BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #30

THE ACADEMY AWARDS BIG FIVE

In the history of the Oscars, only three films have swept the so-called “Big Five” categories, which include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. The first was 1934’s “It Happened One Night,” earning Frank Capra, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Robert Riskin individual awards in the latter four categories. The feat wasn’t replicated until “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975.

What was the 3rd film? (answer below)

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FOLLOW THE MONEY

The 1997 smash “Titanic” was the first movie to earn more than $1 billion at the box office, and it did so just 74 days after its release. “Jurassic Park” (1993) also crossed the $1 billion mark, but only recently thanks to myriad big-screen re-releases. Eventually topping $2 billion, “Titanic” remained the king of box office returns until it was dethroned by “Avatar.” Both were directed by James Cameron.
Source: USA Today
History Quiz website
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THE MAKING OF SUNSET BOULEVARD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZvdKjKL7hQ

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GHOST SINGER

Audiences never suspected that Eleanor Powell did not perform her own singing vocals because Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer linked her with ghost singer Marjorie Lane from the outset of her career. Lane had only one other film credit to her name, appearing on camera in a 1930 short subject. As such, her voice was unknown to movie audiences and, when matched with Powell's visual interpretation, it cemented the notion that Powell could sing as well as she danced, beginning with her very first film, Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935). M-G-M kept Lane under contract solely to serve as Powell's voice double for Born to Dance (1936), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) and Rosalie (1937). Further completing the illusion is the fact that Eleanor Powell provided her own singing voice for several numbers during the course of her career that did not require finessed singing (principally Broadway Melody of 1940 [1940]), and some of her films required no vocals at all, such as Honolulu (1939), Ship Ahoy (1942) and I Dood It (1943). Decades later, with all of the studio's history at his disposal, not even Jack Haley, Jr. suspected Powell's dubbing history and the narration he wrote for That's Entertainment! (1974) professed that Powell was singing "Easy to Love" with James Stewart in Born to Dance (1936)."

iMDb Trivia for BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936
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JACK LEMMON TELLS PLAYBOY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A YOUNG ACTOR STARTING OUT IN A VERY DIFFICULT PROFESSION

Playboy: Did it ever occur to you to quit?

LEMMON: No, it didn't, but there was an awful lot of fear and insecurity the first few years. Still, I would not have quit. The terrible thing is that it isn't a matter of just getting a little job now and then or a small part. An actor really can't begin to know how good he might or might not be until he gets a couple of good parts with a good cast, in a good piece, with a good director. The rest of the time, you don't really know. And it may be ten years and you're going to have to look in the mirror, finally, after all of that time, and say, 'I'm a journeyman,' or 'I can't cut it."

"20 Questions: Jack Lemmon " in Playboy (June 1981)
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Films for persons over 75: 
 
THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Instead of sword fights,
duels are settled on shuffleboard courts.

THE GRADUATE:  "I have a word for you."
                               "Plastics?"
                               "No. Fiber."
Remake of Niagra ---  Viagra
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK CHANGED HOW MOVIES WERE VIEWED THEATERS

Before 1960 most movie theaters did not have set times when screenings began—movies were constantly looping. Patrons would walk into the theater in the middle of a film, watch to the end, and wait for the movie to begin again to see what they missed. Alfred Hitchcock is credited with disrupting this practice. He insisted that no one be allowed in after the start of a Psycho screening to prevent spoiling its ending.

ONE GOOD FACT website for January 5th, 2025
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SMALL TIME CROOKS & SHERLOCK HOLMES

"The film contains several references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story 'The Red-Headed League,' including the plot to break into a bank through the basement of an adjacent storefront and Frenchy's attempt memorize the contents of the dictionary."
                       iMDb Trivia
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BETTE DAVIS AT THE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN 1989

"In 1989 Davis attended the San Sebastián film festival to accept the lifetime-achievement Donostia award. The festival was playing host to a James Whale retrospective and invited Davis because she was the only person to have worked with him who was still alive. She stayed at the rather more upmarket Maria Cristina, room 451, since christened the Bette Davis Suite. The only times she left the room were to attend a press conference, to accept her award and to see a single film in the Whale retrospective – Waterloo Bridge, released in 1931, in which she had a small role. She was too ill after the festival to return to the US, so travelled to France to finish an expanded version of her autobiography, The Lonely Life, and to die."

Lillian Crawford. "Cut! The films the stars saw they died" in  TLS online (July 4, 2024)
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/arts/film/last-movies-stanley-schtinter-book-review-lillian-crawford/ 
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LEARNING MAGIC FROM HOUDINI

Born on September 10, 1915, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, Edmund O'Brien learned the craft of performance as a magician, reportedly tutored by neighbor Harry Houdini.

iDMb Trivia
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ANSWER TO THE BIG FIVE: Silence of the Lambs 
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ON BEING A MOVIE STAR

Gary Cooper
Was not super
Pleased, & he was not forgiving
When I asked what he did for a living.

Louis Phillips