Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1958

The Contenders:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Gigi (winner)
The Horse’s Mouth
I Want to Live!
Separate Tables

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1958

The Contenders:

Richard Brooks: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Stanley Kramer: The Defiant Ones
Vincente Minnelli: Gigi (winner)
Robert Wise: I Want to Live!
Mark Robson: Inn of the Sixth Happiness

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1958

The Contenders:

Rosalind Russell: Auntie Mame
Elizabeth Taylor: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Susan Hayward: I Want to Live! (winner)
Deborah Kerr: Separate Tables
Shirley MacLaine: Some Came Running

It's a Gas!

Film: I Want to Live!
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I Want to Live! is a polemic. As it happens, it’s a polemic that I happen to agree with in terms of its ultimate message. That unfortunately doesn’t change the fact that I Want to Live! gets at its ultimate message by playing significantly with the underlying story we are being told. This is a film that evidently fudges the truth to tell a better story. How much does it fudge the truth? Frankly, it apparently reverses events completely.

Barbara Graham (an Oscar-winning Susan Hayward) is the ultimate good-time party girl. She’s been booked for a number of misdemeanor charges including solicitation, but that hasn’t done anything to change her ways. At one point, she is asked by a couple of associates to lie for them on the stand to prevent them from going to prison. Not only do the two cons end up spending hard time, Barbara gets a year for perjury. Once she’s out, she decides to go straight. She marries Henry Graham (Wesley Lau) and attempts to enter the regular world.