A Century of Film: Film History (1930-1939)

A Century of Film

1930-1939

So, I originally planned to have one long post that covered both film history through 1939 as well as film history during the decade but decided it was long enough just being a single decade; as a result, the film history through 1939 will be posted soon after this and that is how it will work with future decades as well (for the 20’s it was irrelevant since I covered all of film history up to that point in one post).

This decade is a turbulent but fruitful time in the film industry.  The early part of the decade saw the cementing of the major studios as the powers that be in the industry.  It also saw studios struggling to properly integrate sound and learn how to make use of that.  It had a greater degree of freedom in the days before the Production Code was enforced (which happened in 1934) and there were a large group of more risqué films made in 1932 and 1933 that are generally known today as “Pre-Code”.

In awards, the Oscars added a lot of categories in the middle of the decade after finally formalizing things into the calendar year for eligibility.  What’s more, the National Board of Review and New York Film Critics both got their start handing out awards so the Oscars were no longer the only game.

Films really start to get better in 1935 with the first solid number of truly great films and of course 1939 is often (incorrectly) held up as the pinnacle of film-making.  More can be found by looking at books listed in the books section or by looking at my individual years in film.

Genres

Though the statistics are down below in that section, there are some things to be said here about various genres in the 1930s.  I discuss the genres in descending order of quantity.

• Action / Kids / Sci-Fi / Fantasy
  Together, these account for less than 3% of all the films.  They account for just two films above *** (Wizard of Oz, Snow White).
• Suspense
  Spy films began with the international intrigue of the decade and Hitchcock really kicked the genre off although there is some irony to that as you can see from the two lists directly below.
• War
  World War I films thrived as people lamented that war and tried to put off having to fight another and it provided two of the best films of the decade.  At 67.22, it’s also the best genre of the decade.
• Horror
  It thrived early in the decade at Universal of course and they made the most films (14 out of 49 or 28.6%) and they made most of the best ones as well.  The average for the decade (64.49) is far higher than it will ever be after this decade.
• Adventure
  Associated most with Warners because of Errol Flynn but at the end of the decade, all the studios were making them.
• Crime
  Among the Top 5 in production in the first half of the decade but there were actually more Crime films in the second half (86 to 73) after the Code but for the most part they weren’t as good and it wasn’t as big because other genres had become more plentiful.
• Mystery
  Over 1/3 of all the Mysteries I’ve ever seen are from the 30’s when the Detective sub-genre really thrived (see below).  Just from 1935 to 1937 I’ve seen more Mysteries (88) then in multiple other decades combined.
• Westerns
  The worst genre of the decade, barely getting out of ** range (50.3).  That’s because the studios started making cheap B-Westerns like the Hopalong Cassidy films at Paramount.  Also, the Poverty Row studios liked Westerns, especially Republic.  Westerns account for almost half of Republic’s films that I’ve seen in the decade and they are not good.  Stagecoach is the only Western above ***.
• Musicals
  They exploded early in the decade.  I’ve seen 40 in 1930 alone, the only year in the decade where Comedies aren’t the second most genre.  Then they declined for a few years (bad box office) before returning strong after the enforcement of the Production Code.  MGM is most associated with the Musical but their Musicals in the decade were fairly weak and I’ve actually seen a lot from all the majors (at least 30 from all five majors).
• Comedies
  They weren’t great (59.1) in spite of the development of Screwball Comedies but they were plentiful.  In eight of the ten years, it was the second most plentiful genres, coming in third in 1930 and actually first in 1937 with a whopping 97.
• Dramas
  The most plentiful genre by far, as it generally is.  It accounts for over a third of all films though that number is a bit deceptive as it’s basically half the films from 1932-1934 but down to a quarter of the films in 1937-38.  That’s the effect of the Poverty Row studios which rarely made Dramas, perhaps realizing that no one wanted to pay to see poor quality Dramas but were more willing to pay for poor quality in other genres.

The Best Films by Genre, 1930-1939

• Action:  n/a
• Adventure:  The Adventures of Robin Hood
• Comedy:  Modern Times
• Crime:  M
• Drama:  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• Fantasy:  n/a
• Horror:  King Kong
• Kids:  The Wizard of Oz
• Musical:  A nous la liberte
• Mystery:  The Thin Man
• Sci-Fi:  n/a
• Suspense:  The 39 Steps
• War:  The Grand Illusion
• Western:  Stagecoach

The Worst Films by Genre, 1930-1939

• Action:  The Racing Strain
• Adventure:  Lost Jungle
• Comedy:  General Spanky
• Crime:  Let em Have It
• Drama:  Oliver Twist
• Fantasy:  n/a
• Horror:  The Vampire Bat
• Kids:  Huckleberry Finn
• Musical:  Stand Up and Cheer!
• Mystery:  The Maltese Falcon (1931)
• Sci-Fi:  n/a
• Suspense:  Jamaica Inn
• War:  Crimson Romance
• Western:  The Star Packer

note:  n/a means no film better than ***.5 or worse than **
note:  How about that?  Hitchcock manages to make the best and worst Suspense films of the decade.

Sub-Genres

Of the sub-genres from the previous decade, most thrived (except Swashbucklers which mostly dropped off, which is ironic since the two best of the decade, Adventures of Robin Hood and Captain Blood were far better than any of the 20s films) but a number of new ones arose as well.  These are all the sub-genres that had significant numbers of films in the 30s.

Biopic

• Best Film:  The Scarlet Empress

I’ve seen 35 Biopics in the decade and while many are good (including Life of Emile Zola which won Best Picture) only Scarlet Empress manages to rise above *** and just barely at that.  Although there are several sub-categories to this, the only ones with significant numbers are Politicians (9), a category I am pretty broad about (any world leader) and Musicians (7).  There wouldn’t be a great Biopic until 1942 and they are still fairly rare.

Comedy

• Best Film:  Destry Rides Again

This is something that became easier with sound – the trend towards Comedy in another genre (usually Mystery but obviously the best example is a Western).  This doesn’t fully cover it as a lot of films like this are already covered in another sub-genre (like The Thin Man for instance).

Comedy Team

• Best Film:  Duck Soup

There were three main Comedy Teams in the decade: the Marx Brothers (by far the best), Laurel & Hardy (solid) and Wheeler and Woolsey (sadly the worst and the sadly is because they were also the most prolific with 18 films to L & H’s 13 and the Marx’s 8).

Cop

• Best Film:  Bullets or Ballots

Even in this era, Cop films fall into the main three categories that they would in later decades: Action (cop fighting crime), Mystery (cop solving it rather than a detective) or Crime (if the cop is corrupt).

Courtroom

• Best Film:  They Won’t Forget

There are only 19 of these that’s I’ve seen in the decade and they are a weak lot (53.05 average).

Detective

• Best Film:  The Thin Man

Not only is this a significant sub-genre on its own (29 films not including the ones listed below), but there are also no less than ten different detectives that I classify together on their own within it (with number of films followed by averages in parenthesis: Charlie Chan (17, 61.2), Bulldog Drummond (10, 59.5), Dashiell Hammett (various detectives written by him; 5, 66.2), Mr. Moto (8, 63.1), Nancy Drew (6, 64.8), The Saint (just his first film, released in 1939, a 63), The Shadow (3, 57.7), Philo Vance (5, 60.6), Mr. Wong (3, 58) and of course Sherlock Holmes (11, 59.6).  The Holmes series with Rathbone is just starting in 1939 and will continue strong in the 40s.  All in all, 96 Detective films that average 59.17.

The best series are not because the films are that great in and of themselves but the solid work from Peter Lorre (as Moto) and Bonita Granville (as Nancy Drew).  The Hammett films are actually three strong Nick and Nora films (81 avg) and two terrible adaptations of The Maltese Falcon (44 avg).

Gangster

• Best Film:  Scarface

A plethora in the Pre-Code era of course but also strong through the decade, just making certain the gangsters got their comeuppance.  Three films stand out by far: Scarface, Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces.

Historical

• Best Film:  The Mutiny on the Bounty

Unlike Biopics, these are films that tell a historical tale (with often dubious levels of accuracy) but that aren’t the whole biography of a specific person.  Mutiny is the only great film though Alexander Nevsky and The Private Life of Henry VIII are very good.  There are 38 films with a 63.9 average.

Lit Adaptation

• Best Film:  Wuthering Heights

In all there are 72 films with a 64.47 average.  There are a lot of sub-categories to this with 20 different authors that I track having at least one adaptation in this decade (plus several where I don’t track the author).  There are at least 10 authors I track with 3 or more adaptations but the only ones with more than three (with average following) are Dickens (7, 59.5), Lewis (4, 67.8), Maugham (5, 68) and Twain (6, 54.8).  I will note that short stories are included in this as well as novels.  There are only five great films: Wuthering Heights, Les Miserables (the 1935 Hollywood version), The Invisible Man, A Tale of Two Cities and La bete humaine.  Dickens runs the whole gamut, having one in the top 5 but also the worst (Oliver Twist) and third worst (1934 Great Expectations).

Monster

• Best Film:  King Kong

The main monsters get their start here.  Of the various sub-categories in this sub-genre we have Frankenstein (three), Jekyll, Kong (two), Mummy and Werewolf.  Dracula films are separated out down below.

Musical

• Best Film:  The Wizard of Oz

Like with the Comedy sub-genre, this is for films that I don’t classify as a Musical for its genre.  For the most part, this is filled with terrible Westerns made by Poverty Row studios with the likes of Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter and Gene Autry.  Even with Wizard the 30 films here average a 50.4.

Play Adaptation

• Best Film:  The Petrified Forest

The 22 films here average a 73 and they include four Coward adaptations, four Kaufman adaptations and five O’Neill adaptations although the best is of course none of those.

Prison

• Best Film:  Each Dawn I Die

Mostly Dramas but also Crime films depending on the main focus of the film.  Not a great bunch of 17 films with a 57.3 average.

Romance

• Best Film:  L’Atalante

A large sub-genre (102 films) but only one film even above *** and only a handful of high *** films (Waterloo Bridge, Dark Angel, Berkeley Square).

Romantic

• Best Film:  City Lights

Of course this is just a comedic Romance (it’s how I distinguish between the two).  City Lights is the best film by 18 points with People on Sunday the only other one above a 73.  The largest sub-genre in the decade with 165 films that average 60.1.  Mostly Comedies but also some Musicals.

Screwball

• Best Film:  Bringing Up Baby

The most deliriously enjoyable sub-genre of the decade and bizarrely Hollywood would mostly abandon it afterwards.  The 75.1 average of the 26 films is strong enough but there are five great films (Baby, It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds, My Man Godfrey, Awful Truth) and four more high ***.5 (Merrily We Live, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, It’s Love I’m After, Twentieth Century).  Basically everything here is also a Romantic Comedy and it would improve that sub-genre by over two points in spite of having far fewer films.

Series

• Best Film:  Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever

Some of these had started early but they really got going at the end of the decade – cheaper films that would get produced more quickly and often had several films in the series released in the same year.  By the end of the decade all five majors had at least one series going (MGM – Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare; Fox – Jones Family; Paramount – Hopalong Cassidy; RKO – Spitfire; Warner – Torchy Blane).  Columbia would have several series starting with Blondie and Lone Wolf going by 1939 and Republic would have the Three Mesquiteers.

In all, this is 84 films that average a 54.76.  MGM was in the best position because their two looked the best and often were the best – they averaged 66.4 and they also had a Maisie series starting in 1939.  Paramount’s Hopalong was the most prolific – I have seen 26 of those films just in the 30s.

Social

• Best Film:  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Social Dramas were getting their start at this point – dramatic films with a serious message attached to them.  Of course, preachy films often are too preachy to be good and it takes a Capra or a Fritz Lang (Fury) to rise above the pack.  There are 29 films that average a 59.86.

Sports

• Best Film:  The Crowd Roars

A lot of boxing, some football, some car racing.  But 33 films that average only a 53.93.

Spy

• Best Film:  The Spy in Black

The genre was just beginning and if it wasn’t that good yet, it wasn’t that bad yet either with 12 films that all fall between 71 and 51.

Vampire

• Best Film:  Vampyr

Just seven films through 1939, three of which are Dracula films.  The average is 66.7 which makes sense because the greatness of Vampyr and Dracula are negated somewhat by the crappiness of Condemned to Live and The Vampire Bat.

World War I

• Best Film:  The Grand Illusion

It’s very rare to have two of the best films in a decade be from the same sub-genre but All Quiet has to settle for second best here.  The only other films above *** are Wooden Crosses and Road to Glory.  But most of the 42 films are good (66.59 average) and only a couple are bad (Ace of Aces, Crimson Romance).  The first World War II film, Goose Step, comes out in 1939.

