Jack Warner paid the then astronomical sum of $5,000,000 for the screen rights to Lerner and Lowe’s smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady. His dream star cast consisted of Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Cagney in the roles created by Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway. Both Grant and Cagney turned him down, but Hepburn accepted the challenge for $1,000,000 of the film’s purported $17,000,000 budget. She was joined by original stars Harrison and Holloway.

An event film, it won eight of the twelve 1964 Oscars it was nominated for. Although a faithful recreation of the stage show as opposed to an opened up screen presentation, it is nevertheless and eye-popping extravaganza of the type they don’t make anymore. The sets and costumes are spectacular, especially when seen on a large screen and in a properly color restored version. Unfortunately many people who’ve never seen the film on a large screen and have bad memories of color faded TV showings of the film, tend to dismiss it as one of Oscar’s lesser winners. Anyone who thinks so, needs to see it again in the proper light.

Among the film’s wins were those for Best Picture, Actor (Harrison) and Director (George Cukor). Both Holloway and Gladys Cooper were nominated for their supporting performances, but lost. Hepburn was not nominated, and had she been, would likely have lost anyway to Julie Andrews, who after being ignored by Warner had a triumph of her own in Mary Poppins.

Although it garnered more nominations than My Fair Lady – thirteen – Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins won fewer actual Oscars – five. Julie Andrews’ win for Best Actress was among the most popular in Oscar history. Not only had she wowed audiences with her practically perfect nanny in the Disney film, she also scored impressively in the World War II comedy-drama, The Americanization of Emily. By the time the Oscars rolled around, the world had already seen her in the then highest grossing film of all time, 1965’s The Sound of Music.

While Andrews was the undisputed star of Mary Poppins, the film was by no means a one-woman show. Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Karen Dotrice, Matthew Garber, Jane Darwell and many others added to the fun.

Nominated for an impressive twelve Oscars, Peter Glenville’s film version of the stage hit, Becket, won only one – for Edward Anhalt’s adapted screenplay. Richard Burton starred as (St.) Thomas `a Becket, the Bishop of Canterbury and Peter O’Toole co-starred as his nemesis, King Henry II, a role he would reprise to even greater effect in The Lion in Winter four years later. Both were nominated for Best Actor while John Gielgud was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as King Louis II of France.

Anthony Quinn, who had been Broadway’s Becket to Laurence Olivier’s Henry, had the greatest role of his career as the enigmatic Zorba the Greek. His fierce portrayal was so brilliant that audiences thereafter had a hard time distinguishing between the actor and the character he was playing. He was forevermore being accused of playing Zorba the “this” or Zorba the” that” as in Zorba the Pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman.

Based on Nikos Kazantzakis’ celebrated novel, Michael Cacoyannis’ film paired Quinn with Alan Bates, Irene Papas and Lila Kedrova as the other principals. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won three, including one for Kedrova’s heartbreaking portrayal of the aging courtesan. Shockingly, Manos Theodorakis’ pulsating score, which was for many the film’s highlight, wasn’t nominated. Kedrova won a Tony for reprising her role in the Kander and Ebb musical version, Zorba, again opposite Quinn, twenty years later.

Perhaps the film that has stood the test of time better than any other nominated for Best Picture of 1964 is Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The Doomsday satire was released at the height of the Cold War and was so effective at showing the absurdities on both sides of the issues that similarly themed dramatic films such as Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe failed to ignite the intended outrage from audiences.

Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Actor Peter Sellers and Best Director, the film had already won Kubrick the Best Director award from the New York Film Critics, and Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George the Best Screenplay award from the Writers’ Guild. It would go on to win BAFTAs for Best British Film and Best Film from Any Source.

Among the memorable films of 1964 nominated for Oscars in other categories were The Chalk Garden; The Night of the Iguana; Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte; Séance on a Wet Afternoon; The Pumpkin Eater; The Unsinkable Molly Brown; A Hard Day’s Night; Topkapi; Seven Days in May and The Best Man.

Deborah Kerr had her last two major screen roles in Ronald Neame’s The Chalk Garden based on Enid Bagnold’s play, and John Huston’s The Night of the Iguana from Tennessee Williams’ play. Alas, she failed to be nominated for either.

In The Chalk Garden, she plays a convicted murderer, who under another name, is hired by unsuspecting grand dame Edith Evans to act as governess who Evans’ miscreant grand-daughter, played by Hayley Mills. Mills’ father John plays Evans’ butler. Evans won an Oscar nomination reprising her London stage role. She was a replacement for fellow Supporting Actress nominee Gladys Cooper who originated the role on Broadway, but had to bow out due to overtime on My Fair Lady and her commitment to the TV series, The Rogues.

Kerr plays an itinerant quick sketch artist traveling with her aged poet grandfather in The Night of the Iguana. Co-starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon, the film won a nomination for Grayson Hall as a shrill lesbian tour director. How she was nominated, while Kerr and Gardner, both of whom are at the top of their game, were not, is beyond me. The film won for Dorothy Jeakins’ black-and-white costume design.

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, having proved successful box office adversaries in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, were scheduledto be re-united for the director’s follow-up horror flick, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but Crawford fell ill and had to be replaced. After months of delays, the film was finally made with Olivia de Havilland filling in for Crawford. The film was delayed for so long that co-star Barbara Stanwyck had to back out to start work on TV’s The Big Valley and was replaced by Mary Astor. Agnes Moorehead, playing Davis’ slovenly maid, was on the verge of quitting the film to start work on her TV series, Bewitched, when the film resumed production. Thelma Ritter had been tapped to step in.

Lucky for Moorehead, the film brought her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Two American actresses put on British accents and won Best Actress nominations for their efforts. Kim Stanley, who won the New York Film Critics award for hers, played a bogus psychic and kidnapper to stunning effect in Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Bancroft, who won a Golden Globe as the year’s Best Actress – Drama, portrayed the mother of nine undergoing a nervous breakdown to chilling effect in Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater.

Debbie Reynolds campaigned hard for the screen version of Meredith Willson’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown and won the part over Shirley MacLaine, who was equally desperate for the role. Nominated for six Oscars, Reynolds plays the real life survivor of the Titanic whose theme song is “I Ain’t Down Yet”.

The winds of change were blowing in the music world and in the way music was presented on screen. If My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and The Unsinkable Molly Brown were symptomatic of what worked in the past, then The Beatles’ A Hard Day Night was clearly a representation of things to come.

Built around a “typical day” in the lives of the Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Richard Lester’s uproarious comedy also featured Wilfrid Brambell as George’s grandfather. It was nominated for Best Scoring – Adaptation or Original and Best Original Screenplay.

Jules Dassin’s caper comedy, Topkapi, gave us Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov and Robert Morley involved in the theft of a jeweled dagger from a museum in Istanbul. Ustinov won his second Oscar for his sweaty performance.

Two marvelous films about the Presidency accounted for two of Ustinov’s competitors.

Fredric March was the beleaguered President who stands up to would-be military dictator Burt Lancaster in John Frankenheimer’s tense film of Fletcher Knebel’s best-seller, Seven Days in May. Kirk Douglas and Ava Gardner co-starred and former Oscar winner Edmund O’Brien was again nominated for his portrayal of March’s trusted friend, a U.S. Senator, who puts his life on the line for his President.

Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson were the front-runners at the Presidential convention in Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Best Man. Thirties leading man Lee Tracy won an Oscar nomination for his comeback performance as a feisty former President modeled after Harry Truman. Margret Leighton, Edie Adams and a marvelous Ann Sothern were also featured.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

New on DVD this week: the Oscar bound The Kids Are All Right with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore and the Blu-ray debuts of the 1935 Oscar winner, Mutiny on the Bounty with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable and the ahead- of-its time 1955 masterpiece, The Night of the Hunter, directed by Laughton with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish.