Thursday, February 20, 2014

Notes on Of Human Bondage

I recommended the 1934 Bette Davis version of Of Human Bondage back in July 2012. It's airing again tonight at 8:00 PM as part of a look at the Best Actress Nominees of 1934.

And therein lies the first tale. Bette Davis wasn't nominated by the Academy for this movie. Back then, they only nominated three people in hte acting categories, and this is still a couple of years before the supporting acting categories. Somebody must have liked her performance enough to start a write-in campaign, and it was at least successful enough for her to beat out Grace Moore in One Night of Love (11:30 PM tonight). The Academy mentioned who finished second and third back then, and lists Davis third, with a note that it was an unofficial nomination. Technically, then, Of Human Bondage didn't receive any Oscar nominations, as it was overlooked in all the other categories, too. The movie was produced at RKO, and they apparently promoted The Gay Divorcee for a Best Picture nomination. I suppose you can't really blame RKO.

TCM's schedule page claims that you can't get Of Human Bondage from the TCM shop, but a search of the TCM shop itself says that yes you can; in fact there are two versions available and in stock. One is a pricey 2013 release from Kino, while the other is a cheapie 2002 release from Alpha Video, which leads me to believe that the movie must have fallen into the public domain at some point. Interestingly, the TCM shop has a "Recommended for you" sidebar listing a couple of products that you supposedly might like if you like the one that's the main focus of the page. Amazon does too, and Amazon's recommendations are usually stuff with the same actor or director; their page for the Kino Blu-ray of Of Human Bondage also suggests Hell's House starring Bette Davis, and a bit surprisingly, Things to Come. The two TCM Shop pages, however, recommend things completely unrelated to Of Human Bondage -- and completely different from each other! Each recommends a noir box set, but they recommend different sets, for example. Because everybody knows Of Human Bondage is a stellar example of film noir.

No comments: