News

Drew Barrymore is a child of Hollywood royalty and a Golden Globe winning actress whose career has spanned nearly her entire life, making her first credited screen performance at the age of three. But how many of her titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Barrymore was born to a celebrated acting family though she never really knew her famous ancestors. Her grandfather was John Barrymore, star of “Grand Hotel”, “Twentieth Century” and “Dinner at Eight” among others. She is also the great grand niece of Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Lionel won one of the earliest Oscars as Best Actor for “A Free Soul” in 1931 but is probably best remembered as the villainous Mr. Potter of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His sister Ethel won the 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “None but the Lonely Heart...

Clark Gable is the Oscar-winning matinee idol who starred in dozens of films before his untimely death in 1960, but how many of those titles are classics? Let’s take a look back at 12 of Gable’s greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

After appearing in bit parts in a number of films, Gable shot to stardom with his performance in “A Free Soul” (1931) as a gangster who bewitches a young woman (Norma Shearer) whose attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) helped him beat a murder rap. From there forward, the actor’s persona as a raffish leading man who’s every guy’s best friend and every gal’s dream became cemented in a number of subsequent roles.

He won an Oscar just three years later for Frank Capra‘s screwball classic “It Happened One Night” (1934), in which he played a newspaper reporter traveling with a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert). The film...

In the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, 88 films have each received nominations for both Best Actor and Best Actress. Although there have been 19 cases of two or more movies doing so in a single year, there hasn’t been such an occurrence since 1996, when both lead lineups included performers from “Dead Man Walking” and “Leaving Las Vegas.” However, according to Gold Derby’s late-stage 2024 Oscar nominations predictions, that nearly three-decade gap is set to soon be closed by costar pairs from “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro.”

The vast majority of the Oscars prognosticators who’ve been shaping our odds all season agree that Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”) will all clinch academy mentions for their lead performances. The last such quartet consisted of eventual winners Nicolas Cage (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking”) and their respective costars,...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we look at an Oscars category from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winner stands the test of time.)

We are in somewhat of a transitional period with how we think about the acting categories for entertainment awards. This, primarily, has to do with gender. We have had separate categories for female and male performers for decades upon decades, but if you really stop to think about it, there is no difference in what a female actor does compared to a male one. Why shouldn't Colin Farrell in "The Banshees of Inisherin" compete against Cate Blanchett in "TÁR"? Of course, the worry is that in our patriarchal society, men will come to dominate that category and fewer women will be nominated and win. Then you have the added issue of non-binary performers being forced to slot themselves in a particular...

In a rare occurrence, three of the four acting categories are still up in the air as we inch closer to Oscar Sunday. And depending on the permutation of the victorious quartet, we could have one of the oldest groups of winners ever.

Most of the top contenders in each category are over the age of 50. Ke Huy Quan, the closest thing to a lock in Best Supporting Actor, is 51. His “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-stars and fellow Screen Actors Guild Awards winners Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis are 60 and 64, respectively. Yeoh’s been neck and neck this whole time in Best Actress with Cate Blanchett (“TÁR”), who is 53. Curtis pulled off her supporting actress SAG upset over fellow 64-year-old veteran Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”). And in lead actor, SAG-AFTRA crowned 54-year-old Brendan Fraser for “The Whale.”

If any combination of these people prevail, it...

Two years ago, siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell shared in four Grammy wins for the album “When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” (Album of the Year; Best Pop Vocal Album) and its single “Bad Guy” (Record of the Year; Song of the Year). Now, they have concurrently earned their first Oscar nominations for co-writing the song “No Time to Die” for the James Bond film of the same name. If they prevail later this month, they will become the fourth brother-sister pair to both be honored by the academy and the first to win for the same film.

The first brother-sister Oscar champs and first sibling winners overall were Douglas Shearer and Norma Shearer. In 1930, he triumphed in the Best Sound category for “The Big House” while she took the Best Actress prize for “The Divorcee.” They were followed by Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore, who respectively...

Recently, short Best Actor-nominated performances have been scarce at the Oscars. The average screen time of the past decade’s nominees is over 80 minutes, and only a handful of them have not reached one hour. Still, performances that fall under 60 minutes make up nearly one third of the category’s nominees, with plenty boasting much less time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest of all (and here are the 10 shortest winners):

10. Humphrey Bogart (“The Caine Mutiny”)

28 minutes, 22 seconds (22.79% of the film)

Bogart’s third and final Best Actor nomination came in 1955 for his portrayal of tyrannical Naval commander Philip Queeg. Though he is absent from the first quarter of the film and appears on screen for less than 30 minutes, he was classified as a lead. In the decades since, several actors have also been placed in the lead category for relatively short villainous roles, including Michael Douglas (“Wall Street...

