Tag: Monty Woolley

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Will It Go Her Way?: Some Seriously Belated Oscar Predictions

As usual, I am slow to catch up. A few years ago, the BBC relinquished the rights to televising the Oscars; and since we are not subscribing to the premium channel that does air them, I am relying on the old wireless to transport me to the events. So, here I am listening to … the 17th Academy Awards (as broadcast on 15 Mar. 1945). Considering that Claudette Colbert is nominated for Since You Went Away, I just had to tune in. Also among the nominees, for his supporting role in the same picture, is Monty Woolley, the man to whom my terrier owes his name. This year, the event is broadcast nationally for the first time in its entirety. The host is Bob Hope; it was rival radio comic Jack Benny last time. There will be scenes from the nominated pictures, which are going to be explained to us radio listeners. While the president of the Academy, Walter Wanger, is saying a few words (at sixty minutes, this is a rather overblown affair), I might as well share my predictions with you.

As much as I enjoyed Since You Went Away, my money is on Double Indemnity in the Best Picture category. Gaslight is just a one dark note affair, and I don’t think that Wilson, which I haven’t seen, or Going My Way got much of a chance. Stanwyck should get the trophy for Best Actress; but, as you may know, I am partial to Colbert, who hasn’t won in a decade. Besides, she’s delivered a beautifully restrained performance, rather than going all maudlin or hysterical.

Hush, the ceremony is getting under way. It is broadcast live from Grauman’s Chinese. Hope just quipped that he never knew it was a theater, but thought “that it was where Darryl Zanuck had his laundry done.” He can joke; after all, he is being honored with a lifetime membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his many services to the Academy (“Now I know how Roosevelt feels”).

Could Agnes Moorehead win this time for Mrs. Parkington, her second Best Supporting Actress nomination? I certainly like her radio acting. Did you catch “Sorry, Wrong Number”? Mark my word: if it ever gets adapted for the screen, she’s sure to get the Oscar for that role. She also was terrific in the brief scenes she had in Since You Went Away, in which Joseph Cotten’s character refers to hers as the voice that haunted him across the Atlantic. I don’t think Angela Lansbury has got much of a chance in this category; Hollywood doesn’t quite know what to do with her. Maybe she’ll find her medium one day.

Gosh, can you imagine all those stars in one big auditorium? According to Hope, “it’s informal dress”—“they only had to send Bing Crosby home twice.” Now, the winner for Short Subjects (Cartoon) is announced; the award goes to Fred Quimby’s “Mouse Trouble”—what’s next, rats winning best animated feature?—and Max Steiner just scored for scoring Since You Went Away.

I know this makes me sound like a nance, but I’d be terribly upset if Art Direction (Color), did not go to the team behind Mitchell Leisen’s Lady in the Dark; the film faces tougher competition in the Cinematography (Color) category, though, where it is up against Kismet and Meet Me in St. Louis. For Black and White, Joseph LaShelle for Laura should come out on top. I was rooting for Leisen’s No Time for Love and its clever dream sequence to win the Oscar for Art Direction (Black and White), which just lost to Gaslight.

Hang on, there is some mix-up about the trophies. Sure sounds unscripted. In fact, Hope, the old pro at the microphone, seems to have forgotten the audience outside the theater, folks like me who don’t get to see what’s going on. At least we are being treated to a few notes from the twelve nominated songs and the voices of Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

Meanwhile, I am testing out my second sight. Best Director is going to be either Wilder or Hitchcock, who faced such tough competition a few years back when Rebecca lost, rightly, to The Grapes of Wrath. A shame, really, that Tallulah wasn’t even nominated for Life Boat, for the Original Motion Picture Story of which John Steinbeck is likely to get awarded. Original Screenplay, of course, will go to Preston Sturges, who, after all is nominated twice (for Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek). And if the Screenplay Oscar doesn’t go to Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, then I don’t know what what is . . .

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On This Day in 1950: The Man to Whom My Dog Owes His Name Makes His Magnificent Debut

Well, this takes me back. All the way to May 2005, when I made up my mind at last and set out to keep the broadcastellan journal. Apprehensive about disclosing my true identity (the name my parents pinned on me), I entered the blogosphere with the fanciful moniker “The Magnificent Montague.” It took me about five months to shove that nominal cloak into the closet and leap out, as it were, in the buff (or as near to that natural state as my virtual modesty permits). Some five months ago, I once again reached for that retired garment and passed it on to my dog. Such an act of questionable charity would doubtless have infuriated the original bearer of said name, who, on this day, 10 November, in 1950, made his radio debut in a sitcom aptly titled The Magnificent Montague.

