Success or Snub? All the King's Men (22nd Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

 To see part 1, click here.

The Heiress Suite~The Heiress - Alan Copland

To understand the importance and timeliness of a movie like All the King’s Men is to understand the intricacies of American politics, and Hollywood politics, in the late 40s going into the 50s. Almost immediately after the Nazi menace was defeated, the next big boogeyman that America had to face was Russian Communism as the Cold War began. Unlike Nazi Germany which wanted to conquer the world by force, Joseph Stalin’s brand of world domination would be by encouraging Communist dissidents to infiltrate and undermine governments around the world. Knowledge of this led to the famous Red Scare in America which would be a thinly-veiled witch hunt as communities were terrified that their neighbors might be planning on selling them out to the Communists.

In 1947, the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), launched an investigation into the Hollywood studios, probing for alleged Communist ties amongst Hollywood elites and investigating if Hollywood was disseminating Communist propaganda. There were two major problems with this investigation though. First is that being a former member of the Communist Party would not have been unusual during this time period as it would have seemed pretty enticing to many people who had lived through the Great Depression. Second is that the USSR was an ally to the United States during World War II so many pro-Russian films did, in fact, get made by the studios only a couple years before.

Countless actors, directors and screenwriters were called in to testify and the hearings pitted Hollywood against each other. When ten of the subpoenaed refused to testify, citing their First Amendment privileges, they were charged with contempt of Congress. The studios then blacklisted the so-called Hollywood Ten from the industry, getting to pat themselves on the back for fighting off those evil Communists. This opening salvo was the first of many events that occurred over the course of the next decade that would steadily bring the studio system to a close.

(I should also add that, nowadays, it’s become commonplace, especially in the nuance-allergic Hollywood circles, to treat the Hollywood Communism conspiracy as a completely made-up witch hunt which is also untrue. There were actual, real Communists in Hollywood and elsewhere in America at the time who took marching orders from Moscow and did want to end capitalism in the United States. Of particular note was the Communist-backed CSU union which agitated, harassed and competed with IATSE (both represented carpenters, stage hands and other blue-collar jobs on film sets). This rivalry culminated in a bloody strike and brawl in 1945. While HUAC went way the Hell overboard, it’s important to remember that they’re unjust because their methods were unjust and that the First Amendment defends your right to believe whatever you want; not because Communism was a completely made-up threat.)

Another important breakthrough in this time period was the advent of television. The rate of television consumption in the American home is one of the most closely-studied social movements of the 20th Century as it increased at an astronomical rate. By 1950, only 10% of all households in America had a television; by the end of the decade it would be almost 90%. Many of the classic genres in this time period would go the way of the dodo as the profits were no longer quite there. (Why spend money to go see a Laurel and Hardy romp when you can watch I Love Lucy (1951-1960) at home for free?) As the decade would go on, TV would eat more and more at Hollywood’s profit shares. While this was before TV would take its biggest bite of the movies’ profits, you didn’t have to be clairvoyant in 1950 to see which way the winds were blowing.

America after the television.

The cherry on top is that, in 1947, Congress found Hollywood in violation of antitrust laws and ordered the studios and the theaters to separate. Back in the height of the studio system, the whole pipeline was owned by the studio barons: the scripts, the pre-production, the sound stages and the theaters where the movies would eventually be screened. After this court case, the theaters became completely independent businesses, upending the studios’ business models and forcing them to compete with each other in terms of selling their movies to theater owners.

These three movements, combined with a(n in hindsight mild) post-war recession and a public whose tastes were forever changed by World War II and the atomic bomb led to a major reshuffling of the old guard in Hollywood. As an example, MGM, who used to be the biggest studio in the 30s, posted 2 years of profit loss and installed Dore Schary as head of production to try to rescue the cash flow. Schary and MGM CEO Louis B. Mayer (who you may remember as the founder of the Academy Awards) ended up feuding on the type of movies to be made: Mayer wanted to return to the old-school idealism and fluff of the pre-war years while Schary wanted to let in some fresh air with some new, edgy films to try to show a higher level of quality than something you would see on television. Similar changing of the guards and power struggles and feuds would happen at most of the other studios as well.

