Hollywood's Relationship With British Actors Wasn't Always Special, Part 1: Introduction and The 'British Invasion'

 

Last night when I wrote about the complicated history Hollywood has with female directors, I mentioned that I was thinking of writing an article about the Oscars xenophobic attitude towards foreigners. I now think I know the best way to write that article – and I think it’s worth looking at it from a perspective few would consider and fewer still might actually consider bigotry.

Given the current attitude of awards shows across the board in the 21^st century to give great, if not enormous amount of recognition in film and television to British actors, writers and directors to the point where some online think Hollywood is bigoted towards the English over minority groups, it might come as a shock to many that not only was that not always the case, but for at least the first half century of the Oscars existence, British writers and performers were not only considered outsiders to the industry, but their nominations and victories an offense to the order of the studio system, the men who controlled the industry and the Academy voters.

I realize this may seem a bizarre place to consider bigotry and many are rolling their eyes at the concept even to hear it. But the evidence does seem apparent when you look at the history of the major talents who are among those noted for being the most frequent among those ignored by the Oscars. Often the fact that Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock, two of the greatest talents in the history of Hollywood, never won Academy Awards is a sign of how moronic the Academy is. And it should be. Grant was one of the greatest movie stars in history and Hitchcock one of the greatest directors of all time. Grant got exactly two nominations, neither for a performance anywhere near considered his best work, and Hitchcock got a grand total of five nominations, none of them for Vertigo, North By Northwest, Notorious, Strangers on a Train…do I need to keep going? They were beloved by the industry and fans at the time; could the fact both men spoke with an accent have been at least part of the reason they got shafted year after year?

Then there’s the sad fact that the performers with the worst record with the Oscars are almost all British. Deborah Kerr holds the record for both Best Actress nominations without win, she was nominated six times and never won once. Considering that in three of the films she was nominated for – From Here to Eternity, The King and I, and Separate Tables – there was at least one other nominee who won an Oscar, it’s hard not to see this a reflection on here. The two male actors who have the worst record with the Academy were also from the United Kingdom: Richard Burton, who went 0 for 7 and Peter O’Toole, who went 0 for 8. (They were nominated against each other for their roles in Beckett; I’ll get to that in a later piece in this series.) Burton was one of the most famous stars in Hollywood for twenty years and O’Toole created some of the most iconic roles in film; it’s hard to see how they kept getting ignored.

Now it is worth noting part of the reason the Oscars have had a difficult time getting along with the British performer and writer was a combination of snobbery on one end. But there was, at least while the studio system was in existence and quite a while beyond that, a firm resistance towards the acting and directing of some of the greatest talents in history. And it’s hard not to see a  kind of very deep Anglophobia here which represents a very specific type of Hollywood was considered an ‘American’ institution that had the same bigotry towards outsiders then. Was it as obvious as their attitude towards African-Americans, women and other minorities? Of course not. But there’s something kind of insidious about looking down on people whose only difference between you and them is the accent they have.

So this series will deal with the problematic history between the Oscars and the Brits. And the place start, fittingly, is after World War II.

 

It’s worth noting that during the early years of the Oscars the English actors and writers had this way of looking down on Hollywood that was apparent almost from the start. Charles Laughton, the first British performer to win an Academy Award for Best Actor (The Private Life of Henry VIII) wasn’t at the ceremony to accept the award and never gave any sign he appreciated it. He never showed up for any of his other nominations or wins either.

This in itself was far from unusual; in the era when attendance to the Oscars was not mandatory, many of the biggest names in Hollywood basically chose to give the Oscars a pass. Katherine Hepburn never came to the Oscars for any of the twelve nominations or four wins she received; Spencer Tracy stopped showing up after his second win, and prominent actors like Paul Newman and Marlon Brando barely showed up for many of their nominations or wins (even before Brando decided to decline his Oscar for The Godfather.) But the English performers often showed a special sign of contempt. George Bernard Shaw won an Academy Award for Best Original Story for Pygmalion (an award that was phased out by the 1950s) and regarded it with disdain. “It’s absurd they give me such a prize; it’s like honoring George for being King of England,” he said after winning. (Shaw, for the record, was the first man to win both an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize.)

On the other end, some recipients were too grateful. When Greer Garson won her first Oscar for Mrs. Miniver, she started her speech with: “I am practically unprepared,” and then gave the longest speech in the history of the Oscars. (There’s debate as to how long; the estimate is it was at least ten minutes.) It not only became the subject of parody, but Garson’s speech was why the Oscars established the rule that you could only speak for thirty seconds after winning in the first place.

Still for most of the first eighteen years of Hollywood, the Oscars and the British performers mostly got along. But in 1946, the first full year after World War II ended, that began to change.

1946 was probably the first year Hollywood and more importantly American Critics became aware of movies outside the borders of the United States. Children of Paradise, the French film that is rumored to always be playing somewhere in France to this day, was released in the states and became a sensation. Open City, Roberto Rossellini example of neo-realism had a similar reaction. But the biggest player was the U.K. and two very specific talents.