The Directors

Once again, this is not a list of the most prolific directors of the decade, it’s a list of the most important.  I’ve seen 39 films directed in the decade by Lloyd Bacon, only two of which rise above mid ***.  He did a lot of work, but in the scope of film history, not much important work.  And this is based off their work and my estimation of it.  For what, say, the Oscars thought of a director, go down to the Oscars section.

Fritz Lang

• Films:  7
• Average Film:  82.4
• Best Film:  M
• Worst Film:  You and Me

One of the least prolific directors of the decade as he had to move, first from Germany to France and then to Hollywood and only managing to make seven films (two of which are different versions of the same film).  But, even with fewer films than most other directors, he had risen from 4th on my Absolute Points List (see below) to 1st and then rose way out of sight of any other director.  He also wins the Nighthawk twice in the decade.  He’s the only director from the 20s who also belongs on this list.

Jean Renoir

• Films:  12
• Average Film:  80.3
• Best Film:  The Grand Illusion
• Worst Film:  Toni

He started slowly, with only one really memorable film among his first half-dozen in the decade (Boudu Saved from Drowning).  But in an unbelievable four year stretch he made The Lower Depths, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, La Marseillaise, Grand Illusion, La bete humaine and Rules of the Game, six films that average an 87.8 and he would go from 48th in total points in 1934 to 4th in 1939.

Frank Capra

• Films:  15
• Average Film:  73.8
• Best Film:  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• Worst Film:  Rain or Shine

Another slow starter with his seven films in 1930-32 averaging a 66.4 and the rest of the decade producing eight films that averaged 80.4 which also managed to win him two Oscars.  Easily the best Hollywood director of the decade.

Alfred Hitchcock

• Films:  13
• Average Film:  71.1
• Best Film:  The 39 Steps
• Worst Film:  Jamaica Inn

In the full scope of his career, there’s no question his work divides in 1934 with The Man Who Knew Too Much but that was less obvious through 1939 with his three great films undermined by Jamaica Inn, his final film in the decade.

Best Director  (weighted points system)

1. Jean Renoir  (344)
2. Fritz Lang   (312)
3. Frank Capra  (302)
4. James Whale  (234)
5. Alfred Hitchcock  (223)
6. Howard Hawks  (212)
7. Michael Curtiz  (212)
8. Charlie Chaplin  (190)
9. John Ford  (189)
10. Victor Fleming  (167)

Analysis:  This adds up points on a weighted scale (100-1) based on a weighted version of my 9 point director scale.  This is different than the usual list here for the genres or studios because it’s based on the pure directing points rather than the scaled list for how they finish at the Nighthawk Awards.  It is cumulative for all films made by that director in the decade, no matter when they got OE releases.

Top 10 Most Prolific Directors

1. Michael Curtiz  (42, 64.3)
2. Lloyd Bacon  (39, 56.6)
3. Mervyn LeRoy  (33, 61.8)
4. William A. Seiter  (33, 56.1)
5. Alfred E. Green  (32, 57.4)
6. George B. Seitz  (32, 57.4)
7. W.S. Van Dyke  (31, 63.3)
8. William Wellman  (30, 64.4)
9. Ray Enright  (30, 57.4)
10. William Dieterle  (28, 61.4)

note:  The directors in bold were all Warners contract directors.  They clearly worked their directors a lot.  It’s not like I’ve seen way more WB films than other studios (as you can see below, it’s actually lower than MGM, which is who Seitz and Van Dyke worked for while Seiter was an RKO director).  There were also several other WB directors just off the list.  Their directors worked a lot.  There are Top 100 directors who will be bumped off the 3.0 list because they haven’t directed seven films.  Curtiz, in 1932-33 directed 12 films.  I’m actually missing two of Curtiz’s films in the decade which means he directed 44 films.  Clint Eastwood is considered a prolific director in today’s film world and he’s directed six fewer films in almost 50 years than Curtiz directed in a decade.

The Stars

Norma Shearer

Forget Garbo.  Until Vivien Leigh arrived with Gone with the Wind, Shearer was the most beautiful star of the decade as well as being one of the best and one of the most prominent, namely because she was married to Irving Thalberg.  Her best work was more risqué and wasn’t available for a long time because of the Production Code.
Essential Viewing:  The Divorcee, A Free Soul, The Women, The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Leslie Howard

The great gentleman actor of the decade, bringing refinement to a number of roles.  He was also responsible for getting Bogart cast in The Petrified Forest, which the two had done together on stage.  One of my favorite actors as well as one of the best.
Essential Viewing:  The Petrified Forest, Pygmalion, Berkeley Square, A Free Soul

Fredric March

Such a brilliant actor that he managed to win an Oscar for a role in a Horror film when Universal couldn’t even manage single nominations for their Horror films.  Brilliantly intense and another of my favorites.
Essential Viewing:  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Star is Born, Les Miserables, The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Charles Laughton

The premiere antagonist of the decade, facing off against March in Les Mis, Gable in Mutiny, March and Shearer in Barretts and many queens in Henry.
Essential Viewing:  Les Miserables, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Private Life of Henry VIII, Ruggles of Red Gap

Katharine Hepburn

She gets listed before Davis not because she’s better in the decade but because she won the Oscar before Davis even had a nomination.  She only earned two of her nominations in the decade but deserved far more and was equally adept in Drama and Comedy.
Essential Viewing:  Bringing Up Baby, Morning Glory, Little Women, Alice Adams

Bette Davis

As the points make clear, the premiere actress of the decade, winning two Oscars without even getting nominated for her two best performances.
Essential Viewing:  The Petrified Forest, Of Human Bondage, Jezebel, Dark Victory

Best Actress  (weighted points system)

1. Bette Davis  (315)
2. Katharine Hepburn  (265)
3. Norma Shearer  (244)
4. Greta Garbo  (208)
5. Janet Gaynor  (131)
6. Marlene Dietrich  (131)
7. Marie Dressler  (117)
8. Ginger Rogers  (112)
9. Billie Burke  (105)
10. Miriam Hopkins  (97)

Analysis:  This adds up points on a weighted scale (78-1) based on a weighted version of my 9 point acting scale.  It is cumulative for all films made by that actress through 1929.

Best Actor  (weighted points system)

1. Leslie Howard  (371)
2. Fredric March  (356)
3. Charles Laughton  (279)
4. James Cagney  (243)
5. Clark Gable  (235)
6. Paul Muni  (218)
7. Claude Rains  (208)
8. William Powell  (174)
9. Lionel Barrymore  (169)
10. John Barrymore  (137)

Analysis:  This adds up points on a weighted scale (78-1) based on a weighted version of my 9 point acting scale.  It is cumulative for all films made by that actor through 1929.

The Worst Actors of the 1930s

Warren William

Obnoxious, arrogant and a horrible Sam Spade to boot (although under a different name).  He couldn’t quite kill Lady for a Day.  He was, somehow, a huge star for Warner Brothers in the decade although his worst work was as Caesar in Cleopatra.  He was a boring Perry Mason and the end of the decade moved to Columbia to start a long series of boring performances as the Lone Wolf.

George Brent

A dud actor at Warner Brothers.  He was one of the horrible performances that makes 42nd Street so over-rated and was a boring love interest for Bette Davis in Dark Victory.

Warner Baxter

Ham ham ham ham ham ham ham ham.

Richard Dix

Somehow he earned an Oscar nomination for Cimarron in spite of the most boring performance in the film.  He wasn’t as popular as the other two but the Oscar nomination seals it.  Like William, he would move to Columbia to star in a crime series (Whistler) but that wouldn’t happen until the mid 40s.

The Studios

See below for specific statistics about the studios.  There are a lots in the Statistics section but there is also some significant information in the Academy Awards section.

I will make much of “Oscar submitted films” in this section.  Because of disagreement among records, it’s hard to really know how many films were released by various studios (and to be fair, distributors is a more accurate word, but studios is the word that people know).  The easiest way for me to track things (and calculate numbers) is based off how many films were submitted for Oscar consideration.

A lot of studios submitted films in the first Oscar year (47 in all) but many of them never did so again (26 of them).  By 1930 things were focusing a bit better with all the majors in place but there were still a lot of outliers.  In all, 82 different studios submitted at least one film for Oscar consideration in the decade although only 32 of them submitted more than five films.

Things got a bit more streamlined after the formation of Republic in 1935 (see below) and in 1936 and 1937 there were among the fewest studios ever submitting (14 each year) in spite of massive numbers of films (382 and 499 – the most ever after 1928).  But then things started to loosen up again in 1938 and 1939.

I won’t mention every studio – not even close – but I will discuss prominent ones below, grouped together.

Majors

By this, I mean the five majors that both had production studios and theater chains (MGM, Paramount, Warners, Fox, RKO, Columbia), the two major-minors that didn’t have chains (Universal, Columbia), the one wild card (United Artists) and Disney.

MGM

The big daddy.  They had more stars than were in the heavens and they had all the money.  Their films weren’t always that good (though, at 60.82, they are better than all but two majors) but they look good, that’s for certain.  They account for 14% of the films in the decade but 20% of the Art Direction points and almost 30% of the Costume Design points.  They were the most successful studio by far and it showed at the box office (Gone with the Wind) and the Oscars.  In spite of submitting far fewer films than Paramount, Fox or Warners, MGM had by far the most nominated films, the most nominations and the most Oscars.  MGM won over half the lead acting Oscars in the decade.  Thanks to Turner owning the MGM catalog, their films are all over TCM and I’ve seen over 90% of their submitted films as a result, by far the best result I have of any of the actual majors.

Paramount

The oldest of the majors and one that is still going.  I haven’t yet done my post on them so I’m still working through their films.  But in the 30s they were huge, submitting the most films in the decade (558) and having the most in five different years, getting as high as 81 in 1932-33.  I’ve actually seen 363 of those films but that only accounts for 65%.  Their best films were importing M from Germany and the Marx Brothers films.  In the first half of the decade, it actually continually lead in Oscar nominated films before MGM took over in the second half of the decade.  But, even being second in films, it’s only fourth in nominations and wins.  Paramount’s overall average (59.78) is brought down by a ton of mediocre Hopalong Cassidy films.

Warner Brothers

I love Warner Brothers films of the 30’s, from Cagney as a gangster to Errol Flynn with a sword to Bette Davis being snarky with anyone and everyone.  So it’s a surprise that Warners has the second lowest average of the decade (58.15) but that’s because they had a lot of filler and because, unlike some of the other studios, most of their films are available (thanks to TCM) and I’m at over 80% of their submitted films.  Warners wasn’t horrible at the Oscars in the first six years (21 films, 32 noms, 7 wins) but in the last four years, they really started scoring (19 films, 59 noms, 16 wins).

Fox Films  /  20th-Century Fox

As detailed in this post, Fox had a rough decade.  It lost its best asset, F.W. Murnau, early in the decade and as a result had no **** films and barely any ***.5 films.  What’s more, it was in such desperate financial straits by mid-decade that it had to merge with Zanuck’s independent 20th Century Features to form the new combined studio.  Even that didn’t improve the product that much.  It had by a significant margin the fewest Oscar nominations of the actual five majors and the fewest nominated films in spite of having the second most submitted films.  What’s more, I couldn’t quite get to 50% because of the famous 1937 fire that wiped out a lot of the pre merger films.

RKO Radio

The weakest of the majors.  It has the weakest average by several points (55.77) and has the worst average in every year except one.  As discussed, it just didn’t have the talent at its hands that the other majors did.  It had weird luck at the Oscars, winning Best Picture with one of the worst winners ever (Cimarron) and then having the best film of 1935 (The Informer), winning Director, Adapted Screenplay and Actor and not winning Picture.  And its two best films of the decade didn’t earn any Oscar noms at all (Bringing Up Baby, King Kong).

Universal

When people think of Universal in the 30s, they think of Horror films.  There’s good reason for that, of course, with Horror films being the bulk of their best films (4 of the Top 5, 10 of the Top 15) and the easiest to find.  But, even having only seen 46% of their submitted films, Horror films still only account for 10% of the films I’ve seen.  The studio also won the first Best Picture of the decade (and the best choice the Academy made prior to 1943), though that film accounts for half of its Oscar wins in the decade and was the only Universal film nominated for Picture and Director.  Universal did have the first ever film nominated for all four acting categories but first, My Man Godfrey did not get nominated for Picture (still the only film nominated for the big other six but not Picture) and second, it lost all of its nominations.

Columbia

Frank Capra is the main reason for the success.  His films earned 39 of the studio’s 62 Oscar nominations in the decade and they won 11 Oscars as opposed to the three Oscars for the rest of the studio.  He also made four of the six films that earn above ***.  Columbia is the weak link in the majors.  Not only did it release fewer than all but UA, but it was sixth in nominations even with Capra.  What’s more, its films are the hardest to find – it’s the only studio I couldn’t get to 40% of the Oscar submissions.  On the whole, though, its films weren’t much worse than the other studios, though that might be different if I could see the other 60%.

United Artists

The best studio of the decade in terms of quality.  Over 1/4 of all its submitted films earned an Oscar nomination.  It’s the only major to average a *** film for the decade (63.87).  Its 1937 average of 68.41 is astonishing for that many films (22).  And it had great films from a variety of producers releasing their films through the quasi-studio: Chaplin (City Lights, Modern Times), Howard Hughes (Scarface), Zanuck (Les Miserables), Goldwyn (Wuthering Heights), Selznick (A Star is Born) and Wanger (Stagecoach, You Only Live Once).  Perhaps the main reason it was so good was that the limited releases (just 171 submissions, not much more than Republic who didn’t even start until 1935) meant they didn’t have crap filler to drag down the average.  The quality might also be why they’re easier to find; I’ve seen almost 90% of the films.

Disney

Not really a studio and not even a distributor.  They released their shorts through Columbia until 1932 and then UA until 1937, switching over to RKO in time for their first feature release.  Technically, Snow White, and all Disney releases through 1953 should count as RKO (which would greatly increase their average) but I pull them out.  So Disney has just the one film in the decade, but hey, it’s only the 39th best film of the decade, so that’s not too shabby.

Independents

This will mean different things in different decades but basically it’s studios that weren’t majors but released a significant number of films (at least 150 all-time Oscar submitted films is the cut-off).  For the purposes of the 1930’s, these are Poverty Row studios.

Monogram Pictures

Monogram was one of a plethora of Poverty Row studios in the early 30s that merged to form Republic Pictures in 1935.  At the time, they had already submitted 61 films, making them the most prevalent of the then-existing Poverty Row studios.  However, W. Ray Johnston, the head of Monogram, decided he didn’t like being part of Republic, so he split back out in 1937 and started making his own films again.  As a result, Monogram was up to 105 submissions by 1939.  However, their films are pretty bad.  There are only six films I’ve seen (and I’ve seen 64% of their 30s submissions) that even reach *** and those are low ***.  They have 73 films which average a 50.8.

Republic Pictures

In 1935, six of the small Poverty Row studios (Monogram, Mascot, Liberty, Majestic, Chesterfield, Invincible) that had submitted a combined 43 films to the Oscars in 1934 (and would submit 43 more in 1935) would combine to form Republic Pictures, a more prominent Poverty Row studio that would help to make a star out of John Wayne (though the film that really made him one, Stagecoach, was a UA film).  As a result, Republic submitted 124 films from 1936-38 while all other non-majors combined submitted 158 (many of which were from Monogram which left Republic in 1937).  Republic would be a long lasting Poverty Row studio, hitting the Top 10 in total submissions in 1937, submitting films until 1959 and staying in the Top 10 all-time all the way until 2008.  It would even at least get the attention of the Oscars, earning its first nomination in its first year of 1935 (something the six as separate studios had never managed) and then, because of bizarre Oscar rules governing certain categories in the late 30s and 40s, earning at least 4 nominations a year from 1938 to 1945.  Because there were only 8 prominent studios, it entered the Top 10 in Oscar nominations in 1938 with just three and it would not relinquish that position until 1983.  But let’s be clear – Republic films are terrible and only partially because they have no budget.  They’re just badly acted and badly written.  Only four of 99 manage to even reach *** and the films as a total (49.8) can’t even break out of ** range.  The earlier ones are decently easy enough to find and I’ve seen the majority of them (71.43%).  For whatever reason, the Oscars had limited submissions starting in 1939 and running through 1944.  Wikipedia lists 44 Republic Pictures for 1939 but the Oscars only list one as being submitted so the number of their total catalog I’ve seen is probably much lower than the percentage of Oscar submitted that I’ve seen.

Foreign Distributors

This refers to American based distributors that released films made in a different country.  My cut-off here is at least 30 all-time submitted films and that the bulk of the films they release not be American products.

Amkino

I’ve seen all but one of the studio’s Oscar submissions.  Amkino and its successor, Artkino (five of the films distributed through Amkino are included because of later U.S. releases), distributed Soviet films in the States.  Except for 1938 (12 films), it was small and wouldn’t really ramp up until after the war in 1945.  But it has a decent number (32 films) and solid films (66.67 avg).

Gaumont

This British off-shoot of the original French studio released British films in the States including several Hitchcock films.  It’s no surprise that the five best films released in the decade were all Hitchcock films.  Gaumont submitted 31 films to the Oscars from 1932 to 1939 before making a deal with Fox for them to distribute their British products.

The Rest

This is anything that I don’t track in those first three groups but that I feel are significant enough in a particular decade to mention them.

Grand National Pictures

There would be a lot of studios like Grand National that would quickly rise (67 Oscar submission in four years from 1936 to 1939, including more than UA in both 1937 and 1938) and then fade quickly (no more films after 1939).  It grew out of First Division (which had submitted 26 films between 1928 and 1935) and was the third Poverty Row studio in the last years of the decade in years where few independent studios were submitting films.  But it fell apart in 1939, sold its film library to Astor (which submitted its first film in 1939 but then wouldn’t return until the 50s) and its lot to PRC (who would became the third Poverty Row studio through the 40s).  However, in 1937, Grand National joined Republic and Harold Auten as just the third non-major to earn an Oscar nomination (two, actually, with one each for Something to Sing About and The Girl Said No).  Their films aren’t good (51.8 avg) but they are available.  Of the 67 films I have managed to see all but six of them, most of them available online.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s not really 67 films – they re-submitted one film in 1937 from 1936 and four in 1938 that had been submitted in 1937 and the Academy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

The Best Films by Studio, 1930-1939

note:  Must have a minimum of 50 films and must have a film that is ***.5 or higher.

• Columbia:  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• Fox:  City Girl
• MGM:  The Wizard of Oz
• Paramount:  M
• RKO Radio:  Bringing Up Baby
• United Artists:  Modern Times
• Universal:  All Quiet on the Western Front
• Warner Bros:  The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Worst Films by Studio, 1930-1939

note:  Must have a minimum of 50 films and must have a film that is ** or lower.

• Columbia:  The Terror of Tiny Town
• Fox:  Stand Up and Cheer!
• Grand National:  Damaged Goods
• MGM:  General Spanky
• Monogram:  Oliver Twist
• Paramount:  Cleopatra
• Republic:  Git Along Little Dogies
• RKO Radio:  When’s Your Birthday
• United Artists:  White Zombie
• Universal:  Werewolf of London
• Warner Bros:  The Return of Doctor X

Foreign Films

Through 1939, I’m up to 370 films made primarily in a foreign language.  That even includes, starting in 1939, American films not made in English (Tevya – made in Yiddish).

In all, Foreign Films account for 6.37% of the films I’ve seen in the decade, way down from the 20s and the lowest it will be in any decade.  The nadir is 1937 with just 11 films out of 368.  The average is down as well, to 68.23 though that’s, as it usually is, better than any of the genres.

The Ten Countries I’ve Seen The Most Films, 1930-1939

1. France  –  99
2. Germany  –  46
3. USSR  –  40
4. Japan  –  25
5. China  –  10
6. Mexico  –  7
7. Italy  –  5
8. Hungary  –  5
9. Sweden  –  4
10. Brazil  /  Czechoslovakia  /  Spain  –  3

Almost 72% of the foreign films I’ve seen in the decade come from France, Germany or the USSR.

Nighthawk Points, 1930-1939

1. France  –  660
2. Germany  –  160
3. USSR  –   40
4. Spain  –  20
5. Japan  –  20

That’s the whole list.

Weighted Nighthawk Points for Foreign Film by Director, 1930-1939

1. Jean Renoir  –  231
2. Fritz Lang  –  98
3. Rene Clair  –  90
4. Marcel Carne  –  89
5. Marcel Pagnol  –  81
6. Julien Duvivier  –  71
7. Jean Vigo  –  67
8. George Wilhelm Pabst  –  53
9. Fritz Lang  –  40
10. Carl Theodor Dreyer  –  40

note:  Unlike the Director, Actor and Actress lists above, this is actually based on the weighted version of the Nighthawk Award (40-1) depending on place.
note:  It’s worth noting that during the decade Lang came to Hollywood and starting making films in English.

The Best Film I’ve Seen By Country, 1930-1939

• France  –  The Grand Illusion
• Germany  –  M
• Japan  –  A Story of Floating Weeds
• Spain  –  L’Age d’Or
• USSR  –  Alexander Nevsky

lists explanation

The lists down below were created from my Top 1000 list leading up to the full revelation of the list.  There is also a bottom 10 list.  But I am not doing a list of in-between films like I did for the Genre and Studio posts.  I am also not doing links because it takes a really long time.  Most of the reviews of these films can be found by searching on the site for any of the years involved and then clicking on either Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, Nighthawk Awards or Year in Film.  The reviews are also generally available on the “Critics” page on the IMDb page for each film.

Since there aren’t any links to confuse things, I did decide to color-code them (red won the Oscar for Best Picture, blue was nominated).  For the record, there were 92 Oscar nominees in the decade (and 10 winners of course).

The Top 100 Films of the 1930s

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Grand Illusion
3. Modern Times
4. M
5. All Quiet on the Western Front
6. City Lights
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
8. The Adventures of Robin Hood
9. The Rules of the Game
10. A Star is Born
11. The Petrified Forest
12. Scarface
13. Bringing Up Baby
14. King Kong
15. The Informer
16. Mutiny on the Bounty
17. The 39 Steps
18. Wuthering Heights
19. The Thin Man
20. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
21. Les Miserables
22. Vampyr
23. The Bride of Frankenstein
24. It Happened One Night
25. Duck Soup
26. Captain Blood
27. Frankenstein
28. Stagecoach
29. A nous la liberte
30. You Only Live Once
31. The Invisible Man
32. The Gay Divorcee
33. Dracula
34. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
35. Horse Feathers
36. Pygmalion
37. My Man Godfrey
38. The Man Who Knew Too Much
39. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
40. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
41. The Public Enemy
42. The Awful Truth
43. You Can’t Take It With You
44. La bete humaine
45. Gone with the Wind
46. Port of Shadows
47. Angels with Dirty Faces
48. A Tale of Two Cities
49. Design for Living
50. Le million
51. Dinner at Eight
52. The Lady Vanishes
53. The Three Penny Opera
    ***.5
54. L’Age D’or
55. Alexander Nevsky
56. Boudu Saved from Drowning
57. Footlight Parade
58. L’Atalante
59. Merrily We Live
60. Le jour se leve
61. The Mummy
62. The Blood of a Poet
63. Miss Europe
64. Freaks
65. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
66. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
67. Pepe le Moko
68. Top Hat
69. The Crime of Monsieur Lange
70. Five Star Final
71. Dodsworth
72. The Lower Depths
73. It’s Love I’m After
74. Dead End
75. Gunga Din
76. Stage Door
77. Fanny
78. Wooden Crosses
79. Death Take a Holiday
80. Au bonheur des dames
81. Earth
82. Shall We Dance
83. Fury
84. A Night at the Opera
85. Hard to Handle
86. Under the Roofs of Paris
87. Twentieth Century
88. City Girl
89. Cesar
90. The Scarlet Pimpernel
91. People on Sunday
92. Zero for Conduct
93. A Story of Floating Weeds
94. State Fair
95. What Price Hollywood
96. The Private Life of Henry VIII
97. Hotel du Nord
98. Picture Snatcher
99. Mauvaise Graine
100. Doorway to Hell

The Bottom 10 Films, 1930-1939, #2971-2980
(worst being #10, which is #2980 overall)

1. Strike Me Pink
2. Werewolf of London
3. Elmer the Great
4. General Spanky
5. Damaged Goods
6. Cleopatra
7. White Zombie
8. Oliver Twist
9. The Return of Doctor X
10. The Vampire Bat

The 5 Most Underrated Films of the 1930s

These are all films that I rate at **** or high ***.5 that have never appeared in TSPDT’s Top 1000 (now 2000) or their Top 250 21st Century Films (now 1000).  Also, none of these films were nominated for any Oscars.  They are listed in descending order of quality.

