoodlum, conditioned to violence by a background of slums and reformatories, is a memorable piece of work, ranking with his other great characterization in Public Enemy. Certainly, Angels With Dirty Faces would have been pretty thin stuff without him.”
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1939
The year in which the weary supporters of the two front-running films reached a compromise.
Just as a bit of background information, he's a brief rundown on the newspapers for whom the critics wrote (though, of course, the reviewer didn’t necessarily share the editorial stance of his or her paper).
The Herald-Tribune was the "establishment" paper. Run by WASP.s, it's editorial stance was liberal Republicanism. (Wendell Wilkie would have been the Trib’s dreamboat.)
The Times was even then considered the paper of record. The stuffiest of the dailies, it had a fairly liberal editorial page.
The Daily News was for many years the daily paper with the largest circulation in America. It was a sensationalistic tabloid; it's politics were liberal (it vigorously supported FDR's New Deal policies), although it was isolationistic on international affairs. After the war, it became more and more conservative -- by the time I was first reading it in the 60s, it was a reactionary rag.
The Mirror (morning) and the Journal-American (afternoon) were the two Hearst papers. They were extremely right-wing (there was a joke that the editorial page director of the Journal-American was General Franco). Its readership consisted largely of ethnic Catholics.
The Post was the most liberal of the dailies (other than the short-lived P.M. in the 1940s) -- it's editorial page was what used to be called "progressive." A tabloid, the Post's readership was largely Jewish.
The Morning Telegram was a horse racing newspaper -- why it even had a movie (and theatre) critic, I'm not quite sure.
The Daily Worker was, of course, the newspaper of the American Communist Party and was essentially a mouthpiece for whatever came out of Moscow.
The World-Telegram was a thoroughly respectable, moderately-conservative broadsheet.
Anyway: The New York Times' report on the 1939 New York Film Critics Awards:
"Confounding the prognosticators, whose guesses had favored the year's "biggest" productions -- Gone With The Wind and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington -- the metropolitan reviewers selected the relatively modest Samuel Goldwyn version of the Emily Bronte novel as their choice for the year’s best motion picture.
"Vivien Leigh, the ultimate Scarlett O'Hara of that celebrated two-year hunt was awarded the critical palm as the actress who gave the most admirable performance of the year in Gone With The Wind. Other selections were bitterly contested, but Miss Leigh was chosen quietly, without a dissenting murmur on the second ballot, her closest competitor being the inevitable Garbo of Ninotchcka. James Stewart was chosen as best actor in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, with Robert Donat of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Henry Fonda of Young Mr. Lincoln as runners-up.
The award for the year's most distinguished job of directing went to John Ford for the Walter Wanger production Stagecoach, from a story by Ernest Haycox. . . . Mr. Ford was selected with 12 votes on the 3rd ballot, with Ernst Lubitsch in second place with 3, and Victor Fleming with 2 votes for Gone With The Wind in third.
"Twelve ballots were required to establish the Marcel Pagnol production of Harvest (from the novel "Regain" by Jean Giono) as best foreign-language film. Harvest had a particular advantage in the fact that it is still running at the World Cinema, in its fourth month, while its closest competitor, Julien Duvivier's End Of A Day (formerly at the Filmarte), lost out comparatively early. Weariness and indifference in the End Of A Day ranks while the Harvest bloc fanatically stood its ground to the last, was accountable for the final decision.
"After considerable debate it was decided that the special award instituted last year and given to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs should not be presented this year, though the critics reserve the right to present it to any person or production in future years without further notice.
"The biggest balloting was the question of the best English-language picture. Wuthering Heights representing a final compromise between a powerful Gone With The Wind bloc on the one hand and a formidable Mr. Smith faction on the other. It was significant, perhaps, that while both factions were irreconcilable with each other, both considered Wuthering Heights an acceptable second choice. It was not arrived at, however, until the 14th ballot.
The voters were: Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and R.W. Dana of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick of the Journal-American; Archer Winsten and Irene Thirer of the Post; Frank S. Nugent, B. R. Crisler and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram; Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Herbert Cohn of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker.
AND THE HERALD-TRIBUNE ON THE AWARDS:
Other films in the running for Best Picture were Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Juarez and Stagecoach.
Miss Leigh was named winner after two ballots. Her only competitors were Greta Garbo and Bette Davis.
Mr. Stewart needed three ballots to assert his supremacy. Others considered were Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips; Vaughan Glaser, the high school principal of What A Life!; Conrad Veidt and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering heights. Mr. Donat came closer to Stewart, leading him 8 votes to 6 in the second ballot. Henry Fonda received votes in the last two ballots.
In addition to Mr. Ford, other directors considered were Victor Fleming, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Ernst Lubitsch, Edmund Goulding (The Old Maid), and Garson Kanin (Bachelor Mother and The Great Man Votes). Mr. Lubitsch and Mr. Kanin were the only competitors when Mr. Ford received the necessary 12 votes on the 3rd ballot.
"Harvest," the French film which originally was banned by the State Board of Censors and later allowed to open at the World Theatre when the Board of Regents overruled the censors, had a tight fight to win over The End of the Day, another French film which was directed by Julian Duvivier. Finally, on the 12 ballot, Harvest got the nod, but for several ballots the two films changed places. Other foreign films considered were Lenin in 1918, Green Hell and Entente Cordiale.
Mayor LaGuardia will present the awards at a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room. The proceedings will be broadcast over an international hook-up.
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But for a clearer picture of what was going on, here is the report from
William Boehnel of the World Telegram on the Awards: [who didn't have a Katharine Hepburn picture to vote for]
Like the rest of America at this season of the year, the New York Film Critics were imbued with the spirit of "peace on earth, good will to men" when they met on Tuesday night to make their best selections of the year. But before long, you would have thought the Civil War was being fought all over again with Gone With the Wind in the role of Johnny Reb and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Wuthering heights playing the Damned Yankees.
"But several hours after the first ballot had been cast, the smoke of battle lifted, and Gone With The Wind surrendered, bloody but unbowed to Wuthering Heights.
"Thereafter a temporary truce was called while Vivien Leigh won the honors on the 2nd ballot for best feminine performance; James Stewart took first prize on the third ballot for best male performance for his acting in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and John Ford was named best director on the 3rd ballot for Stagecoach.
"Hostilities were resumed over the foreign film, with Harvest finally nosing out The End of the Day, but not until12 ballots had been cast.
"Although my purely personal preference for the English-speaking film was Mr. Smith, down to the last few ballots, when its cause seemed hopeless, nothing that shall be said here is intended to detract one whit from the glory of the winner. Wuthering Heights is a distinguished film, sombre, unrelenting, exciting, beautifully written, acted and directed.
"In a year which has produced many outstanding screen entertainments, it stands head and shoulders above most and for sheer merit in all departments of production it has rarely been equaled and seldom surpassed. Putting personal likes and dislikes aside, it warrants, I believe, the Critics' accolade without reservation.
"Although the Gone With The Wind bloc fought furiously and gamely, the struggle, like that of the Confederacy, was doomed from the beginning. It lashed out heroically when on several ballots it jumped from six to nine votes and threatened the opposition as much as Lee gave the North the willies when he advanced as far as Gettysburg. But it gasped its last on the 14th and had to surrender to Wuthering Heights.
