Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: The 'Oscars'

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 years of 100 Things. Today, thing number 73, 100 years of the Best Picture award at the Oscars. We're almost at that centennial. This Sunday's broadcast will mark the 97th year of the Academy Awards, coming at a time when movie studios are stuck between the peril of going straight to streaming and on the other hand, massive studios like Marvel. What is the history of the awards and are they still relevant?

Best Picture in particular, though we'll touch on a few other things as we go. Joining us now to walk and really run, we're going to speed read our way through 100 years of the Best Picture winners, through the decades of the Oscars is Michael Schulman, New Yorker staff writer and the author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears. Hey, Michael, thanks for coming on today.

Michael Schulman: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Just to establish the basics before we get into a lot of titles and a few actors, your book begins in 1927 with the formation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For people who've never really thought it through, what is the Academy in the first place, and who gets to decide on these awards?

Michael Schulman: The Academy is a group of around 11,000 professional filmmakers from all different branches. They have the actors branch, the directors, technicians of different kinds, documentary makers, all sorts of different aspects of filmmaking. They all vote for their individual branch for the nominations, plus Best Picture, and then everyone gets to vote on the final winners.

You write about how there were two underlying reasons for why it really came to be, to counter unions and to censor scandals. Not the most wholesome reasons for what has become an American TV tradition, at least, the Oscars.

Michael Schulman: No. You'll notice that the word awards was not in that description of why the Academy was founded. This was the 1920s, the silent film era, and the studio head, Louis B. Mayer of MGM basically came up with the idea and corralled 30-something people who were powerful in the industry across a section of stars and directors and fellow producers to come up with this industry group. Now, their early rhetoric was very utopian.

They said they wanted to be a league of nations for the film industry and they wanted to promote motion pictures throughout the world, which all sounds very idealistic and nice, but really underneath that was these two more spicy reasons that they wanted the Academy to exist. One was the threat of unionization by the Actors, directors and writers and people like Louis B. Mayer didn't want to give up that kind of power.

Instead of letting them form guilds and demand power, he basically came up with this group where these different factions could resolve disputes in a friendly, collegial way. It actually did work to forestall the formation of SAG and other kinds of guilds until the early '30s. Then another thing that was happening in the '20s was that then, as now, there was a culture war in the country, and the more conservative element thought that movies were one of the chief corrupting influences on America.

There was a threat of censorship by the federal government and local governments. Instead of letting that happen, the industry fought back on its own terms. People thought of Hollywood as this cesspool of sin. What better rebrand than to call it the Academy? What's loftier than that? It was a way to promote motion pictures as a lofty, heightened art form. That's where the award idea grew out of.

Brian Lehrer: First Best Picture winner, Wings, 1927. What was that?

Michael Schulman: Wings is really good. It's a World War I aerial battle movie. Actually, the first Oscars in 1929 had two top awards. It's the only year that that happened. Wings got Best Production, and then there was also another award for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, which was FW Murnau's Sunrise, which is a little tight, intense psychodrama. I feel like that tension still exists between whether you award a big, splashy production, something like Wicked, or whether you honor something that's small, intense and artful, like, say, Anora. I think that that duality in the category still exists to some extent.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to speed read through some of the winners in different decades for Best Picture, and I'm curious on your take of how and if they reflect something about the times. Here we go. 1930s, All Quiet on the Western Front 1930. Then '31, Cimarron. '32, Grand Hotel. '33, Cavalcade. '34, It Happened One Night. '35, Mutiny on the Bounty. '36, The Great Ziegfeld. '37, The Life of Emile Zola. '38, You Can't Take It with You, andn 1939, Gone with the Wind. Anything tie those together? It was the Great Depression, but I don't know if that is relevant.

Michael Schulman: It was. One thing that stands out is that two of Those winners are Frank Capra films. It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It with You. Capra was one of the first filmmakers who really, really, in the first decade of the awards, really wanted one. He writes in his memoir about how he would actually make movies trying to win an Academy Award. Of course, he created this genre that thrived in the depression of these snappy parables of class ascension.

