1940--The Year in Review

Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca reigned supreme at the Oscars, but its director went home unrewarded (despite Judith Anderson's unforgettable villain, I've always found Du Maurier's story a little dull and quite honestly subpar to Hitch's more exciting Foreign Correspondent released this same year). The Oscars instead wisely gave the Best Director prize to John Ford, whose movie of John Steinbeck's dust bowl saga remains among cinema's finest film-to-novel adaptations (Steinbeck even thought it improved upon his work). Fonda would be nominated for his stirring lead as Tom Joad, and would then escape Academy recognition year after year until the end of his career; but, in fact, this was the assured performance that should have won him the gold. Rosalind Russell's fast-talking reporter gal in Howard Hawks' dizzying His Girl Friday ran rings around her already harried co-stars, and the actress wouldn't find a more energetic character until the 1950s and Auntie Mame. Chaplin popped up again, in his first speaking (double) role as both the oppressed and globe-juggling oppressor, while his fellow Brits behind The Thief of Bagdad garnered much international love for their quirky, vibrantly hued adventure (it was the most visually stunning movie of the year, and the one 1940 production--aside from Tyrone Power swashbuckling through The Mark of Zorro--I'd encourage all present-day genre movie lovers to check out). Yet again, Disney stole the year as the mastermind behind the ambitious two-shot of Fantasia and Pinocchio, both of which still enrapture audiences with their visionary power. In fact, Fantasia would for years stand as a singular blending of sound and image, and no one would approach such chutzpah in that realm until the 1960s. Finally, in the shorts categories, The Three Stooges scored again, and Bugs Bunny--though still unnamed--debuted under Tex Avery's pen to much adoration, although the Academy saw matters in a different way.  NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and they are in no way reflective of the choices made by the Oscars.

PICTURE: THE GRAPES OF WRATH (US, John Ford)
(2nd: The Great Dictator (US, Charles Chaplin), followed by:
Fantasia (US, Ben Sharpsteen, Walt Disney)
The Thief of Bagdad (UK, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, Ludwig Berger)
His Girl Friday (US. Howard Hawks)
The Shop Around the Corner (US, Ernst Lubitsch)
They Drive by Night (US, Raoul Walsh)
Foreign Correspondent (US, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Letter (US, William Wyler)
Rebecca (US, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Sea Hawk (US, Michael Curtiz)
Dance, Girl, Dance (US, Dorothy Arzner)
Pinocchio (US, Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Walt Disney)
The Great McGinty (US, Preston Sturges)
All This and Heaven, Too (US, Anatole Litvak)
The Bank Dick (US, Eddie Cline)
Christmas in July (US, Preston Sturges)
The Philadelphia Story (US, George Cukor)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (US, John Cromwell)
Broadway Melody of 1940 (US, Norman Taurog))



ACTOR: Henry Fonda, THE GRAPES OF WRATH (2nd: W.C. Fields, The Bank Dick, followed by: Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator; Brian Donlevy, The Great McGinty; Cary Grant, His Girl Friday; Laurence Olivier, Rebecca; Herbert Marshall, The Letter; James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner; Raymond Massey, Abe Lincoln in Illinois)



ACTRESS: Rosalind Russell, HIS GIRL FRIDAY (2nd: Bette Davis, The Letter, followed by:Joan Fontaine, Rebecca; Margaret Sullivan, The Shop Around the Corner; Ginger Rogers, Kitty Foyle; Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story; Carole Lombard, They Knew What They Wanted; Irene Dunne, My Favorite Wife)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Walter Brennan, THE WESTERNER (2nd: Jack Oakie, The Great Dictator, followed by: Rex Ingram, The Thief of Bagdad; John Carradine, The Grapes of Wrath; Frank Morgan, The Shop Around the Corner; Albert Basserman, Foreign Correspondent; James Stephenson, The Letter; Akim Tamiroff, The Great McGinty)


SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Judith Anderson, REBECCA (2nd: Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath, followed by: Barbara O’Neil, All This and Heaven, Too; Lucille Ball, Dance Girl Dance; Fay Bainter, Our Town; Ida Lupino, They Drive by Night; Margaret Lockwood, The Stars Look Down; Marjorie Rambeau, Primrose Path)

