The 1963 Oscars (for 1962 films)

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This was the year of the Big Epics and the Old Broads.

MGM, after having huge success redoing the 1925 hit that got the company off to a strong start, Ben-Hur, in 1959, now decided to re-do their 1935 classic, “Mutiny on the Bounty”, for 1962. They made two mistakes: they scheduled the filing during the rainy season in Tahiti and they hired Marlon Brando to play the lead. Per Life Magazine: “Worst rebel of all was Marlon Brando, who repeatedly delayed production by defying the director and impulsively revising his portrayal of Fletcher Christian, which turned the other stars against him.” Especially when he decided he shouldn’t be playing that role at all but instead Richard Harris’ role of one of the crew-members. The picture took 13 months to complete, used 5 writers and 3 directors cost $20 million and came up $6 million short of that at the box office.

It also made Brando unavailable to star in David Lean’s film, “Lawrence of Arabia”, forcing lean to use a virtually unknown Englishman, Peter O’Toole in the title role. It became the huge hit “Mutiny” was supposed to be and was the year’s most admired and remembered film. It also made a star of an Egyptian actor named Omar Sharif.

But the most complicated movie of the year was Darryl Zanuck’s “The Longest Day”, about the D-Day landings, which also employed three directors in addition to Zanuck, who said he directed 65% of the film himself. He employed 167 actors, most of them noted stars and 472 US Army troops. Zanuck modestly declared “This was the greatest challenge any producer has faced at any time in the history of of making motion pictures.” It was kind of “Hollywood Invades Normandy with John Wayne, (who of course was actually back home making westerns on 6/6/44), Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Robert Ryan and many others hitting the beaches. But it was worth all the effort. The film even edged out Lawrence of Arabia as the top box office film of the year, $39 million to $37 million.

But there were many more intimate films of note made that year. Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke repeated their Broadway roles in “The Miracle Worker”, the story of Helen Keller. Shirley MacLaine got another role Bancroft had played on stage in “Two for the Seesaw” with Robert Mitchum. Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Katherine Hepburn were in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into night”, which was originally to have started Hepburn with Spencer Tracy but the latter backed out . Marlon Brando was initially offered the role Robards played, (he was offered just about everything in those days), but walked out of a performance of the play halfway through. Per Wikipedia, “Joseph E. Levine bought the film for distribution but said he lost money on it. "You cannot stay in business by making O'Neill pictures," he said.”

Meanwhile Universal was filing Harper Lee’s novel of southern justice, or the lack of it, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, with Gregory Peck. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick were filing a movie version of a noted TV play from the “Golden Age”: The Days of Wine and Rose, about a likeable young couple brought down by an addiction to alcohol. Frank Sinatra was making the classic political thriller, “The Manchurian Candidate”, with Angela Lansbury playing the mother of all mothers. And Burt Lancaster was giving another Oscar-worthy performance playing the Birdman of Alcatraz. It really was quite a year at the movies.

The film that inspired the most gossip, (other than “Cleopatra”, which was taking so long to film it wouldn’t come out until the next year), was “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”, a film that almost didn’t get made. When Robert Aldrich peddled the script around Hollywood, wanting to pair two Hollywood legends who were known to loathe each other, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, he kept getting told “Don’t tell me about using those two old broads in it”. The film was eventually shot on a low budget by the two old broad’s former employer, Warner Brothers in 21 days, basically at the pace of an episodic TV show. Davis said “In the area of being a worker and having drive, Joan and I are incredibly alike. But the exterior, well, nothing could be further apart.” Stories of their feud are legion but the most repeated one was that Bette had Coca Cola put into the Pepsi machine Joan had had installed on the set, (Joan was married to the Chairman of the Pepsi Board and used any opportunity to promote the product). Joan was also reported to be miffed when Bette got top billing- because she played the title role- and then got the Oscar nomination, instead of Joan.

Then there was Geraldine Page, who played a faded movie star in Tennessee Williams’s “Sweet Bird of Youth” with Paul Newman. She prepared for her role by watching the films of: Bette Davis. Meanwhile, another old broad, Katherine Hepburn, who had spurned the Oscars for years, suddenly decided she wanted one and began contacting all the columnists to discuss her film. One of them, Sheila Graham wrote: “Hepburn, almost as much of a recluse as Garbo, is actually almost as accessible as Zsa Zsa Gabor. She’d love to win.”

So would Joan Crawford, but she wasn’t’ nominated. What she did instead was to get dressed to the nines, march to the ceremony, sign her autograph to anything the fans outside wanted signed, and volunteer to accept the Oscar for anyone who was absent. That included Anne Bancroft, who was back on the New York stage starring in “Mother Courage and Her Children”. Columnist Mike Connolly: “Joan reigned like a queen back there. She brought two Pepsi coolers stocked with bourbon, scotch, vodka, gin, champagne and Pepsi plus four kinds of cheese and all the fixin’s.” The less pretentious Patty Duke had brought her chihuahua, Bambi, “for luck” in a bowling bag, which she was made to check during the ceremony.