"It is interesting to note that its most ardent supporters were three of the women critics, Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters [all of the Daily News], although Bosley Crowther ran them a close second in his defense of the film. Indeed, the arguments became so bitter and volatile at times that some of us began to suspect it was Katie Cameron who had the "you-all" accent and not her associate, Wanda Hale.
"Although Wuthering Heights was always in the running, it wasn't until after it appeared as if a deadlock between Mr. Smith and Gone With The Wind had been reached, along about the ninth ballot, that it began to come into its own.
"At this point, the Wind bloc, led by Leo Mishkin and Mr. Crowther tried to pull off a coup when they called for a vote on Mr. Smith and Wuthering Heights, the winner to oppose Wind.
"Their scheme was to eliminate Wuthering Heights, because they knew from discussions that a lot of those who would vote for Heights against Wind would not vote for Mr. Smith in such a dual contest.
"On the 13th ballot, Heights pulled 11 votes against Wind's 5 and Smith's 1, and on the next ballot received the required 2/3rds majority to be acclaimed the winner.
“Nor were the Smith and Heights defenders less biting in defense of their favorites. Time and again the merits of each of these films was put forth to be howled down by the opposition,
"The fact that most of the opposition had praised these films both these films made no impression on their reasoning. Nor could the argument that in many ways Mr. Smith was an even greater expression of Americanism and democratic ideals than Wind leave a dent on these diehards.
"For them, it was the Confederacy or nothing, and the chances are that, like the Civil War, the critics' battle over Gone With The Wind will be fought over and over again for months to come.
"By comparison, the voting for the acting and direction awards was like eating pumpkin pie. There was never any doubt that Miss Leigh would win the feminine honors, since she polled 11 votes on the first ballot against 2 each for Misses Garbo and Bette Davis, and received the required 2/3rds when the next vote was taken.
"The same, too, was virtually true of Mr. Stewart, although on the first two ballots he ran second to Robert Donat. It was during this balloting that Ben Crisler of the Times made a passionate plea on behalf of Vaughan Glaser, the school principal in What A Life, just as last year he made an equally passionate plea for Will Fyfe.
"For a few moments, his practical logic almost won his candidate a lot of supporters when he pointed to the clock and reminded us all of the time. But on the 3rd vote, Stewart came out the winner.
"Although 3 ballots were required to give John Ford the award for the best direction, where one would have been enough, the decision was never in doubt. He polled 8 votes on the 1st ballot. 10 on the second and 12 on the 3rd. His only serious contender was Ernst Lubitsch, who received 3 votes on each ballot.
"The foreign film caused havoc again. Twelve ballots were required before a sufficient number of votes were polled to give the award to Harvest over The End of a Day. In this case, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of another, since both are excellent films and certainly far above anything else the foreign producers have distributed here during the year rapidly coming to a close.
"With the war over for another year, the New York Film Critics will celebrate the armistice with a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room on January 7, at which time the awards will be made to the winners. Mayor LaGuardia will acts as master of ceremonies which will be broadcast over a nationwide hook-up on NBC's Blue network from 6:30 to 7 o'clock.
For 1938, I have accounts from the Times and the Herald-Tribune. Although they do not give a lot of details about the balloting, they do provide some interesting opinions. By the way, the Times reported that the newspaper reviewed an incredible 611 movies in 1938 (270 of which were foreign).
Best Picture
The Citadel received the necessary 2/3 of the votes on the 4th ballot. Other films that received votes over the course of the balloting were The Lady Vanishes, To The Victor, Sing You Sinners, In Old Chicago, The Sisters, Blockade and Three On A Weekend (sorry, but that's as specific as the reporting got.)
Special Award
There was a brouhaha over whether Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs should be eligible for Best Picture. After an apparently contentious debate, it was decided the full-length cartoon was not eligible. But the critics decided it could receive a Special Award to be given to achievements not covered by any of the other categories. This wasn't an open-and-shut case, though -- although it won on the 1st ballot, Snow White faced competition from Pare Lorentz's documentary, The River.
Best Actor
It took 9 ballots from James Cagney to be named Best Actor for Angels With Dirty Faces. Also receiving consideration over the course of the voting were Spencer Tracy in Boys Town, John Garfield in Four Daughters, Will Fyffe in To The Victor, Franchot Tone in Three Comrades, Robert Morley in Marie Antoinette, Edward Ellis in A Man To Remember, Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber, Gene Lockhart in Algiers, Robert Montgomery in Yellow Jack, Ralph Richardson in The Citadel, and John Barrymore who, in 1938, was in Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge, Romance in the Dark, Bulldog Drummond’s Peril, Spawn of the North, Hold That Co-Ed and Marie Antoinette (I assume he was cited for the latter).
Best Actress
Margaret Sullavan won for Three Comrades on the 4th ballot. The other women receiving support were Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion, Alice Brady in In Old Chicago, Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet and, of course, William Boehnel's girl, Katharine Hepburn in Holiday (not Bringing Up Baby)
Best Director
Alfred Hitchcock was named best director for The Lady Vanishes on the 1st ballot. Also named were Frank Capra for You Can't Take It With You, John Cromwell for Algiers, Julien Duvivier for The Great Waltz, Michael Curtiz for Four Daughters, and Garson Kanin for A Man To Remember.
Foreign Film
Surprisingly enough, considering that it is in the canons as one of he all-time official classics and was the first foreign film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, Grand Illusion had to go 7 ballots before winning Best Foreign Film. Its competition was Professor Mamlock (USSR), Ballerina (France) and Un Carnet de Bal (France, directed by Julien Duvivier)
The voters were: Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and R.W. Dana of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick and Regina Crewe of the Journal-American; Archer Winsten and Irene Thirer of the Post (I see that the Times neglected to include them in 1937); Frank S. Nugent, B. R. Crisler and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram; Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Herbert Cohn of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker.
The awards were presented at the Rainbow Room, with Writers Guild president Dudley Nichols serving as emcee. NBC broadcast the ceremony, which contained cutaways to Hollywood, London (presumably for Hitchcock) and Paris (presumably for Grand Illusion). The Citadel received a bronze plaque (as opposed to the gold one given last year to Emile Zola) and the other winners received scrolls.
HERE’S WHAT FRANK S. NUGENT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE PROCEEDINGS:
"To say that these awards represent final truth and final justice is as absurd as attributing those qualities to any or all lists of the best ten. The verdict of eighteen newspaper critics is no more reliable than the verdict of one of them, although it may carry more authority . . .There were valiant challengers in each competitive class and the log-rolling, lobbying and vote-trading that went on in the traditional smoke-filled room were shameful and very funny.
"But compromise is the mainspring of democratic procedure and The Gang [Nugent's pet name for the Critics] is a democratic group. We vote as we like, The New York Times and The Daily Worker, and occasionally we find ourselves sitting on our neighbor's fence. No critic could claim the election of his entire slate; every critic voting had the satisfaction of seeing at least one of his first choices s. Mr. Barnes of the Herald-Tribune was crushed when Snow White did not win the Best Picture Award. Mr. Boehnel of the World-Telegram fought his annual losing battle for Katharine Hepburn and sneered that Miss Sullavan had won only because she had a consumptive death scene to do in Three Comrades. (Garbo's Camille had won the year before.) Mr. Crisler of The Times was white-faced and thin-voiced pleading for Will Fyffe."
"Any of the [Best Actress contenders] might have been named with honor, just as the award could have gone with equal cause to Beulah Bondi for her frontier mother in Of Human Hearts or to Fay Holden for her Mrs. Hardy in that friendly series. Still, one had to be selected and Miss Sullavan easily earned her scroll. It was a deserved award--even though The Gang is to be twitted by Mr. Boehnel for its susceptibility to tuberculosis.
“The Cagney selection was perhaps the most surprising of the lot, even to the voters, for on the first ballot – which had ten candidates submitted – Mr. Cagney received just one vote. Nine ballots later he had the required two-thirds, with Spencer Tracy and Will Fyffe as runners-up. It is not quite as upsetting as it sounds. Mr. Cagney has the faculty of being taken for granted. Although he is not in the least public-enemyish off the screen, he has done so well in the role that producers have entered a happy conspiracy to keep him there. His few breaks for freedom -- Boy Meets Girl among them -- have not been successful, whether through Cagney’s fault or through our inability to adjust ourselves to seeing him without an armpit holder.
“Maybe that proves he is not a great actor, but it does not prevent him from giving a great performance – and ‘best performance’ is what the scroll calls for. His Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces was as lusty and real and sustained performance as any contributed by a Hollywood actor last year. Mr. Tracy, who deserves an award and will get one some fine season, had no role of comparable stature. Mr. Fyffe will have to try again, in spite of his delightful share in To The Victor, and John Garfield of Four Daughters has time and many more pictures ahead. The Cagney award was surprising, it is true, but I had no qualms about swinging my vote that way; it was time the critics placed a wreath at the feet of the screen’s best public enemy.
“Mr. Hitchcock’s selection for The Lady Vanishes was no surprise. The only shock that one ballot provided was that none of the six dissenting votes went to any of the three directors I should have placed directly beneath Hitch’s name: . . . Michael Curtiz for Robin Hood, Four Daughters and Angels With Dirty Faces (three splendid films in a year), Frank Borzage for Three Comrades and King Vidor for The Citadel. “
“[T]he best foreign-language film . . . saw my favorite, Un Carnet de Bal, trailing hopelessly from the start and completely out of the running on the last ballot. Unquestionably, Grand Illusion was a good picture, but I confess I was never able to decide exactly what its director was trying to say -- neither, for that matter, has anyone been able to explain its message satisfactorily to me. Possibly it is jut a personal blind spot. I mean to see it again.”
AND HOWARD BARNES OF THE HERALD-TRIBUNE WEIGHED IN WITH:
“I still think that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a motion picture, I still think it should have been selected as the best production of 1938 by the New York Film Critics. Otherwise the awards find me in complete agreement with my colleagues. With the Disney masterpiece ruled out of the voting as something other than a feature film, I cannot see how there van be much quarrel with choosing The Citadel for top honors. Nor can I see how any one can put up much of an argument against our picking of [the other winners].
“As a matter of act, the awards, in spite of the inevitable compromises which occur when eighteen professional film-goers get together and pool their likes, dislikes and prejudices, strike me as particularly happy. It should be no secret that 1938 was far from a glorious year of motion picture achievements [Editorial Comment: He’s lucky he didn’t have to endure the 1980s and 90s]. There were pretentious shows aplenty, but very few which had tenable claims to artistic distinction. At such a time, I believe it is extremely important for critical cinematic opinion to separate gold from dross and put a finger on genuine quality. To my way of thinking, the above awards have singled out the gold to a remarkable degree in each instance. The screen as an industry may not pay much heed to the honors bestowed, but they should gratify those who seem something besides business in motion picture entertainment.
“At the voting of the New York Film Critics . . . I was provoked, as Mr. Winsten of the Post has put it, when Snow White was considered ineligible for the production award. Actually, I could use a much stronger term for my feelings. Once the cause was lost, though, there was no question in my mind that The Citadel deserved the laurels. Directed with consummate skill by King Vidor, this saga of a doctor, with its challenging treatment of the whole problem of medical practice. Is a stirring and moving film. In a year when provocative ideas were generally taboo on the screen, it has proved rather triumphantly that they still have a place there. In addition, it is a photoplay which is graced with eloquent writing and acting of a rare sort, even though it is essentially a director’s picture.
“It is still a bit baffling to me that the Soviet film, Professor Mamlock, should have given Grand Illusion as close a run as it did in the selection of the best foreign-language screen offering. The former production is an impassioned and persuasive anti-Nazi tract, making its points with brutal effectiveness, but I do not think it is one of the first-rank Soviet films. Grand Illusion, in spite of its lack of formal unity, is a truly distinguished motion picture, superbly directed and acted and as full of ideas as any you will witness for a long time. I should have been genuinely disappointed if it had not won our award. The French have sent us a series of films in recent months and Grand Illusion is the best of the lot.
“Having participated for three years in the voting of the NY Film Critics, I can assure you that Mr. Hitchcock’s winning of the vote for the best directorial job of the year in one ballot was something of a distinction in itself. At the same time, I can’t very well see how he could have failed to win hands down for his stunning staging of The Lady Vanishes. If he is not the greatest director alive, he can give anyone else an excellent battle for that distinction. In The Lady Vanishes, his extraordinary talents are in full flower. Working always in straight motion picture terms, he has put together a screen melodrama of such suspense, terror and excitement that you will have to back to his own The Man Who Knew Too Much to find its equal.
“So far as the best performances are concerned, there was a marked lack of unanimity in the voting of the critics. I must admit that I had few enough strong convictions myself. My private opinion is that 1938 was a director’s year. While there were fine performances, they were usually shaped to the larger pattern of the production in which they occurred. So long as best performances had to be adjudged, though, I believe we did very well in picking those of Miss Sullavan and Mr. Cagney. In the case of Miss Sullavan, she dominated and made convincing a none too convincing show for me, with a powerful and poignant characterization. Alice Brady and Wendy Hiller both gave such vivid impersonations that they both very rightly were runners-up in the voting, but my vote was for Miss Sullavan.
“So was I for Mr. Cagney . . . A few of my colleagues argued that Mr. Cagney was playing a type gangster part in Angels With Dirty Faces and was lacking in versatility, but it seemed to me that it was the performance that was concerned. From that standpoint, his terrifying portrayal of a hoodlum, conditioned to violence by a background of slums and reformatories, is a memorable piece of work, ranking with his other great characterization in Public Enemy. Certainly, Angels With Dirty Faces would have been pretty thin stuff without him.”
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1939
The year in which the weary supporters of the two front-running films reached a compromise.
Just as a bit of background information, he's a brief rundown on the newspapers for whom the critics wrote (though, of course, the reviewer didn’t necessarily share the editorial stance of his or her paper).
The Herald-Tribune was the "establishment" paper. Run by WASP.s, it's editorial stance was liberal Republicanism. (Wendell Wilkie would have been the Trib’s dreamboat.)
The Times was even then considered the paper of record. The stuffiest of the dailies, it had a fairly liberal editorial page.
The Daily News was for many years the daily paper with the largest circulation in America. It was a sensationalistic tabloid; it's politics were liberal (it vigorously supported FDR's New Deal policies), although it was isolationistic on international affairs. After the war, it became more and more conservative -- by the time I was first reading it in the 60s, it was a reactionary rag.
The Mirror (morning) and the Journal-American (afternoon) were the two Hearst papers. They were extremely right-wing (there was a joke that the editorial page director of the Journal-American was General Franco). Its readership consisted largely of ethnic Catholics.
The Post was the most liberal of the dailies (other than the short-lived P.M. in the 1940s) -- it's editorial page was what used to be called "progressive." A tabloid, the Post's readership was largely Jewish.
The Morning Telegram was a horse racing newspaper -- why it even had a movie (and theatre) critic, I'm not quite sure.
The Daily Worker was, of course, the newspaper of the American Communist Party and was essentially a mouthpiece for whatever came out of Moscow.
The World-Telegram was a thoroughly respectable, moderately-conservative broadsheet.
Anyway: The New York Times' report on the 1939 New York Film Critics Awards:
"Confounding the prognosticators, whose guesses had favored the year's "biggest" productions -- Gone With The Wind and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington -- the metropolitan reviewers selected the relatively modest Samuel Goldwyn version of the Emily Bronte novel as their choice for the year’s best motion picture.
"Vivien Leigh, the ultimate Scarlett O'Hara of that celebrated two-year hunt was awarded the critical palm as the actress who gave the most admirable performance of the year in Gone With The Wind. Other selections were bitterly contested, but Miss Leigh was chosen quietly, without a dissenting murmur on the second ballot, her closest competitor being the inevitable Garbo of Ninotchcka. James Stewart was chosen as best actor in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, with Robert Donat of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Henry Fonda of Young Mr. Lincoln as runners-up.
The award for the year's most distinguished job of directing went to John Ford for the Walter Wanger production Stagecoach, from a story by Ernest Haycox. . . . Mr. Ford was selected with 12 votes on the 3rd ballot, with Ernst Lubitsch in second place with 3, and Victor Fleming with 2 votes for Gone With The Wind in third.
"Twelve ballots were required to establish the Marcel Pagnol production of Harvest (from the novel "Regain" by Jean Giono) as best foreign-language film. Harvest had a particular advantage in the fact that it is still running at the World Cinema, in its fourth month, while its closest competitor, Julien Duvivier's End Of A Day (formerly at the Filmarte), lost out comparatively early. Weariness and indifference in the End Of A Day ranks while the Harvest bloc fanatically stood its ground to the last, was accountable for the final decision.
"After considerable debate it was decided that the special award instituted last year and given to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs should not be presented this year, though the critics reserve the right to present it to any person or production in future years without further notice.
"The biggest balloting was the question of the best English-language picture. Wuthering Heights representing a final compromise between a powerful Gone With The Wind bloc on the one hand and a formidable Mr. Smith faction on the other. It was significant, perhaps, that while both factions were irreconcilable with each other, both considered Wuthering Heights an acceptable second choice. It was not arrived at, however, until the 14th ballot.
The voters were: Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and R.W. Dana of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick of the Journal-American; Archer Winsten and Irene Thirer of the Post; Frank S. Nugent, B. R. Crisler and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram; Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Herbert Cohn of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker.
AND THE HERALD-TRIBUNE ON THE AWARDS:
Other films in the running for Best Picture were Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Juarez and Stagecoach.
Miss Leigh was named winner after two ballots. Her only competitors were Greta Garbo and Bette Davis.
Mr. Stewart needed three ballots to assert his supremacy. Others considered were Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips; Vaughan Glaser, the high school principal of What A Life!; Conrad Veidt and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering heights. Mr. Donat came closer to Stewart, leading him 8 votes to 6 in the second ballot. Henry Fonda received votes in the last two ballots.
In addition to Mr. Ford, other directors considered were Victor Fleming, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Ernst Lubitsch, Edmund Goulding (The Old Maid), and Garson Kanin (Bachelor Mother and The Great Man Votes). Mr. Lubitsch and Mr. Kanin were the only competitors when Mr. Ford received the necessary 12 votes on the 3rd ballot.
"Harvest," the French film which originally was banned by the State Board of Censors and later allowed to open at the World Theatre when the Board of Regents overruled the censors, had a tight fight to win over The End of the Day, another French film which was directed by Julian Duvivier. Finally, on the 12 ballot, Harvest got the nod, but for several ballots the two films changed places. Other foreign films considered were Lenin in 1918, Green Hell and Entente Cordiale.
Mayor LaGuardia will present the awards at a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room. The proceedings will be broadcast over an international hook-up.
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But for a clearer picture of what was going on, here is the report from
William Boehnel of the World Telegram on the Awards: [who didn't have a Katharine Hepburn picture to vote for]
Like the rest of America at this season of the year, the New York Film Critics were imbued with the spirit of "peace on earth, good will to men" when they met on Tuesday night to make their best selections of the year. But before long, you would have thought the Civil War was being fought all over again with Gone With the Wind in the role of Johnny Reb and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Wuthering heights playing the Damned Yankees.
"But several hours after the first ballot had been cast, the smoke of battle lifted, and Gone With The Wind surrendered, bloody but unbowed to Wuthering Heights.
"Thereafter a temporary truce was called while Vivien Leigh won the honors on the 2nd ballot for best feminine performance; James Stewart took first prize on the third ballot for best male performance for his acting in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and John Ford was named best director on the 3rd ballot for Stagecoach.
"Hostilities were resumed over the foreign film, with Harvest finally nosing out The End of the Day, but not until12 ballots had been cast.
"Although my purely personal preference for the English-speaking film was Mr. Smith, down to the last few ballots, when its cause seemed hopeless, nothing that shall be said here is intended to detract one whit from the glory of the winner. Wuthering Heights is a distinguished film, sombre, unrelenting, exciting, beautifully written, acted and directed.
"In a year which has produced many outstanding screen entertainments, it stands head and shoulders above most and for sheer merit in all departments of production it has rarely been equaled and seldom surpassed. Putting personal likes and dislikes aside, it warrants, I believe, the Critics' accolade without reservation.
"Although the Gone With The Wind bloc fought furiously and gamely, the struggle, like that of the Confederacy, was doomed from the beginning. It lashed out heroically when on several ballots it jumped from six to nine votes and threatened the opposition as much as Lee gave the North the willies when he advanced as far as Gettysburg. But it gasped its last on the 14th and had to surrender to Wuthering Heights.
"It is interesting to note that its most ardent supporters were three of the women critics, Kate Cameron, Wanda Hale and Dorothy Masters [all of the Daily News], although Bosley Crowther ran them a close second in his defense of the film. Indeed, the arguments became so bitter and volatile at times that some of us began to suspect it was Katie Cameron who had the "you-all" accent and not her associate, Wanda Hale.
"Although Wuthering Heights was always in the running, it wasn't until after it appeared as if a deadlock between Mr. Smith and Gone With The Wind had been reached, along about the ninth ballot, that it began to come into its own.
