Oscars Retrospective: Marty (28th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

  To see part 1, click here.

Seven Samurai Suite~Fumio Hayasaka - Seven Samurai

1955 is possibly the greatest year of film of the 50s. Most decades seem to top out at their respective ends but the midpoint here seems to capture the essence of the decade the best.  So much so that I’ll be a little honest on my thought process here and say that I was actually surprised and a little disappointed by how good Marty was. When you read the rundown of classics here (especially foreign cinema), it seems like they were all totally snubbed and I was getting ready to complain about why they should’ve won compared to some random melodrama. Imagine my surprise after watching Marty that it turned out to actually be an excellent movie that helped move the medium forward. But we don’t have to let it go down without a fight.

First are some popular big-hitters. A fun piece of American history is To Hell and Back

a unique war movie in that it’s a biopic about the most decorated soldier in World War II, Audie Murphy, starring Audie Murphy as himself. Once you get past this fun piece of casting, the film is pretty awful.

Equally notable and even more wretched was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

This is less of a biopic and more of a fairy tale regarding the legendary frontiersman. It was originally 3 episodes of a TV miniseries that was eventually compiled together released in the theaters after it proved profitable enough. In its wake, Crockett Fever swept the United States as millions of coonskin caps were sold, its catchy opening song was sung by countless American children and the film was shown constantly both in theaters and on television. It also proves our present-day adage that just because a movie is popular doesn’t mean that it’s good as this is basically every negative stereotype you associate with a Disney film with none of the redeeming qualities. (The fact that it originally aired on television probably also meant that it was ineligible for the Academy Awards but it’s an iconic piece of film history so why not talk about it briefly?)

Equally iconic is The Seven-Year Itch

a.k.a. that movie where Marilyn Monroe stands over a subway grate and the wind blows up her skirt. This is the shot that is most famous for turning Monroe into a bombshell which is why it might be surprising just how short the scene is in the movie as it only lasts a couple seconds (the bit got famous because they turned the scene into a publicity stunt for the movie and Monroe did a press photoshoot over the grate for several hours). The movie itself is way too long for its own good but it does have a funny set-up and Monroe is, once again, pretty amusing.

The last big film of the short-lived Shakespeare trend of the late 40s/early 50s came out in America with Orson Welles’ The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice.

This is one of the most notorious Shakespeare adaptations as Welles made the interesting choice of casting himself to play Othello while covering his face in shoe polish, over ten years after minstrel shows had gone out of vogue. If you can get past that unfortunate piece of casting (and most people can’t and shouldn’t), this is a pretty solid adaptation of Othello (1603).

On a more positive note is The Man with the Golden Arm

another movie that pushed boundaries on the Hays Code as the plot features a card shark (Frank Sinatra) whose handlers get him addicted to heroin/morphine to keep him under their thumb. Despite this insanely dark setup, the movie isn’t as uncomfortable as you would think and is a pretty standard (albeit good) noir. While you might think they couldn’t go that dark given the time, compare this film to The Lost Weekend (1945) and you’ll notice a quality gap.

An excellent noir was Bad Day at Black Rock

which was one of the first movies to tackle the injustice of the Japanese internment camps during WWII and Asian racism. It is a pretty clear example of the white savior trope that we’ve discussed previously (no Asian characters even appear in the movie) but it’s still very good and acknowledges a topic no one else was discussing at the time.

A truly great movie that we sadly won’t be giving the feature presentation to is The Night of the Hunter

the one and only movie directed by Charles Laughton and a scathing commentary on the duality of religion with its serial killing priest memorably portrayed by Robert Mitchum. A film tackling religious hypocrisy was something that did not sit well in America in 1955 and the film was too controversial to really catch on. While it’s nowadays considered one of the best movies of the 1950s, it took over a decade for that reappraisal to occur so we can’t give them too much flack for ignoring it at the time (though The Night of the Hunter should’ve at least earned a nomination for the Oscar for Best Black-and-White Cinematography as it’s one of the most beautifully shot movies ever).

Another landmark was Blackboard Jungle

a film that analyzes juvenile delinquency by showing a teacher (Glenn Ford) teaching at an inner-city school and trying to reach his students who seem more concerned with rabble-rousing. The film is notable at trying to analyze the sort of living Hell that many teachers were dealing with in terms of juvenile delinquency, showcasing the plight of African-American students in neglected schools and the innovative use of rock-and-roll on the soundtrack (the song “Rock Around the Clock” being the first # 1 hit in rock-and-roll history; also take a moment and imagine a time when you could be driving around in your car and turn the radio dial from Rock Around the Clock to The Ballad of Davy Crockett because this time period apparently did exist at one point).

Because of its talking about relevant social issues while being generally ignored by the Academy, I would normally reserve this for a feature presentation but there are a few key problems that stop Blackboard Jungle from being a masterpiece. First, like most movies starring teenagers, all the kids in this movie are very visibly adults. (Like, not even baby-faced adults like later movies would do; a few of them are starting to go gray and it’s very distracting.) Second, is that the film’s resolution is patently ridiculous and seems to have a very reductive answer to the dramatic question of, “How do you get juvenile delinquents to behave and take their future seriously?”

And finally, Walt Disney had another one of his Silver Age masterpieces with Lady and The Tramp;

often considered one of the greatest movie romances, which initially sounds weird considering how it’s about animated talking animals. It’s the classic story of an upper-class Cocker Spaniel named Lady (Barbara Luddy) and a stray mutt called Tramp (Larry Roberts) who slowly fall in love while navigating the terrors of the human world around them.

Lady and the Tramp presents a few landmarks in Disney’s catalog. For one thing, it was the first movie to be animated in widescreen (still called CinemaScope back then). And while this wasn’t the first movie to depict talking animals, it was the first to have the trope of talking animals navigating the human world and all the hijinx that ensue from them being confused about said world. (“Dog logic” jokes were a thing even back then.) This trend is one that is situated almost exclusively to animated films and Disney movies in particular, being a common trope that the company uses as their bread and butter (e.g. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1963), The Aristocats (1970), The Rescuers (1986) etc.)

While the film is now regarded as a masterpiece, this is another one where it took a little while to be recognized as such. Critics and audiences at the time were divided between thinking that a romantic film about two dogs was a bit too corny and thinking that it didn’t matter because the film still talks about relationship issues, just through the guise of talking animals. Accounting for this fact, it’s actually surprising just how natural the romance feels. During the protagonists’ first meeting, you would honestly have no idea that they two are destined to fall in love. You don’t even really realize it as they’re going on an adventure together. It’s not until partway through that it dawns on you (and the characters) what’s going on.

We’ve discussed in literally 2 blogs ago the animation taboo where animated films have never been given respect from the Academy, even during the height of Disney’s outputs. In the interest of saving space, I won’t go into it again here but this is, once again, one of the best films the studio ever put out. If nothing else, the film’s standout musical number, Bella Notte, which features the famous spaghetti kiss that’s one of the most iconic love scenes in cinematic history, was robbed as it wasn’t even nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song.

But that’s enough for America; let’s go globe-trotting. 1955 was a phenomenal year for foreign cinema released in America and, wouldn’t you know it, some of them even got acknowledged by the Academy (shocking I know). While we’re in the realm of animation, let’s hop on over to jolly old England for Animal Farm.

Adapted from one of George Orwell’s greatest and most famous novellas, Animal Farm is set on a farm where the animals all band together one day to throw out the oppressive Farmer Jones (Maurice Denham) and create a farm where the animals will be in charge. Despite the cute cover and guise of talking animals, Animal Farm is less of a Disney-esque parable and instead a thinly-veiled allegory for the rise and horrors of Joseph Stalin as the pigs, led by Napoleon (also Maurice Denham; he voiced literally every character in the movie), start manipulating and eventually oppressing all of the other animals on the farm. It’s a great cautionary tale and the movie does follow the book pretty closely albeit with some major deviations that do drag the film down.

In another curious piece of history, Animal Farm was actually bankrolled by the CIA, thus turning Animal Farm into a propaganda film. They’re also the ones who forced the filmmakers to change the ending to a happier one which does not at all gel with the rest of the story (the original novella has a much grimmer conclusion). And this isn’t one of those things only book purists notice either. I watched the movie before reading the book and even I noticed that the tone of the finale does not at all match the rest of the film.

From Italy, came two of the last masterpieces of the Neorealist wave. Roberto Rossellini made Viaggio in Italia which translates to Voyage to Italy but was released in America as Strangers though it’s nowadays commonly known as Journey to Italy.

