The Bad and the Beautiful

The Bad and the Beautiful is a 1952 American melodrama that tells the story of a film producer who alienates everyone around him. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, written by George Bradshaw and Charles Schnee, and stars Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame and Gilbert Roland. The Bad and the Beautiful won five Academy Awards out of six nominations in 1952 (including Gloria Grahame winning Best Supporting Actress), a record for the most awards for a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture or for Best Director. In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The theme song, "The Bad and the Beautiful", penned by David Raksin, became a jazz standard and has been cited as an example of an excellent movie theme. The Bad and the Beautiful was created by the same team that later worked on another film about the seedy film business, Two Weeks in Another Town (1962): director (Vincente Minnelli), producer (John Houseman), screenwriter (Charles Schnee), composer (David Raksin), male star (Kirk Douglas), and studio (MGM). Both films also feature performances of the song "Don't Blame Me", by Leslie Uggams in Two Weeks and by Peggy King in The Bad and the Beautiful. In one scene of Two Weeks in Another Town, the cast watches clips from The Bad and the Beautiful in a screening room, presented as a film that Douglas's character in Two Weeks, Jack Andrus, had starred in. Two Weeks is not a sequel, however, as the characters in the two stories are unrelated. Plot In Hollywood, director Fred Amiel (Sullivan), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Turner), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Powell) each refuse to speak by phone to Jonathan Shields (Douglas) in Paris. Movie producer Harry Pebbel (Pidgeon) gathers them in his office and explains that Shields has a new film idea and he wants the three of them for the project. Shields cannot get financing on his own, but with their names attached, there would be no problem. Pebbel asks the three to allow him to get Shields on the phone before they give their final answer.