"At this point, the Wind bloc, led by Leo Mishkin and Mr. Crowther tried to pull off a coup when they called for a vote on Mr. Smith and Wuthering Heights, the winner to oppose Wind.
"Their scheme was to eliminate Wuthering Heights, because they knew from discussions that a lot of those who would vote for Heights against Wind would not vote for Mr. Smith in such a dual contest.
"On the 13th ballot, Heights pulled 11 votes against Wind's 5 and Smith's 1, and on the next ballot received the required 2/3rds majority to be acclaimed the winner.
“Nor were the Smith and Heights defenders less biting in defense of their favorites. Time and again the merits of each of these films was put forth to be howled down by the opposition,
"The fact that most of the opposition had praised these films both these films made no impression on their reasoning. Nor could the argument that in many ways Mr. Smith was an even greater expression of Americanism and democratic ideals than Wind leave a dent on these diehards.
"For them, it was the Confederacy or nothing, and the chances are that, like the Civil War, the critics' battle over Gone With The Wind will be fought over and over again for months to come.
"By comparison, the voting for the acting and direction awards was like eating pumpkin pie. There was never any doubt that Miss Leigh would win the feminine honors, since she polled 11 votes on the first ballot against 2 each for Misses Garbo and Bette Davis, and received the required 2/3rds when the next vote was taken.
"The same, too, was virtually true of Mr. Stewart, although on the first two ballots he ran second to Robert Donat. It was during this balloting that Ben Crisler of the Times made a passionate plea on behalf of Vaughan Glaser, the school principal in What A Life, just as last year he made an equally passionate plea for Will Fyfe.
"For a few moments, his practical logic almost won his candidate a lot of supporters when he pointed to the clock and reminded us all of the time. But on the 3rd vote, Stewart came out the winner.
"Although 3 ballots were required to give John Ford the award for the best direction, where one would have been enough, the decision was never in doubt. He polled 8 votes on the 1st ballot. 10 on the second and 12 on the 3rd. His only serious contender was Ernst Lubitsch, who received 3 votes on each ballot.
"The foreign film caused havoc again. Twelve ballots were required before a sufficient number of votes were polled to give the award to Harvest over The End of a Day. In this case, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of another, since both are excellent films and certainly far above anything else the foreign producers have distributed here during the year rapidly coming to a close.
"With the war over for another year, the New York Film Critics will celebrate the armistice with a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room on January 7, at which time the awards will be made to the winners. Mayor LaGuardia will acts as master of ceremonies which will be broadcast over a nationwide hook-up on NBC's Blue network from 6:30 to 7 o'clock.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
No, that was an actual name -- and I believe it's a woman.FilmFan720 wrote:Question: Is the Daily Mirror's critic really named Bland Johansen, or is this one of your Damien-isms?
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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I was going through old files on my computer and came across something I had posted back around 2000 -- it's a year-by-year history of the New York Film Critics awards, from 1935-1945, culled from contemporary newspaper accounts.
Since those post have long disappeared into cyberspace and since a lot of our community wasn't around back then, I thought I'd repost them since I think they may be of interest (even I didn't remember most of what I wrote). And then can hold us over until this year's results come in.
Here are 1935-37:
1935
(To win, an entry needed a 2/3 majority, and there was no limit as to the number of the ballots it could take)
Amazingly enough, The Informer was the unanimous choice for Best Picture (there were 11 critics voting, ranging from Andre Sennwald of the New York Times to Martin Dickstein of the Brooklyn Eagle)
Best Actor:
In a first ballot victory, Charles Laughton for Mutiny On The Bounty, 11 votes, Victor McLaglen in The Informer, 1
Best Actress:
Receiving votes on the first ballot were Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never, Bette Davis in Dangerous, Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina, Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and Luise Rainer in Escapade. On the second ballot, Garbo beat Hepburn by what the NY Times called a 2-1 margin
Best Director:
On the first ballot, Alfred Hitchcock, for both Thirty-Nine Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much, had a lead of one vote over The Informer's John Ford. There was a "scattering" of votes for Henry Hathaway (Lives of a Bengal Lancer), George Cukor (David Copperfield) and King Vidor (The Wedding Night). According to the Times, "on the second ballot, the critics swung almost entirely to Mr. Ford, with Mr. Hitchcock getting minority recognition."
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1936
There were 18 critics voting, with second-stringers voting this year. It was also the first year the critic for the Daily Worker was part of the group, and also the initial vote for Archer Winsten of the New York Post who would spend over 40 years as a member of the group. Voting was in the penthouse suite of the Hotel Victoria.
Picture
On the first ballot, the votes were: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 8; Fury,4; Winterset, 2; Dodsworth, 1; These Three, 1. (note, this only adds up to 16)
Second ballot: Mr. Deeds won with 11; Fury,4; Winterset,1; Dodsworth 1.
Actor
1st Ballot: Walter Huston in Dodsworth, 6; Spencer Tracy in Fury, 5; Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, 3; Burgess Meredith in Winterset, 2; and Charles Laughton in Rembrandt, 1.
2nd Ballot: Huston, 8; Tracy, 6; Cooper, 3; and new entry, Hugh Herbert, 1.
3rd Ballot: Huston, 8; Tracy, 6; Cooper, 4.
4th Ballot: Details not given
5th Ballot: Huston, 12; Tracy 6.
Actress:
1st Ballot: Ruth Chatterton in Dodsworth, 7; Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld, 4; Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet, 3 (go figure); Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door, 1; Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, 1; and Rosalind Russell in Craig's Wife, 1.
2nd Ballot: Chatterton, 9; Rainer, 6; Shearer, 2.
3rd Ballot: Rainer, 9; Chatterton, 8.
4th Ballot: Rainer, 13; Chatterton 4. [weird voting patterns in this one]
DIRECTOR
1st Ballot: Fritz Lang (Fury), 6; William Wyler (Dodsworth & These Three), 5; Rouben Mamoulian (The Gay Desperado), 4; Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town), 1; George Cukor (Romeo and Juliet), 1.
2nd Ballot: Mamoulian, 7; Lang, 6; Wyler, 4.
"The next seven ballots see-sawed between Mr. Mamoulian and Mr. Lang and finally, after considerable discussion of the directors' respective contributions to their films, the vote went: Mr. Mamoulian 12, Mr. Lang, 6."
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
It only took one ballot: Carnival in Flanders, 15; Les Amours de Toni, 1; Revolutionists (U.S.S.R., and presumably voted for by the woman from the Daily Worker).
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1937
The N.Y. Times didn’t give totals but fortunately the N.Y. World-Telegram gave a nicely detailed account of the 1937 voting. Again, a 2/3 majority was necessary for a victory.
Best Picture
First Ballot: The Life of Emile Zola, 9; Captains Courageous, 3; The Good Earth, 2; Stage Door and Night Must Fall, 1 each.
Second Ballot: The Life of Emile Zola, 11; Captains Courageous, 4; The Good Earth, 1.
Best Actor
The World-Telegram said “the real fun began when the cinema defenders tried to decided on the best male performance.”
First Ballot: Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous, 7; Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola, 4; Charles Boyer in Conquest, 3; and Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall, 2. (Interestingly, they. along with Fredric March who shows up later, would be the men who were nominated for the Best Actor Oscar this year.)