This was the Hollywood that existed on March 23rd, 1950 when All the King’s Men won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. As mentioned in the previous review, it does seem like a timely choice as the movie made about a scumbag politician who brings out the worst in people acts like a neat little rebellion against the Red Scare, especially once it was given a face by Senator Joseph McCarthy. However, that is my 21st Century POV as the reality is that the people in charge of the Academy were also perfectly happy with red-baiting and may have instead been trying to show a movie about home-grown dangers right here in our backyard. The cynical truth is honestly that they may have just chosen the movie that was getting good reviews and based on a book that already won an award and decided that Robert Rossen hadn’t gotten his statuette yet and was due one right about now. Rossen would end up himself becoming a victim of HUAC and the ensuing Hollywood Blacklist so his reason for making it was probably as a rebellion against HUAC while the Academy choosing it for Best Picture as an embracing of HUAC.

Still, it does raise the question of what actually is a Best Motion Picture and how do you ascertain that decision when put against the backdrop of history. All the King’s Men was clearly a very timely movie and is a good movie but it still has its flaws. Would that be enough to call it movie of the year or is another movie that isn’t topical but better-made more deserving of the title? Well, let’s look at 1949’s catalog and see if there’s anything that was both topical and well-made.

The two biggest competitors, as judged by their winning the respective Oscars for Best Leading Actress and Supporting Actor (the other two acting awards went to Broderick Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge in All the King’s Men) were The Heiress

and Twelve O’Clock High.

The Heiress is a delightful twist on the classic Hollywood story with a real all-star performance by Olivia de Havilland as socialite, Catherine Sloper. The film at first seems like the typical Hollywood love story but instead shows Catherine’s slow descent into nihilism. I won’t dare spoil the ending for you but I can confirm that it’s genuinely one of the best movies of the year and far better than it seems at first glance. I think All the King’s Men is more topical but The Heiress is actually a strong contender for movie of the year.

Twelve O’Clock High is an aviation film that is a bit closer to the type of movie that I tend to make fun of in this blog. Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) is given direct control over a rowdy division of soldiers and must prepare them for battle. Most of the characters are dull, it’s 40 minutes too long, Dean Jagger did not deserve the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, this type of story was done ten times better ten years earlier in The Dawn Patrol (1938) and it also has almost no flying scenes which defeats the point of being an aviation film. The movie is redeemed, however, by its very understated and powerful climax.

There was also Little Women

one of the essential coming-of-age stories about four sisters growing up in the American heartland during the Gilded Age. This is often considered the most definitive version of the story with dazzling Technicolor and some genuinely great chemistry and acting amongst the leads. You believe that these all these actresses are sisters and they have all the squabbling that that entails. That having been said, the film’s back half where the drama is doesn’t feel as strong as the fun first half.

Some of the more technical Oscars are also worth noting from a film history point-of-view. The Oscar for Best Screenplay went to A Letter to Three Wives

which had one of the most uniquely-written screenplays since Citizen Kane (1941). The film centers around a woman (Celeste Holm) who writes to three wives (Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern) that she’s sleeping with one of their husbands but doesn’t say who. The film then bounces around between each of the wives’ perspectives, examining each of their respective marriages as they try to figure out who’s having the affair. This kind of non-linear storytelling to this degree was new at the time and made for something special. While the characters aren’t especially riveting, it’s still notable.

The Oscar for Best Special Effects went to Mighty Joe Young

a kinda-sorta-but-not-really parody of King Kong (1933) with some pretty major special effects work in the form of stop-motion animation and models. Comparing King Kong to Mighty Joe Young, you can see how sixteen years of special effects make the gorilla look so much better. This is also the film that launched the career of Ray Harryhausen, one of the most venerated men in the history of film special effects. I would be remiss without acknowledging this importance to film history though, honestly, Mighty Joe Young is actually still a lot of fun.

Moving onto some of the bigger hitters, 1949 was actually a pretty strong year for movies as there are several films that are in the same league as All the King’s Men, if not flat-out better, both in relevance and actual quality. First is Battleground

the first major film about World War II since the war ended. The movie depicts the Battle of the Bulge and, now that the patriotic fervor has subsided, shows a much more realistic band of soldiers fighting the Germans. These guys aren’t unabashed heroes who will always do the right thing and want to lecture you about why America is so important. Instead, they’re normal guys who contemplate desertion, complain about being in a war zone and slack off. This makes them feel much more like real people which in turn makes the movie feel more realistic which makes it feel that much more rewarding when they win at the end.

