This article was originally written for the 31 Days of Oscar programming in the TCM Now Playing newsletter in March, 2023.
The biographical film has been a staple of Hollywood cinema almost since the beginning. Producers quickly discovered that basing a movie on true lives and historical occurrences not only gives them a leg up in crafting a plot and characters, it also helps to pre-sell a picture on the assumption that audiences are drawn to stories about people and events they’ve heard of.
Oscar loves a biography. Over the course of Academy history, over a dozen of the Best Picture winners purportedly depict the lives of real people. More than 300 nominations in all four acting categories have been for biographical portrayals of one kind or another, often with multiple nods in the same year. In 2018, for example, 11 of 20 acting nominees played historical figures. Nearly a fifth of all acting Oscar wins have been for “true life” stories (with the caveat that Hollywood biographies frequently have only a cursory relationship with fact). It's easy to see why Oscar lore contends that if you want a good crack at winning a statuette, play a real person.
Most of these movies and performances fit into the category “biopic” but not all. The term generally refers to films that dramatize the characters, actions, accomplishments, etc. of real individuals, whether historical or more contemporary to the time of production, vs. movies “based on a true story” that are more concerned with past events, even if all the characters are or were real people. So, films like Malcolm X (1992) and The Aviator (2004) are biopics, while Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Argo (2012) are not.
Most biopics stick to the usual genre formula, following a person from the early struggles, influences and events that shaped them through their later years of triumph or tragedy (Marie Antoinette, 1938; Ray, 2004). Such films often reduce complex stories down to recognizable and digestible tropes: a childhood of poverty or privilege that shapes the subject’s future life; an aha moment of discovering the artistic, scientific or professional path they will follow; a death or love affair that profoundly affects their personality and future relationships; a fortunate occurrence or fatal error that determines the outcome of their remaining years. A different type of biopic focuses on a limited time frame or specific incidents in a life that illuminate a subject’s essential nature and their significance in history and culture (Young Mr. Lincoln, 1939; Lincoln, 2012).
The 10 films in this month’s showcase may not always provide the deepest and truest insight into their famous subjects’ lives, but the program gives a good picture of how Hollywood has approached the biographical genre and the kind of films and performances the Academy has deemed worthy of recognition.
Disraeli (1929) is an example of the second kind of biopic, following the Victorian-era prime minister in the last few years of his life, when he had the greatest impact on the United Kingdom’s history and politics. The film won a Best Actor Oscar for George Arliss, an unlikely yet bona fide star of the early 30s. By the time he moved from a successful stage and silent film career into sound pictures, Arliss was a late middle-aged Englishman with an uncanny and decidedly unglamorous resemblance to, well, Benjamin Disraeli. Arliss played him on Broadway in 1911, in a 1921 silent and in this film, which was also nominated for Outstanding Production (equivalent to today’s Best Picture) and Best Writing. The movie was a critical and box office success, and Arliss became the first British actor to win an Oscar. He had an affinity for biopics, also playing Alexander Hamilton (1931), Voltaire (1933), the Duke of Wellington in The Iron Duke (1934), two generations of The House of Rothschild (1934) and Cardinal Richelieu (1935).
Taking great liberties with the life and career of the early 20th-century theater impresario, The Great Ziegfeld (1936) is a lavish musical drama that was one of the biggest hits of the decade. William Powell was not nominated for playing a rather sanitized version of Florenz Ziegfeld. But as his first wife, stage star Anna Held, Luise Rainer won the first of two back-to-back Best Actress Oscars for what is essentially a supporting role, largely on the strength of a hyper-emotional telephone scene. The film also won Best Picture and Best Dance Direction (for the over-the-top production number “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”) and received nominations for art direction, editing, original story and director Robert Z. Leonard. Doubling down on the real-life connections, the film also featured Myrna Loy as Ziegfeld’s widow, Billie Burke (aka Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, 1939) and Broadway and vaudeville performers Fanny Brice (once a Ziegfeld Follies star) and Ray Bolger as themselves.
Gary Cooper won the first of two Academy Awards for his portrayal of World War I hero Alvin York in director Howard Hawks’ patriotic biopic Sergeant York (1941). The hugely popular release also won Best Film Editing and was nominated for nine other awards, including male and female supporting roles, original screenplay, director and Outstanding Motion Picture. It was still playing in theaters when the U.S. entered World War II and proved to be an effective recruitment tool. Throughout the war years, the picture often returned to theaters to replace box-office flops and to raise money for war bonds. Cooper’s homey appeal was the perfect fit for the story of the rural pacifist who became one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I.
