If I Picked the Winners: Best Actor 1935

     In this week's addition of "If I Picked the Winners", I thought I would go back into the furthest possible catacombs of Oscar history that I have fully explored, which happened to be Best Actor 1935. Now as much as I may be tempted to inflate my own cultural prowess by playing up the fact that I have seen all the nominated films in an Oscar category that took place a full 52 years before I was born, I feel obligated to point out that to the complete viewing of the filmography of Best Actor 1935 consists of watching all of two films. That's right, only two films are nominated in the four alloted slots the Academy gave to the category in 1935, and if you're an "old movie" buff such as my self, both films are relatively famous, so their viewing is expected and not something to point out proudly, like some difficult merit badge.

     The two films in question are 1935's Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Frank Lloyd's "Mutiny on the Bounty", which had an amazing three out of the four nominations, a feat that has rarely been repeated in an acting category (never again in Best Actor, and "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" in Best Supporting Actor are the only other times I can think of off the top of my head), and John Ford's "The Informer". Both film's are considered classics of the era (an appraisal that I would whole heartedly agree with the former, but not quite the latter), and any frequent viewers of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) are likely to have at least caught a glimpse of the films at one point or another. Both films have had a lasting impact on cinema, as proved by the remaking of "Mutiny on the Bounty" in 1962 with Marlon Brando as the star (supposedly much inferior to the original, but since I haven't seen it I can render no judgement), and for "The Informer", influence on auteurs of later generations, such as Martin Scorsese who included a cameo appearance of the film in his only Best Picture winner, "The Departed" (the film's famous last scene makes a brief appearance on a television screen).

     Despite my fondness for Depression-era cinema, I have seen disappointingly few films from 1935. The means the choice of viable alternatives is sparse, with the only possible worthy alternative I can think of being Groucho Marx in "A Night at the Opera" (sorry Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood", your acting, as as well as the movie, are overrated). On the plus side though, this allows us to more quickly get to the actual nominees, so let's do that.