2nd Ballot: Tracy, 7; Muni, 5; Boyer, 2; Joseph Schildkraut in The Life of Emile Zola, 2.
3rd Ballot: Fredric March in A Star Is Born, 6; Tracy, 5; Muni, 5.
4th Ballot: Tracy, 7; Muni, 7; March, 2.
At this point, the critics took a break from the Best Actor contest and moved on to Best Actress.
After the Best Actress award, said the World-Telegram, “the critics went back to the business of the best male performance. This went on indefinitely, with nobody really voting for anyone, but always against someone, until the strain became so great trying to get a two-thirds majority for either Tracy or Muni that enough members weakened and on the 12 ballot Muni received 11 votes against Tracy’s 5.”
Best Actress
The World-Telegram says that the Best Actress voting “didn’t get off to any better start” than Best Actor. Both the Telegram and Times are skimpy on details, but receiving votes on the first ballot were Deanna Durbin in 100 Men and A Girl, Greta Garbo in Camille, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and Erin O’Brien-Moore. {Editorial Comment: The latter’s was a very small part in Emile Zola and probably would have won Supporting Actress if the group had given such an award back then. O’Brien-Moore was a truly wonderful Warner Brothers contract actress, totally forgotten today.}
There was a critic from the World-Telegram named William Boehnel, who apparently voted for Kate Hepburn every year no matter what she was in, and his devotion (or obsession) became a running joke among the other critics. Neither newspaper said which movies the actresses were nominated for, but Hepburn was in Stage Door and Quality Street, Lombard in True Confession, Swing High Swing Low and – the one for which I would assume she was nominated -- Nothing Sacred.
It took five ballots to name a winner. On that 5th ballot, the votes were: Garbo, 12; Hepburn, 2; Lombard and Durbin, 1 each.
Best Director.
On the first ballot, Gregory La Cava received the necessary 11 votes for his “megaphoning” [the Telegram’s word] of Stage Door. Other vote-getters with one each were Victor Fleming for Captains Courageous, Henry Koster for 100 men And A Girl, William Dieterle for The Life of Emile Zola and Leo McCarey, who received one vote for The Awful Truth and one for Make Way For Tomorrow.
Best Foreign Film.
Mayerling won on the first ballot with 12 votes. Receiving one vote each were four films I’m not familiar with: Baltic Deputy, The Eternal Mask, The Wave and Razumov.
The awards were given out at a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room, with Robert Benchley serving as master of ceremonies. The presentations were broadcast nationally by NBC radio. The Best Picture producer received a gold medal, the other winners got scrolls.
According to the Times, critics voting were: Kate Cameron and Wanda Hale of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and Marguerite Tazelaar of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick (she was a piece of work!) and Regina Crewe of the Journal-American; Frank S. Nugent and B. R. Crisler of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram (which was a horse racing tout sheet); Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Gould Cassal of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker. (This is a total of 14, but the vote totals from the World-Telegram indicate that 16 people voted.)
Eleven days after the voting -- the day of the presentations, in fact, Frank S. Nugent of the Times acknowledged that a lot of readers had written to him expressing dismay over the Critics’ choices, and he acknowledged that he had voted for all of the winners. Here are some highlights from the article. [INTERESTING SIDENOTE: As some of you undoubtedly know, Nugent left the Times to go to Hollywood in 1940 and later married John Ford’s daughter. He became Ford’s foremost screenwriter and wrote the splendid scripts for She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, The Last Hurrah and The Searchers, among others. He received an Oscar nomination for The Quiet Man. His non-Ford screenplays include Preminger’s Angel Face and Phil Karlson’s Gunman’s Walk.]
“Zola has been accused of stuffiness and disregard of the cinema’s primary law – motion. Mr. Muni [some readers] credit for an impressive make-up, for several beautifully read speeches and for an intellectual performance – by which, they explain, is meant a performance governed by the player’s intellectual grasp of a role, not by an emotional insight into the character of the man he was portraying. Thus, they argue, they may appreciate Mr. Muni’s Zola as a well-studied performance, but not one which arouses an emotional response. “
“Miss Garbo’s Camille has stirred up a hornet’s nest. One body of readers sees no virtue in anything Miss Garbo does and lumps her Marguerite Gautier with all the rest. Another cannot reconcile itself to the notion that anything connected with Camille could win an award after all these years; it is, they say, like giving a Pulitzer prize to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Till, a third, without denying Miss Garbo’s superb performance, feels that the critics might have shown more initiative, and a bit more originality, by giving the award this year to one of our gifted comediennes, a Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert, a Ginger Rogers or a Katharine (Stage Door not Quality Street) Hepburn.”
“Direction is still a sufficiently nebulous factor in the public’s mind to escape much attention. But enough comment has been aroused to show that Mr. La Cava’s crown is not unchallenged. [Nugent then lists directors championed by people who wrote to him: Leo McCarey, Koster; Wesley Ruggles, I Met Him In Paris and True Confession; Frank Lloyd, Maid of Salem and Wells Fargo; and William Wellman, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred.)
“And what can one answer, except to say that there can be no trophy which is not an apple of discord. When I presented myself at the voting afternoon of the critics, I felt strongly about only two things. I believed Mr. Muni’s Zola was the finest masculine portrait of the year, and that Miss Garbo’s Lady of the Camellias was the most beautifully shaded portrait on the distaff side. One must recognize, of course, that their films were ‘vehicles’ – a misnomer. Since they did not carry their stars, but were carried by them. Conversely, one must realize that Captains Courageous owed as much to Freddie Bartholomew and Lionel Barrymore as it did to Mr. Tracy; that Stage Door was so perfectly served by all hands that no one of then, unless it be Andrea Leeds, was entitled to have hers held aloft. [So presumably, Kate’s votes were for Stage Door.]
“The same would apply to Mr. Montgomery in Night Must Fall. Was he really more important to the film’s success than Dame May Whitty? . . . To Nothing Sacred and True Confession, for where precisely did Miss Lombard begin, her script and direction end? The answer seems to be – or so it seems to me – that congratulations are sue all these major also-rans and the wish that some day they, too, may find a ‘vehicle’ which will be unmistakably theirs and not merely a flawless mosaic of many brilliances.
“I have no apologies to make for helping Mr. La Cava win the directorial award. Few directors this season, or any other, have proved themselves capable of transmuting a play for the screen without holding the picture for the screen without holding the picture to a series of walled-in sequences. Fewer still have been able to take a play, reduce it to its spirit and, with high courage, toss out line after line, situation after situation, and build it anew. With the writing assistance of Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller and with a superbly marshaled cast, he took George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s clever little play and turned it into one of the best pictures of the year. . . . had this prize not gone to Mr. La Cava, but to one of the others, we should have had to apologize to him and hold ourselves accountable to his cohorts. So, if Stage Door does not impress you as being the best directorial contribution of the season, admit at least that it is one of the best and be consoled by the hope that your man may win next year.”
