Anita and the Oscars
Anita Loos and Robert “Hoppy” Hoskins at MGM
Put on your fancy jewelry, pop some bubbly, and order your Chinese takeout. It’s time for OSCAR!
Now, the question we’re all here for: did Anita Loos ever win an Oscar?
The first Oscars were held in May, 1929, so Anita was definitely well-ensconced in the industry at that point. She’d also contributed to one of the most capital-S serious films of the silent era by this point: D.W. Griffith’s follow-up to The Birth of a Nation, the infamous flop Intolerance.
Anita, however, flourished when writing comedies. Her best works were satires of romance, society, and hypocritical poseurs. My personal favorite is her 1932 film for Jean Harlow, Red-Headed Woman, an adaptation of a Katharine Brush novel. There’s nothing like Jean Harlow slithering around in silk slips while dishing out Anita Loos wisecracks: “A girl's a fool that doesn't get a head. It's just as easy to hook a rich man as it is to get hooked by a poor one."
Anita’s particular talent for comedy may have been one reason she never took home the little gold man.
Then, as now, the Academy favored serious dramas. The first best picture winner in 1929 was Wings, a Paramount war drama directed by William Wellman featuring Gary Cooper and Clara Bow.
The year Red-Headed Woman might have received notice, an adapted film called Bad Girl won the category, offering a melodramatic take on the misunderstandings between a working-class couple. Though the girl from the wrong side of the tracks was part of Loos’s milieu, this was not her tone.
The closest Loos got to Oscar was through her partnership with frequent collaborator at MGM, Robert “Hoppy” Hopkins.
Loos adored working with Hoppy. She described collaborating with him and Irving Thalberg as being as good as a love affair.
The delight the writers took in one another’s company shows in their best scripts, 1936’s San Francisco and 1937’s Saratoga (despite Loos’s general disgust with director Jack Conway at the time and the tragedy of Harlow’s death during filming).
San Francisco, was a disaster film with musical numbers, featuring Clark Gable, Jeanette McDonald, and Spencer Tracy. Despite the dubious genre mash-up and directing credits (though Jack Conway is named director, both D.W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim a hand in the film), the film was a hit.
The film generated an acting nomination for Spencer Tracy (he’d lose to Paul Muni for The Story of Louis Pasteur) a directing nomination to W.S. Van Dyke, an Outstanding Production nomination, and an Assistant Director nomination for Joseph Newman.
Today’s Oscar’s website also lists the film’s nomination in the Original Story category, but only Hoskins’ name appears there. His collaborator Anita Loos is nowhere to be found.
Poster for San Francisco