DIRECTOR: John Ford, THE GRAPES OF WRATH (2nd: Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator, followed by: Ben Sharpsteen, Fantasia; Michael Powell, Tim Whelan and Ludwig Berger, The Thief of Bagdad; Alfred Hitchcock, Foreign Correspondent; Ernst Lubitsch, The Shop Around the Corner; Raoul Walsh, They Drive by Night)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Charles Chaplin, THE GREAT DICTATOR (2nd: Preston Sturges, The Great McGinty, followed by: W.C. Fields, The Bank Dick; Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison, James Hilton and Robert Benchley, Foreign Correspondent; Preston Sturges, Christmas in July; Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis and Vicki Baum, Dance, Girl, Dance)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Nunnally Johnson, THE GRAPES OF WRATH (2nd; Charles Lederer, His Girl Friday; Samson Raphelson, The Shop Around The Corner; Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, Rebecca; Donald Ogden Stuart, The Philadelphia Story; Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulaey, They Drive By Night)

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: A-PLUMBING WE WILL GO (Del Lord; The Three Stooges) (2nd: London Can Take It! (Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt), followed by: From Nurse to Worse (Jules White; The Three Stooges); Quicker 'N A Wink (George Sidney; Pete Smith); Britain at Bay (Harry Watt); You Nazty Spy (Jules White; The Three Stooges))

ANIMATED SHORT FILM: A WILD HARE (Tex Avery; Bugs Bunny) (2nd: The Milky Way (Rudolph Ising), followed by: Boogie Doodle (Norman McLaren); Swinging the Lambeth Walk (Lenny Lye); Themis (Dwinnel Grant); You Ought To Be in Pictures (Friz Freling); Elmer's Candid Camera (Chuck Jones))

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Georges Perinal, THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (2nd: Gregg Toland, The Grapes of Wrath, followed by: George Barnes, Rebecca; Tony Gaudio, The Letter; Arthur Miller and Ray Rennahan, The Blue Bird; Rudolph Mate, Foreign Correspondent; Gregg Toland, The Long Voyage Home; Oliver T. Marsh and Joseph Ruttanberg, Broadway Melody of 1940)

ART DIRECTION: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, Rebecca, Pride and Prejudice, The Westerner, Broadway Melody of 1940 

COSTUME DESIGN: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, Broadway Melody of 1940, Bitter Sweet, His Girl Friday, The Blue Bird

FILM EDITING: THE GRAPES OF WRATH, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, They Drive By Night, The Letter 



SOUND: FANTASIA, Broadway Melody of 1940, The Grapes of Wrath, The Sea Hawk, Strike Up the Band

ORIGINAL SCORE: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, THE SEA HAWK (2nd: Aaron Copland. Our Town, followed by: Leigh Harline, Paul J.Smith Pinocchio; Miklós Rózsa, The Thief of Bagdad; Franz Waxman, Rebecca; Alfred Newman, The Mark of Zorro; Max Steiner, The Letter)



ORIGINAL SONG: "When You Wish Upon A Star" from PINOCCHIO (Music by Leigh Harline, lyrics by Ned Washington) (2nd: "I've Got No Strings" from Pinocchio (Music by Leigh Harline, lyrics by Ned Washington), followed by: "I Concentrate on You" from Broadway Melody of 1940 (Music and lyrics by Cole Porter); "Remind Me" from One Night in the Tropics (Music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields); "Down Argentina Way" from Down Argentine Way (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon); "Who Am I?" from Hit Parade of 1941 (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Walter Bullock); "Love of My Life" from Second Chorus (music by Artie Shaw, lyrics by Johnny Mercer)

SPECIAL EFFECTS: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, The Sea Hawk, Dr. Cyclops, One Million BC

MAKEUP: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, Dr. Cyclops, One Million BC

Finally, I need to add my favorite clip from 1940: the dazzling dance to "Begun the Beguine" shared by Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire in Norman Taurog's Broadway Melody of 1940. This is some serious athleticism here, and I don't think we'll be seeing its like ever in the future. The movie, as a whole, is utter fun and the best out of the Broadway Melody series:

Forgotten Movie Songs #25: "Little April Shower" from BAMBI

Walt Disney's Bambi is, officially, the only movie I ever saw alone with my father. It must have been re-released the theaters when I was ten or eleven. Even though my parents had been taking me to adult movies--rated PG, or M, or R--for years, I found myself drawn to the G-rated Bambi, probably due to TV commercials for the re-release. Back then, my family used to go to the drive-in a lot. We always went as a team--my mother, my father and I. And I, at least, ALWAYS had a good time.

