I was just thinking that Stephanie at ScrapsbyStephanie was one dedicated movie chick because she expanded this meme to 1965. Then Stacy at TrueBlueTexan went all the way back! As far as they go...to 1940 (films released in 1939 got their award in early 1940). So much of her list reminded me of my mom and her film-watching prowess. My dad never went to movie theaters, I think he might have just fallen asleep and drowned out the soundtrack with his snoring. But pre-1970? My mom knew them all.
We had a couple local shows, I suspect every town did in the days before cable, one was Bill Kennedy At the Movies. Bill was a minor actor in a couple films, and would answer caller questions about movies and celebrities in between acts of the movie of the day.
The other was the Rita Bell Prize Movie, where our gracious host, Rita Bell Hansen would play a snippet of a song, and give away prizes to the caller who could identify the song title. Thanks to BlogOfDeath for refreshing my memory. I expect I will be exploring that site some more, and wishing I'd registered that name.
Anyway, the main difference between the two shows was that Rita was on in the morning, and Bill was on in the afternoon. Since I went to morning kindergarten, I saw more of Bill than of Rita. So I shamelessly cut and pasted from Stacy's site, and will have my mother rolling in her grave at how few I have seen. Two notes: I have changed the years from Stacy's post. She got her list from the IMDB which gives the year of the award, rather than the year of release. Also, I changed a couple foreign film titles to English, so you won't think they are typos. Ingmar Bergman should forgive me.
I think I will try to have Husband do a guest post with the whole list so you can all be amazed.
1939- Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights
1940- Rebecca, All This and Heaven Too, The Foreign Correspondent, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, Kitty Foyle, The Letter, The Long Voyage Home, Our Town, The Philadelphia Story
1941- How Green Was My Valley, Blossom in the Dust, Citizen Kane, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, One Foot in Heaven, Sergeant York, Suspicion
1942- Mrs. Miniver , 49th Parallel, Kings Row, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Pied Piper, The Pride of the Yankees, Random Harvest, The Talk of the Town, Wake Island, Yankee Doodle Dandy
1943- Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Heaven Can Wait, The Human Comedy, In Which We Serve, Madame Curie, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Song of Bernadette, Watch on the Rhine
1944- Going My Way, Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Since You Went Away, Wilson
1945- The Lost Weekend, Anchors Aweigh, The Bells of St. Mary's, Mildred Pierce, Spellbound
1946- The Best Years of Our Lives, The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France, It's a Wonderful Life, The Razor's Edge, The Yearling
1947- Gentleman's Agreement, The Bishop's Wife, Crossfire, Great Expectations, Miracle on 34th Street
1948- Hamlet, Johnny Belinda, The Red Shoes, The Snake Pit, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1949- All the King's Men, Battleground, The Heiress, A Letter to Three Wives, Twelve O'Clock High
1950- All About Eve, Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, King Solomon's Mines
Sunset Blvd
1951- An American in Paris, Decision Before Dawn, A Place in the Sun, Quo Vadis, A Streetcar Named Desire
1952- The Greatest Show on Earth, High Noon, Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man
1953- From Here to Eternity, Julius Caesar, The Robe, Roman Holiday, Shane
1954- On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Three Coins in the Fountain
1955- Marty, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Mister Roberts, Picnic, The Rose Tattoo
1956- Around the World in Eighty Days, Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, The Ten Commandments
1957- The Bridge on the River Kwai, 12 Angry Men, Peyton Place, Sayonara, Witness for the Prosecution
1958- Gigi, Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Defiant Ones, Separate Tables
1959- Ben-Hur, Anatomy of a Murder, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Nun's Story, Room at the Top
1960- The Apartment, The Alamo, Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, The Sundowners
1961- West Side Story, Fanny, The Guns of Navarone, The Hustler, Judgment at Nuremberg
1962- Lawrence of Arabia, The Longest Day, The Music Man, Mutiny on the Bounty, To Kill a Mockingbird
1963- Tom Jones, America, America, Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, Lilies of the Field
1964- My Fair Lady, Alexis Zorbas, Becket, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Mary Poppins
1965- The Sound of Music, Darling, Doctor Zhivago , Ship of Fools, A Thousand Clowns
1966- A Man for All Seasons, Alfie, The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming, The Sand Pebbles, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1967- In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
1968- Oliver!, Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, Rachel, Rachel, Romeo and Juliet
1969- Midnight Cowboy, Anne of the Thousand Days, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Hello, Dolly! , Z
1970- Patton, Airport, Five Easy Pieces, Love Story, MASH
1971- The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange, Fiddler on the Roof, The Last Picture Show, Nicholas and Alexandra
1972- The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, Sounder, The Emigrants
1973- The Sting, American Graffiti, The Exorcist, A Touch of Class, Cries and Whispers
1974- The Godfather: Part II, Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, The Towering Inferno
1975- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville
1976- Rocky, All The President's Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Taxi Driver
1977- Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point
1978- The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight, An Unmarried Woman
1979- Kramer vs. Kramer, All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, Norma Rae
