Post Time

In 1927, when Silent Cinemactress Janet Gaynor won Hollywood's first Academy Award for her acting in Seventh Heaven, a gold-plated Oscar statuette was worth about $150. The value of most gewgaws has risen since then, but Oscars have outstripped them all. Hollywood publicists have long since discovered that these "noncommercial" citations for artistic merit have a specific box-office value: a mere Oscar nomination can add about $100,000 to a movie's gross. An actual award, if well exploited, may be worth $500,000.

In this year's sweepstakes, proper timing is essential. Many Oscar contenders released earlier this year (e.g., Ivanhoe, Snows of Kilimanjaro, Carrie) are commonly regarded as already too old to get an Academy nod. This strange tradition of fast-fading eligibility has produced an equally strange custom: year-end "prerelease" of most of the brightest Oscar hopefuls.

Under Academy rules, feature movies eligible for 1952 Oscars must be exhibited for no less than a week, their runs to start no later than midnight on New Year's Eve. In February, Academy members, along with members of various guilds, will hold a "primary election," pick five nominees each for best picture, best acting, best direction, etc. A final, secret balloting will set the stage for the searchlights and ceremonious hullaballoo in March.

This week, on the eve of Oscar post time, the moviemakers were busily grooming their hottest entries and preparing to trot them out. Along Beverly Hills's Wilshire Boulevard and in several art theaters in the year's last week, marquees will blaze with a flurry of top-fated (by their makers) new titles. The leading entries:

P:The Bad and the Beautiful (M-G-M), a story about a Hollywood producer, with Candidates Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.

P: My Cousin Rachel (20th Century-Fox), co-starring Newcomer Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland, who is hopeful of a third best-actress Oscar (previous awards: 1946, 1949). The studio's dark horse: Stars and Stripes Forever, with Clifton Webb playing the late John Philip Sous'a (see below).

P:Come Back, Little Sheba (Hal Wallis; Paramount), a film version of the 1950 Broadway hit play (TIME, Feb. 27, 1950) about a reformed drunk and his sluttish wife, starring Shirley Booth, who appears to be a cinch for a best-actress nomination (see below).

P: The Member of the Wedding (Stanley Kramer; Columbia), the story of an unhappy twelve-year-old girl and her sympathetic Mammy, with Julie Harris and Ethel Waters (both top-actress hopefuls) in their original Broadway parts (see below). Director Fred Zinnemann, himself a good Oscar prospect, might lose out, paradoxically, if the vote for him is split between Member and his High Noon, whose star, Gary Cooper, is in the running for his second Oscar (his first: in 1941, for Sergeant York).

P: The Jazz Singer (Warner), a remake, starring Nightclub Comic Danny Thomas, of the first (1927) sound picture, which starred Al Jolson.

P:Hans Christian Andersen, Sam Goldwyn's bid for every Oscar in the Academy's trophy case.

P: The Star (Bert Friedlob; 20th Century-Fox), with Bette Davis- suffering heavy emotional weather as a fading movie actress (Bette won Oscars in 1935 for Dangerous and in 1938 for Jezebel).

P:Moulin Rouge (John Huston; United Artists), a biography of dwarfish Painter Toulouse-Lautrec, starring Jose Ferrer, wearing shoes on his knees, in his bid for a second award (his first: Cyrano de Bergerac).

-For other news of Actress Davis, see THEATER.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.