I remember begging to go see Bambi back then, but somehow we missed the weekend it was playing at the Northeast Expressway Drive-In. Going to the drive-in was a strictly Friday/Saturday thing for my parents and I. So it looked like I was going to miss seeing Bambi. And--I clearly remember this--I cried. I cried about not seeing Bambi at the drive-in. So to calm me down, my father--on a Thursday night--took me, on his own, to go see it.

Absolutely starstruck, I was, by the film, from beginning to end. I believe that, though it was an imposition on his time, my father was glad we saw it together, and I like to think the memory of seeing this film together stayed with him until he passed away. As a result of the film's powerful intrinsic quality, and of my very personal relationship with it, I still that it is, nearly 70 years after its release, the single best animated feature that has ever been made, and probably the best that will ever BE made.

I base this conclusion on the quality of its animation, surely. But, most of all, I base it on the intense emotional reactions Bambi engenders in everyone who sees it. No other film in history has dramatized the beauties and harshness of the wild, and the life within it, better than this one.

It was released in 1942, and was based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. It's biography at its most exacting: it tells the story of a doe, Bambi, who is born into royalty as the Great Prince of The Forest. His father is a majestic, many-horned buck--the King of the Forest--and his mother is a tender, nurturing queen. The film follows him from his birth to his ascendance to his father's mantle.

The film is an astonishingly short 70 minutes long, but it packs an amazing punch. Bambi's childhood days, with his exuberant best friend, the rabbit Thumper (memorably voiced by the uncredited Peter Behn) and the shy skunk Flower, are vividly dramatized; we get Bambi's first steps, his first words, and his first friendships. And, in the film's greatest sequence, the "Little April Showers" number, his introduction to the more benign, but nonetheless scary, cruelties of nature.

Upon this opening sequence's emotional climax--of which scads of humans have confessed is their most scarring moviegoing experience (and of which, for the benefit of the many whom I'm sure haven't seen it, I won't talk about now, except to say that it is devastating enough to have proven a problem for Disney, in the 1930s, to ever get made)--we jump to Bambi's adulthood. This part of the film is a bit less charming but, in its portrayal of "the circle of life," is ultimately as moving and makes the story blossom into one that acts a perfect template for another, arguably more popular Disney animated epic called The Lion King (which owes a ridiculous debt to Bambi). Just to keep the record straight, the supervising director was David Hand, and he had six other sequence directors, as well as Disney himself, to help; this puts it on an even plane with the largely more ambitious Fantasia, which had eleven animators working as directors. But it remains that Bambi is the more resplendent picture.

I can still recall experiencing the "Little April Shower" sequence for the first time. I remember thinking that it reminded me of being at the drive-in when the rain begins to fall, so I immediately experienced a soul-deep connection to it. Now when I watch it again, it astonishes me on so many levels. The animation of the droplets' movements, in all their infinite permutations, hits me first. Then the lyrics, vocal and instrumental arrangement, and music for the sequence--scored by Frank Churchill and worded by Larry Morey--takes me aback me with its gorgeous power. Finally, I am hit on a subliminal level with a wave of empathy for animals of all species, who are forced to endure the callousness of nature and yet almost always emerge ready to face the challenges of a new day of life. I have always been an animal lover, but Bambi made me into more of one, I think, and chiefly because of "Little April Shower." Bookended by cheekily austere clarinet solos, the sequence steps up into, at first, a sweet look at the cooling benefits of a nice rain. But then, in its middle, it balloons into a genuinely frightening examination of a storm, and how it affects life in the forest, and how it traumatizes Bambi in particular, and strengthens his bond with his brave mother--an issue that comes into desperate play later in this extraordinary film.


The song is called "Little April Shower." The music is by Frank Churchill (who composed the film's exuberant score--one of the best in film history), and the lyrics are by Larry Morey. These two artists were nominated for Oscars in 1942, but for another excellent Bambi number, called "Love is a Song." But, still, when I think of Bambi, I think of this sequence, and this song, primarily.



Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To your beautiful sound
Beautiful sound, beautiful sound
Drip, drop, drip, drop

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
Your pretty music
Will brighten the day

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You'll come along
With a song right away

Come with your beautiful music

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song

Gay little roundelay
Gay little roundelay
Song of the rainy day
Song of the rainy day
How I love to hear your patter
Pretty little pitter patter
Helter skelter when you pelter
Troubles always seem to scatter

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound

(Break)

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound
Beautiful sound