The characters, while not one of the great movie casts, are all likable and the film does a great psychedelic portrayal of the Battle of the Bulge, complete with the heavy fogs and the constant tension if the American line will hold. This was one of the first major post-war WWII films and the genre would only pick up steam as the industry went into the 50s. My hypothesis for why is that as the industry was losing money, they tended to fall back on what they knew would work and Lord knows that WWII movies worked well enough when the war was actually being fought so why not now?

The fact that Battleground was such a major box office splash, coupled with it showing more down-to-earth heroism, coupled with it just being a straight-up great movie gave it a lot of staying power at the time and I would argue the superior movie to All the King’s Men.

(For the Pacific theater, there was another WWII film that made a pretty penny called Sands of Iwo Jima.

This is much, much cornier than Battleground and was the first film to earn John Wayne an Oscar nod. These two movies also continue the trend where German villains in WWII movies are actually cunning and erudite while Japanese villains in WWII movies are horrifically racist stereotypes.)

Though, if we’re really going to argue about the better movie, one of the best examples of why this gets to be really technical is comparing All the King’s Men against one of the greatest movies of the late 1940s, White Heat.

White Heat is often considered one of the best crime thrillers of the Golden Age of Hollywood and James Cagney’s greatest role. Arthur Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) is the leader of a gang that decides to turn himself in so he can avoid the death penalty (he killed someone but he commits another crime as an alibi to prove he was somewhere else). The authorities are suspicious of him and so assign an agent named Hank Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) to infiltrate Cody’s gang and befriend him all while Cody pulls the strings on his gang from behind prison walls.

By the time White Heat came out, Cagney had proven himself several times over as one of the best actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The man had honest-to-God range as he had starred in comedies, musicals, Oscar-baiting biopics and romances but it was the gangster film where he fit right at home. We’ve discussed previously how he helped to pioneer the genre with The Public Enemy in 1931 and brought it back into the public eye in 1938 with Angels with Dirty Faces. White Heat, though, is by far his best performance. Cody Jarrett has the same trigger-happy violence and cruel scheming that define Cagney’s characters but what makes him stand out is the thinly-veiled Oedipal relationship between him and his mother (Margaret Wycherly), who also acts as his second-in-command. The characters are all memorable and the film is great at giving each member of Cody’s gang memorable personalities and motivations. The dynamic between Cody, Fallon, Cody’s girlfriend (Virginia Mayo), Ma Jarrett and the members of the Jarrett Gang makes for one Hell of a fun thriller.

While White Heat doesn’t have anything necessarily important to say (beyond perverting the sensibilities of mama’s boys a full decade before Psycho (1960)), it’s still one of the best movies of the year and, unsurprisingly, was completely snubbed, with its only nomination being the Oscar for Best Motion Picture Story. (This is famous for being one of the most confusing and probably dumbest awards since it existed alongside the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Basically, it was the Oscar given to film treatments.) You’d think that a movie that takes something seen a million times before and twisting it to make a whole new fresh thing should earn some noms but apparently not.

This gets back to our discussion earlier about what does and does not count for calling something the best movie. In terms of sheer film technique in creating a 3-act story with a beginning, middle and end with interesting characters, suspense and making all the factors that go into making a movie flow without you noticing, White Heat comes a lot closer to being perfect than All the King’s Men does. However, All the King’s Men has more of a timeliness to it in terms of its moral. Does that make White Heat a better movie or does All the King’s Men get bonus points just for saying something?

I’m always of the former camp, and that opinion is part of the impetus that started this blog series but as I get further along, I do understand the argument for how a movie being about something is a certain point-of-view and how one man’s great movie is another’s mediocre one. At the same time, is White Heat really not about anything? Sure, it’s not holding up a reflection to society but it does have some clever commentary about always wanting to please our mothers.

Either way, if we’re going into the camp of great movies needing to be about something, then let’s go back across the seas for some more movies that weren’t considered for Best Picture. 1949 saw the American release dates of the remaining two movies in Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (the first film being Rome, Open City (1944)): Paisá (Eng.: Paisan)

and Germania, Anno Zero (Eng.: Germany, Year Zero).

