75th Golden Globes Anniversary

East of Eden, one of the first films to be shot in Color Cinemascope, was awarded Best Motion Picture - Drama at the 1956 Golden Globes. Sadly, the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Actor had to be awarded to James Dean posthumously - the actor died in a car accident, at 25, just a few months before, on that infamous September 30, 1955 (in Cholame, California).

The issue of antisemitism gets the Elia Kazan treatment in this tight drama sprung out of a personal experience: when producer Darryl F. Zanuck’ application to join the prestigious Los Angeles Country Club was denied because it was assumed (incorrectly) that he was Jewish.

War comes home in director William Wyler’s drama about three servicemen returning from the blood-soaked battlefronts of World War II to hometowns they no longer recognize. The project started as an article in Time magazine about the difficulties encountered by troops coming home, turned into a screenplay by MacKinlay Cantor, commissioned by producer and studio head Samuel Goldwyn.

A powerful drama about four days in the life of an alcoholic writer spiraling out of control, The Lost Weekend is the fourth film of Billy Wilder’s extraordinary career as a director and only his third US production. Self-exiled in Hollywood after the ascent of Nazism in his native Austria, Wilder had left behind over a decade of steady work as a screenwriter, and was, in his own words, “learning to do it all over again”, in great part thanks to his collaboration with writer Charles Brackett, who would be his writing partner throughout his career.