Then he, by the end of the '30s, became the president of the Academy and basically saved this new organization from going under. He was a very major figure. Then, of course, 1939, a famous legendary film year, and Gone with the Wind was part of that.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to play a clip of the winner for Best Supporting Actress for Gone with the Wind. It was Hattie McDaniel, and it was history-making because she was the first Black actor to win an award. This was at the 12th Academy Awards.

Hattie McDaniel: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of the awards for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble, and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Hattie McDaniel in 1940, accepting the Best Supporting Actress award for Gone with the Wind, which also won Best Picture for its release year, 1939. 1940s, Rebecca, How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, Going My Way, The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Our Lives, Gentleman's Agreement in 1947, Hamlet in 1948, All the King's Men in 1949. My question about this decade is going to be the one that wasn't on the list. Citizen Kane.

Michael Schulman: Citizen Kane, that's right. The 1942 ceremony was two and a half months after the Pearl Harbor attack. The Academy actually canceled the banquet at first, back then it was a banquet, and then uncanceled it when the Department of Defense told them it was fine to go on with the Oscars. That was also the year that Citizen Kane was nominated for nine awards and lost all of them, but Best Original Screenplay written by Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz.

It's one of the big mistakes of Academy History. The first sentence of my book is, "The Oscars, it should be said at the start, are always getting it wrong." What's interesting, of course, the history of Citizen Kane is very thorny. Part of the reason it lost was that it took on this press mogul, William Randolph Hearst, as a thinly veiled version of him. The Hearst papers all fought back and attacked Orson Welles and wouldn't acknowledge the movie and tried to punish the industry for making this movie.

It was so stressful for everyone that I think by the time they got to the Oscars, Citizen Kane hadn't been a big hit. Orson Welles had been this boy wonder who got final cut. Very unprecedented back then. People just didn't really go-- They didn't want to award it. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley won.

Brian Lehrer: I'm looking forward to next year's Citizen Bezos, but never mind. That's another show.

Michael Schulman: Yes, Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: 1950s, All About Eve, An American in Paris, The Greatest Show on Earth, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Marty, Around the World in 80 Days, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Gigi, and in 1959, Ben-Hur. Those are a lot of iconic films that a lot of people who weren't even alive then would know the names of. Right?

Michael Schulman: Yes. The thing that stands out to me is this is the decade, of course, of the Hollywood blacklist. One of those movies, The Bridge on the River Kwai, was written by two blacklisted screenwriters who didn't get credit on the movie and weren't able to go accept their awards. They were Carl Foreman, who also wrote High Noon, and Michael Wilson, who also wrote a couple of things. One of them was the first version of Lawrence of Arabia.

That screenplay was attributed to Pierre Boulle, the French author of the novel that it's based on. He was the person submitted for Best Adapted Screenplay, adapting himself, but it was all a farce because everybody knew that Pierre Boulle barely spoke or wrote in English. This award was finally given to the actual authors of the screenplay only decades later.

Brian Lehrer: The 1960s. The Apartment, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, Tom Jones, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, A Man for All Seasons, In the Heat of the Night, Oliver and Midnight Cowboy. One of the trends from the '60s, musicals.

Michael Schulman: Yes. This was the dying era of this old studio system. It was falling apart. Television had stolen a lot of the audience, or so that's what people in movies felt. One of the trends in movies was to make these gigantic spectacles that you had to go see. Movies like The Sound of Music were a huge hit. For years after that, they would try to recreate the magic of The Sound of Music with diminishing returns. Another really amazing shift as you read that list is the 1968 winner is Oliver, which because of the new rating system was the first G-rated movie that had ever won the award and the only one since.

Then the very next year was Midnight Cowboy, which is the only X-rated movie to ever win Best Picture.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, what a cobtrast.

Michael Schulman: You went from G to X. That is a very rapidly changing culture.

Brian Lehrer: The 1970s, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, Godfather II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer. Any quick thought on the 1970s?

