- Turner Classic Movies’ “31 Days of Oscar” series continues on Feb. 3 with seven Best Art Direction Academy Award contenders and five Oscar-pedigreed titles (in various categories) focused on the successes and hardships of petty and master criminals alike.
TCM’s ‘31 Days of Oscar’ 2025: Day 3 offers 7 Best Art Direction contenders and 5 features about criminals of various specialties
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Monday, Feb. 3, with the airing of seven Best Art Direction Academy Award contenders (in some instances split into Black-and-White/Color categories), in addition to five Oscar-nominated/-winning titles (in different categories) centered on the profits and losses reaped by criminals in both North America and North Africa. (See TCM’s Feb. 3 schedule further below. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below are brief comments on each TCM presentation.
The Merry Widow (1934)
Jeanette MacDonald is usually extolled for her pre-Code work at Paramount (The Love Parade, One Hour with You) and derided for her Production Code era work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (chiefly, her ridiculously popular operettas costarring Nelson Eddy).
The Merry Widow is the hybrid/mutant child of Paramount’s Ernst Lubitsch, who directed it, and Louis B. Mayer’s MGM, where this lush, scintillating pre-Codeish Production Code era musical was made and in which MacDonald delivers what is surely the finest performance of her career.
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Robert Z. Leonard’s Pride and Prejudice may not be quite Jane Austen, but it’s nevertheless one of the best releases not only of 1940 but of the 1940s.
The extensive, nearly flawless cast includes Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver, Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Sullivan, Marsha Hunt, and Frieda Inescort – not one of whom received as much as an Oscar nod. (Olivier was nominated that year for Rebecca.)
Little Women (1949)
Although less well-liked than George Cukor’s 1933 version starring Katharine Hepburn, Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Women is a fine, handsome transfer of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868–1869 novel about four daughters (no connection to the Priscilla Lane romantic drama TCM presented yesterday) and their troubles during the Civil War.
Making this clear: Being in New England, they’re not at the front.
June Allyson stars as Jo March. Her sisters are Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, and Margaret O’Brien. Peter Lawford and Rossano Brazzi, making his Hollywood debut, are the good-looking men in their lives.
Young Bess (1953)
Stewart Granger’s dashing Thomas Seymour just may love two women in George Sidney’s historical melodrama Young Bess.
Making things a wee bit more complicated: One of the women in question is the future Queen Elizabeth I of England, played by Granger’s real-life wife Jean Simmons. The other woman, Catherine Parr*, is played by Deborah Kerr in a subordinate role.
Charles Laughton, who won the 1932–1933 Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the titular character in the British-made The Private Life of Henry VIII, is back as the English monarch.
Note: In the past, TCM has shown a subpar print of Young Bess. The Oscar-nominated work of art directors Cedric Gibbons and Urie McCleary, and set decorators Edwin B. Willis and Jack D. Moore deserves better.
* In Young Bess, Catherine Parr goes from Elizabeth’s stepmom (she was Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife) to unwitting romantic rival.
Kismet (1944)
Based on Edward Knoblock’s 1911 play, William Dieterle’s Kismet stars Ronald Colman as an Arabian Nights-ish Baghdad beggar and magician similar to – but less interesting than – his medieval French poet François Villon in Frank Lloyd’s If I Were King. Getting to display her impressive figure, Marlene Dietrich, then in her early 40s, is the Queen of the Grand Vizier’s harem.
Though dramatically flat, Kismet is an undeniably handsome color production; one whose visual grandeur is diminished by TCM’s below-par print.
Brigadoon (1954)
Unlike Stanley Donen’s studio-bound Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – released that same year – Brigadoon, based on Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1947 Broadway musical, suffers in good part because its sets look cheap and phony. Just as unconvincing is the fantasy romance between American hunter Gene Kelly and ethereal Scottish lass Cyd Charisse.
Director Vincente Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed, despite their past and future film musical credentials (e.g., Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi), mishandled the proceedings. Ultimately, Brigadoon turned out to be one of MGM’s biggest flops of the year (a loss of nearly $1.6 million).
Note: The work of art directors Cedric Gibbons and E. Preston Ames and set decorators Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason was shortlisted in the Oscars’ Best Art Direction-Set Decoration – Color category. The winner that year was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (art director: John Meehan; set decoration: Emile Kuri).
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
More enjoyable than more well-regarded musicals like An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain, George Sidney’s song-filled Western Annie Get Your Gun is the only MGM title starring Paramount box office draw Betty Hutton (replacing a “difficult” Judy Garland).
That’s too bad, as Hutton could enliven a movie like few other performers. Case in point: Her dynamic rendition of “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” which far outshines Ethel Merman’s in the 1954 20th Century Fox musical of the same name.
The Sting (1973)
One of the biggest domestic box office hits in history, George Roy Hill’s Best Picture Oscar winner The Sting brought back Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford as two more lovable criminals. This time around, instead of frolicking in the Old American West, they plan to con mob boss Robert Shaw in Great Depression-era Chicago.
As a character named Johnny Hooker, Redford was shortlisted for that year’s Best Actor Academy Award – his only nomination in the acting categories to date. (He would take home a Best Director Oscar statuette for the family drama Ordinary People, 1980.)
In addition to winning Best Picture, The Sting also topped six other categories: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (David S. Ward), Best Film Editing (William Reynolds), Best Original Song Score and Adaptation or Scoring: Adaptation (Marvin Hamlisch, working from Scott Joplin’s tunes, notably “The Entertainer” [1902]), Best Art Direction (Henry Bumstead & James W. Payne), and Best Costume Design (veteran Edith Head).
But is The Sting that good?
Well … Let’s just say that Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers was a Best Picture nominee that same year. And that Bergman was a nominee in the Best Director and Best Original Screenplay categories.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Far more cinematic than his previous Oscar-nominated hit The Miracle Worker (1962) yet far less dramatically impressive than his previous mega-bomb The Chase (1966), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde became one the seminal movies of the 1960s.
Much of what takes place before the final shootout is a bit of letdown, but that bullet-riddled, blood-soaked climax justifiably remains one of the most memorable sequences in film history.
Double Indemnity (1944)
Barbara Stanwyck went from fiery heroine to cool villainess in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, a memorable performance despite the unbecoming blond wig. In a less showy role, Edward G. Robinson is equally effective as the claims manager/insurance investigator noseying his way into her husband’s much too financially convenient death. (That’s what the title refers to.)
Now, if you keep getting Double Indemnity mixed up with The Postman Always Rings Twice, don’t blame yourself. Blame author James M. Cain instead.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Directed by Oscar nominee John Huston, The Asphalt Jungle – which failed to receive a matching Best Picture nod – is one of a number of bank/jewelry store/pawnshop heist movies of the 1950s. See André De Toth’s criminally neglected Crime Wave, Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Richard Fleischer’s Violent Saturday, Mario Monicelli’s caper comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street.
Big, handsome, stolid Sterling Hayden stars in The Asphalt Jungle, though Marilyn Monroe, in a brief role as the sultry mistress of corrupt society lawyer Louis Calhern, is the better-remembered performer.
In the form of a (good enough) Western directed by Delmer Daves and starring Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine, The Asphalt Jungle would be “remade” in 1958. (Both titles are based on W.R. Burnett’s 1949 novel.)
Algiers (1938)
Hollywood versions of non-English-language films is hardly a new thing. Ask independent producer Walter Wanger, whose John Cromwell-directed Algiers is an adaptation of Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko, released the previous year in France.
In the role originally played by Jean Gabin, Best Actor Oscar nominee Charles Boyer is a Casbah, Algiers, jewel thief who, like Stewart Granger in Young Bess, becomes enmeshed with two women: Brooklyn-born Norwegian import Sigrid Gurie (as Pépé’s Algerian lover) and Vienna-born Austrian import Hedy Lamarr (as Pépé’s French object of desire).
In the supporting cast: Oscar nominee Gene Lockhart, who happened to be one of the most accomplished and most versatile performers of the studio era, whether playing avuncular types, obnoxious businessmen, or scuzzy heels.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 3.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 3
6:15 AM The Merry Widow (1934)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch.
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel.
99m8:00 AM Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Director: Robert Z. Leonard.
Cast: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Sullivan, Edna May Oliver, Melville Cooper, Frieda Inescort, Marsha Hunt, Ann Rutherford, Heather Angel, Edward Ashley, Karen Morley, E.E. Clive, Marjorie Wood, May Beatty, Bruce Lester, Vernon Downing, Elspeth Dudgeon.
117m10:00 AM Little Women (1949)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
Cast: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Margaret O’Brien, Rossano Brazzi, Mary Astor, Lucile Watson, C. Aubrey Smith, Elizabeth Patterson, Leon Ames, Harry Davenport, Richard Stapley, Connie Gilchrist, Ellen Corby.
121m12:15 PM Young Bess (1953)
Director: George Sidney.
CCast: Jean Simmons, Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton, Kay Walsh, Guy Rolfe, Kathleen Byron, Cecil Kellaway, Rex Thompson, Robert Arthur, Leo G. Carroll, Norma Varden, Alan Napier, Ivan Triesault, Elaine Stewart, Dawn Addams, Doris Lloyd, Lumsden Hare, Lester Matthews, Ann Tyrrell.
112m2:15 PM Kismet (1944)
Director: William Dieterle.
Cast: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig, Joy Page.
100m4:00 PM Brigadoon (1954)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Elaine Stewart, Barry Jones, Hugh Laing, Albert Sharpe, Virginia Bosler, Eddie Quillan.
108m6:00 PM Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Director: George Sidney.
Cast: Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern, Keenan Wynn, Benay Venuta, J. Carrol Naish, Edward Arnold, Clinton Sundberg.
107m8:00 PM The Sting (1973)
Director: George Roy Hill.
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Eileen Brennan, Harold Gould, Sally Kirkland.
127m10:15 PM Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Director: Arthur Penn.
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Evans Evans, Gene Wilder.
111m12:15 AM Double Indemnity (1944)
Director: Billy Wilder.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber, Mona Freeman.
107m2:15 AM The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Director: John Huston.
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Teresa Celli, Marilyn Monroe, William “Wee Willie” Davis, Dorothy Tree, Brad Dexter, Don Haggerty, Theodore Bikel.
112m4:15 AM Algiers (1938)
Director: John Cromwell.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr, Sigrid Gurie, Joseph Calleia, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale, Walter Kingsford, Paul Harvey, Stanley Fields, Johnny Downs, Robert Greig, Joan Woodbury, Claudia Dell.
95m
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Art Direction, Criminals” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Robert Redford and Paul Newman The Sting image: Universal Pictures.
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Art Direction, Criminals” last modified in February 2025.