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31 Days of Oscar: ‘Drama’

TCM, beginning at 3:15 a.m.

Eleven dramas, probably the most commonly honored genre in Academy Award history, make up today’s daylong 31 Days of Oscar celebration on Turner Classic Movies. Featured titles are 1931’s The Champ (pictured) — winner of Best Actor (Wallace Beery, who tied with Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and Best Writing, Original Story, and also nominated for Best Picture and Director (King Vidor); Grand Hotel (1932) — won in its only nominated category, but it was a big one: Best Picture; Jezebel (1938) — winner for Best Actress (Bette Davis, her second and final win in this category, though she would have several more nominations) and Supporting Actress (Fay Bainter), and also nominated for Best Picture, Cinematography (Ernest Haller) and Original Score (Max Steiner); Citizen Kane (1941) — nine nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (Orson Welles), Director (Welles) and Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Bernard Herrmann, who was also nominated in, and won, that category for All That Money Can Buy), and one win:

Original Screenplay (Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz); How Green Was My Valley (1941) — winner of five of its 10 nominations, notably for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Director (John Ford, with his second consecutive win in that category, following 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath); The Lost Weekend (1945) — winner of four of its seven nominations: Best Picture, Actor (Ray Milland), Director (Billy Wilder) and Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett); On Golden Pond (1981) — winner of Best Actor (Henry Fonda), Actress (Katharine Hepburn) and Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Thompson), and seven other nominations, including Best Picture and Supporting Actress (Jane Fonda); All About Eve (1950) — received 14 nominations, a record it held alone until matched by Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016), including two Best Actress nods (Bette Davis and Anne Baxter) and two Supporting Actress nods (Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter), and came away with six wins, notably Best Picture, Supporting Actor (George Sanders), and Director and Screenplay (both for Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Sophie’s Choice (1982) — earned Meryl Streep the first Best Actress Oscar win of her oft-nominated career, and also received four other nominations; and There Will Be Blood (2007) — eight nominations, including Best Director and Adapted Screenplay (both for Paul Thomas Anderson), and two wins: Best Actor (Daniel Day-lewis) and Cinematography (Robert Elswit). The day concludes with Midnight Cowboy (1969), the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture (the drama was released in an era when the X rating was similar to today’s NC-17 rating and had not developed its association with pornography in people’s minds). Midnight Cowboy also won Oscars for Best Director (John Schlesinger) and Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt), and earned Best Actor nominations for both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, a Supporting Actress nod for Sylvia Miles and an Editing nomination for Hugh A. Robertson, the first African American to be nominated in that category.

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER WARNER BROS.