Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1953

The Contenders:
Deborah Kerr: From Here to Eternity
Leslie Caron: Lili
Ava Gardner: Mogambo
Maggie McNamara: The Moon is Blue
Audrey Hepburn: Roman Holiday (winner)

Watching Oscar: Mogambo

Film: Mogambo
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan of Clark Gable, but I do understand the appeal of the man on the screen. He was a player and a pimp. This may have been best demonstrated in Gone with the Wind, but I might enter Mogambo as Exhibit B. This is very much Gable’s picture because it couldn’t be anyone else’s. There is a strange provincial sense to Mogambo; it’s a boy’s own adventure film, but just as much a romance, and its depiction of both men and women are mildly sexist and offensive by today’s standards. That said, it’s still pretty entertaining.

Victor Marswell (Gable) runs a hunting/safari/trapping camp in East Africa. He collects game animals and ships them back to zoos in the rest of the world and takes people out on various expeditions. He is assisted in this by a number of native workers as well as John “Brownie” Brown-Pryce (Philip Stainton) and the crude and unmannered Boltchak (Eric Pohlmann). I mentioned that it’s a bit provincial, and that may be the wrong word for it. I can’t identify the guys who work at Marswell’s compound because they aren’t listed individually in the credits.