The Winners

This time of year, critics, exhibitors, trade papers and assorted know-it-alls select their cinema bests--and after checking over the 1954 crop, the choices were pretty automatic all the way. At the top of the heap: Marlon Brando and Grace Kelly.

For the best acting job of his career, as a true-to-life patsy in On the Waterfront, Brando got the nod from the New York Film Critics, Film Daily and the Hollywood stars themselves, who were polled by the United Press. Newcomer Grace Kelly, who smoothly dressed up Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and Green Fire (see below} with what Director Alfred Hitchcock has called her "sexual elegance," but who performed most stunningly in her biggest acting part as the embittered wife in The Country Girl, won hands up with the New York Film Critics, and the National Board of Review.

As usual, the choices generally did not agree with the top box-office grossers for the year. The five big money pictures so far (in the U.S. and Canada only), reported by Variety: 1) Paramount's White Christmas, which, though it has been playing less than three months, has already grossed $12 million; Columbia's The Caine Mutiny, $8,700,000; Universal's The Glenn Miller Story, $7,000,000; Fox's The Egyptian, $6,000,000; Paramount's Rear Window, $5,300,000.

Motion Picture Herald, which polls the men who should know--the exhibitors--found John Wayne the No. 1 box-office draw, although Wayne made only two films eligible in 1954: Hondo and The High and the Mighty. Runners-up: Martin and Lewis, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Marilyn Monroe. Alan Ladd, William Holden (first time to figure in the first ten), Bing Crosby. Jane Wyman (first time), Marlon Brando (first time).

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