“Mayerling won its necessary two-thirds of the vote as Best Foreign Film of 1937 on the first ballot, but that does not comfort the earnest admirers of: Baltic Deputy, The Eternal Mask, The Last Night, The Wave or Razumov. Unquestionably, The Eternal Mask was the more unusual film, really avant-garde in its impressionistic study of schizophrenia, but there was no gainsaying the tragic beauty of Mayerling – the story of the ill-starred romance of the crown Prince Rudolph of Austria and the lovely Countess Vetsera.
“I know that my sentimental predilection further damns me in the eyes of my left-wing readers (who brandish my uncomplimentary reviews of Russian films as sure proof that I am a capitalistic weasel and who accept favorable reviews with obvious suspicion). But I believe that Mayerling has fairly won over strong competition. It was beautifully played, reflected its period perfectly and has proved to be one of the most popular pictures of the year.”
“My chief regret is that the present system of awards does not provide for one in distinguished service to the screen. It would require a prize like that to acknowledge players like Lionel Barrymore and Adolphe Menjou, Maria Osupenskaya and Beulah Bondi, or technical experts like James Basevi [in 1937, Basevi created the amazing special effects for John Ford’s The Hurricane], camera men like Gregg Toland [pretty perspicacious on Nugent’s part – this was 2 years before Wuthering Heights and 4 years before Citizen Kane. His 1937 releases were History Is Made At Night and Dead End], and other subastral people who have gone unrewarded too long. Possibly the situation may be remedied next year. Until then, we stand by the film critics’ awards.”
Since those post have long disappeared into cyberspace and since a lot of our community wasn't around back then, I thought I'd repost them since I think they may be of interest (even I didn't remember most of what I wrote). And then can hold us over until this year's results come in.
Here are 1935-37:
1935
(To win, an entry needed a 2/3 majority, and there was no limit as to the number of the ballots it could take)
Amazingly enough, The Informer was the unanimous choice for Best Picture (there were 11 critics voting, ranging from Andre Sennwald of the New York Times to Martin Dickstein of the Brooklyn Eagle)
Best Actor:
In a first ballot victory, Charles Laughton for Mutiny On The Bounty, 11 votes, Victor McLaglen in The Informer, 1
Best Actress:
Receiving votes on the first ballot were Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never, Bette Davis in Dangerous, Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina, Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and Luise Rainer in Escapade. On the second ballot, Garbo beat Hepburn by what the NY Times called a 2-1 margin
Best Director:
On the first ballot, Alfred Hitchcock, for both Thirty-Nine Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much, had a lead of one vote over The Informer's John Ford. There was a "scattering" of votes for Henry Hathaway (Lives of a Bengal Lancer), George Cukor (David Copperfield) and King Vidor (The Wedding Night). According to the Times, "on the second ballot, the critics swung almost entirely to Mr. Ford, with Mr. Hitchcock getting minority recognition."
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1936
There were 18 critics voting, with second-stringers voting this year. It was also the first year the critic for the Daily Worker was part of the group, and also the initial vote for Archer Winsten of the New York Post who would spend over 40 years as a member of the group. Voting was in the penthouse suite of the Hotel Victoria.
Picture
On the first ballot, the votes were: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 8; Fury,4; Winterset, 2; Dodsworth, 1; These Three, 1. (note, this only adds up to 16)
Second ballot: Mr. Deeds won with 11; Fury,4; Winterset,1; Dodsworth 1.
Actor
1st Ballot: Walter Huston in Dodsworth, 6; Spencer Tracy in Fury, 5; Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, 3; Burgess Meredith in Winterset, 2; and Charles Laughton in Rembrandt, 1.
2nd Ballot: Huston, 8; Tracy, 6; Cooper, 3; and new entry, Hugh Herbert, 1.
3rd Ballot: Huston, 8; Tracy, 6; Cooper, 4.
4th Ballot: Details not given
5th Ballot: Huston, 12; Tracy 6.
Actress:
1st Ballot: Ruth Chatterton in Dodsworth, 7; Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld, 4; Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet, 3 (go figure); Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door, 1; Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, 1; and Rosalind Russell in Craig's Wife, 1.
2nd Ballot: Chatterton, 9; Rainer, 6; Shearer, 2.
3rd Ballot: Rainer, 9; Chatterton, 8.
4th Ballot: Rainer, 13; Chatterton 4. [weird voting patterns in this one]
DIRECTOR
1st Ballot: Fritz Lang (Fury), 6; William Wyler (Dodsworth & These Three), 5; Rouben Mamoulian (The Gay Desperado), 4; Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town), 1; George Cukor (Romeo and Juliet), 1.
2nd Ballot: Mamoulian, 7; Lang, 6; Wyler, 4.
"The next seven ballots see-sawed between Mr. Mamoulian and Mr. Lang and finally, after considerable discussion of the directors' respective contributions to their films, the vote went: Mr. Mamoulian 12, Mr. Lang, 6."
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
It only took one ballot: Carnival in Flanders, 15; Les Amours de Toni, 1; Revolutionists (U.S.S.R., and presumably voted for by the woman from the Daily Worker).
==============================================
1937
The N.Y. Times didn’t give totals but fortunately the N.Y. World-Telegram gave a nicely detailed account of the 1937 voting. Again, a 2/3 majority was necessary for a victory.
Best Picture
First Ballot: The Life of Emile Zola, 9; Captains Courageous, 3; The Good Earth, 2; Stage Door and Night Must Fall, 1 each.
Second Ballot: The Life of Emile Zola, 11; Captains Courageous, 4; The Good Earth, 1.
Best Actor
The World-Telegram said “the real fun began when the cinema defenders tried to decided on the best male performance.”
First Ballot: Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous, 7; Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola, 4; Charles Boyer in Conquest, 3; and Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall, 2. (Interestingly, they. along with Fredric March who shows up later, would be the men who were nominated for the Best Actor Oscar this year.)
2nd Ballot: Tracy, 7; Muni, 5; Boyer, 2; Joseph Schildkraut in The Life of Emile Zola, 2.
3rd Ballot: Fredric March in A Star Is Born, 6; Tracy, 5; Muni, 5.
4th Ballot: Tracy, 7; Muni, 7; March, 2.
At this point, the critics took a break from the Best Actor contest and moved on to Best Actress.
After the Best Actress award, said the World-Telegram, “the critics went back to the business of the best male performance. This went on indefinitely, with nobody really voting for anyone, but always against someone, until the strain became so great trying to get a two-thirds majority for either Tracy or Muni that enough members weakened and on the 12 ballot Muni received 11 votes against Tracy’s 5.”
Best Actress
The World-Telegram says that the Best Actress voting “didn’t get off to any better start” than Best Actor. Both the Telegram and Times are skimpy on details, but receiving votes on the first ballot were Deanna Durbin in 100 Men and A Girl, Greta Garbo in Camille, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and Erin O’Brien-Moore. {Editorial Comment: The latter’s was a very small part in Emile Zola and probably would have won Supporting Actress if the group had given such an award back then. O’Brien-Moore was a truly wonderful Warner Brothers contract actress, totally forgotten today.}
There was a critic from the World-Telegram named William Boehnel, who apparently voted for Kate Hepburn every year no matter what she was in, and his devotion (or obsession) became a running joke among the other critics. Neither newspaper said which movies the actresses were nominated for, but Hepburn was in Stage Door and Quality Street, Lombard in True Confession, Swing High Swing Low and – the one for which I would assume she was nominated -- Nothing Sacred.