Bicycle Thieves Suite~Bicycle Thieves - Alessandro Cicognini

Paisan is an episodic look at the Liberation of Italy, showing a series of vignettes as different aspects of Italian culture (e.g. peasants, monks, city-dwellers etc.) interact with the Allied Soldiers and fight off Benito Mussolini’s Fascists. The shorts are all excellent and show the sentimental brotherhood present between these two cultures as they join forces to liberate their home. It received international acclaim and was actually nominated for the Oscar for Best Screenplay (which it lost to Battleground which isn’t a bad one to lose to though Paisan is the better-written film). It’s often considered the best of the War Trilogy and one of the triumphs of the Neorealist movement.

Germany, Year Zero is set in Berlin right after the war ends and focuses on a family’s struggle to make ends meet. It’s considered the first of the “rubble films,” a European genre that existed in post-war Europe that used the new rubble-strewn to make much more Gothic films. Germany, Year Zero is by far the darkest of the War Trilogy though it also happens to be the weakest. The main kid isn’t an especially good actor and the ending of the film where he’s wandering around the ruins of Berlin, while aesthetically pleasing and thematically strong, drags for what feels like an eternity.

Both of these films are very good but if there’s a foreign film that would’ve been truly the best film released in America that year, that would be Ladri di Biciclette (Eng.: The Bicycle Thief or Bicycle Thieves, depending on who’s doing the translating).

A very harsh and cynical alternative to Paisan, Bicycle Thieves is set in post-war Rome as a father named Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is desperate to make ends meet to support his wife Maria (Lianella Carell), his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) and his small infant. He manages to find a job that requires a bicycle to do it. After saving up enough to buy a bicycle, however, it is stolen and, desperate to keep his family afloat, Antonio and Bruno embark on a quest around Rome to try to retrieve his bicycle.

It really speaks to the power of the Neorealist filmmakers that something as simple as a story about a man trying to find a lost bicycle can create such a strong parable with several layers on top of it. Bicycle Thieves serves both as a look into post-WWII Italian culture as well as a think piece on the crushing classism inflicted upon a postwar economy combined with a look at male pride. The image of Antonio being clad in dirty clothes and having to put up posters of a beautiful and presumably rich actress is a pretty allegorical image but the film trusts you enough to get the parable without dwelling on it. By any stretch of the imagination, this should be a very droll and boring subject matter but instead it ends up being a very engaging and dramatic thriller. The decision that Antonio makes at the end of the movie is downright heartbreaking even though, if you say it out loud, it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal.

Antonio is also a richly complex and layered character. He wants to be a good husband, a good father and all he asks for is an honest day’s pay but is denied it. You can see how much the bicycle means to him and just how desperate he is to get back. Neorealism was backed by the belief that stories seen in our day-to-day life were much more powerful than anything the human imagination could ever conjure up. Director Vittorio de Sica definitely drank the Kool-Aid on that belief as he rarely, if ever, hired professional actors to play the leads in his films, believing that if his character would be a working-class stiff, then he should hire a working-class stiff, not an actor. Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker who barely made enough to keep the lights on when de Sica hired him to play the role in his movie. His general scruffiness and desperation to make money to support his family feels great for the performance and shines through that much stronger for it. (In a tragic case of divine irony, Maggiorani would end up getting laid off from the factory, failed to spend his paycheck from the movie in a wise manner and would go the rest of his life without another big break.)

Bicycle Thieves is often considered a strong contender for the greatest film in Italian history as well as the greatest film of the Italian Neorealist movement and, at the time, was considered the greatest movie made since Citizen Kane (1941). In 1952, it actually held the spot as greatest movie of all time on Sights & Sound magazine. Any film professor worth their salt will usually include this as one of the most essential pre-1970 films to show their students.

Bicycle Thieves would receive the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, back when this was an just honorary award instead of an official category, so it did receive some well-earned acknowledgment from the Academy. However, this does raise the question as to why some foreign films are nominated for some of the awards (Paisan being nominated for Best Screenplay, see above) while others aren’t considered for any of the big kahunas such as Best Picture or Best Actor? Why didn’t they just specify it as Best American Motion Picture? Bicycle Thieves is a much better, much timelier and much every positive adjective you can think of than All the King’s Men.

But since it did receive some acknowledgment, I suppose we can let it pass. Really, if we want to challenge the award’s decision based on its timeliness in late 40s America, then we must look at the other fun topic that predominates American politics: racism.