This movie portrays a troubled marriage of an English couple, Alexander (George Sanders) and Katherine Joyce (Ingrid Bergman), who take a vacation to Italy to try to rekindle their marriage. Despite being an Italian production, the film is mostly in English as Italian films were starting to gain a market in America. The story is fairly loose but does show much more of a style to it, depicting the haunting Italian vistas set against the backdrop of two characters who are unable to find their meaning in life and with each other.

From Vittorio De Sica came Umberto D.,

a truly tragic and heartbreaking tale of an elderly Italian man named Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti who, true to De Sica’s Neorealist form, was not a professional actor) who is in danger of being evicted from his apartment after his landlady (Lina Gennari) increases his rent. So Umberto embarks on a quest around Rome to try to scrounge up enough money to make ends meet. It’s a tragic portrayal of male pride, of a man regressing back to a lifestyle that he should be old enough to be above and ultimately of the bond between a man and his dog. (As a personal aside, I don’t normally get emotional at movies but the ending of Umberto D. is one of the saddest things I’ve ever watched.)

While both Journey to Italy and Umberto D. are regarded as masterpieces, they did not do too well at their release, either in America or in Italy, surprisingly enough. The Marshall Plan was in full effect at this point and Italy and Europe were finally recovering from World War II. Turns out that the same audiences who were so favorable to Bicycle Thieves (1948) only 5 years ago were now desperately trying to move on from the same pessimistic mindset.

The big country to make a splash this year, however, was Japan with its many samurai films, a few of which actually won Oscars. The Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film (and the last time that this was an honorary award) was Miyamoto Musashi (in America, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi) and the Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Costume Design was given to Ugetsu (Eng.: Rain-Moon Tales).

Samurai, The Legend of Musashi follows the trials and tribulations of a samurai named Takezo (Toshiro Mifune) who becomes a fugitive from the law after finding himself on the losing side of a battle. Being on the road for a bit causes him to go more than a little crazy and he quickly degenerates into a self-destructive rampage across the countryside. It’s ultimately up to a Buddhist monk, Priest Takuan (Kuroemon Onoe), to track Takezo down and get him to renounce his violent ways and reconnect with his family and loved ones.

Like many other films of the samurai wave of the 50s, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi uses Japan’s ancient past to confront uncomfortable truths about its present day: in this case, the forgotten soldier who has spent so much time hunting for his honor that he can’t exist in society anymore. It’s often regarded as a classic in Japanese cinema and a must-watch for any fan of the genre though I think it’s probably the least well-known and lesser of the three samurai movies we'll be talking about.

Ugetsu was the bigger splash of these two films, both financially and pop culture-wise, which is impressive since it is a lot more steeped in Japanese culture which you think would present a bigger cultural barrier in the dub. Ugetsu takes place, once again, in medieval Japan as the land is being ravaged by roving bands of samurai who lay waste to the land and the peasants who inhabit it. The story centers around a potter named Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) and his family who flee their home to the nearby city to try to survive. Whilst selling his wares, Genjuro meets a noblewoman named Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo) who invites him to visit her home. It isn’t long after arriving that Genjuro slowly comes to realize that this home is, in fact, haunted and Wakasa may not be who she seems.

We’ve discussed previously with Rashomon (1950) how the samurai films grew out of a desire from Japanese filmmakers to examine the culpability of Japanese culture in the atrocities of World War II. Since the Japanese government forbade portrayal of World War II on film at the time, filmmakers instead used the Japanese mythology of the samurai to examine contemporary issues. Ugetsu is arguably the poster child of this movement. Ugetsu presents a brutally harsh portrayal of the atrocities the samurai commit on the little people of the country. The film is meaner than most, showing wanton destruction and all-but-shown rape. They also avoid the easy trap by having one single samurai presented as the clear villain; it’s the collective warrior class who’s committing atrocities, there’s no easy one to blame.

The nucleus the film revolves around, however, is Genjuro’s encounter with Lady Wakasa and this part is beautifully understated. Ugetsu has more in common with the horror genre than anything else. Her home has distant echoes of Dracula’s castle from the Universal monster films and incorporates many tropes of Japanese mythology. These scenes have a very uneasy, ethereal quality that offsets the brutality of the world outside Lady Wakasa’s doors. Ugetsu, thus, portrays the literal ghost of an old Japan that is dying away, both the brutal soldiers and the ruined nobility that continued to inflict damage upon the land.