1. Dinner at Eight
2. Footlight Parade
3. The Mummy
4. It’s Love I’m After
5. Death Takes a Holiday

The Most Over-Rated Films of the 1930s

1. 42nd Street
   I’ve never understood the appeal of this film with its terrible writing, direction and acting.  Footlight Parade does much the same story except it’s superior in basically every way with a charismatic Cagney instead of a terrible George Brent and hammy Warner Baxter.
2. Cimarron
   Not highly regarded today but it did win Best Picture, was the first film nominated for 7 Oscars, the only film nominated for that many prior to the expansion of categories in the mid 30s and the only film ever nominated for every available Oscar.  And it just sucks.
3. The Blue Angel
   A solid film, a mid to low ***.  But TSPDT used to have it in the Top 300 all-time and they still have it in the Top 600 and that’s just way out of line.
4. Make Way for Tomorrow
   Another good film, this one even a high *** but on the TSPDT list it’s there near Snow White, It Happened One Night and Bride of Frankenstein and that’s ridiculous.
5. All films from 1939 except The Wizard of Oz
   Well, not all films, with obvious exceptions being Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights and Stagecoach.  But I’ve written an entire piece about this.  Gone with the Wind is overblown and good, high *** films like Ninotchka, Only Angels Have Wings, Dark Victory and Drums Along the Mohawk get over-rated because they’re in this year.  Only Angels Have Wings is a good example – a good Howard Hawks film that was better than I remembered but it’s not a great film or even a very good film.  It’s a solid high *** film.  Yet thanks to numerous people overrating it, it’s over 400 spots higher on the TSPDT list than All Quiet on the Western Front, Adventures of Robin Hood and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and that’s just absurd.

The Statistics

Total Films I Have Seen, 1930-1939:  2980

Total Films Used For Statistics Below:  2974

note:  Because I track statistics by “Oscar Year”, the following statistics only use the 2974 films that are Oscar eligible in those years.  That moves films on both ends.  There are 105 films originally released in this decade that aren’t Oscar eligible until 1940 (33 films) or later.  But that also includes 99 films from before 1930 that weren’t Oscar eligible until 1930 or later.

By Genre:

• Drama:  1079
• Comedy:  651
• Musical:  321
• Western:  239
• Mystery:  207
• Crime:  159
• Adventure:  109
• Horror:  49
• War:  45
• Suspense:  44
• Action:  30
• Kids:  17
• Sci-Fi:  13
• Fantasy:  11

% of All Films That are Drama:

• 1930:  40.00%
• 1931:  37.68%
• 1932:  49.48%
• 1933:  51.20%
• 1934:  49.14%
• 1935:  27.60%
• 1936:  29.77%
• 1937:  24.39%
• 1938:  26.49%
• 1939:  30.47%
• TOTAL:  36.28%

note:  So why does that number drop so drastically after 1934?  First, there’s the Great Depression which makes Dramas less compelling.  Also, there is the rise of Poverty Row which made very few Dramas because people don’t go to see crappy Dramas but they are much more likely to see crappy Comedies, Musicals or genre films.

% of All Films That are Genre (non-Drama / Comedy / Musical):

• 1930:  22.11%
• 1931:  28.99%
• 1932:  31.62%
• 1933:  24.27%
• 1934:  16.15%
• 1935:  37.39%
• 1936:  32.78%
• 1937:  37.13%
• 1938:  36.61%
• 1939:  38.35%
• TOTAL:  31.04%

% of All Films That Are Foreign Language:

• 1930:  6.32%
• 1931:  5.80%
• 1932:  4.47%
• 1933:  8.27%
• 1934:  4.81%
• 1935:  6.23%
• 1936:  6.02%
• 1937:  2.98%
• 1938:  9.82%
• 1939:  8.60%
• TOTAL:  6.36%

note:  This is based on when films played L.A.  A lot of 1930s Foreign films wouldn’t play LA until 1940 or 1941 or even after the war.

Average Film by Genre:

• War:  67.22
• Sci-Fi:  65.77
• Horror:  64.49
• Fantasy:  63.18
• Suspense:  62.20
• Kids:  62.00
• Drama:  59.80
• Musical:  59.71
• Adventure:  59.18
• Comedy:  59.12
• Crime:  58.23
• Mystery:  56.96
• Action:  52.20
• Western:  50.99

note:  With the exception of Musicals (up less than a point and they really hadn’t figured out how to make good ones yet by 1929), the numbers are all down from the 20s, often significantly down (down at least 9 points in every genre except Adventure, Kids, Sci-Fi and War) and in Western it dropped 14.30 points.  It’s not that the movies in the 20s were better necessarily but that the better ones have survived and most of the weak ones have not.

Top 10 Finishes by Genre:

• Drama:  31
• Comedy:  21
• Horror:  10
• Crime:  9
• Adventure:  6
• Musical:  6
• Suspense:  6
• War:  5
• Kids:  2
• Mystery:  2
• Sci-Fi:  1
• Western:  1
• Action:  0
• Fantasy:  0

Top 20 Finishes by Genre:

• Drama:  81
• Comedy:  46
• Horror:  13
• Adventure:  11
• Crime:  10
• Suspense:  10
• Musical:  9
• War:  8
• Mystery:  4
• Fantasy:  3
• Kids:  2
• Sci-Fi:  1
• Western:  1
• Action:  0

By Studio (Top 10):

• Warner Bros:  476
• MGM:  428
• Paramount:  384
• RKO Radio:  350
• Fox Films / 20th Century-Fox:  262
• United Artists:  156
• Universal:  144
• Columbia:  134
• Republic:  99
• Monogram:  69

The “Major” Studios by Average:

note:  “Major” is in quotes because according to the standard definition of “The Majors”, Columbia, Universal and United Artists didn’t count.

• United Artists:  63.87
• Universal:  61.06
• MGM:  60.82
• Columbia:  59.83
• Paramount:  59.81
• Fox:  59.79
• Warners:  58.13
• RKO:  55.74

note:  Like in the 20s, UA is the best and RKO is the worst.  But, like with genre, these numbers are all significantly down from the 20s.
note:  I didn’t include Disney because their one film was a 90 and it seems like cheating.

Top 10 Finishes by “Major” Studio:

• MGM:  16
• United Artists:  12
• Warners:  11
• RKO:  10
• Universal:  9
• Paramount:  8
• Columbia:  6
• Fox:  2
• Disney:  1

Notes on Top 10 Finishes

• Total Percentage of Top 20 Films Distributed by “Majors”:  75.00%
• Total Percentage of All Films Distributed by “Majors”:  78.48%
• Five different studios have at least three films in one year but only MGM has three films twice (1936, 1938).

Top 20 Finishes by “Major” Studio:

• MGM:  31
• United Artists:  24
• Paramount:  24
• Warners:  22
• RKO:  14
• Universal:  14
• Columbia:  13
• Fox:  10
• Disney:  1

Notes on Top 20 Finishes

• Total Percentage of Top 20 Films Distributed by “Majors”:  76.50%
• MGM has 6 Top 20 films in 1938 and Paramount has 6 in 1933.
• Paramount and UA are the only studios with at least one Top 20 film in every year.

Breakdown by Star Rating:

• ****:  1.65%
• ***.5:  1.71%
• ***:  36.62%
• **.5:  43.21%
• **:  16.68%
• *.5:  0.10%
• *:  0.03%
• .5:  0.00%
• 0:  0.00%

Nighthawk Awards

This area will have a lot more than I usually do in this section.  This is an in-depth look at all the films and I what I think of them when it comes to awards.  Please note that it does run off my “Film Years” which means that there are films from the 30s which won’t appear because they wouldn’t have an L.A. release until after 1939.  Unlike the 20s, that affects a lot of films with 17 of the above listed Top 100 for the decade getting pushed out of the decade with eight of those not even making it into the 40s either.

Because of the way I keep track of my lists, there are no “ties” for the 10th spot.  The first film to reach that amount gets to keep that spot.

A quick note about the points: these reflect my recent changes in adding a Best Ensemble category to the Nighthawk Awards (worth 80 points) and down-grading the Visual Effects and Sound Editing category from 40 points to 30 points.  This also has an effect on the Oscar points below.

• Number of Films That Earn Nominations:  231
• Number of Films That Win Nighthawks:  77
• Number of Films With Multiple Nominations:  142
• Number of Films With Multiple Wins:  34
• Total Number of Nominations:  833
• Total Number of Wins:  188
• Director with Most Nighthawk Nominated Films:  Frank Capra  /  George Cukor  /  Michael Curtiz  /  Mervyn LeRoy  (7)
• Best Film with No Nighthawks:  Wuthering Heights
• Best Film with No Nighthawk Nominations:  Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
• Weakest Best Picture Nominee:  Doorway to Hell
• Best Film Not Nominated for Picture:  Captain Blood
• Number of Films That Earn Comedy Nominations:  65
• Number of Films That Win Comedy Awards:  34
• Total Number of Comedy Nominations:  253
• Total Number of Comedy Wins:  85
• Best Comedy Film With No Nominations:  Show Boat
• Weakest Comedy Picture Nominee:  After the Thin Man
• Best Comedy Not Nominated For Picture:  Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
• Number of Films That Earn Drama Nominations:  128
• Number of Films That Win Drama Awards:  41
• Total Number of Drama Nominations:  373
• Total Number of Drama Wins:  88
• Best Drama Film With No Nominations:  Arsenal
• Weakest Drama Picture Nominee:  The Scarlet Empress
• Best Drama Not Nominated For Picture:  The Man Who Knew Too Much
• Best Film Without a Top 10 Finish:  n/a
• Best Film Without a Top 20 Finish:  n/a

Most Nighthawk Nominations:

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  20
2. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  14
3. Gone with the Wind  –  14
4. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  13
5. Frankenstein  –  12
6. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  –  12
7. My Man Godfrey  –  12
8. The Grand Illusion  –  12
9. City Lights  –  11
10. Dracula  –  11

Most Nighthawks:

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  14
2. City Lights  –  9
3. Modern Times  –  9
4. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  8
5. M  –  8
6. Frankenstein  –  7
7. The Grand Illusion  –  7
8. The Informer  –  6
9. Scarface  –  5
10. The Thin Man  –  5

Most Nighthawk Points:

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  845
2. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  670
3. City Lights  –  670
4. Modern Times  –  610
5. The Grand Illusion  –  610
6. Scarface  –  535
7. The Thin Man  –  530
8. The Informer  –  530
9. A Star is Born  –  525
10. M  –  520

Most Drama Nominations:

1. The Petrified Forest  –  9
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  9
3. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  7
4. The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna  –  7
5. Scarface  –  7
6. Les Miserables  –  7
7. Wuthering Heights  –  7
8. Gone with the Wind  –  7
9. Dracula  –  6
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  –  6

Most Drama Wins:

1. The Petrified Forest  –  7
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  6
3. A Star is Born  –  5
4. The Grand Illusion  –  5
5. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  4

Most Drama Points:

1. The Petrified Forest  –  610
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  575
3. A Star is Born  –  445
4. The Grand Illusion  –  445
5. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  440
6. M  –  410
7. Scarface  –  405
8. The Informer  –  405
9. Dracula  –  330
10. Gone with the Wind  –  330

Most Comedy Nominations:

1. My Man Godfrey  –  10
2. Dinner at Eight  –  9
3. The Gay Divorcee  –  9
4. Merrily We Live  –  9
5. Footlight Parade  –  8
6. The Awful Truth  –  8
7. The Wizard of Oz  –  8
8. City Lights  –  7
9. Le million  –  7
10. Design for Living  –  7

Most Comedy Wins:

1. City Lights  –  7
2. The Wizard of Oz  –  7
3. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  6
4. The Awful Truth  –  6
5. The Thin Man  –  5

Most Comedy Points:

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  570
2. City Lights  –  540
3. The Awful Truth  –  530
4. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  505
5. My Man Godfrey  –  500
6. The Thin Man  –  450
7. Dinner at Eight  –  435
8. The Gay Divorcee  –  435
9. Merrily We Live  –  435
10. Le million  –  420

Most Film Points:

note:  This is the point value I assign in all the various categories added up on a scale of 0-9.

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  168
2. Gone with the Wind   –  83
3. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  81
4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  76
5. Modern Times  –  73
6. The Grand Illusion  –  72
7. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  71
8. The Petrified Forest  –  69
9. Captain Blood  –  69
10. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  68

Most Weighted Film Points:

note:  This is the point value I assign in all the various categories added up on a scale of 0-9, but then weighted to account for their Oscar points, with 8 being the equivalent of an Oscar win.  So, for Picture, the point scale is 1=12, 2=25, 3=37, 4=50, 5=62, 6=75, 7=87, 8=100, 9=115.