5 random things that happened on this day, January 27th, in showbiz history

1939 Idiots Delight starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable opens in theaters. It was their final picture together but Mr Gable had in fact become a star In a Norma Shearer picture: A Free Soul (1931). Jesse James starring Tyrone Power was also released on this day during "Hollywood's Greatest Year"...

The creation of the supporting Oscar categories in 1937 clarified the intention that the lead acting categories are meant to honor true star turns. While most Best Actor wins have aligned with that idea, there have been more than a few whose placement has been called into question due to low screen time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest winners in the category:

10. Gary Cooper (“High Noon”)

40 minutes, 57 seconds (48.35% of the film)

Five-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Cooper earned his second win in 1953 for playing morally conflicted Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon.” By appearing in less than half of the 85-minute film, Cooper made history by holding two screen time records at once. At the time, his one-hour, 30-minute, 55-second performance in 1941’s “Sergeant York” was the longest to have won in the Best Actor category. His second win broke a 21-year record for shortest, which was previously held...

The verdict is in. If you want to have success in awards’ season go to court. Over the decades, a caseload of legal movies have been judged to be Oscar worthy. And for good reason. The genre is rich with emotions, betrayals, manipulations, love, hate, violence and redemption. Who doesn’t remember Humphrey Bogart’s brilliant Oscar-nominated turn as Captain Queeg slowly losing his mind on the stand as he recounts his obsession with missing strawberries in 1954’s “The Caine Mutiny”?

“A Free Soul” (1931)

Lionel Barrymore won his only Academy Award for for his delicious over-the-top turn as a wily alcoholic attorney who gets a ruthless gangster (Clark Gable) off for murder in this juicy pre-code melodrama. Though his free-spirited daughter (Norma Shearer), who wears the slinkiest of gowns, has a boyfriend (a staid Leslie Howard), she soon realizes she loves bad boys and leaves Howard for Gable. It’s a big mistake.

This article marks Part 3 of the Gold Derby series reflecting on films that contended for the Big Five Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted). With “A Star Is Born” this year on the cusp of joining this exclusive group of Oscar favorites, join us as we look back at the 43 extraordinary pictures that earned Academy Awards nominations in each of the Big Five categories, including the following 11 films that scored a pair of prizes among the top races.

At the 4th Academy Awards ceremony, “Cimarron” (1931) made Oscar history as the first motion picture to ever score nominations in the Big Five categories. On the big night, the western took home the top prize in Best Picture, as well as the Oscar in Best Adapted Screenplay (Howard Estabrook). Not as successful were the picture’s director, Wesley Ruggles, topped by Norman Taurog (“Skippy”), and the leads,...

With the second season of the Netflix series “Santa Clarita Diaries,” it’s the perfect chance to look back at the film career of star Drew Barrymore from a very young girl to now. The unusual program takes the popular zombie storyline and sets it in suburban California where a young mother and wife becomes a flesh-eating zombie and craves human flesh to eat.

See‘Santa Clarita Diet’ Season 2 trailer [Watch]

Barrymore was born to a celebrated acting family though she never really knew her famous ancestors. Her grandfather was John Barrymore, star of “Grand Hotel”, “Twentieth Century” and “Dinner at Eight” among others. She is also the great grand niece of Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Lionel won one of the earliest Oscars as Best Actor for “A Free Soul” in 1931 but is probably best remembered as the villainous Mr. Potter of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.

This year’s quartet of Oscar acting winners is one for the ages. With an average age of 56.5, 59-year-old Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), 60-year-old Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), 49-year-old Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards”) and 58-year-old Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”) are the second oldest foursome to take home Oscars.

They only trail the Class of 1981, which featured three septuagenarians — 76-year-old Best Actor Henry Fonda (“On Golden Pond”), 74-year-old Best Actress Katharine Hepburn (“On Golden Pond”) and 77-year-old Best Supporting Actor John Gielgud (“Arthur”) — and 56-year-old Maureen Stapleton (“Reds”) for an average age of 70.75, which may never be surpassed. Since the supporting races weren’t added until the ninth ceremony, Oldman, McDormand, Rockwell and Janney aren’t the second oldest set of winners overall; that belongs to then-53-year-old Lionel Barrymore (“A Free Soul”) and then-63-year-old Marie Dressler (“Min and Bill”), whose average age was 58 at the fourth Oscars.