Michael Schulman: My favorite year of that is 1975. This was the era, of course of the new Hollywood, this renaissance in filmmaking, very anti-authoritarian spirit. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won in a year that is absolutely, if not the best lineup of Best Picture nominees. It beat Barry Lyndon, the Kubrick movie, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, and Jaws. Now which one of these doesn't belong?

You have four very autourist, anti-authoritarian masterpieces of the new Hollywood, especially One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, all about this wild man going up against the institution and evil Nurse Ratched and they're all these like gritty, rambunctious movies. Then Jaws, of course, directed by very young Steven Spielberg, which pointed the way toward the blockbuster '80s. It gave Hollywood a new vision for how to make a ton of money. Even though it lost and Spielberg was the only one of those directors of those movies that wasn't nominated for Best Director, it pointed the way toward Hollywood's future.

Brian Lehrer: Those 1980s winners, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, and Driving Miss Daisy. Just for a little fun, I know you have a chapter in your book called Fiasco, which covers the 1989 Oscar ceremony, widely known as the worst Oscars ever, infamous among other things for its 11-minute opening featuring Rob Lowe and an actress dressed as Snow White singing a rendition of Proud Mary. Really? Here's 30 seconds.

Speaker 3: Used to work a lot for Walt Disney, starring in cartoons every night and day.

Rob Lowe: But you said goodbye to Grumpy and sleepy. Left the dwarves behind, Came to town to stay.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad I didn't see that.

Michael Schulman: Oh, it's painful. As you can tell, Rob Lowe, not blessed-- Prettier to look at than to listen to sing.

Brian Lehrer: 1990s, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty. Did those as a group in any way represent the '90s?

Michael Schulman: I hate to say it, but this decade of Oscars really has a lot to do with the rise of Harvey Weinstein's Miramax. Weinstein notoriously-- He's now notorious for something else, rightfully, but at the time, he was notorious for his very aggressive, very relentless Oscar campaigns. For instance, in the ''94 movies, his movie was Pulp Fiction, this gritty, violent movie that lost to Forrest Gump. Two years later, Miramax won with The English Patient, which he basically turned this little period drama into a movie everyone had to see. Then this decade culminated in the 1998 year of Shakespeare in Love versus Saving Private Ryan.

Shakespeare in Love was Weinstein's movie. Saving Private Ryan was the presumed frontrunner, of course, the Spielberg war epic. Weinstein staged such a brow beating campaign for Shakespeare in Love that when it won, there was this eruption of resentment toward him and toward Miramax, and yet starting with the American Beauty year, every other studio in Hollywood felt they needed to copy the Weinstein playbook. That's how we got the very bloated campaign ecosystem of the 21st century.

Brian Lehrer: We've got two minutes left in this 100 years of 100 Things. 100 year of the Best Picture Oscar with Michael Schulman from the New Yorker, the 2000s. Here we go. You ready for the Sprint? Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, The King's Speech, The Artist, Argo, 12 Years of a Slave, Birdman, Spotlight, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Green Book, Parasite, Nomadland in 2020, then CODA, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and last year, Oppenheimer. Where are we now?

Michael Schulman: It's so interesting looking at that list, you see how the traditional Oscar bait movie really changes and it's harder to define what a Best Picture looks like in wonderful ways. You have movies Slumdog Millionaire that is a story from India, and Parasite, which is the first non-English winner of the category. Movies like The Hurt Locker, which was the first female director to win best director, Kathryn Bigelow, and Moonlight, which in the aftermath of Trump's election, put forward this alternate vision for America.

I think the Oscars are becoming more globalized, more diverse, more embracing of different kinds of movies. It's become, because of that, much harder, in a good way, I think, to define what a "Oscar movie" looks like.

Brian Lehrer: Michael Schulman, New Yorker staff writer and author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears. You have a prediction for Best Picture Sunday night.

Michael Schulman: Oh, it's been a humdinger of a year. I like to be wrong about predictions because I like being surprised. I think it's down to Anora and Conclave, and my prediction is that Anora is going to squeak by.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you very much.

Michael Schulman: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Really appreciate you doing this sprint with us. Have a great weekend, everyone, whether you watch the Oscars or anything else you do. Talk to you Monday.

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