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  966
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  645
3. Modern Times  –  606
4. The Grand Illusion  –  595
5. The Petrified Forest  –  590
6. Gone with the Wind   –  580
7. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  565
8. City Lights  –  556
9. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  546
10. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  529

Most Weighted Acting Points:

note:  The same as the above category, but only using the acting points.  Because this is weighted (which gives more to lead than supporting), this is not quite the same list I use for doing my Best Ensemble award but it’s close.

1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  279
2. Gone with the Wind   –  237
3. My Man Godfrey   –  223
4. The Petrified Forest  –  221
5. The Wizard of Oz  –  196
6. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  166
7. Merrily We Live  –  153
8. Pygmalion  –  140
9. Dinner at Eight  –  139
10. A Free Soul  –  138

Most Weighted Tech Points:

note:  The same as the above category, but only using the Tech categories.  Because this is weighted (which gives more to the major categories), this is not quite the same list I use for doing my Best Tech award but it’s close.  While there is no maximum possible for the acting category, the maximum here is 386.

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  365
2. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  270
3. Captain Blood  –  237
4. The Adventures of Robin Hood  –  236
5. Gone with the Wind   –  226
6. King Kong   –  205
7. Modern Times  –  205
8. The Grand Illusion  –  186
9. Frankenstein  –  178
10. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  177

Most Top 20 Points:

note:  This takes a film’s finish in any Nighthawk category and gives it points based on a finish in the Top 20.  A win is 20 points, a 2nd place is 19, down to 20th place which is 1 point.  All categories are equal.

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  417
2. The Bride of Frankenstein  –  274
3. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  271
4. Frankenstein  –  262
5. Gone with the Wind   –  258
6. Captain Blood  –  250
7. Le million   –  246
8. The Grand Illusion  –  242
9. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  239
10. The Petrified Forest  –  236

Most Top 20 Weighted Points:

note:  This takes a film’s finish in any Nighthawk category and gives it points based on a finish in the Top 20.  However, this weights the categories on a scale based on the award points, both for the win and the nominations.  So, the scale for Picture, in descending order is 100, 77, 70, 67, 63 (it then drops because you can’t have more than 50 points, which is what you get for a nomination), 43, 40, 38, 36, 33, 18, 17, 15, 13, 12, 8, 7, 4, 3, 2.  It’s designed to give more weight to Top 5 and Top 10 finishes.  The scale is roughly the same for all of the categories, beginning with its point total for the award.

1. The Wizard of Oz  –  928
2. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  751
3. City Lights  –  703
4. The Grand Illusion  –  677
5. The Petrified Forest  –  672
6. Modern Times  –  654
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  650
8. Scarface  –  621
9. A Star is Born  –  614
10. Gone with the Wind  –  604

Nighthawk Awards, 1930-1939

note:  These are my all-time Top 5 in each category in the decade.  Films in red won the Oscar.  Films in blue were Oscar nominated.  There are a few lists here that aren’t in my usual Nighthawk Awards.  I also don’t discuss as much since there are fewer awards groups and I have discussed the quality of these so many other places.

• Best Picture

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Grand Illusion
3. Modern Times
4. M
5. All Quiet on the Western Front

Analysis:  One one level, the Academy generally could have done worse.  Of my Top 100 films for the decade, listed above, five won Best Picture and Grand Hotel was just off the list.  The Oscar winners averaged a 78.4 which is low ***.5 but it’s 81.8 aside from Cimarron.  Another 24 (out of 82) nominees made my Top 100.  However, the overall average for winners and nominees is 55.4 and that’s pretty damn bad.  This decade includes eight bad films (one of which won Best Picture and one of which is among the Bottom 10 of the decade).  Given that there have only been 15 bad films nominated since this decade that makes it all the worse.  Of the ten worst years in history for this category, seven are in this decade.  1939 is the best of the bunch not because it’s “classic” but because all of the nominees were at least good.
The oddest Oscar nominee is probably East Lynne, a bad film that also had no other nominations (the same could be said for She Done Him Wrong but that at least had Mae West’s star power).  The oddest omission is clearly My Man Godfrey, nominated for the other six major awards and still the only film nominated for those six but not Picture.  Clearly the oddest winner is Mutiny on the Bounty, which is a great film, but it won over The Informer which had become the first film to win both the NBR and NYFC and it won Director, Screenplay and Actor at the Oscars (the only film to do so without winning Picture until 2002).  It actually set the stage for John Ford who would win Director without Picture for three of his four Oscars.
The critics, at least, only picked good films though several (including The Citadel, one of the three films to win both awards) were no better than ***.  Overall, though, they averaged an 82.4.

• Best Director

1. Victor Fleming  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Fritz Lang  (M)
3. Jean Renoir  (The Grand Illusion)
4. Charlie Chaplin  (Modern Times)
5. Lewis Milestone  (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Analysis:  The Oscars were pretty bad in the decade.  The winners weren’t too bad (6.7 average rank but 2.1 among the nominees) with only winner being the worst choice (Norman Taurog for Skippy) and after 1933, the winners all at least deserved nominations though only Milestone and John Ford (The Informer) also win the Nighthawk.  But many of the nominees were terrible choices with such Oscar scores as 10.5 (1932), 9.1 (1933) and even a zero (1931).  The Oscar Score was 56.4 after 1933 but the score through then was so abysmal that the overall score for the decade is 35.3, a score so low that only three years after this decade have one that low.
After 1932, all but two of the nominees were from Picture nominated films (My Man Godfrey and Angels with Dirty Faces being the exceptions which was even more odd in that Curtiz had a Picture nominee without a Director nomination that year (Adventures of Robin Hood)).  The Picture-Director connection wasn’t strong among winners though with only half the winners winning both.  Clearly they passed over what I think are the best of the decade but the oddest omissions are Mervyn LeRoy (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang), Michael Curtiz (Captain Blood and Adventures of Robin Hood) but perhaps none moreso than Frank Capra who wasn’t nominated for Lost Horizon, in spite of it having seven nominations (tied for most in the decade without a Director nom) and who won the Oscar the year before and year after.
The NYFC were the only critics award in the decade.  After awarding John Ford for The Informer they didn’t match Director with Picture again for the rest of the decade with the oddest being 1936 when they passed over eventual Oscar winner Frank Capra (though gave the film Picture) in place of Rouben Mamoulian for The Gay Desperado.  Since Mamoulian would never earn an Oscar nom that makes him the first (and until 1948 the only) director to win a critics award without ever earning an Oscar nomination.

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Petrified Forest
3. All Quiet on the Western Front
4. Bringing Up Baby
5. The Thin Man

Analysis:  That’s two nine point script in the decade and several that earn an eight.  A strong top five.
After a terrible start with Oscars for The Big House and Cimarron, things got better.  The Oscars scores are weak at the beginning (none of the first four years break 60) but stronger at the end (five of the last six break 60 with two of them over 70).  Overall though, it’s a 48.6 which is pretty bad.

Best Original Screenplay:

1. The Grand Illusion
2. Modern Times
3. City Lights
4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
5. Duck Soup

Analysis:  That’s some brilliant comedic and dramatic work at the top there and no surprise that Chaplin is in the Top 5 for both of his films.
The Oscars were a disaster though, as they couldn’t keep the category straight and the only good year is 1939.  The overall score is 31.9 for what is really the Best Story category.

• Best Actor:

1. James Stewart  (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)
2. Peter Lorre  (M)
3. Charles Laughton  (Mutiny on the Bounty)
4. Charlie Chaplin  (Modern Times)
5. Fredric March  (A Star is Born)

Analysis:  The Oscars got a lot of the nominees right in the decade but less so with the winners.  Only March’s Oscar (for Jekyll) deserved the Oscar and the back-to-back Oscars for Spencer Tracy were terrible.  The Oscar Score is 68.8 and that’s after three simply awful years to start the decade – the high score in those years is 41.2 which is over 20 points lower than any year since.  But after March they wouldn’t choose even the best of the nominees, let alone the best of the year, again until 1942.
The NYFC began by doing what all the critics group would later do and reward an actor for multiple films (though oddly they didn’t include Les Miserables in that award for Charles Laughton) though ironically one of his performances was the best of that year.  They wouldn’t agree with the Oscars once but their picks were generally better than the Oscars in the decade.

• Best Actress

1. Vivien Leigh  (Gone with the Wind)
2. Wendy Hiller  (Pygmalion)
3. Janet Gaynor  (A Star is Born)
4. Katharine Hepburn  (Bringing Up Baby)
5. Bette Davis  (The Petrified Forest)

Analysis:  Leigh’s is the first 9 point lead actress performance.  She’s the best of a great bunch.
Only twice did the Oscars get it right (Leigh and Hepburn in 1933) but two other times (1932, 1934) they chose the best nominee.  What’s more, they never chose the worst nominee or even the second worst.  The nominees were strong as well with a 74.7 Score and they began the decade with two straight years over 80 and finished with three straight years.
Until the NYFC picked Leigh, they weren’t doing a great job but none of their choices were bad either.

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Claude Rains  (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)
2. Charles Laughton  (Les Miserables)
3. Humphrey Bogart  (The Petrified Forest)
4. Erich von Stroheim  (The Grand Illusion)
5. Boris Karloff  (Frankenstein)

Analysis:  Rains would give the first 9 point performance in this category and of course the Oscars passed him over as they would continue to do forever.
The Oscars finally got it going in 1936 and immediately started getting it wrong, being obsessed with Walter Brennan’s performances that didn’t even deserve a nomination let alone two Oscars.  In 1937 they came close (best of the nominees as a winner, 75.0 Score) but the other three years were dismal and poor choices for winners.

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Margaret Hamilton  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Olivia de Havilland  (Gone with the Wind)
3. Miriam Hopkins  (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
4. Gale Sondegaard  (Anthony Adverse)
5. Andrea Leeds  (Stage Door)

Analysis:  The Oscars would do much better here with all four years having a Score of at least 66.7, picking the right choice in 1936 and decent choices in 1938 and 1939.

• Best Supporting Actor  (total)

1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  (20)
2. The Wizard of Oz  (10)
3. The Petrified Forest  (10)

Analysis:  This adds up all the points for Supporting Actor.  I won’t include films with less than 10 points since 9 points is what you can get for a single performance.

• Best Supporting Actress  (total)

1. Gone with the Wind  (12)
2. Merrily We Live  (11)

Analysis:  This adds up all the points for Supporting Actress.  I won’t include films with less than 10 points since 9 points is what you can get for a single performance.

• Best Ensemble

1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  (35)
2. Gone with the Wind  (29)
3. My Man Godfrey  (28)
4. The Petrified Forest  (27)
5. The Wizard of Oz  (25)

Analysis:  This adds up all the acting points across the categories.  Smith wins this easily thanks to the supporting performances.  But Godfrey is strong in all four categories.
This is actually a category I have added to my awards points in general, as I have recalculated some things.  It is worth 80 points (40 for a nomination) and I have added it in awards groups as a category where it exists.
It says something interesting that no film wins this award that also wins the Nighthawk for Best Picture.  In fact, five of the winners of this award don’t even earn a Picture nomination and two of them weren’t even considered (because they are *** or lower): Anna Christie and A Free Soul.  The latter is one of the best examples in film history of really good acting not making for a good film.

• Best Editing:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Modern Times
3. M
4. City Lights
5. The 39 Steps

Analysis:  This is one of the categories were I disagree with the Oscars the most.  My best works listed here were of course all ignored in spite of brilliant editing.  The Oscars themselves only score over a 40 once in six years (1935) and have an overall score of 32.9.  The winners are even worse with only two of them even making my Top 10 and only Adventures of Robin Hood actually deserving a nomination.

• Best Cinematography:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. M
3. Gone with the Wind
4. Modern Times
5. All Quiet on the Western Front

Analysis:  Better than some of the categories as two of my Top 5 were Oscar nominated and it used to be three (Wizard of Oz is listed in some sources as a nominee but it apparently wasn’t).
The Oscars were generally okay with the winners, with five of the 11 (they started the split in 1939) being the best of the nominees.  But a lot of the nominees in the first half of the decade are duds and the overall Oscar Score is just 37.7.  However, the Color score in 1939, the first year of the split, is 64.7, the highest score to that point and a reflection that the color choices over the next several years would be strong while the black-and-white category would be weak.

• Best Original Score:

1. Herbert Stothart  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Max Steiner  (Gone with the Wind)
3. Erich Wolfgang Korngold  (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
4. Charlie Chaplin  (City Lights)
5. Max Steiner  (King Kong)

Analysis:  This began at the Oscars in 1934 along with Song.  The best of the major Tech categories with an Oscar Score of 47.4 and two very deserving winners to close out the decade.  In fact, that’s the only time in any Tech category until the late 40’s that the deserving winner won in back-to-back years.  In spite of the iconic Wind score, it’s great that the Oscars picked the also iconic Oz score instead, as much of a surprise as it is.