The Civil Rights Movement was seeing its genesis around this time as countless African-American soldiers came home from a war against the evils of genocidal racism and five years of watching movies about the greatness of America only to find that large swathes of their population still existed as second-class citizens. While it would tragically take over ten more years before civil rights would officially be codified into law, the opening salvos of the movement began around this time. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued an executive order desegregating the Armed Forces and federal government and campaigned on a platform of civil rights for his Fair Deal (the lesser-known and not-quite-as-successful sequel to the New Deal).

In light of this, as well as studio heads who were willing to test audiences’ social mores a bit more, came four culturally important films analyzing racial relations. First were Pinky

and Lost Boundaries.

Pinky Theme~Pinky - Alfred Newman

Pinky revolves around a mixed-race young woman named Pinky Johnson (Jeanne Crain) who can pass for white and returns to her Deep South home to get in touch with her roots. Lost Boundaries follows a similar tact but is instead set in New England with a couple called the Carters (Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson) who are mixed race but pass as white and try to keep that secret under wraps from their community. Both films serve as slow, methodical think pieces of people who no one would think is black while looking at others still being discriminated against. They do show a very nice ugly reflective mirror at America and, needless to say, were quite controversial and ended up being banned from theaters in several Southern states. (Nowadays, they’d be controversial for the opposite reason as they star clearly white actors playing characters who’re supposed to be mixed race.)

Between these two, Pinky is the better movie and made a bigger splash though it ultimately falls into the same category of All the King’s Men in that it’s a very good movie that’s tragically flawed and needed some tinkering to become a true masterpiece. There was another actress who was originally supposed to play Pinky and a director switch after about a week and it does show through in the final product. Jeanne Crain, while not bad, doesn’t feel like she has quite the steeliness or oomph to really make this performance something special. In addition, for a movie that’s supposed to shine a light on the plight of African-American discrimination, the black characters still come off as pretty stereotyped.

With that in mind, Pinky is still a good and forward-thinking movie for the time. Many of the side-characters are straight-up despicable in their racism and the film doesn’t shy away from it or take any easy outs. I especially like just how unpleasant and mean the ending of the climactic court case is as the film plays with your expectations somewhat. While Lost Boundaries is forward for its time as well, it’s definitely a lot slower, takes way too much of its sweet time and the film doesn’t really feel like it hits a strong enough climax to make the story worth it.

A better pair of movies, however, are the other two major films about race relations that seemed to go a little bit further in terms of tackling this subject matter: Intruder in the Dust

and Home of the Brave.

Intruder in the Dust is set in the Deep South as a black man named Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez) has been accused of murdering a white man. The only two people in town who think that he’s innocent are a pair of local teenagers (David Brian and Claude Jarman Jr.) who take it upon themselves to try to clear Lucas’ name before the local townsfolk take justice into their own hands. What makes Intruder in the Dust so excellent is that even if you were to take the moral out of the story, it would still be a good murder-mystery and whodunnit with likable characters. But with the moral attached, it becomes a strong parable about standing up for justice and not letting generational hatred get in the way of doing the right thing. The film doesn’t even really have a lecture or big “this is what it’s all about” speech at the end. It just shows the story as is and knows the audience will understand that this is something that can (and probably has at many points) happen(ed) in contemporary America.

Home of the Brave revolves around a black soldier during the Pacific Campaign in World War II, Private Peter Moss (James Edwards), who is assigned as a topography expert to join in on a patrol unit that’s mapping islands (since the Army wasn’t integrated in World War II, this is a decent plot contrivance to get the characters together). Needless to say, Moss tends to butt heads with members of the all-white unit and the film does take particular note of the struggle that comes from that. Would you be able to risk your life to save your fellow soldiers, even when they openly dehumanize you every chance they get? This is a powerful question that dominates the bulk of Home of the Brave. It also manages to get a lot of heavy questions done and said despite its clearly low budget. Home of the Brave is barely 90 minutes, almost the whole movie is set on the same beach, has fewer than 10 characters and you never actually see the enemy soldiers they’re fighting against.

