- TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” series continues on Feb. 6 with six Academy Award contenders in the Best Cinematography categories (general, black-and-white, color) and five Oscar-nominated/-winning titles revolving around people sailing on big ships and tiny boats.
TCM’s ‘31 Days of Oscar’: Day 6 showcases 6 contenders in the Best Cinematography categories and 5 features about ‘seafarers’
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Thursday, Feb. 6, with the airing of six Best Cinematography contenders/winners*, in addition to five Oscar-nominated/-winning titles (in different categories) about “seafarers” – i.e., characters at sea, whether sailing aboard ocean liners or tiny fishing boats. (See TCM’s Feb. 6 schedule further below. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Now, The Unsinkable Molly Brown has been included among the titles about seafarers, but … where are Lifeboat and Life of Pi?
* Apart from 1957, from 1939 to 1966 (when black-and-white American movies all but vanished) the Best Cinematography Academy Award was split in two categories: Color and black-and-white.
Below are brief comments on each TCM presentation.
The Great Waltz (1938)
One of the most sumptuous movies ever made*, Julien Duvivier’s Johann Strauss biopic The Great Waltz also has a beating heart, courtesy of two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld, 1936; The Good Earth, 1937) in the (unfortunately subordinate) role of Strauss’ wife, Poldi Vogelhuber.
Rainer was bypassed at the Oscars, but soprano Miliza Korjus nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
* Oscar-winning cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg, costumes by Adrian, and art direction by MGM perennial Cedric Gibbons (who designed the Oscar statuette and went on to win a record 11 Oscars in the Best Art Direction category, out of a record 39 nominations).
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Boy-next-door Robert Walker (Since You Went Away, One Touch of Venus) delivers the best performance of his career as a murderous gay psychopath in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Something else worth noting is that this psychological thriller features, heresy of heresies, a Cool Hitchcock Brunette: Ruth Roman.
Robert Burks deservedly received a Best Cinematography – Black-and-White nomination.
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Vincente Minnelli wasn’t the greatest dramatic director, as can be attested by both The Bad and the Beautiful and the inferior Two Weeks in Another Town: Tragedy is turned into melodrama, characterizations are turned into scenery-chewing, and so on.
Kirk Douglas is a major problem in both movies, but the former title does have Lana Turner at her very best. So, kudos to Minnelli for that one. To paraphrase a line in the movie, whenever Turner is on screen, your eyes will be on her and nothing else.
Somehow or other, Gloria Grahame won that year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar for what amounts to a non-role. Grahame had done/would do far better work elsewhere (Macao, The Big Heat, Not as a Stranger).
Gypsy (1962)
Directed by veteran Mervyn LeRoy, the old-fashioned musical blockbuster Gypsy feels like it belongs to the year 1952.
Rosalind Russell stars as the title character’s stage mother, a role originated by Ethel Merman on Broadway. Some find Russell miscast, but however unsubtle her Mama Rose, for better or for worse she will linger in your mind just like Auntie Mame. You’ve been forewarned.
Now, no reason to fear Natalie Wood, who looks great as stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.
Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
One might say that director Mervyn LeRoy and screenwriter Everett Freeman’s Million Dollar Mermaid is MGM’s only Esther Williams star vehicle that features an actual plot, as it’s a loose biography of Australian actress-swimmer Annette Kellerman, who attempted to swim across the English Channel and who is perhaps best remembered for wearing a tight-fitting one-piece bathing suit at a time when women went to the beach covered in layers of garments.
The movie itself is no great classic, but it is entertaining while the aqua-musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley remain as impressive as they were more than seven decades ago.
George J. Folsey deservedly received an Oscar nomination in the Best Cinematography – Color category.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon features some pleasant acting (John Agar, Mildred Natwick), plenty of magnificent vistas, and some repugnant racism. John Wayne stars as a veteran cavalry officer assigned with pacifying injuns who have broken out of their reservations.
Shot on location in Monument Valley, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon earned Winton C. Hoch the Best Cinematography – Color Oscar.
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Frank Lloyd’s Best Picture Academy Award winner Mutiny on the Bounty is notable as the only movie to have received three nominations in one of the “lead” acting categories: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone, who all lost the Best Actor Oscar to the fourth nominee, Victor McLaglen (for The Informer).
Now, the word “lead” in the above paragraph is in quotes because the Best Supporting Actor category would be instituted only in 1936. Had it been around a year earlier, Franchot Tone would surely have landed in it.