• Best Sound:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front
2. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
3. The Wizard of Oz
4. King Kong
5. The Bride of Frankenstein

Analysis:  One of the rare Tech categories where Wizard isn’t the top film.  The industry was still finding its way in sound in this decade and it shows.  The Oscar Score is simply terrible (24.6) and in two years (1934, 1938), it earns a zero.  The winners, at least, are generally better as a whole than the nominees are.

• Best Art Direction:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Frankenstein
3. Dracula
4. Gone with the Wind
5. The Adventures of Robin Hood

Analysis:  The first four films are perfect 9 scores.  In sixth place is Bride of Frankenstein.
Oz almost certainly would have won the Oscar if it didn’t have to go up against Wind.  It’s a shame the Academy didn’t realize how great the Art Direction was in the classic Universal Horror films which is why the Oscar Score is so weak in the first half of the decade and just 42.2 for the decade as a whole.

• Best Visual Effects

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. King Kong
3. The Bride of Frankenstein
4. The Invisible Man
5. San Francisco

Analysis:  The Oscars had dropped this after 1928 and finally added it back in, in 1939, though that didn’t help the earlier films that deserved accolades.  They also gave the Oscar to The Rains Came when it should have easily gone to Oz.

• Best Sound Editing

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Captain Blood
3. All Quiet on the Western Front
4. King Kong
5. The Bride of Frankenstein

Analysis:  Even the few films with sound at the time didn’t really use Sound Editing.  And the Oscars wouldn’t recognize it for a couple more decades.

• Best Costume Design:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Gone with the Wind
3. The Adventures of Robin Hood
4. Marie Antoinette
5. The Scarlet Empress

Analysis:  Wizard and Gone both earn perfect 9 scores.  The category still wouldn’t exist at the Oscars until 1948 which is a shame although it meant that Wind didn’t earn a 14th nomination that would still be a record.

• Best Makeup

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Bride of Frankenstein
3. Frankenstein
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5. The Privates Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Analysis:  Wizard is the first film to earn a perfect 9 in the category.  The category wouldn’t exist at the Oscars for decades.

• Best Technical Aspects

1. The Wizard of Oz  (76)
2. The Bride of Frankenstein  (56)
3. The Adventures of Robin Hood  (45)
4. Captain Blood  (45)
5. Gone with the Wind  (44)

Analysis:  Simply a tallying of all the points I award in the Tech categories with a maximum of 81.  Wizard wins this by a mile.  The other four and King Kong are the only films in the decade to even earn half of what Wizard earns.  Bride is a distant second, but obviously still way ahead of the others because of Visual Effects and Makeup.

• Best Original Song:

1. “Over the Rainbow”  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. “If I Only Had a Brain”  (The Wizard of Oz)
3. “Cheek to Cheek”  (Top Hat)
4. “Heigh Ho”  (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
5. “We’re Off to See the Wizard”  (The Wizard of Oz)

Analysis:  “Over the Rainbow” is the best song ever written for a film.  The others in my Top 5 are all acknowledged classics.
The category began at the Oscars along with Score in 1934.  For the record, I nominate more than one song, but rules in 1939 prevented multiple nominations from a film (“Each studio music department shall be invited to nominate its best song used for the first time in a motion picture within the Awards year.”) so Oz could only have one nominee.  What’s more, since they were also MGM films, it meant that such classics as “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” (At the Circus) and “Good Morning” (Babes in Arms) were also not eligible because MGM chose (correctly) “Over the Rainbow”.  This is reflected in the Oscar Score (which is 100 for 1939) which is 63.2 for the decade because of the awful choices in 1937.

• Best Original Song Total:

1. The Wizard of Oz  (40)
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  (24)
3. Shall We Dance  (21)
4. Horse Feathers  (16)
5. Duck Soup  (12)

Analysis:  This adds up the points of all the original songs for the film.  The maximum possible is 45.  Wizard could have earned more than 40 points (out of 45) if I hadn’t decided to consider all the “If I Only Had” songs as one song and if I didn’t limit films to five songs (since that’s the number of nominees).

• Best Animated Film:

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Analysis:  The first feature-length animated film wouldn’t actually stay #1 for long (it would be bumped by Pinocchio in 1940) but it’s the best to this point of the very few made.

• Best Foreign Film:

1. The Grand Illusion
2. M
3. The Rules of the Game
4. Vampyr
5. A nous la liberte

Analysis:  France starts to take over from Germany as the pre-eminent country, although that’s a bit of a misnomer.  After all, Germany was the premiere film producing company through 1929, including the States while the States massively takes over in the 30’s (helped by the fact that we, unlike many countries in the world, weren’t at war).

Best Films With No Top 5 Finishes:

• Scarface

note:  Several films rated at a 94 failed to earn a Top 5 finish in the decade but Scarface was the only 95 to fail to earn one.

Worst Film with a Top 5 Finish:

• San Francisco

note:  Only four films below ***.5 ended up with Top 5 finishes for the decade with Marie Antoinette and Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex being mid *** while Anthony Adverse is a higher **.5 than San Francisco.

Nighthawk Awards, 1930-1939 – By Genre

Drama

• Best Picture

1. The Grand Illusion
2. M
3. All Quiet on the Western Front
4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
5. A Star is Born

• Best Director

1. Fritz Lang  (M)
2. Jean Renoir  (The Grand Illusion)
3. Lewis Milestone  (All Quiet on the Western Front)
4. Frank Capra  (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)
5. Howard Hawks  (Scarface)

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. The Petrified Forest
2. All Quiet on the Western Front
3. The Informer
4. Les Miserables
5. The 39 Steps

• Best Original Screenplay:

1. The Grand Illusion
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
3. A Star is Born
4. M
5. You Only Live Once

• Best Actor:

1. James Stewart  (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)
2. Peter Lorre  (M)
3. Charles Laughton  (Mutiny on the Bounty)
4. Fredric March  (A Star is Born)
5. Paul Muni  (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang)

Analysis:  A tough enough category that Olivier (Wuthering Heights), Gable (Gone with the Wind) and Howard (Petrified Forest) can’t make the final cut.  While the lead actresses are thoroughly dominated by Bette Davis, there’s a lot more great male actors getting to ply their work here.

• Best Actress

1. Vivien Leigh  (Gone with the Wind)
2. Janet Gaynor  (A Star is Born)
3. Bette Davis  (Of Human Bondage)
4. Bette Davis  (The Petrified Forest)
5. Bette Davis  (Jezebel)

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Claude Rains  (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)
2. Charles Laughton  (Les Miserables)
3. Humphrey Bogart  (The Petrified Forest)
4. Erich von Stroheim  (The Grand Illusion)
5. Boris Karloff  (Frankenstein)

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Olivia de Havilland  (Gone with the Wind)
2. Miriam Hopkins  (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
3. Gale Sondegaard  (Anthony Adverse)
4. Andrea Leeds  (Stage Door)
5. Hattie McDaniel  (Gone with the Wind)

Comedy / Musical

• Best Picture

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Modern Times
3. City Lights
4. The Adventures of Robin Hood
5. The Rules of the Game

Analysis:  A fantastic Top 5 although it would have been much better if it included 1940, the year where great Comedies explode.

• Best Director

1. Victor Fleming  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Charlie Chaplin  (Modern Times)
3. Charlie Chaplin  (City Lights)
4. Michael Curtiz  (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
5. Howard Hawks  (Bringing Up Baby)

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Bringing Up Baby
3. The Thin Man
4. It Happened One Night
5. Pygmalion

Analysis:  Adapted Comedies are always interesting to look at.  In this case we have two novels (both very good, very enjoyable, neither great), two short stories and a play.

Best Original Screenplay:

1. Modern Times
2. City Lights
3. Duck Soup
4. The Rules of the Game
5. Horse Feathers

• Best Actor:

1. Charlie Chaplin  (Modern Times)
2. Leslie Howard  (Pygmalion)
3. Charlie Chaplin  (City Lights)
4. William Powell  (The Thin Man)
5. Clark Gable  (It Happened One Night)

• Best Actress

1. Wendy Hiller  (Pygmalion)
2. Katharine Hepburn  (Bringing Up Baby)
3. Myrna Loy  (The Thin Man)
4. Judy Garland  (The Wizard of Oz)
5. Claudette Colbert  (It Happened One Night)

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Ray Bolger  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. John Barrymore  (Dinner at Eight)
3. Eric Blore  (It’s Love I’m After)
4. Harry Myers  (City of Lights)
5. Allan Mowbray  (Merrily We Live)

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Margaret Hamilton  (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Billie Burke  (Merrily We Live)
3. Marie Dressler  (Dinner at Eight)
4. Bonita Granville  (Merrily We Live)
5. Alice Brady  (My Man Godfrey)

Nighthawk Notables

• Best Film to Watch Over and Over:  The Wizard of Oz
• Funniest Film:  Duck Soup
• Best Sequel:   The Bride of Frankenstein
• Read the Book, SKIP the Film:  Oliver Twist
• See the Film, SKIP the Book:  Of Human Bondage
• Best Tagline:  “Garbo TALKS!”  (Anna Christie)
• Coolest Performance:  Errol Flynn in Captain Blood
• Best Cameo:  Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy
• Best Animated Character Performance:  Pinto Colvig as Grumpy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Best Performance in an Otherwise Terrible Film:  Norma Shearer  (The Divorcee)
• Best Line  (comedic):  “Go – and never darken my towels again.”  (Duck Soup  –  Groucho Marx)
• Best Line  (dramatic):  “How do you live?”  “I steal.”  (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang – Helen Vinson and Paul Muni)
• Best Opening:   It’s Love I’m After
• Best Ending:   Bringing Up Baby
• Best Scene:  sepia becomes color in The Wizard of Oz
• Most Gut-Wrenching Scene:  the ending of I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
• Most Heart-Breaking Scene:  sending the children away between suicides in Five Star Final
• Best Death Scene:  Leslie Howard  (The Petrified Forest)
• Best Kiss:  Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March  (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
• Best Use of a Song  (dramatic):  “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz
• Best Use of a Song  (comedic):  “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” in Shall We Dance
• Best Soundtrack:  The Wizard of Oz
• Best Original Song from a Bad Film: “Broadway Rhythm”  (The Broadway Melody of 1936)
• Best Guilty Pleasure:  The Mask of Fu Manchu
• Worst Film by a Top 100 Director:  Jamaica Inn  (Alfred Hitchcock)
• Worst Sequel / Franchise Film:  The Return of Dr. X
• Performance to Fall in Love With:  Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz
• Sexiest Performance:  Miriam Hopkins in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Highest Attractiveness / Acting Ability Ratio:  Helen Mack in The Son of Kong
• Best Nude Scene:  Hedy Lamarr in Ectsasy
• Best Reaction:  Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight
• Sexiest Scene:  the underwater swim in Tarzan and His Mate
• Strangest Casting:  Gary Cooper as Marco Polo in The Adventures of Marco Polo
  

note:  It doesn’t include categories that are covered in some of the lists above like Worst Film, Most Over-rated Film, Best Ensemble, etc.

Soundtracks I Own:  The Wizard of Oz is the only film for which I own the entire soundtrack but there are a number of films through the decade where I have some of the songs (especially original songs written for films).

At the Theater

By the end of 2011, I had probably seen over 1000 films in the theater at some point or another.  I had certainly been to the movies well over 1000 times.  The films in this decade, of course, were released decades before I was born.  But some of them have been released again over the years.  For this decade, I have seen M in the theater, was supposed to see King Kong but COVID happened and have seen Wizard of Oz several times (and, for the record, will see it again anytime it comes to a theater).

Awards

Academy Awards

note:  This includes the 3rd through 12th Oscar ceremonies.  There are notes about this decade in this post.  It does include links in those posts to my various posts covering these years.  Many notes on this period will be included in the upcoming Film History Through 1939 post.  This just covers these 10 Oscar ceremonies.