(Ugetsu’s director, Kenji Mizoguchi, made another excellent film that saw Stateside release in 1955, Sanoshu Dayu (Eng.: Sansho the Bailiff)

about two aristocratic children sold into slavery under the cruel titular villain. Both Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff won the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, which, along with the Palme d’Or, is considered a far more prestigious and noteworthy award than the Oscar.)

While these are both great, the Academy completely ignored one of the greatest and most influential Japanese movies of all time, Shichinin no Samurai, which was originally released in America as The Magnificent Seven. Eventually, that title would be used for an American Western also called The Magnificent Seven (1960) (which essentially ripped off its plot from the Japanese film) so the original movie would be titled as Seven Samurai in future re-releases, which is its most common name.

A horde of bandits are laying waste to villages amongst the Japanese countryside and one village, afraid that they’ll be next, decides to hire some local samurai to protect the village. They approach the wise old Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) who reluctantly accepts. Realizing that he cannot face an entire horde of bandits on his own, he recruits an array of six other samurai, each with their own memorable and colorful personality, to defeat the evil bandits.

Seven Samurai is often considered the very first action movie ever made and many of the tropes of the genre come from this film. For example, there’s the “gathering of the team” trope as most of the first act is Kambei recruiting the samurai (seen mostly in later heist films). There’s what I like to call the “badass establishment” trope, where Kambei’s first scene is spent showing just how good of a samurai he is in his own unique way (literally every action movie ever made has a scene like this that is always one of my favorites to watch). There’s the younger samurai who starts losing his focus by falling in love with one of the villager’s daughters, there’s the seasoned second-in-command who has a long history with the leader, there’s the guy on the team who’s much more short-tempered and doesn’t always listen to Kambei, the scenes of camaraderie between the team; you name an action movie archetype, odds are it originates here.

Seven Samurai is still entertaining to this day regardless of these tropes though. Going back to the allegorical nature of most samurai movies, what makes this excellent is the commentary of the relationship between the samurai and the villagers that they protect. Despite the fact that the samurai are literally saving their lives, most of the villagers seem to dislike their presence and want them to leave town as soon as possible. The samurai, in turn, try to bury their resentment because their code of bushido demands that protecting the innocent is part of their honor code, regardless of how ungrateful said innocents may be.

Despite its 3-hour length the movie doesn’t feel it. Most of Seven Samurai is just the build-up to the samurai’s showdown with the bandit army, as the samurai slowly plan their attack to best defend the village and kill the bandits. The character relationships play so wonderfully off of each other that the actual action scenes in the back half of the movie end up feeling lacking by comparison. Though I think this is just a case of them being poorly-aged. This is sadly before action movie scenes would start being believable so most of the swordplay feels pretty weak and it’s clear that the swinging katanas are going nowhere near the bandits who are falling into melodramatic heaps.

Comparing Seven Samurai to Samurai, the Legend of Musashi does feel like a definite snub as this was easily the greatest and most revolutionary movie to come out of Japan that year. Comparing Seven Samurai to Marty is a bit of another story. While Seven Samurai remains the more widely-known of these two movies today, I think it’s still fair to consider Marty the contender for the Best Movie of 1955. However, before we decide that for sure, we need to return to America for one more movie; both for its quality and also for the discussion it opens up. The most well-known film of 1955, and biggest snub at the Oscars, had to have been Rebel Without a Cause.

If Seven Samurai is a contender for the first action movie ever made, Rebel Without a Cause is unquestionably the first teenage drama ever made. Mostly because teenagedom as a concept didn’t really exist until the widespread rise of suburbia after World War II. In a pre-industrial economy, most people were widely considered adults or adults-in-training by age 13. After the war, the middle class stabilized and the children of returning World War II veterans were treated to an upbringing behind white-picket fences and extended adolescence all the way up until 18.

The silent and especially baby boomer generations were the first ones to experience this phenomenon in a widespread manner. The film is about the life and times of young Jim Stark (James Dean) who is lashing out because of his emotional frustration at being of age to act like an adult but still being treated like a kid. Stark is constantly caught between going on a rampage to lash out his emotions while also trying to keep his feet on the ground and contribute to society. Unlike many modern, later teen movies, there isn’t really much of a throughline in the story per se; it’s just a character study of this teenager (who is, of course, played by a 24-year-old adult) and his relationships with the people around him, particularly his emasculated father (Jim Backus), his friends Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo) and the local bullies.

Similar to Marty, Rebel Without a Cause eschews the Hollywood story while still having a bit of a Hollywood style. The melodrama and relationships are still there with a big bang for an ending but most of the film is just Stark experiencing contemporary teenage culture. Now, if I’m going to be totally honest, I don’t know how much of this film is actually based on real teenage culture versus how much was stuff that was completely made up by what adults think teenagers did back then (which teenagers watching this movie would of course imitate creating a chicken and the egg scenario). The (excellent) scene where they play chicken and kids running away from home I believe but several of the bullies in the film are carrying switchblades for Christ’s sake and try to hunt Stark down to kill him. Did suburban bullies in the 50s have such easy access to switchblades back then?!

James Dean is the standout performance of the piece and, along with Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, was one of the most iconic actors of the 1950s, embodying the spirit of the birthing counterculture. Stark is easily Dean’s most identifiable role (although to be totally fair, it’s not like he had many roles to choose from) and he is perfect. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are very excellent as his co-stars and most of his supporting cast hit the right notes as well. The cinematography is good, if forgettable, and the movie strikes the right balance of having fun moments while also never forgetting its parable of coming-of-age. Similar to how every action movie trope can find its roots in Seven Samurai, every teen movie ever made must pay some form of tribute to Rebel Without a Cause.

While Rebel Without a Cause is nowadays seen as a classic, it received somewhat mixed reviews from some of the haughtier critics back in the day, which is our opportunity to utilize this to analyze the aforementioned counterculture. Of all the generational divides in American history, the largest had to have been the divide between the Lost and GI Generations versus the baby boomers, culminating in what is colloquially known as the youthpocalypse of the 60s. Many debates rage on why this ended up happening, ranging from corruption of big government (Vietnam and segregation being the biggest symptoms) versus loss of youth morals. The biggest, in my opinion, though has to be the coming of age of the first generation born after World War II and the establishment of a mass culture seen through cinema (which always shows a great epic struggle followed by a happily ever after). The generation that fought in World War II wanted a suburban lifestyle and white-picket fence while their children wanted to rebel against it because of the sterility.

I bring this up because Rebel Without a Cause is fascinating in how it seems to understand this movement a full decade before this would come to a head. Most of Stark’s angst is rooted in his frustration at wanting his own epic cause to fight in as his father was serving in a war at his age but is now eschewing the typical manly duties of the house. Rebel Without a Cause serves as a fun mirror of a bunch of kids reflecting the world they’re brought up in and how frustrated they are that they’re expected to just enter it without having a casus belli to become adults. There’s no great adventure awaiting for them as far as they know; they’re just going to grow up, get jobs and that’ll be their lives. Most of the rabble-rousing that Stark partakes in the film seems to go back to him just lashing out at wanting his own war and his own glory that his parents would’ve experienced at his age. There’s especially smart (if on the nose) commentary in the last act when Stark and his friends become their own makeshift, stereotypical family.

Coming off of most TV shows of this era of television such as Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963) and the Andy Hardy movies, Stark was the first child character who was a rabble-rouser. A character breaking the rules and disobeying his parents so flagrantly was unheard of. The film spoke to a whole generation of Americans who were upset at their lot in life and told them that it’s okay to be upset through the lens of each of its main characters. Whether they’re into leather jackets and fast cars (Dean’s character) or overprotected daddy’s girls who just want some trouble (Wood’s character) or implied homosexuals (the overtones of Mineo’s character are so on the nose it’s amazing how anyone could miss it), there are other people like you.
This generational culture clash is about when I think the divide between the Academy and the common moviegoer would begin to grow. Mineo did receive a well-earned Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role though most of the other roles were ignored. Probably the most frustrating is that Dean was snubbed for this role as he was instead nominated for his performance in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden.