One last thing: The members of the then-moribund Academy (lots of defections because of labor disputes) committed bloody murder when they chose McLaglen instead of Laughton (who happened to be the choice of the New York Film Critics Circle [also for Ruggles of Red Gap]).
Captains Courageous (1937)
As a New England-based Portuguese fisherman in Victor Fleming’s adventure drama Captains Courageous, Spencer Tracy delivers what is one of the worst performances ever to have won an Oscar. Really, Tracy’s characterization is so phony, but so phony, it’s just as infuriating as Victor McLaglen’s in The Informer.
Ship of Fools (1965)
Not nearly as good as it could – and should – have been, Stanley Kramer’s Best Picture Oscar nominee Ship of Fools is, on the other hand, better than its reputation would suggest.
What could have been improved: Oscar nominees Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner, both of whom have done far better work elsewhere.
What couldn’t have been made any better: Vivien Leigh’s mesmerizing work as a divorced fading beauty. One of these things: Leigh, in what turned out to be her swan song, was bypassed at the Oscars.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)
Rambunctious Debbie Reynolds – her one and only Oscar nomination – is the show in Charles Walters’ mega-musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which deservedly was shortlisted in five other categories, notably, Best Cinematography – Color (Daniel L. Fapp), Best Art Direction (art directors George Davis and E. Preston Ames; set decorators Henry Grace and Hugh Hunt ), and Best Costume Design – Color (Morton Haack).
Harve Presnell, the you-don’t-wanna-mess-with-him Minneapolis car dealership owner in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo, is Reynolds’ handsome leading man.
The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
Based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novella, John Sturges’* The Old Man and the Sea isn’t the great classic its makers – director Sturges, producer Leland Hayward, screenwriter Peter Viertel – clearly aimed it to be. Yet Spencer Tracy (as a Cuban…) did receive an Oscar nomination for mostly sharing the screen with a giant marlin he proudly kills.
Whatever your take on fishing – fun and relaxing, cruel and environmentally dangerous – you’ll surely agree that The Old Man and the Sea would have been far more compelling had Tracy’s character gotten eaten by a great white just as he was about to reach the wharf.
Dimitri Tiomkin won the Best Original Score Oscar, while James Wong Howe was shortlisted in the Best Cinematography – Color category.
* Replacing Fred Zinnemann.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 6.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 6
7:15 AM The Great Waltz (1938)
Director: Julien Duvivier.
Cast: Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravet, Miliza Korjus, Hugh Herbert, Lionel Atwill, Curt Bois, Minna Gombell, Alma Kruger, Greta Meyer.
102m9:15 AM Strangers on a Train (1951)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Kasey Rogers (as Laura Elliott), Marion Lorne, Jonathan Hale, Howard St. John, John Brown, Norma Varden.
96m11:15 AM The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame, Gilbert Roland, Elaine Stewart, Steve Forrest.
118m1:30 PM Gypsy (1962)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Paul Wallace, Ann Jillian, Parley Baer, Harry Shannon, Morgan Brittany, Jean Willes, Harvey Korman.
Cameo: Jack Benny.
149m4:00 PM Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
Cast: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Donna Corcoran, Jesse White, Maria Tallchief, Howard Freeman.
115m6:00 PM She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Director: John Ford.
Cast: John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen, Mildred Natwick, George O’Brien.
103m8:00 PM Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Director: Frank Lloyd.
Cast: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin, Eddie Quillan, Dudley Digges, Donald Crisp, Henry Stephenson, Spring Byington, Movita Castaneda, Hal LeSueur.
132m10:30 PM Captains Courageous (1937)
Director: Victor Fleming.
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Charley Grapewin, Mickey Rooney, John Carradine, Jack La Rue, Donald Briggs.
116m12:45 AM Ship of Fools (1965)
Director: Stanley Kramer.
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner, José Ferrer, Lee Marvin, George Segal, Elizabeth Ashley, Michael Dunn, Alf Kjellin, Charles Korvin, Lilia Skala.
149m3:30 AM The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)
Director: Charles Walters.
Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley, Vassili Lambrinos, Martita Hunt, Audrey Christie.
128m5:45 AM The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
Director: John Sturges.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Felipe Pazos Jr., Harry Bellaver, Don Diamond.
86m
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Cinematography, Seafarers” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Esther Williams Million Dollar Mermaid image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Cinematography, Seafarers” last modified in February 2025.