• Number of Films That Earned Nominations:  316
• Number of Films That Have Won Oscars:  81
• Number of Films With Multiple Nominations:  143
• Number of Films With Multiple Wins:  26
• Total Number of Nominations:  714
• Total Number of Wins:  126
• Number of Films with Nominations I Haven’t Seen:  3
• Best Film with No Oscar Nominations:  Modern Times

Most Oscar Nominations

1. Gone with the Wind  –  13
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  11
3. The Life of Emile Zola  –  10
4. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  8
5. Wuthering Heights  –  8
6. nine films  –  7

Most Oscar Wins:

1. Gone with the Wind  –  8
2. It Happened One Night  –  5
3. The Informer  –  4
4. Anthony Adverse  –  4
5. six films  –  3

Most Oscar Points:

1. Gone with the Wind  –  665
2. The Life of Emile Zola  –  435
3. It Happened One Night  –  410
4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  400
5. The Informer  –  365
6. Cimarron  –  360
7. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  340
8. You Can’t Take It With You  –  330
9. The Great Ziegfeld  –  320
10. A Star is Born  /  Wuthering Heights  –  295

note:  As the trend grew for more nominations (with more categories) later in the decades we get four films that didn’t win Best Picture on the list beating out three of the first four Best Picture winners in the decade.

Most Nominated Films by Director:

1. W.S. Van Dyke  –  11
2. Clarence Brown  –  8
3. George Cukor  –  8
4. John Ford  –  8
5. William Wyler  –  7

Most Nominations by Director:

1. Frank Capra  –  39
2. William Wyler  –  27
3. Victor Fleming  –  26
4. John Ford  –  24
5. W.S. Van Dyke  –  24

Most Oscars by Director:

1. Victor Fleming  –  11
2. Frank Capra  –  11
3. William Dieterle  –  8
4. John Ford  –  7
5. William Wyler  –  5

Most Oscar Points by Director:

1. Frank Capra  –  1770
2. Victor Fleming  –  1155
3. William Wyler  –  1045
4. William Dieterle  –  1030
5. John Ford  –  1010

Most Submitted Films by Studio:

1. Paramount  –  558
2. Fox Films / 20th Century-Fox  –  527
3. Warner Brothers  –  505
4. MGM  –  446
5. RKO Radio  –  417
6. Universal  –  297
7. Columbia  –  283
8. United Artists  –  171
9. Republic  –  140
10. Monogram  –  105

Most Nominated Films by Studio:

1. MGM  –  70
2. Paramount  –  49
3. United Artists  –  45
4. Warner Brothers  –  42
5. RKO Radio  –  37
6. Fox Films  /  20th Century-Fox  –  28
7. Columbia  –  17
8. Universal  –  15
9. Republic  –  8
10. Grand National  –  2

Highest Percentage of Nominated to Submitted Films by Studio:

1. Disney  –  100%
2. Harold Auten  –  50%
3. United Artists  –  26.32%
4. MGM  –  15.70%
5. World Pictures Corp.  –  14.29%

Most Submitted Films Without a Nomination:

1. Monogram  –  105
2. Tiffany  –  56
3. All-Star  –  56
4. Mayfair  –  36
5. Gaumont  –  32

Most Nominations by Studio:

1. MGM  –  183
2. United Artists  –  107
3. Warner Brothers  –  90
4. Paramount  –  89
5. RKO Radio  –  74
6. Columbia  –  62
7. Fox Films  /  20th-Century Fox  –  54
8. Universal  –  37
9. Republic  –  12
10. Grand National  –  2

Most Wins by Studio:

1. MGM  –  39
2. Warner Brothers  –  23
3. Columbia  –  15
4. Paramount  –  12
5. RKO Radio  –  12
6. Fox Films  /  20th-Century Fox  –  11
7. United Artists  –  10
8. Universal  –  5

Best Picture Nominations by Studio (wins in parenthesis):

1. MGM  –  28  (4)
2. Warner Brothers  –  14  (1)
3. Paramount  –  11
4. United Artists  –  11
5. Columbia  –  8  (2)
6. RKO Radio  –  8  (1)
7. Fox Films  /  20th-Century Fox  –  7  (1)
8. Universal  –  4  (1)
9. World Pictures Corp  –  1

Nominated Films by Genre:

• Drama:  139  (43.98%)
• Musical:  77
• Comedy:  44
• Adventure:  20
• Crime:  9
• War:  6
• Western:  6
• Horror:  3
• Kids:  3
• Mystery:  3
• Fantasy:  2
• Action:  1
• Documentary:  1

Best Picture Nominees by Genre (wins in parenthesis):

• Drama:  49  (53.26%)  (4)
• Musical:  14  (1)
• Comedy:  11  (2)
• Adventure:  8  (1)
• War:  3  (1)
• Crime:  2
• Western:  2  (1)
• Fantasy:  1
• Kids:  1
• Mystery:  1

Films I’ve Seen:

• Winners:  100.00%  (81/81)
• Nominees:  99.05%  (313/316)
• Submitted “Major Studio” Films:  67.61%  (2167/3205)
• Submitted “Indie Films”:  68.57%  (168/245)
• Submitted “Foreign Distributors”:  75.00%  (60/80)
• Submitted Other Films:  55.62%  (272/489)
• Total Submitted Films:  66.36%  (2667/4019)

My Rate of Submitted Films I’ve Seen By Year:

• 1930:  47.41%  (162/341)
• 1931:  52.22%  (165/316)
• 1932:  63.35%  (261/412)
• 1933:  69.03%  (321/465)
• 1934:  72.91%  (261/358)
• 1935:  67.64%  (324/479)
• 1936:  70.42%  (269/382)
• 1937:  70.34%  (351/499)
• 1938:  67.23%  (320/476)
• 1939:  80.07%  (233/291)

Nominees I Haven’t Seen:

• The Case of Sergeant Grischa  (1930, Sound)  (lost)
• The Song of the Flame  (1930, Sound)  (lost)
• The Right to Love  (1931, Cinematography)

Critics Awards

The critics awards began in 1932 with the National Board of Review giving out Best Picture and Best Foreign Film which is all it awarded through the end of the decade.  The New York Film Critics began their awards in 1935 with awards for Picture, Director, Actor and Actress, adding Foreign Film the next year.

I award the NBR at 80% of the point totals while I award the NYFC at 100% to gain my weighted total for Awards Points.

• Number of Films That Won Awards (NBR):  15
• Number of Films That Won Awards (NYFC):  23
• Number of Films That Won Awards (both):  5
• Number of Films With Multiple Wins:  6
• Total Number of Films:  33
• Total Number of Awards:  40
• Director with Most Awarded Films:  Frank Capra  (3 films, 4 awards)
• Studio with Most Awarded Films:  MGM  (8 films, 9 awards)
• Best Film with No Awards:  The Wizard of Oz

Trivia:

• In 1936, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town would become the second film and first Comedy to win both Best Picture awards.  No Comedy would do it again for 20 years.
• In 1939, John Ford would become the first director to win two NYFC Awards for Best Director.
• Three films through 1939 won both the NYFC and NBR.  None of them won the Oscar.

Top 5 Points (Total – Weighted):

1. The Informer  –  270
2. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town  –  180
3. The Citadel  –  180
4. The Life of Emile Zola  –  170
5. Wuthering Heights  –  100

note:  The only films with multiple wins not listed are Carnival in Flanders and The Grand Illusion both of which earned 72 points (both Foreign Film awards).

Top 5 Points (Total – NYFC only):

1. The Informer  –  190
2. The Life of Emile Zola  –  170
3. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town  –  100
4. The Citadel  –  100
5. Wuthering Heights  –  100

note:  There is no list for the NBR only because the Pictures all earn 100 (or 80 weighted) and all the Foreign winners earn 40 (or 32).

Awards

Top 10 Awards Nominations

1. Gone with the Wind  –  14
2. The Life of Emile Zola  –  12
3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  12
4. The Informer  –  9
5. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  9
6. Wuthering Heights  –  9
7. The Great Ziegfeld  –  8
8. Stagecoach  –  8
9. nine films  –  7

Top 5 Awards Nominations (no wins)

1. The Love Parade  –  6
2. My Man Godfrey  –  6
3. Love Affair  –  6
4. The Four Daughters  –  5
5. Merrily We Live  /  The Privates Lives of Elizabeth and Essex  –  5

Top 5 Awards Wins

1. Gone with the Wind  –  9
2. The Informer  –  7
3. It Happened One Night  –  6
4. The Life of Emile Zola  –  5
5. The Great Ziegfeld  /  Anthony Adverse  –  4

Top 10 Awards Points

1. Gone with the Wind  –  735
2. The Informer  –  635
3. The Life of Emile Zola  –  605
4. It Happened One Night  –  490
5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  455
6. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town  –  415
7. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  410
8. Wuthering Heights  –  395
9. The Great Ziegfeld  –  390
10. Cimarron  –  360

note:  Cimarron is the only of these films that didn’t win at least one critics award.  Three of these films didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars but did win critics awards and earn a lot of Oscar noms.  The other three Oscar winners finished at #13 (You Can’t Take It With You), #21 (Cavalcade) and #84 (Grand Hotel).

Top 10 Awards Points (films that received no Nighthawk noms)

1. Boys Town  –  285
2. The Story of Louis Pasteur  –  280
3. Cavalcade  –  265
4. The Champ  –  245
5. One Night of Love  –  245
6. Skippy  –  215
7. The Love Parade  –  195
8. 100 Men and a Girl  –  185
9. Captains Courageous  –  185
10. Love Affair  –  185

Top 10 Awards Points Percentage

1. It Happened One Night  –  22.79%
2. The Informer  –  21.28%
3. Cimarron  –  20.69%
4. Gone with the Wind  –  18.13%
5. The Champ  –  16.15%
6. The Life of Emile Zola  –  15.81%
7. Cavalcade  –  14.97%
8. Bad Girl  –  14.50%
9. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  13.86%
10. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  13.74%

Top 10 Awards Points Percentage (Nighthawk Awards included)

1. All Quiet on the Western Front  –  19.32%
2. The Informer  –  19.30%
3. It Happened One Night  –  16.37%
4. Gone with the Wind  –  16.07%
5. City Lights  –  15.43%
6. The Thin Man  –  15.03%
7. The Wizard of Oz  –  14.36%
8. Mutiny on the Bounty  –  13.73%
9. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  13.38%
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  –  12.31%

Lists

I won’t do a lot of lists because that’s the whole point of TSPDT – they put a ridiculous amount of lists in the blender and come out with the “definitive” one.  Their lists includes lists by genre, so you can always go there and look at their source lists.

The TSPDT Top 25 Films 1930-1939

1. The Rules of the Game (#4)
2. L’Atalante (#18)
3. City Lights (#28)
4. The Grand Illusion (#44)
5. Modern Times (#48)
6. M  (#58)
7. The Wizard of Oz (#105)
8. Gone with the Wind (#107)
9. Bringing Up Baby  (#125)
10. Stagecoach (#136)
11. L’Age d’Or (#140)
12. Duck Soup (#145)
13. Trouble in Paradise (#149)
14. King Kong (#163)
15. Earth (#169)
16. Vampyr (#207)
17. Only Angels Have Wings (#233)
18. Zero for Conduct  (#236)
19. Tabu (#250)
20. Freaks  (#251)
21. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (#260)
22. Make Way for Tomorrow (#297)
23. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (#302)
24. Bride of Frankenstein (#313)
25. It Happened One Night (#322)

note:  These are the current (2020) rankings from TSPDT.  I will point out that my own lists don’t include Earth (documentary).

AFI Top 100 Films Released, 1930-1939

1. All Quiet on the Western Front  (#56  /  n/a)
2. City Lights  (#76  /  #11)
3. Frankenstein  (#87  /  n/a)
4. King Kong  (#43  /  #41)
5. Duck Soup  (#85  /  #60)
6. It Happened One Night  (#35  /  #46)
7. A Night at the Opera  (n/a  /  #85)
8. Mutiny on the Bounty  (#86  /  n/a)
9. Modern Times  (#81  /  #78)
10. Swing Time  (n/a  /  #90)
11. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  (#49  /  #34)
12. Bringing Up Baby  (#97  /  #88)
13. Gone with the Wind  (#4  /  #6)
14. The Wizard of Oz  (#6  /  #10)
15. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  (#29  /  #26)
16. Stagecoach  (#63  /  n/a)
17. Wuthering Heights  (#73  /  n/a)

note:  Listed chronologically.  The first number is the original 1998 list and the second is the 2008 version.

The IMDb Voters Top 10 Films, 1930-1939

note:  Constructed by searching all IMDb films released in the decade with at least 100 votes and sorting by user rating.