Truth be told, I’ve got a thing for Monty Woolley, the man who played him. If he were The Man Who Came to Dinner—and if I did not already have both the man and the machine for the job—I might almost stoop to doing the dishes. Mr. Woolley was, of course, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and a lot of other compelling characters besides. Over the years, I’ve seen him in films like Midnight, Since You Went Away, As Young As You Feel, and the delightful if lesser known Molly and Me (opposite Gracie Fields). He also did a bit of campaigning for Roosevelt in 1944, as I found out when I heard him in a line-up of FDR supporters in a recently discussed radio special. Now, Mr. Woolley could almost talk me into anything—and talk he did. His voice was such an integral part of his persona—prickly, pompous, and proud—that it is not surprising he was talked into playing that sort of man in a weekly sitcom written for radio.

His is a beard you could hear on the air. I mean, Woolley was such an iconic figure in American culture that those tuning in did not require a picture. They knew exactly what Woolley looked like—and there was no need to create a new look for Edwin Montague, the character he portrayed. Montague and Woolley were one; or, let’s say that Montague was so ideally suited to the Woolley persona that it was easy to confuse the star and his role. One was an extensions of the other, so that Montague seemed at once caricature and lifelike portrait, as flat and vivid as a Dickensian character, a Mr. Pecksniff or Pickwick or Turveydrop.

Written and produced by Nat Hiken (who had previously worked for comedians Fred Allen and Milton Berle), The Magnificent Montague cast Woolley as an accomplished Shakespearean actor who, luckless of late (indeed, for nearly a decade), accepts a role in a sentimental daytime radio serial. However disdainful, the venerable thespian charms millions of listeners as Uncle Goodheart, a popular success he is anxious to keep from the members of the Proscenium Club who would be offended by such a shameful act of selling out.

It is a perfect setup for a radio sitcom, considering that broadcasting was generally frowned upon by serious or distinguished actors . . . unless, that is, they realized how much money there was to be made and how comparatively easy it was to make it. The Magnificent Montague was radio’s way of ridiculing highbrow culture, of deriding those who dismissed it as vulgar or trivial but were nonetheless envious of its tremendous pull.

In the 1950s, radio was no longer the live medium it had been prior to the development and widespread use of magnetic tape; for the most part, dramatic programs were being recorded for later broadcast, which meant greater flexibility and fewer scheduling conflicts for performers who would otherwise not have committed to a weekly series. Some of the great names in film and theater—Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, and Laurence Olivier among them—pulled an “Uncle Goodheart” during those days by becoming radio regulars (rather than being special guests whenever there was some promoting to be done).

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Unpopular Culture; or, the Return of the Magnificent Montague

Popular culture is generally understood to be the mass-market consumer culture of the present.  As the culture of the everyday it is especially vulnerable to obliteration.  What happens to the popular of the past, to the dime novels, movies, television programs or radio entertainment no longer of interest to a larger public, no longer deemed marketable or relevant? Does it become fodder for historians? Is it fuel for nostalgia? I am going to investigate this heap of discarded objects, review products of a by now “unpopular culture,” and relate them to my here and now.

This attempt at a blog is an unacademic continuation of my doctoral study Etherized Victorians. It will chiefly concern movies, television and radio programs that may have fallen out of favor or are favored by the few only but are still available to anyone using contemporary means and media (television, radio, and the internet); or distributed as DVDs, mp3s or in plain old print.

Unlike my academic writing, this journal will allow me to broadcast my findings immediately upon discovery and to share my impressions with others who, like me, are passionate about presumably stale pop, whatever their cultural or educational background.  It also permits a more personal approach than did my dissertation, in which I never referred to myself in the first person singular.

My [initial] signature, “The Magnificent Montague,” [was] appropriated from a US radio sitcom (1950-51) of the same name. In it, a proud but hapless thespian (portrayed by Monty Woolley) finds himself stooping to radio work to make ends meet. This obscure reference was meant to express the confrontation of cultures high and low, of trends and traditions, of personal predilections and public personae—confrontations broadcastellan will bring about in the months to come.

[As I became more confident writing about myself and saw the need to lay claim to my own words, the “Montague” cloak became cumbersome and useless.  It was retired on 24 October 2005].