The Good Earth (1937), Oscar winner for Best Actress (Luise Rainer) and Best Cinematography. Still, this is top-notch entertainment, with reliables like Melvyn Douglas, Mickey Rooney and John Carradine filling out the supporting roles. Tracy is earnest, but if that's a Portuguese accent he's sporting, then I'm Katharine Hepburn - if anything, his performance appears to be based on Chico Marx. Freddie Bartholomew plays a spoiled rich kid who winds up on a fishing schooner captained by Lionel Barrymore Tracy plays the Portuguese fisherman who takes the lad under his wing.

Tracy earned the first of his two consecutive Oscars for this Rudyard Kipling adaptation directed in grand style by Victor Fleming (who two years later would helm both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz). But as a study of the American mindset at the time of both the story's setting and the film's production, it's a fascinating look back, with its casual cruelty and condescension toward Native Americans, blacks ('Lots of watermelon there, Isaiah!' bellows Dix to his young servant, to which the lad replies, 'Yes sir, I sure glad I came to Oklihomy!'), Jews and the handicapped.Ĭaptains Courageous (1937), Oscar winner for Best Actor (Spencer Tracy). As a motion picture, this is fairly worthless, crippled by static direction, overblown performances (particularly by lead Richard Dix) and dull conflicts. One of the worst Best Picture winners in the Academy's 78-year history, Cimarron is based on Edna Ferber's novel about one family's struggles during the settling of the West at the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. To wit:Ĭimarron (1931), Oscar winner for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Interior Decoration. Watching these films of varying quality, it becomes apparent that the Academy's occasional penchant for picking unworthy winners is hardly a modern phenomenon. Getting into the spirit of the Oscar season, Warner has released a handful of vintage Academy Award-winning films (all sold separately) covering a 25-year span.

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