1. Modern Times
2. City Lights
3. M
4. Make Way for Tomorrow
5. Les Miserables  (1934)
6. I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
8. Gone with the Wind
9. The Grand Illusion
10. It Happened One Night

note:  For the record, The Wizard of Oz is the most popular film at the IMDb with by far the most votes (over 60,000 more than the next, Gone with the Wind) though it came in 13th based on user rating.
note:  Probably to no one’s surprise, when sorted by number of votes, Make Way, Les Mis, Fugitive and Grand Illusion get bumped for Wizard, Snow White, King Kong and Frankenstein.
note:  For the record, the film with the most votes in the decade at the IMDb that I haven’t seen is Revolt of the Zombies with 1437 votes, one of just eight films with over 1000 votes that I haven’t seen.  It’s easy to determine that thanks to the IMDb’s advanced search and 22 years of entering ratings (yes, I’ve been a registered IMDb user since 1998).

Top 2 U.S. Domestic Box Office (Rentals)

1. Gone with the Wind  –  $26.0 mil
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  –  $6.0 mil

note:  This information is pulled from the January 18, 1950 issue of Weekly Variety (page 18).  For a long time, Variety reported rentals rather than grosses.  It’s hard to equate that perfectly to today’s gross figures and I don’t know where Box Office Mojo gets their pre-1980 information from since Variety seemed to be the main place that had info and they only reported rentals.  A comparison I did of the 1980 Variety all-time list against the listed gross at BOM ranged from a 3.3 multiplier for the rental figure (Benji) all the way down to 1.22 (A Bridge Too Far).  I haven’t the time to plow through all the early Variety issues to see if there are earlier lists but they seem to have cut off their all-time list with rentals of four million, so there might not be anything more on pre-1930 films.

note:  But more on that.  Those films reflect the domestic rentals as of the start of 1950.  Both films would have consistent re-releases so by the end of 1987, Wind would be up to $77.6 million and Snow White would be up to $62.7 million.  Both of those have quite high multipliers when it comes to converting rentals to grosses so I have my doubts as to those numbers below.  See the further note below.

Top 10 U.S. Domestic Box Office (Gross – supposedly)

1. Gone with the Wind  –  $198.68 mil
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  –  $184.93 mil
3. Tom Sawyer  –  $11.00 mil
4. King Kong  –  $10.00 mil
5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington  –  $9.60 mil
6. Shanghai Express  –  $8.07 mil
7. Cavalcade  –  $7.63 mil
8. Gulliver’s Travels  –  $7.13 mil
9. Saratoga  –  $5.30 mil
10. Gold Diggers of 1933  –  $4.80 mil

note:  For reasons covered above, I am dubious of these numbers.  But when making a list in the Advanced Search at the IMDb, you can sort it by gross and this what the Top 10 are according to the IMDb (which, of course, owns BOM).  According to BOM, by the end of 1987, Wind was at #11 place all-time and Snow White was in #22 (Snow White had another re-release in 1993 that moved up quite a bit).  However, based on Variety’s rental numbers, Wind was at #22 and Snow White was down at #30.  More importantly, from the first all-time report in 1973 when The Godfather was placed at #1 by Variety (with $4 million more in rentals that Wind), it never was passed again by Wind and according to Variety’s 1987 list, it was $9 million ahead of Wind.  Yet, according to IMDb, that translates to a gross of $55 million less.  So, again, I’m calling bullshit on BOM’s pre-1980 numbers.

Books

My hope is to go back after COVID, when I can get into work again and fill this section out.  However, even aside from that, I can look at my own bookcases.  Aside from general books that cover wide swaths of film history, I pulled five books that are indispensable when it comes to this era.

Memo from David O. Selznick, Rudy Behlmer, 1972

Unlike the rest of the books, the image on the right is not the edition that I own.  I have an old book club hardcover without a dust jacket that of course doesn’t have an intro by Ebert.  A fantastic use of archives to document the making of important films: Gone with the Wind gets 120 pages and Rebecca gets another 40 – it’s a reminder of the famous Hitchcock quote “I came to these shores 26 years ago to make a picture for David Selznick. Naturally upon my arrival Mr. Selznick sent me one of his interoffice memos. I completed reading that memo yesterday. I shall act upon it at my earliest opportunity. Actually, it wasn’t bad reading. In fact, I may make it into a picture. I intend to call it “The Longest Story Ever Told.”

Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951), Rudy Behlmer, 1985

Behlmer’s follow-up book to Memo is the same kind of book.  One of the best books for understanding film history because it covers a much wider array of films than Memo.  The book that allows me to slap the crap out of anyone who suggests that Bette Davis was given Jezebel as a consolation prize for missing out on Gone with the Wind (on page 40 she’s suggested for the lead in a memo dated from 1935, the year before Wind was even published).

The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era, Thomas Schatz, 1988

A very valuable book as I have been writing all my pieces on studios for my Century of Film project.  It moves between all the major studios with different chapters (although there are also several chapters devoted to Selznick at whichever studio he was at at the time) and gives a great narrative history of film from 1920 to 1946 with a shorter section covering the end of the Studio Era (1947-1960).

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934, Thomas Doherty, 1999

Doherty was interviewed in the film Skin which I recently reviewed that covered the history of nudity on screen, which is appropriate given his knowledge of the Pre-Code era.  Doherty documents very well in an academic book (Columbia University Press) with a lot of good, relevant stills, what was going on in the first few years of the decade that lead to the enforcement of the Production Code starting in 1934 and lead to everything in the cover image being banned (if you’re unfamiliar with the image on the right, it was taken by a Paramount photographer in 1940 to document ten different things banned by the Code).

Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, Mick LaSalle, 2000

LaSalle was another one of the commenters in the film Skin.  This book, a great short (less than 300 pages with some pretty generous margins) look at the most important actresses working in the early 30’s (with a picture of one of my favorites, Norma Shearer, on the cover) is great for learning more about these women and their work.  This book has four additional things to really recommend it: a considerable number of stills in the middle, an epilogue which covers all the major actresses and what happened to them after the decade, an appendix that lists films mentioned and their availability and a bibliography that gives you a lot more books to go look for to learn more about the era.

Reviews

The Best Film of the 30s I Haven’t Yet Reviewed

Angels with Dirty Faces
(1938, dir. Michael Curtiz)

It’s interesting the Angels has always been sitting there at the lower end of great films while The Public Enemy started down in the lower ***.5 and eventually moved up my list and passed Angels.  Angels was already in an interesting historical place as one of just two films nominated for Best Director in the original expanded Best Picture era (1932-1943) without a Best Picture nomination; it also added Story and Actor nominations on top of that.  Adding to the oddity, of course, is that director Michael Curtiz was not nominated for Adventures of Robin Hood, his Best Picture nominated film (though he was also nominated for Four Daughters which was nominated for Picture).  Making it look even stranger, in my own 1938 Nighthawk Awards, I also nominate this film for Director (as well as Screenplay, Actor and three tech awards) but not Picture because I find the direction stronger than that in Pygmalion but find that to be the better film.  It should be obvious that this film didn’t earn a Nighthawk nomination for Picture because otherwise I would have reviewed it in my awards.

So what exactly do we have here?  We have a film that ranks in my Top 50 for the decade (so taking the decade as a whole, would have received a Picture nom) with strong directing, a very strong lead performance from James Cagney (his first Oscar nomination) and a powerful story but that doesn’t quite match up to The Public Enemy.  And that’s where the timing of the film comes in, because that film was made in 1931 and this one was made in 1938, several years after the Production Code came into effect.  Thus we have an ending that is powerfully done but it also clearly worked into the story to give it a moral bearing and it ties in with one of the few weaknesses of the film.

Cagney plays Rocky, a guy who grows into a gangster after he’s caught as a kid stealing pens while his best friend isn’t caught (and grows up to be a priest – a serious bit of nurture over nature being argued here).  Years later, out of prison (for other crimes), Rocky returns home and is determined to wreck his revenge on his crooked lawyer (Bogie playing a bit of a coward, which is one of the film’s few weaknesses as Bogie doesn’t really work in that role) and show the local kids how tough he is (the Dead End Kids who were still doing okay long before they descended into being the Bowery Boys and making dumb comedy after dumb comedy).  Rocky eventually kills Bogie and a cop and gets caught and sentenced to death.

Here’s where we get the two things that really have kept this film at the same level all these years while Public Enemy‘s intensity has moved it up my list: the total blah performance of Pat O’Brien as the priest (though “total blah performance” and “Pat O’Brien” is kind of redundant) and the excessive moralizing of the conclusion of the film.  It’s not that Rocky deliberately (presumably) turns chicken faced with death, but that the film is so determined to beat that into our heads.  It doesn’t keep the film from being great, but it keeps it just enough in the lower ranges of **** so that it can’t quite make the leap above 6th place in 1938.

The Worst Film of the 30s I Haven’t Yet Reviewed

White Zombie
(1932, dir. Victor Halperin)

Even before Ed Wood helped to revive his reputation, I was a fan of Bela Lugosi (though not to the extent that Wood himself was).  Because he had been a stage actor before he went to Hollywood unlike a lot of the big talent in the decade, he understood theatricality.  That’s the kind of thing that gave him his hypnotic stare and his pause before “wine”.  But let’s not for a minute think that Bela didn’t do a considerable load of crap, both before and after he met Ed Wood (and yes, Wood’s films were the worst of it).

Here we have White Zombie.  It was independently produced and so it suffered from budget problems of course.  But budget problems alone aren’t enough to bring you down to high *.5 and being the fourth worst film of the decade (the other three were already reviewed in the various Nighthawk Awards as the worst films of their respective years but this is from 1932-33, the same year as the dreadful Oliver Twist that’s even worse).  It’s ineptly directed, very badly acted (including by Bela) and poorly written.  Of course it also has appallingly bad technical aspects but that can kind of be chocked up to the budget

White Zombie is the first feature-length zombie film.  That means it’s the first in what, for the most part, has been a long line of crap.  You might be obsessed with whatever that Dead show is on television but I don’t give a shit about zombies, namely because they have no motivation and so they’re awfully boring to me.  That’s not to say a good zombie film can’t be made, but George A. Romero wasn’t around in 1932 to show them how to have no budget but still create an intense mood of terror and desperation.  Instead, we just get Bela constantly staring and muttering while commanding his troop of zombies to go after a bunch of people we don’t care about because the actors are so bad we can’t be bothered.

Bonus Review

Footlight Parade
(1933, dir. Lloyd Bacon)

I guess I’ve been leading up to this for a while now.  This film appeared recently in my Top 1000 countdown and I mentioned it above when discussing the flaws in 42nd Street.  I didn’t mention it when I originally reviewed 42nd Street back in 2010 for my Best Picture project because, amazingly, I hadn’t seen this film at that point.  I spent so long obsessed with awards (it didn’t earn any noms), directors (made by a studio stalwart who made lots of films but not ones worthy of watching a film because he directed it) and all-time lists (this has never made TSPDT’s list) that it actually took a TCM day devoted to James Cagney in 2012 before I finally saw this (and Picture Snatcher and Hard to Handle).

This film overlaps with 42nd Street in a lot of ways – it’s a Musical made at Warner Brothers, directed by Lloyd Bacon but owing much of its success to the song and dance numbers directed by Busby Berkeley and with a young romantic couple played by Dick Powell (who I can tolerate in this) and Ruby Keeler.  But that’s where the similarities end.  That film was nominated for Best Picture and has a reputation (both undeserved).  It starred those horrible hams George Brent and Warner Baxter who you may have noticed were listed above as the worst actors of the decade.  This film stars James Cagney in the first role where he was allowed to dance (and he’s brilliant when he finally goes on at the end).  It also has a fantastically snarky performance from Joan Blondell with one of the great all-time insults (when she kicks out her rival for Cagney’s affection with the line “Outside, countess. As long as they’ve got sidewalks you’ve got a job.”

That may be the best line in the film but it’s far from the only great one.  When her same rival says to Cagney “It’s like being in jail” and Cagney replies “Sorry, dear, better get used to it,” Blondell adds “She is used to it.”  There is the line where Cagney is asked by someone if there is anything he can do and he replies “See that window over there?  Take a running jump and I think you can make it.”  Or when a romantic entanglement makes a problem he comments “send a new boy and girl on right away, and make sure they’re not in love with each other.  Get a couple already married.”

All of that is just the proof of why this film is so much better.  42nd Street is a badly written film and this is a well-written film.  That film had a terrible lead and this one has a great lead who can move like no other lead actor in Hollywood.  That film had a cliched plot, this film has a cliched plot (which is part of what keeps it from just getting over the hump and into **** level – well that and the ending goes on too long) but manages to bring a considerable level of wit to it.

Look, the point of a film review is either to try and convince someone to see a film or someone not to see a film.  Don’t make the mistake that I made and wait until I was well over 10,000 films before I finally saw this film just because some of the other people who know a thing or two about film haven’t recognized it for how good it is.  See it now and cross it off your list.