David Lean had come to the attention of Hollywood with In Which We Serve, a British War Film which had been nominated for Best Picture in 1943. But his official launch to the ranks of great filmmakers came with Brief Encounter, his movie about two forty-ish married people who begin a flirtation that is close to an affair. Lean would spend the next decade being a pain in Britain before he won Hollywood’s acceptance. The movie won Best Feature at Cannes in 1946.

The bigger noise came from Laurence Olivier. Oliver had been part of the studio system for a while – he had received his first two Oscar nominations for Wuthering Heights and Rebecca and was considered one of the major leading men at the time. In 1944, he began working on an adaption of Henry V. Primarily organized to rally the British at home, it became one of the most popular films IN Britain though it was more admired then seen.

When awards season began the trouble started. The National Board of Review gave Best Picture to Henry V and Best Actor to Olivier. Olivier also won Best Actor from the New York Film Critics. Celia Johnson won Best Actress for Brief Encounter.

It is not as though Hollywood was lacking for great movies in 1946. Among the major contenders that year were The Best Years of Our Lives, the first real film to deal with the consequences of soldiers coming home to war, The Yearling, an adaptation that launched the careers of Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman to box office and critical success and It’s A Wonderful Life. There were also minor masterpieces such as The Killers, Notorious and The Razor’s Edges. But the Oscars had been a club exclusive for Hollywood and American made films and the bosses and gossip columnists were outraged that these ‘foreigners’ were crashing the party.

The mood did not improve when the nominations came out. Henry V was nominated for Best Picture which infuriated among others the notorious prickly David O. Selznick who was angry his film Duel in The Sun was ignored. Oliver was nominated for Best Actor and Johnson for Best Actress. David Lean received his first nomination for Best Director and Best Screenplay. That actually made people angrier then the nomination of Henry V. Children of Paradise and Open City also got nominated for writing awards and The Seventh Veil, another British film that had introduced the world to James Mason, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay as well.

On Oscar Night, the response was muted. The Seventh Veil won Best Original Screenplay and Oliver received an Honorary award for his achievements. But the Oscars and the bosses were clearly hoping this was a one-off. They were wrong.

The next year David Lean was back for Great Expectations, which among its other nominations was for Best Picture. Another major contender for nomination was Black Narcissus which reintroduced the Academy to Michael Powell. The films won Oscars for Art Decoration and Cinematography (Great Expectations for black and white; Black Narcissus for color.)  I should also mention the Oscars had decided to show how enlightened they were by giving three Academy Awards to Song of The South.

In 1948 things came to a head. Oliver was back with his adaptation of Hamlet and as Olivier began winning every Best Actor award in sight, and the film won Best Picture from the New York Film Critics, the Oscars were coming face to face with the fact they’d have to give this ‘Brit’ – who had not attended their ceremonies since 1940 – an Oscar. Just as annoying was the fact that Michael Powell was back with a just as brilliant masterpiece The Red Shoes. This film, set in the world of ballet, has held up better than Hamlet and clearly is one of the great films of all time.

That did not change the fact that when both of these films were among the major nominees for 1948 – Hamlet got six nominations; The Red Shoes got five – the Hollywood system was royally pissed at the idea of recognizing them. They focused their attention on The Snake Pit and Johnny Belinda, which were among the major contenders from the studio. In typical Hollywood fashion, they ignored the unquestioned masterpiece Treasure of The Sierra Madre which is one of the greatest films ever made. (It currently ranks #150 on imdb.com)

You sometimes wonder about the studio system in that when it came to most of the Oscars they actually got it right. Sierra Madre won Best Director and Best Screenplay for John Huston and Walter Huston took a prize for Best Supporting Actor. And yes Bogart did not get nominated for Best Actor, which is ridiculous. He might actually have been able to beat Olivier, which was what they wanted.

Still everybody was sure that Johnny Belinda would prevail on Oscar night, so the bosses accepted it when Olivier won Best Actor. Then came Best Picture and the winner was – Hamlet. There was noted sounds of surprise and disappointment in the theater and in the days to come, Olivier was the victim of a lot of outrage from the trades.

Olivier’s reputation with Hollywood never truly recovered after this. He would be nominated for six more Oscars in his career, two of them for his work in other Shakespearean adaptations Richard III (1956) and Othello (1965). But Hollywood never got over the win and they treated him with disdain. He responded by never coming back to the Oscars until 1978, when he was given a lifetime achievement award.

As for the ‘British Invasion’, it was basically over by 1949. Carol Reed was nominated for Best Director for The Fallen Idol but that was basically it. David Lean would not be recognized among the great directors until he came to Hollywood and began to work within the system. There is some debate among scholars whether his epics, which finally got him the Oscars films like Brief Encounter and Great Expectations did not, were actually lesser films. As we shall see in the next article in this series, it did little to improve his opinion among certain critics.

In the next article, I will deal with the next wave which began in the 1960s – when the British Invasion music was happening as well. As we’ll see, there was a similar amount of handwringing by the old guard there too.