1954 Best Picture:
On the Waterfront

Competition:
The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Three Coins in the Fountain

Other Winners:
Best Actor: Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront
Best Actress: Grace Kelly, The Country Girl
Best Supporting Actor: Edmund O'Brien, The Barefoot Contessa
Best Supporting Actress: Eva Marie Saint, On the Waterfront
Best Director: Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront

Bette Davis gives Brando the award for Best Actor. Where the hell did she get that hat?

Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, Eva Marie Saint, Leif Erickson

Storyline: Terry Malloy has dreams of being a prize fighter, but those dreams are hampered by his involvement with the mob boss who oversees a docker's union.  He is a key witness to a mob hit, and is asked to come forward by the local priest and the victim's sister.

Did it deserve to win: Yeah!  This is Brando at his peak, in a film that is certainly deserving of the man's great talent.  

On the Waterfront continues to make the top ten lists of most critics and film lovers, for best films of all time.  It's competition that year doesn't seem to be worthy enough to stand in the same circle.  

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a light Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, but not one of their best.  Hollywood was fascinated with Italy in the fifties, with the likes of Three Coins in the Fountain, a whimsical romance about Rome.  And The Country Girl was the Bing Crosby-Grace Kelly pairing, about an alcoholic singer trying to make a comeback.  

Perhaps the most deserving, after Waterfront, would have been The Caine Mutiny, the Bogart film about a navy captain who goes nuts. 

Critique: Shot on location in Hoboken, New Jersey, this compelling drama that demonstrates a major shift in Hollywood film making.  The acting is gritty and realistic.  It marks a total departure from the melodramatic star vehicles of years previous, like no other film has done before.  

Waterfront can be compared to the independent films of today, in that its characters seem real, and the story is anything but cliché.  

Brando's isn't the only great performance in On the Waterfront.  Four other actors received well deserved nominations for their parts.  Eva Marie Saint won for Best Supporting Actress.  Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and Karl Mulden were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  

Best Scene:  "I coulda been a contender!"  The famous car ride where big brother, Steiger tries to talk Brando into not confessing is a huge turning point in the movie.  The line would forever follow Brando. 

Behind the Scenes:  On the Waterfront is regarded as one of the best films ever, as a story about a dock worker who must consider naming names about a murder.  It's ironic that Elia Kazan directed this morality tale, as he was heavily embroiled in the witch hunts orchestrated by the House Un-American Activities.  He named names, and his own credibility would forever be in question.  

Kazan approached Arthur Miller to write the screenplay for Waterfront, but Miller turned it down, fearing that Kazan might have named him in his secret testimony.  In 1999, Kazan was given a special Oscar, amid controversy that still existed.  Many in the audience at that years ceremonies refused to applaud when he appeared on the stage.

Brando set a record that year as being the only actor to be nominated four times in a row.  The actor was making waves in the early fifties as the motorcycle driving, ripped shirt, tough guy, and people loved him.  Even Bette Davis, who presented him with the Best Actor Award said, "He and I had much in common.  He too had made many enemies.  He too is a perfectionist."

Bob Hope was that years host, with Thelma Ritter as his co-host.  Back then, hosting duties were often shared, and in the early fifties, the ceremony had an audience in Los Angeles and New York.  Since many of the actors were Broadway stars, the Academy wanted to make sure that everyone could attend.

The biggest surprise at that years awards was not who won, but who didn't win!  Judy Garland was absent from the ceremony as she was delivering a baby, but she was expected to win the Best Actress award for A Star is Born.  It wasn't a popular film, but it was considered a huge comeback for the troubled star, who by that time had suffered alcoholism and drug dependency.  According to Hedda Hopper, she lost the award by a mere seven votes, to Grace Kelly.  MGM wouldn't back Garland's nomination with a campaign.  Hopper commented, "You know where those seven votes were, don't you?  They belonged to those bastards in the front office at MGM."

Judy Garland's failure to win, overshadowed Dorothy Dandridge, who became the first black actress to receive a nomination in the Best Actress category, for her role in Carmen Jones.

Camera crews were positioned in her hospital room in the event that she won.  It was rumored that when she lost, the crew dismantled and left, leaving her all alone, in the darkened hospital.  Sid Luft, her then husband, was reported to have said, "Fuck the Academy Awards baby, you've got yours in the incubator."  She just gave birth to Joe Luft.  Shortly after the nurse came in to give her sleeping pills.  Garland didn't make another film for six years. 

Groucho Marx later called it the 'biggest robbery since the Brinks." 

Grace Kelly was only a year away from marrying Prince Rainier, of Monaco, and leaving her Hollywood career forever. 

 

 

Brando sets about exacting his own revenge.

Also in 1954:

January 21:  Nautilus, the first US atomic sub, is launched.

February 25: Senator Joe McCarthy turns his attention to the army.

May 17: The Supreme Court orders school integration.

December 2:  The Senate votes 67 to 22 to condemn Joe McCarthy for conduct unbecoming the senate.

"I can't remember what I was going to say for the life of me.  I don't think ever in my life that so many people were so directly responsible for me being so very, very happy." Marlon Brando accepting his first Best Actor Oscar.