Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1937

The Contenders:

The Awful Truth
Captains Courageous
Dead End
The Good Earth
In Old Chicago
The Life of Emile Zola (winner)
Lost Horizon
One Hundred Men and a Girl
Stage Door
A Star is Born

Lost Horizon

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I wasn’t too keen on Lost Horizon showing up at my door. On the 1001 Movies list, four of the entries were also included in the “50 Worst Films of All Time” book that my brother Tom had, and I at least disliked all of them and hated several. I was under the impression that Lost Horizon was a part of that book, too. It is, but it’s the version from 1973, not this one. Let me tell you, that was a significant relief on my part. I’m hoping to be done with anything that was in Medved’s book.

So this is not that film. In this one, a group of Westerners are attempting to leave China on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Of particular interest is Robert “Bob” Conway (Ronald Colman), who has worked for the British Foreign Office for years. His brother George (John Howard) is convinced that he is about to be named the new Foreign Minister. Why else would the British have assigned a ship to him, awaiting his arrival in Shanghai? Eventually, the brothers climb aboard a final plane with three other potential refugees. These are a paleontologist named Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) , a mystery man named Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), and a sickly woman named Gloria (Isabel Jewell). They discover mid-way through their flight to Shanghai that they have, in fact, been shanghaied and are instead heading in the wrong direction.