Performers of all types have been among the most popular subjects for biopics, with nominations for, among others, Larry Parks as singer Al Jolson in The Jolson Story (1946), Dustin Hoffman as comedian Lenny Bruce in Lenny (1974), Vanessa Redgrave as dancer Isadora Duncan in Isadora (1968) and Sissy Spacek as country-western star Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980). Three of this month’s spotlighted films look at successful show business figures. James Cagney got a welcome break from tough guy roles and a Best Actor award as Broadway legend George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). The patriotic musical rescued Cagney from persistent accusations of communist sympathy for his left-wing, pro-labor politics and became a morale booster during World War II. It also won Oscars for Best Music, Scoring and Sound Recording and received five other nominations, including Best Picture.
Stars James Stewart and Doris Day weren’t nominated for their respective showbiz biopic roles as the eponymous Big Band leader in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and as 1920s singing sensation Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me (1955), but their films were honored with several nominations and awards. The Stewart film, following Miller’s life from his early career in the 1920s to his death in a plane crash in 1944, was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Score and won for Best Sound Recording. James Cagney received his third and final Best Actor nomination as Etting’s devoted but abusive husband, Martin Snyder, the volatile Chicago gangster who promoted the successful career of the now mostly forgotten stage star. The musical also garnered nods for its screenplay, scoring, sound recording and song (“I’ll Never Stop Loving You,” one of two numbers written for the movie and never performed by Etting in real life) and won Best Motion Picture Story. Stewart bore some resemblance to Miller, but Day’s performance was mostly Doris Day with minimal effort to capture the vocal and fashion style of the woman she was portraying.
Kirk Douglas went to much greater lengths to depict Vincent Van Gogh in director Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956). Having secured the rights to the artist’s biography two years earlier, Douglas practiced painting to be convincing as an artist at work. He also dyed his hair and beard, achieving a likeness to Van Gogh’s self-portraits close enough to use the actual paintings in the film. His wife also noted that the famously intense Douglas had a hard time shaking off the character when he was not on set. He was nominated for his pains but didn’t win. The critically praised but financially disastrous film’s only Oscar went to Anthony Quinn in a supporting role as Van Gogh’s friend Gauguin. Nominations also went to Norman Corwin for the screenplay he adapted from Irving Stone’s novel and for Best Art Direction. The look of the film was singled out by The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, who noted that Minnelli and team’s use of “the flow of color and the interplay of compositions and hues” conveyed a real sense of Van Gogh’s work and inner life.
In Academy history, only three people have officially refused their awards. The first was screenwriter Dudley Nichols, who turned down his writing award for The Informer (1935) over disputes between the Screen Writers Guild and the studios. (He accepted it three years later.) Marlon Brando sent actor-activist Sacheen Littlefeather to the 1973 ceremony to publicly reject his Best Actor award for The Godfather (1972) as a protest against the film industry’s treatment of Native Americans. But the first actor to turn down an Oscar was George C. Scott for his portrayal of U.S. Army General George S. Patton. The producers of Patton (1970), however, were not disappointed on awards night. The film was nominated in ten categories, winning for Best Picture, director (Franklin J. Schaffner), original screenplay, art direction, editing and sound. It was also nominated for cinematography, score and visual effects. The story takes the “capsule” approach to biography, following the military leader not from his earliest days but beginning the story when he was already a World War II general and ending not long after the global conflict was over.
If, indeed, audiences like biopics for their glimpses into the lives of people they know, how to explain the success of The Last Emperor (1987), Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic about the life of Puyi, the final imperial ruler of China, relatively unknown in the Western world to anyone but scholars and history buffs? The film won in all nine of its nominated categories: picture, director, adapted screenplay, art direction, cinematography, costumes, editing, score and sound. The acclaimed performances by John Lone as Puyi, Joan Chen as his wife and Peter O’Toole as his British mentor and advisor were all overlooked by the Academy. But the sumptuous visuals characteristic of Bertolucci’s work were justly celebrated, thanks to the art direction team and the director of photography Vittorio Storaro, who also shot the biopics Reds (1981), Wagner (1983), Peter the Great (1986), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Goya in Bordeaux (1999), Caravaggio (2007) and Muhammad: The Messenger of God (2015).
Paul Muni was nominated but did not receive an award for The Life of Emile Zola (1937) as the French author who famously conducted a public defense of army officer Alfred Dreyfus, wrongfully accused of treason. It was one of ten nominations for the film, which received Oscars for Best Picture and Best Screenplay (despite the complete avoidance of the antisemitism at the heart of the Dreyfus Affair) and for Joseph Schildkraut in his supporting role as the accused captain. Muni already had a Best Actor Oscar for another biopic, The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). He would go on to play more historical figures in Juarez (1939), Hudson’s Bay (1940) and A Song to Remember (1945). A later biopic on the famous case, I Accuse (1958), with Emlyn Williams as Zola and director José Ferrer as Dreyfus, restored the Jewishness to the story but did not fair well with either critics or audiences.