East of Eden is an adequate, if incredibly boring, film, though Dean is, once again, excellent. By the time this awards ceremony happened, Dean had tragically died in a motorcycle crash, forever immortalizing him as America’s bad boy. It’s not clear if the Academy gave him a posthumous nomination because they actually thought so highly of his skills or if just because he was owed one due to the recent tragedy of his death. What is clear is that they nominated him for the wrong role. Instead of the landmark role that turned him into a star, they nominated him for the standard, Oscar-baiting affair. Was Rebel Without a Cause just too cutting-edge for the conservative Academy crowd who had trouble understanding the plight of modern youth? Well, judging by the fact that it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, it certainly appears so.

Getting back to the Success or Snub question, Rebel Without a Cause has definitely lived on through the years more than Marty has. Its influence cannot be denied as teen films exploded on the scene after this came out, running the gamut from other high school films of the culture clash (Teenage Rebel (1956)) to horror films now featuring teenage main characters instead of adult ones (The Blob (1958)) since that’s who was mainly coming to see these movies anyway. If you’ve never seen it before, I actually think it still holds up even compared to later teen films. There is a cheesiness to it but it does ultimately come across as genuine and it doesn’t pull many punches. As far as movies made for teenagers go, Rebel Without a Cause is actually still pretty dark, even by today’s standards.

Despite the radical difference in subject matter and ages of the leads, I actually think Rebel Without a Cause and Marty have a lot more in common than immediately meets the eye. Both films aim for the slice of life and have a bit more of a grounded feel to them despite being still shot like Hollywood films. They are comparable in quality at least though I think Marty holds more for adults while Rebel Without a Cause speaks to the youth more.

The Academy is obviously made up of adults so this was probably a no-brainer on their part. Comparing influence so many years later, Rebel Without a Cause and Seven Samurai are clearly much more iconic and influential films than Marty was. Two whole film genres began out of these movies which is not something that Marty can say. A common critique of the Academy is that it isn’t always initially clear what the best and most influential film of any given year is in less than one year. Sometimes it takes decades to clearly see what is the most iconic film of any given year (see It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) vs. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), previous blog). This makes this ceremony seem like a colossal waste of money and ego but that’s only because it is.

At the time the 28th Academy Awards took place, Marty was taking the world by storm by showing a slice of life that Hollywood had never come near before. While we can (and will) castigate the Academy for not nominating Seven Samurai or Rebel Without a Cause for Best Picture (the other nominees were Love is a Many Splendored Thing

Mister Roberts

Picnic

and The Rose Tattoo;

have you ever even heard of any of these movies?), Marty being acknowledged as the best is something that can be understood Plus, knowing that it caused some karmic retribution to a thick-headed Hollywood producer does tickle my fancy so I think we can let it have it on those merits alone.

Calling Marty the Best Picture of 1955 was a…

SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1955:

• All That Heaven Allows (dir. Douglas Sirk)
• Animal Farm (dir. John Halas and Joy Batchelor)
• Bad Day at Black Rock (dir. John Sturges)
• Lady and the Tramp (dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske)
• Marty (dir. Delbert Mann)
• Rebel Without a Cause (dir. Nicholas Ray)
• Shichinin no Samurai (The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai) (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
• The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton)
• Ugetsu (Rain-Moon Tales) (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
• Umberto D. (dir. Vittorio De Sica)

Favorite Heroes:

• Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) (Ugetsu (Rain-Moon Tales))
• Jim Stark (James Dean) (Rebel Without a Cause)
• John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) (Bad Day at Black Rock)
• Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) (Shichinin no Samurai (The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai))
• Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) (Shichinin no Samurai (The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai)
• Lady (Barbara Luddy) (Lady and the Tramp)
• Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) (Marty)
• Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) (The Night of the Hunter)
• Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) (Blackboard Jungle)
• The Tramp (Larry Roberts) (Lady and the Tramp)

Favorite Villains:

• Angie (Joe Mantell) (Marty)
• Antonia Belloni (Lina Gennari) (Umberto D.)
• Aunt Sarah (Verna Felton) (Lady and the Tramp)
• Captain Morton (James Cagney) (Mister Roberts)
• Iago (Micheál Marc Liammóir) (The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice)
• Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo) (Ugetsu (Rain-Moon Tales))
• Napoleon (Maurice Denham) (Animal Farm)
• Preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) (The Night of the Hunter)
• Sansho the Bailiff (Eitaro Shindo) (Sanoshu Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff))
• The Samurai (Ugetsu (Rain-Moon Tales))