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31 Days of Oscar: ‘Biopics’
TCM, Beginning at 5 a.m.
Biographical dramas depicting the lives of famous people are frequent Academy Award contenders, if not winners, and Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar will be showcasing 10 memorable examples of these all day today, beginning with one of the earliest Oscar-winning biopics: 1929’s Disraeli (pictured), which earned George Arliss a Best Actor award as 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Writing, Achievement (Julien Josephson). Following that are The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which received seven nominations and three wins: Best Picture, Actress (Luise Rainer) and Dance Direction (Seymour Felix, for the “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” number); Sergeant York (1941), which earned Gary Cooper his first Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of World War I hero Alvin C. York and also earned William Holmes an Editing Oscar, with nine other nominations including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan), Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly) and Director (Howard Hawks); Lust for Life (1956), with Kirk Douglas giving a Best Actor-nominated performance as painter Vincent Van Gogh, and Anthony Quinn winning a Supporting Actor Oscar as fellow painter Paul Gauguin; Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), which won James Cagney the Best Actor Oscar as composer/singer/dancer George M. Cohan, and also won awards for its sound recording and scoring, with five other nominations including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Walter Huston) and Director (Michael Curtiz); The Glenn Miller Story (1954), which received three nominations and one win, for its sound recording; Patton (1970), which won seven of the 10 Oscars for which it was nominated, including Best Picture, Actor (George C. Scott, who famously refused to accept either his nomination or the award for his portrayal of World War II general George S. Patton), Director (Franklin J. Schaffner) and Adapted Screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North); The Last Emperor (1987), the winner in all nine of its nominated categories, including Best Picture and Director (Bernardo Bertolucci); Love Me or Leave Me (1955), which had six nominations, including Best Actor (Cagney as gangster Martin Snyder, first husband and manager to the film’s subject, singer/actress Ruth Etting, played by Doris Day), and one win, for Daniel Fuchs’ story; and The Life of Emile Zola (1937), which earned 10 nominations, including Best Actor for Paul Muni as the titular 19th-century French author, and won three awards: Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Joseph Schildkraut as Capt. Alfred Dreyfus) and its screenplay.