Intruder in the Dust and Home of the Brave also broke ground by allowing the main black actors to give dignified performances. Juano Hernandez’s Lucas Beauchamp, despite being the person that the main characters have to save, is not a stereotype or a damsel-in-distress figure. He’s a farmer who owns his own piece of land and is a quietly confident individual who invites respect. It makes you want to see his name cleared that much more because he clearly does not deserve to get lynched. And, similarly, James Edwards’ Private Moss is a very engaging protagonist. He’s not a coward or the butt of a joke; he’s a brave and honest soldier who’s putting his life on the line despite being treated like dirt. The framing device of the film is him being psychoanalyzed and they really cut deep about him trying to come to grips with his masculinity whilst living in a society that wants to emasculate him.

(While both these movies are entertaining and progressive steps forward, I will caution that there is a big asterisk in recommending them to a modern viewer as they’re progressive by 1949 standards which means different things to modern morals. Home of the Brave in particular is very liberal in its usage of the n-word. The film is still clear that it’s a hurtful word but this is well before usage of it would become taboo and the sheer amount of times it’s casually said can be shocking to a modern audience. Also, mild spoilers, but the film climaxes with the main character discovering his masculinity by being race-baited which I’m not sure holds up for modern values.)

Of these 4 films that challenged racial mores in America, only Pinky was nominated for any Academy Awards and, even then, almost exclusively for the acting awards. As much as I hate to make this comparison, I do find it very interesting that the movie about anti-Semitic discrimination was fast-tracked to movie of the year and garnered several Academy Awards while the movies about anti-black discrimination were completely ignored by the Academy. This is a decision that I think really shows the hypocrisy of the Hollywood establishment.

If All the King’s Men won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture and they were trying to give out the award for the film that tackled social mores the best (a trend that had been ongoing for the past couple years), then there’s no good reason why Intruder in the Dust and Home of the Brave shouldn’t have at least been nominated in the top 5. You cannot say that this was ahead of its time even; as mentioned, Civil Rights was in the public discourse in 1949. Home of the Brave was especially timely since it’s about an integrated army unit. Anyone who had served or was going to serve in the army (which would’ve been almost every of-age American) would have had an opinion about this decision.

Getting back to the question of success or snub, I think the trend is starting to become clearer and clearer the more we argue about it. All the King’s Men is a good movie, make no mistake, but it does have some clear flaws to it that would stop it from being called the best movie of 1949. Intruder in the Dust and Home of the Brave are actually great movies that have a clearer focus and tighter writing. Hell, Bicycle Thieves and White Heat are two of the greatest movies ever made. You cannot honestly say All the King’s Men is a better movie than those films.

I’ll be fair and acknowledge my own bias to wanting to hate the Academy by admitting that I’m probably more venomous because none of these movies were nominated. If they were, I might be a bit more forgiving here and see the argument. But they weren’t and I’m not. Calling All the King’s Men the best movie of 1949 was a…

SNUB!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1949:

• Adventures of Don Juan (dir. Vincent Sherman)
• All the King's Men (dir. Robert Rossen)
• Battleground (dir. William A. Wellman)
• Home of the Brave (dir. Mark Robson)
• Intruder in the Dust (dir. Clarence Brown)
• Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief/Bicycle Thieves) (dir. Vittorio De Sica)
• Mighty Joe Young (dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack)
• Paisá (Paisan) (dir. Roberto Rossellini)
• The Heiress (dir. William Wyler)
• White Heat (dir. Raoul Walsh)

Favorite Heroes:

• Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) (Twelve O'Clock High)
• Carmela (Carmela Sazio) (Paisá (Paisan))
• Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo (White Heat)
• Jo March (June Allyson) (Little Women)
• Joe (Dots Johnson) (Paisá (Paisan))
• Joe Young (animatronics) (Mighty Joe Young)
• Massimo (Renzo Avanzo) (Paisá (Paisan))
• Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) (Mighty Joe Young)
• Private Holley (Van Johnson) (Battleground)
• Private Peter Moss (James Edwards) (Home of the Brave)

Favorite Villains:

• Arthur Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) (White Heat)
• Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) (The Heiress)
• Corporal T.J. Everett (Steve Brodie) (Home of the Brave)
• Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson) (The Heiress)
• Ichabod Crane (Bing Crosby) (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad)
• Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) (White Heat)
• Melba Wooley (Evelyn Varden) (Pinky)
• Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan) (Caught)
• The Headless Horseman (Billy Bletcher) (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad)
• Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) (All the King's Men)