It took five ballots to name a winner. On that 5th ballot, the votes were: Garbo, 12; Hepburn, 2; Lombard and Durbin, 1 each.
Best Director.
On the first ballot, Gregory La Cava received the necessary 11 votes for his “megaphoning” [the Telegram’s word] of Stage Door. Other vote-getters with one each were Victor Fleming for Captains Courageous, Henry Koster for 100 men And A Girl, William Dieterle for The Life of Emile Zola and Leo McCarey, who received one vote for The Awful Truth and one for Make Way For Tomorrow.
Best Foreign Film.
Mayerling won on the first ballot with 12 votes. Receiving one vote each were four films I’m not familiar with: Baltic Deputy, The Eternal Mask, The Wave and Razumov.
The awards were given out at a cocktail party at the Rainbow Room, with Robert Benchley serving as master of ceremonies. The presentations were broadcast nationally by NBC radio. The Best Picture producer received a gold medal, the other winners got scrolls.
According to the Times, critics voting were: Kate Cameron and Wanda Hale of the Daily News; Bland Johaneson of the Daily Mirror; Howard Barnes and Marguerite Tazelaar of the Herald-Tribune; Rose Pelswick (she was a piece of work!) and Regina Crewe of the Journal-American; Frank S. Nugent and B. R. Crisler of the New York Times; William Boehnel of the World-Telegram; Leo Mishkin of the Morning Telegram (which was a horse racing tout sheet); Edgar Price of the Brooklyn Citizen; Gould Cassal of the Brooklyn Eagle; and David Platt of the Daily Worker. (This is a total of 14, but the vote totals from the World-Telegram indicate that 16 people voted.)
Eleven days after the voting -- the day of the presentations, in fact, Frank S. Nugent of the Times acknowledged that a lot of readers had written to him expressing dismay over the Critics’ choices, and he acknowledged that he had voted for all of the winners. Here are some highlights from the article. [INTERESTING SIDENOTE: As some of you undoubtedly know, Nugent left the Times to go to Hollywood in 1940 and later married John Ford’s daughter. He became Ford’s foremost screenwriter and wrote the splendid scripts for She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, The Last Hurrah and The Searchers, among others. He received an Oscar nomination for The Quiet Man. His non-Ford screenplays include Preminger’s Angel Face and Phil Karlson’s Gunman’s Walk.]
“Zola has been accused of stuffiness and disregard of the cinema’s primary law – motion. Mr. Muni [some readers] credit for an impressive make-up, for several beautifully read speeches and for an intellectual performance – by which, they explain, is meant a performance governed by the player’s intellectual grasp of a role, not by an emotional insight into the character of the man he was portraying. Thus, they argue, they may appreciate Mr. Muni’s Zola as a well-studied performance, but not one which arouses an emotional response. “
“Miss Garbo’s Camille has stirred up a hornet’s nest. One body of readers sees no virtue in anything Miss Garbo does and lumps her Marguerite Gautier with all the rest. Another cannot reconcile itself to the notion that anything connected with Camille could win an award after all these years; it is, they say, like giving a Pulitzer prize to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Till, a third, without denying Miss Garbo’s superb performance, feels that the critics might have shown more initiative, and a bit more originality, by giving the award this year to one of our gifted comediennes, a Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert, a Ginger Rogers or a Katharine (Stage Door not Quality Street) Hepburn.”
“Direction is still a sufficiently nebulous factor in the public’s mind to escape much attention. But enough comment has been aroused to show that Mr. La Cava’s crown is not unchallenged. [Nugent then lists directors championed by people who wrote to him: Leo McCarey, Koster; Wesley Ruggles, I Met Him In Paris and True Confession; Frank Lloyd, Maid of Salem and Wells Fargo; and William Wellman, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred.)
“And what can one answer, except to say that there can be no trophy which is not an apple of discord. When I presented myself at the voting afternoon of the critics, I felt strongly about only two things. I believed Mr. Muni’s Zola was the finest masculine portrait of the year, and that Miss Garbo’s Lady of the Camellias was the most beautifully shaded portrait on the distaff side. One must recognize, of course, that their films were ‘vehicles’ – a misnomer. Since they did not carry their stars, but were carried by them. Conversely, one must realize that Captains Courageous owed as much to Freddie Bartholomew and Lionel Barrymore as it did to Mr. Tracy; that Stage Door was so perfectly served by all hands that no one of then, unless it be Andrea Leeds, was entitled to have hers held aloft. [So presumably, Kate’s votes were for Stage Door.]
“The same would apply to Mr. Montgomery in Night Must Fall. Was he really more important to the film’s success than Dame May Whitty? . . . To Nothing Sacred and True Confession, for where precisely did Miss Lombard begin, her script and direction end? The answer seems to be – or so it seems to me – that congratulations are sue all these major also-rans and the wish that some day they, too, may find a ‘vehicle’ which will be unmistakably theirs and not merely a flawless mosaic of many brilliances.
“I have no apologies to make for helping Mr. La Cava win the directorial award. Few directors this season, or any other, have proved themselves capable of transmuting a play for the screen without holding the picture for the screen without holding the picture to a series of walled-in sequences. Fewer still have been able to take a play, reduce it to its spirit and, with high courage, toss out line after line, situation after situation, and build it anew. With the writing assistance of Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller and with a superbly marshaled cast, he took George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s clever little play and turned it into one of the best pictures of the year. . . . had this prize not gone to Mr. La Cava, but to one of the others, we should have had to apologize to him and hold ourselves accountable to his cohorts. So, if Stage Door does not impress you as being the best directorial contribution of the season, admit at least that it is one of the best and be consoled by the hope that your man may win next year.”
“Mayerling won its necessary two-thirds of the vote as Best Foreign Film of 1937 on the first ballot, but that does not comfort the earnest admirers of: Baltic Deputy, The Eternal Mask, The Last Night, The Wave or Razumov. Unquestionably, The Eternal Mask was the more unusual film, really avant-garde in its impressionistic study of schizophrenia, but there was no gainsaying the tragic beauty of Mayerling – the story of the ill-starred romance of the crown Prince Rudolph of Austria and the lovely Countess Vetsera.
“I know that my sentimental predilection further damns me in the eyes of my left-wing readers (who brandish my uncomplimentary reviews of Russian films as sure proof that I am a capitalistic weasel and who accept favorable reviews with obvious suspicion). But I believe that Mayerling has fairly won over strong competition. It was beautifully played, reflected its period perfectly and has proved to be one of the most popular pictures of the year.”
“My chief regret is that the present system of awards does not provide for one in distinguished service to the screen. It would require a prize like that to acknowledge players like Lionel Barrymore and Adolphe Menjou, Maria Osupenskaya and Beulah Bondi, or technical experts like James Basevi [in 1937, Basevi created the amazing special effects for John Ford’s The Hurricane], camera men like Gregg Toland [pretty perspicacious on Nugent’s part – this was 2 years before Wuthering Heights and 4 years before Citizen Kane. His 1937 releases were History Is Made At Night and Dead End], and other subastral people who have gone unrewarded too long. Possibly the situation may be remedied next year. Until then, we stand by the film critics’ awards.”
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell