Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1955

The Contenders:

Susan Hayward: I’ll Cry Tomorrow
Eleanor Parker: Interrupted Melody
Jennifer Jones: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing
Anna Magnani: The Rose Tattoo (winner)
Katharine Hepburn: Summertime

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1955

The Contenders:

John Sturges: Bad Day at Black Rock
Elia Kazan: East of Eden
Delbert Mann: Marty (winner)
Joshua Logan: Picnic
David Lean: Summertime

Shirley Valentine's Patient Zero

Films: Summertime
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on laptop.

When you think of David Lean, you probably think of epic films, but those films are from the end of his career. Lean’s last five films were epic in terms of length and most of them were epic in scope as well. Lean’s career contained smaller films, too; Brief Encounter stands out as a prime example, but the strength of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India, and especially Lawrence of Arabia (and to a lesser extent Ryan’s Daughter) are what causes him to be remembered as a director of epics. Summertime is the last of his smaller, shorter movies, but with its exotic (for 1955) setting, it serves as a bridge between Lean’s earlier career and his later movies.

Summertime, based on a play called “The Time of the Cuckoo,” seems to have been tailor-made for Katherine Hepburn. Much like Lean is associated with epics, there is a particular kind of role that is easily associated with Hepburn. For a movie from then 1930s-1950s, any female character who has a strong independent streak, often living life on her own terms despite not being married (unusual for the time), Katherine Hepburn was your go-to. So, that’s exactly what we’re going to have here.