Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1950

The Contenders:

Jose Ferrer: Cyrano de Bergerac (winner)
Spencer Tracy: Father of the Bride
James Stewart: Harvey
Louis Calhern: The Magnificent Yankee
William Holden: Sunset Boulevard

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1950

The Contenders:

All About Eve (winner)
The Asphalt Jungle
Born Yesterday
Broken Arrow
Father of the Bride

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1950

The Contenders:

All About Eve (winner)
Born Yesterday
Father of the Bride
King Solomon’s Mines
Sunset Boulevard

I'm Telling My Girls to Elope

Film: Father of the Bride
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I like Spencer Tracy pretty well, so I’m always at least interested when I encounter one of his movies that I haven’t seen. It feels like I’ve seen a ton of them, but I’m sure I haven’t hit half, or even a quarter of everything he was in. Father of the Bride is one that was at least well enough thought of that it was remade not that long ago. In fact, even the sequel got remade. With a name like Father of the Bride, there’s not a great deal of shock or surprise where this one is going to go. If you don’t know what you’re going to get here, go back to that title and read it one word at a time.

Father of the Bride is one of those movies that starts at the end, with Stanley Banks (Tracy) sitting in the aftermath of his daughter’s wedding reception, trying his best to come to terms with the fact that his daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) has gotten married and is off on her honeymoon. While Banks speaks to us in voiceover, we flash back to a few months before when Stanley and his wife Ellie (Joan Bennett) discovered the existence of one Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor), the latest young man in Kay’s life. After Kay speaks gushingly of Buckley, Stanley asks her (almost joking) if she’s planning on marrying the guy, and she says that she supposes she is—they’ve talked about it, evidently.