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1949 Best Picture:
All the King's Men

Competition:  Battleground, The Heiress, A Letter to Three Wives, Twelve O'Clock High

Other Winners:

Best Actor: Broderick Crawford, All the Kings Men
Best Actress: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress

Best Supporting Actor: Dean Jagger, Twelve O'Clock High
Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes McCambridge, All the Kings Man
Best Director: Joseph L. Makiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives

Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek, Mercedes McCambridge, Anne Seymour, Sheppard Strudwick 

Storyline: A political thriller that takes a hard look at the rise to power, of a grass roots politician, named Willie Stark, who campaigns on fundamental issues, but who, once in power, becomes a bloodthirsty, corrupt dictator.  

Did it deserve to win: Yes!  All the King's Men is a taught political drama, presented in a way that was very fresh and new at the time. 

A Letter to Three Wives, although very good, was the kind of melodrama that Hollywood had mastered over the past several years.  

Critique: All the King's Men doesn't beat around the bush with its story line.  Ruthless characters, gritty subject matter and a slick plot, make this a very unusual film for its day.  

Broderick Crawford pulls off a brilliant performance here, playing the man who becomes a monster.  Meanwhile, McCambridge is brilliant as the tough-talking political aide, Sadie.  

There is a certain maturity that seems to blossom in film making of the day, and it would be perfected the following year for All About Eve, but All the King's Men marks a smooth transition from the melodrama previously, to the slicker film making that was to come.

 

Best Scene:  "I had small pox when I was a kid!"  Mercedes McCambridge gives the speech of her career, and maybe the one the won her the Oscar, as she breaks down  in front of Jack, warning him that Willie will one day let him go to!


Behind the Scenes:  All the King's Men was based on the life of Louisiana Senator, Huey Long, but it was rumored that Crawford was coached to base his performance on studio boss, Harry Cohn.  Cohn begrudgingly released the film, but ran no Oscar campaign for it.

McCambridge played an atypical character for her time.  She lacked the conventional looks of an ingénue, thus she was typecast  in later roles as tough broads.  Her most notable follow up was the 1953 film, Johnny Guitar, the cult-ish film starring Joan Crawford, where the two fight a gun battle in the old west.  Her most notable role was as the voice of the Devil, in the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist.

Olivia de Havilland trumps her sister in the Oscar race, winning her second, of five nominations.  Among the women she beat out were Jeanne Crain, with her first and only nod, for playing a woman of mixed race, in the message movie, Pinky.  The film was notable for also providing the second acting nod for a woman of color, as Ethel Waters was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Art-house favorite, The Bicycle Thief, wins an honorary Oscar for Best Foreign film.  Foreign films were not an official category yet.

The highlight of the ceremony that year was a peculiar performance of one of the nominated songs, Baby It's Cold Outside, by Rock Hudson and Mae West.  The campy send up became so popular that black market copies of the performance exist to this day!

 

 

Dirty politics is exposed in the 1949 Best Picture! 
Grass roots politician, Willie Stark, as played by Broderick Crawford.
 
John Ireland plays Jack Bruden, the reporter who covers the Willie Stark story.  Joanne Dru is girlfriend, Anne.
 
Best Supporting Actress, Mercedes McCambridge is the political aide, Sadie.
 
Crawford makes the speech that puts his political name on the map to success.
 
Tough talker, McCambridge is jilted by Willie.
 
Willie Stark achieves ultimate power.
John Derek plays Willie's trouble-ridden son, Tom, years before playing Bo Derek's scandal-ridden hubby in real life.
 
Willie's opponents start the process of taking him down, when they uncover a missing body.  Did Willie's people do it?
 
Joanne Dru, as Anne, finds herself more and more connected to the Willie scandal.
 

Willie survives a near-impeachment, by imploring the support of the people that voted him in.

 

Also in 1949:

January 22:  Chinese communists take control of Peking.

March 18:  The US joins several western European countries to form NATO.

July 13:  Rome excommunicates communists.

October 1:  China establishes the People's Republic.