What does a working girl have to do to get ahead, when all she has in her favor is an incredible face, a lavish wardrobe, and a pair of legs to make any executive wolf howl? Loretta Young juggles two egotistical swains, while Joan Blondell shines as an enticing all-pro homewrecker.

Big Business Girl

DVD-r

The Warner Archive Collection

1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 74 min. / Street Date September 14, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Loretta Young, Frank Albertson, Ricardo Cortez, Joan Blondell, Frank Darien, Dorothy Christy, Oscar Apfel, Judith Barrett, Mickey Bennett, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Virginia Sale.

Cinematography: Sol Polito

Film Editor: Pete Fritch

Written by Robert Lord, story by Patricia Reilly & H.N. Swanson

Produced and Directed by William A. Seiter

Let’s hear it for the Warner Archive Collection’s voluminous vault of early ’30s Warners, MGM and Rko entertainments, which has given us a real education about this era of filmmaking.

Norma Shearer: The Boss' wife was cast in 'The Divorcee.' Norma Shearer movies on TCM: Early talkies and Best Actress Oscar Note: This Norma Shearer article is currently being revised and expanded. Please Check back later. Norma Shearer, one of the top stars in Hollywood history and known as the Queen of MGM back in the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of Nov. 2015. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that even though its parent company, Time Warner, owns most of Shearer's movies, TCM isn't airing any premieres. So, if you were expecting to check out a very young Norma Shearer in The Devil's Circus, Upstage, or After Midnight, you're out of luck. (I've seen all three; they're all worth a look.) It's a crime that, music score or no, restored print or no, TCM/Time Warner don't make available for viewing the...

Tod Browning’s “Freaks”

Before R-ratings, anti-heroes and gratuitous violence and nudity in mainstream Hollywood movies, there was the Hays Code. As a form of self-policing the industry, virtually every movie released up until 1968 needed that stamp of approval if it wanted distribution. And while it helped produce all of Old Hollywood’s true classics for several decades, it often included ridiculous rulings like not being able to show or flush a toilet on screen, not allowing married couples to be shown sleeping in the same bad or always making sure criminals, even protagonists of the movie, got punished in the end.

But before the Hays Code was nothing, and it was a gloriously weird, scandalous time for the movies. Certain Hollywood films in the early ’30s as “talkies” were rapidly taking hold have since been labeled “Pre-Code” films that never received Hollywood’s stamp of approval.

Every Friday in September,...

Drew Barrymore half-sister Jessica Barrymore found dead near San Diego (photo: Jessica Barrymore) Drew Barrymore’s half-sister Jessica Barrymore was found dead in her car early Tuesday, July 29, 2014, in National City, located between San Diego and Chula Vista in Southern California. Jessica Barrymore (née Brahma [Jessica] Blyth Barrymore) would have turned 48 on Thursday, July 31. According to a witness, Jessica Barrymore, who worked at a Petco store, was found reclined in the driver’s seat, with a drink between her legs. White pills were seen scattered on the passenger seat. Despite online rags reporting either that Drew Barrymore’s half-sister committed suicide or died from a drug overdose, the official cause of death hasn’t been announced. As per the Los Angeles Times, an autopsy will be performed in the next few days. In a statement published in the gossip magazine People, Drew Barrymore, 39, said she had "only met her [sister Jessica] briefly." Their father was John Drew Barrymore,...

Mickey Rooney dead at 93: Four-time Oscar nominee, frequent Judy Garland co-star may have had the longest film career ever (photo: Mickey Rooney ca. 1940) Mickey Rooney, four-time Academy Award nominee and one of the biggest domestic box-office draws during the studio era, died of "natural causes" on Sunday, April 6, 2014, at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of North Hollywood. The Brooklyn-born Rooney (as Joseph Yule Jr., on September 23, 1920) had reportedly been in ill health for some time. He was 93. Besides his countless movies, and numerous television and stage appearances, Mickey Rooney was also known for his stormy private life, which featured boozing and gambling, some widely publicized family infighting (including his testifying in Congress in 2011 about elder abuse), his filing for bankruptcy in 1962 after having earned a reported $12 million (and then going bankrupt again in 1996), his eight marriages — including those to actresses Ava Gardner, Martha Vickers, and Barbara Ann Thomason...

I must have been about 12 years old when I first saw Tarzan and His Mate. I loved the Tarzan movies. Tarzan was the undisputed King of the Jungle and was the greatest, Cheetah was man’s best friend, Boy was annoying, and Jane was the Queen of the Jungle and a young male’s introduction to the allure of the female. The uncensored version, with a naked Jane silhouetted while changing clothes in a backlit tent and the spectacular underwater ballet scene would have been a revelation to me; Tarzan and Jane are frolicking in their favorite swimming hole, Tarzan in his usual loincloth and Jane naked – not naked from the waste up, or presumed naked as they hid her behind some lake flora or rocks – Jane was naked.

Madam Satan

Most film fans knowledge of Pre-Code Hollywood movies doesn’t go much further than King Kong, Frankenstein, and a few other titles.

Schoolgirl Zoë Smith was penning lucid movie reviews back in 1932, and when our veteran film critic retired, she sent him her work. He was so impressed, he drove to her home to meet her

A few months ago a rather special present arrived on my 80th birthday, my final day as film critic of the Observer. It was a small, lined notebook, seven by four-and-a half inches. On the first page was a drawing of the matinee idol Clive Brook under the title "Film Criticisms 1932". It had been sent from south London by the 97-year-old Zoë Di Biase. She'd been a regular Observer reader since the age of 18, she said, and this was a gift to mark my retirement. "I've always enjoyed the cinema and you were a great follow-on to CA Lejeune," she wrote, referring to my predecessor who was this paper's critic from 1928 to 1960. "Turning out the other day,...

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ sequel could get killed by Paramount (photo: James Stewart and Donna Reed in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’) What would the world be like if any one individual human being had never been born? In most cases, the world would quite possibly be an infinitely better place, but the overwhelming majority of (delusional) humans want to feel good about themselves and their place on our overpopulated, fast-rotting planet. Hence movies such as Frank Capra’s 1946 sentimental fantasy drama It’s a Wonderful Life, released the year after the end of World War II — which reportedly left about 60 million human beings dead (plus countless other non-humans), in addition to millions more maimed, homeless, and/or psychologically destroyed. Starring James Stewart as Small Town America family man George Bailey, who almost kills himself but is prevented from doing so by an angel with way too much time in his hands,...

Almost as old as Hollywood itself, nepotism has had the movie industry stitched up for decades and Will Smith's family are keeping up the tradition

Seriousfacing its way into cinemas this weekend, After Earth is the $130m father-son action movie that fans of slightly icky familial relationships have been waiting for. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth 1,000 years after its abandonment by humankind, the film stars Will Smith and his real-life son Jaden Smith, has a story by Will Smith, and is produced by Will Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith and her brother Caleeb Pinkett. And people say Hollywood is too incestuous.

The Smiths have been cultivating their showbiz dynasty for more than a decade now, ever since a four-year-old Jaden was cast in All Of Us, an autobiographical sitcom produced by his parents. (Layabout sibling Willow was a doddering six-year-old by the time her own acting career began). Still,...

The play Barrymore, which in 1997 earned Christopher Plummer a Tony Award for his portrayal of legendary stage and screen star John Barrymore, will be shown at movie houses in Canada in May. Screenings in the United States and elsewhere will follow in October. Could that possibly mean a third Oscar nomination for Plummer, this year's Best Supporting Actor winner for Mike Mills' Beginners? Unless Academy rules have changed in that regard — and Barrymore gets shown for a week in the Los Angeles area — that's certainly a possibility. Filmed plays — Barrymore was filmed with multiple high-definition cameras last year — have earned Academy recognition in the past. For instance, a 1965 filmed version of Britain's National Theatre presentation of Othello earned acting nods for Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, Maggie Smith, and Joyce Redman. In 1975, James Whitmore was shortlisted in the Best Actor category for the Theatrovision production of his one-man show Give 'em Hell,...

Two radically different Norma Shearer characters: as loving (ditched) wife and mother in The Women, with Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell (top); as a woman with a penchant for pointed feathers in Lady of the Night (bottom). She also enjoyed to be slapped around by Clark Gable in A Free Soul (below right) Mike Lasalle on Norma Shearer: "Shearer was at her best in the films no one sees: her silents. When you see her in the masterpieces she made with Monta Bell – or even in fluff, such as Lady of Chance – there’s no question that she was a great silent-film actress. In the talkies, the work is uneven, sometimes in curious ways. … Generally, I think the mistake [...]...