By CJ Johnson & Les Asmussen
The Best Picture Oscar for 1952 didn’t go to Singin’ In The Rain because it went to The Greatest Show On Earth, which was not the greatest show of 1952 (Time called it “a mammoth merger of two masters of malarkey for the masses”), and in a year of great filmmaking, its win has gone down as a huge embarrassment. The without-a-doubt Best Picture of 1952 was the critical darling, Singin’ In The Rain, but it wasn’t even nominated. Three hugely impressive works by major directors were nominated – High Noon, Moulin Rouge and The Quiet Man – but all of them lost to…The Greatest Show On Earth, an over-stuffed studio nightmare that would be lucky to screen on cable at 4:00pm on Sunday, let alone get the continuing acclaim that Singin’ In The Rain currently enjoys.
The fifth nomination went to Ivanhoe, directed by MGM house-hack, Richard Thorpe. The rollicking adventure was one of the big box office films of the year…but to be nominated instead of Singin’ In The Rain? It seems that Dore Schary (Chief Of Production at MGM) hated musicals, and in those days, studio employees were often told how to vote. Schary told ‘em to vote for Ivanhoe…and The Best Musical Ever went un-nominated. Meanwhile, the largely forgotten The Greatest Show On Earth has the second-worst rating of the 81 Best Picture winners on Rotten Tomatoes (41%), while Singin’ In The Rain sits on a rating of 100%. Roger Ebert wrote, “The verdict of the years knows better than Oscar: Singin’ In The Rain is a transcendent experience, and no-one who loves movies can afford to miss it.”
They often get it wrong