As a change of pace, Frank Sinatra was the Master of Ceremonies for this year’s event, resulting in some rather flat jokes. The Mona Lisa was being exhibited in Washington. “The chick just sits there and smiles”. Shelley Winters, despite wearing glasses while presenting the sound awards, said that one nominee was “Meredith Wilson’s “The Sound of Music”, (close: it was “The Music Man”).

The clips actually open with Ginger Rogers announcing the best original musical score award for “Lawrence Arabia” and adapted score for “The Music Man”. The man accepting the first informed the audience that he was not Maurice Jarre, the composer but Maurice Stoloff, the “coordinator” for the music of Lawrence of Arabia.

The audience was shocked when veteran character actor Ed Begley won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth over Shariff. So was he. The first words out of his mouth were: “I’m not Ed Begley”, even though he was. Ed thanked his agent who was unable to see him do so because heis TV set had been stolen that morning.

Van Helfin announced the short subjects winner and then wrangled the winners off the stage as they tried to go off in different directions.

Audrey Hepburn introduced the award for Best Costume Design from Paris, saying that the award was “important to women throughout the world”. Eva Marie Saint announced the actual awards. Unfortunately, they dropped the concept of having beautiful young starlets, (some of whom would later be famous modeling the costumes in favor of just showing sketches of them. Gene Kelly does the art direction awards. David Niven does a filmed intro from Rome of the cinematographer’s awards, which are presented by Donna Reed. Again sketches or still pictures are used, giving the ceremony a sort of an austerity look.

Ingrid Bergman did another filmed intro from Paris for the best foreign film award, which was actually presented by the President of the Academy, a very unsteady-looking Wendell Corey to “Sundays and Cybele” from France. (Corey would die of cirrhosis of the liver five years later.)

Lawrence Oliver also had a filmed introduction for the best Director award, introduced by Sinatra with the phrase “There you go, Ollie”. (This is not in the clips.) Joan Crawford got to announce the winner, David Lean, who said “This Limey is very touched and greatly honored.”

Sinatra announced Bette Davis as the presenter for the writing awards, saying that the screenwriters he knew were “among the surliest in Hollywood.” Bette had trouble with the Italian names of the writers of “Divorce, Italian Style”. When they won, she simply referred to them “those three difficult Italian names for Divorce, Italian Style”.

Sinatra announced “the Greatest Pizza Maker in the World”, Sophia Loren would present the Best Actor award, which was won by Gregory Peck. “The winner took off his glasses and walked to the stage as various audience members shouted bravo. Peck came prepared and read aloud a list of names from the podium.”

Then it came time for the best actress award. “Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland sat in Frank Sinatra’s dressing room holding hands as Davis chain-smoked. Joan Crawford was in the neighboring dressing room, pacing and puffing on a cigarette. The TV director Richard Dunlop debated about showing the home viewers the scene backstage. “I couldn’t. It would have been cruel.” When Maximillian Shell opened the envelope and announced that Anne Bancroft had won, “Joan instantly stood erect – shoulders back, neck straight, head up. She stamped out here cigarette butt, grabbed the hand of the stage manager, who blurted afterwards that she “practically broke all of my fingers with her strength”. Then she soared calmly on stage with that incomparable Crawford composure. Backstage, Bette bit her cigarette and seemed to stop breathing. Joan was out here: suddenly it was her night.” She read a brief note from Bancroft, (who had originally asked that Patty Duke be allowed to accept for her.)

Years alter Bette Davis told Joyce Haber: “I was positive I would get it. So was everybody in town. I almost dropped dead when I didn’t win. I wanted to be the first actress to win three times but now it’s been done, so I may as well give up. And of course, the fact that Miss Crawford got permission to accept for any of the other nominees is hysterical. I was nominated but she was receiving the acclaim. It would have meant a million more dollars to our film if I had won. Joan was thrilled I didn’t.”

Sinatra, after an editorial about the state of the movie business, described Olivia de Havilland as “a French housewife born in Tokyo” as she came out to present the best picture award to Lawrence of Arabia, whose producer, Sam Spiegel said “There’s no magic formula for making pictures.”

”Joan didn’t want the evening to end so she insisted on hand-delivering the statuette to Bancroft in New York”. Inside Oscar has a picture of Crawford, dressed much as she was at the Oscars, handing the award to Bancroft, apparently on stage after a performance of Mother Courage. Bancroft is dressed in peasant’s clothing and make-up so it seems quite a contrast. Joan is smiling fiercely but I suspect it was painful to part with the Oscar, even if it didn’t actually belong to her.

Anne Bancroft was asked if she felt she deserved to win. “Well, if that means I was better than anyone else, the answer is- Yes!” the New York Journal-American reported “Anne Bancroft celebrated at home and her boyfriend, Mel Blanc was with her.” That must have been news to her fiancé, Mel Brooks.

I’ll give the last word to Shirley Knight, who had been nominated for the second time for Best Supporting Actress for Sweet Birth of Youth and lost again: “Hollywood – that’s where they give Academy Awards to Charlton Heston for acting.”