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Just in time for Pride month, the undeniably queer Stage Door is not not an odd couple romantic comedy. A terrific movie where the Powerful Lesbian Energy fan service is only barely subtextual— Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers play two up and coming Broadway actresses thrown together by circumstance who pretty obviously fall in love with each other. While it takes a hard left turn at the very end, this funny, sweet, and ultimately very moving women-centric movie still manages to stick the landing thanks to its darling central couple.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Stage Door (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Deanna Durbin is back in this bizarre Depression Era concert movie cum Cinderella story, and our hosts are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of our young heroine. One hundred men and not one of them can get the girl to school or tell her to stay out of bars?

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Dead End welcomes the legendary Humphrey Bogart to the podcast for the first, but not the last time! An excellent ensemble cast, a class warfare theme, and a handful of impressive bits of cinematography result in David having to reel in a very jetlagged Suzan from way over rating this movie.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Dead End (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Our hosts aren’t sure that anything could make them forgive Paul Muni for The Good Earth, but the lackluster biopic and incomprehensible 1937 Best Picture Winner, The Life of Emile Zola isn’t it.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Won)

Additional audio: The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

David and Suzan take you on a giddy, punch drunk voyage of fish bonding, bad Portuguese (question mark?) accents, and entirely unbelievable rich dads in this week’s episode reviewing Captains Courageous. Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, and a young Mickey Rooney return to the podcast, but this time they’re not panned! Lionel Barrymore and an unreasonably handsome John Carradine co-star.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Captains Courageous (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The original A Star is Born (and only other Best Picture nominee besides the Lady Gaga one), is a good movie with the bones of a great movie, and the first nominee entirely in color! Screen Test of Time favorites Frederic March, Janet Gaynor, and Alfred Anjou turn in excellent performances… just not necessarily in the same film. All the same, it’s still, unquestionably, a movie… which isn’t always the case here at SToT.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: A Star is Born (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The first Frank Capra movie we haven't been immediately sure should have won the year, Lost Horizon is never the less still leading the pack for 1937. (Of course, that’s not saying much, since the only other nominee our hosts have seen so far is the dreadful Good Earth.) Ronald Coleman gives a great performance in the original Shangri-La story, though it’s not as tight or profound as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, as clever as It Happened One Night, or as quirky and heartwarming as Lady for a Day, but one thing’s for sure: it’s definitely a movie, cause Capra doesn’t know how to make anything that’s not.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Lost Horizon (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

1937 is not off to a good start with The Good Earth. A cast led by Paul Muni and Luise Rainer, white actors in yellow face hair and makeup, portraying rural Chinese peasants at the turn of the 20th century, this may be the most infuriating movie Suzan and David have seen so far.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)

Additional audio: The Good Earth (1937)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The 1936 nominees wrap up this week with Three Smart Girls, a sort of musical that’s basically a proto-Parent Trap… but are there three smart girls in it? There are three daughters of indeterminate age, true, but are they girls? And if so, why are we supposed to be rooting for two of them to date clearly adult men? Our hosts also wrap up their assessment of the 1936 Academy’s choice— spoiler, David and Suzan are not impressed.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Three Smart Girls (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Start with It Happened One Night as the foundation, add William Powell and Myrna Loy back on their witty repartee from The Thin Man, and top with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, and you seemingly have a recipe for success, right? Libeled Lady has all the ingredients to make a tasty romantic comedy, but the different elements never quite gel, with a bizarre twist ending that makes for a deeply unsatisfying dish.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Libeled Lady (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

A film that tries to justify a husband’s neglectful, sometimes abusive treatment of his wife basically because she wants to go on a vacation he promised her over 20 years ago, Dodsworth is a misogynistic polemic masquerading as the unholy marriage of a grand tour narrative and the slow, agonizing story of a couple’s divorce.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Dodsworth (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

With Leslie Howard (41) and Norma Shearer (34) as the titular characters, Romeo and Juliet begins the long Hollywood tradition of casting extremely age inappropriate actors as teenagers. An obvious cash grab after the success of 1935’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, this movie’s best quality is that it reminded our hosts how good the Baz Luhrmann version actually is.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Romeo and Juliet (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Never before have our hosts said, “But whatever,” as many times as in this episode (please do not turn this into a drinking game— you have been warned). Despite SToT favorite Frederic March giving it his all as the titular character, Anthony Adverse is a confusing and confused muddle devoid of character development and made worse by a middle third fraught with all kinds of racism. But it does have the distinction of being the lowest rated Best Picture nominee on Rotten Tomatoes, so at least it has that going for it.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Anthony Adverse (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

San Francisco starring Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracey, and Clark Gable, is nearly two and a half hours of muddled confusion. Is it an historical dramedy? A musical disaster film? Or just an historical disaster?

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: San Francisco (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Frank Capra continues his streak of good movies with the best one so far: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. It’s a funny, quirky, extremely moving, and socioeconomically progressive gem starring an incredible Gary Cooper as the eponymous Mr. Deeds and a delightfully complex performance by Jean Arthur. A fantastic film and the first 10 to be awarded by David and Suzan!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The winner of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld is absolute Academy cat nip: a big flashy musical that’s also a biopic, almost three hours long and lousy with famous stars, and generally a celebration of the entertainment industry— Hollywood loves few things more than a movie about itself. But is it any good?

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Won)

Additional audio: The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

So far, 1936 holds steady with the totally acceptable biopic, The Story of Louis Pasteur. Telling the somewhat… uh… sanitized version of Pasteur’s proving the existence of microbes and the germ theory of disease, Paul Muni plays the famed chemist as a crotchety genius at odds with the rather sociable and charming members of the medical establishment, personified by Fritz Leiber as the fictional Dr. Charbonnet. Anita Louise (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Donald Woods (A Tale of Two Cities) also return to the podcast as Pasteur’s daughter and son-in-law, respectively. Not the best movie ever made, nor even the best our hosts have watched for Screen Test of Time, but a solid entry that gives them hope the curse of 1935 has not persisted into the following year.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

It was the best of times, it was the— actually, know what? It’s just the best of times, because 1936 has kicked off with a solidly good movie! A Tale of Two Cities is a dream come true after the slog of 1935, and in many respects is a wish granted to our hosts who have received all the things they wished they’d seen in David Copperfield. Ronald Coleman gives a moving and brilliant performance as Sydney Carton, and a number of supporting actors from Copperfield return, this time in better roles, under better direction, and with better acting. This one may not be the Best Picture of 1936 (after all, it’s the first of the nominees), but it definitely won Suzan and David over!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1936 (Nominated)

Additional audio: A Tale of Two Cities (1936)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Captain Blood is the 1930s version of a big, brainless action movie— David suggests Jason Statham would star in this today— and yet Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out how to make a big, brainless action movie. Starring Errol Flynn as a doctor named Peter Blood (which Suzan cannot actually say without laughing) who becomes an indentured servant and then a pirate, with Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone, this movie has possibly the most confused politics of anything our hosts have watched thus far. And at the end, they break down the nominees for this, perhaps the worst year of Oscar contenders— find out if the Academy chose right in 1935!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Captain Blood (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

There are a number of movies where Charles Laughton has been acting in an entirely different film than everyone else on screen, but this is the first where that one seems like the better movie. Based on a true story, Mutiny on the Bounty departs radically from history for all the wrong reasons… if you can find a reason at all. Fraught with white washing British colonialism and naval history, not to mention the cast of white actors playing native Tahitians, not even a shirtless (albeit sadly clean shaven) Clark Gable nor one very impressive boat can save this poorly paced dud.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Won)

Additional audio: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)