But was The Sundowners better than Inherit The Wind? That's the question.

ItW is crap, especially when compared to much more mature fare such as Elmer Gantry

I've seen The Apartment and Elmer Gantry. Hard to compare comedy and drama so I'll leave The Apartment out (it's good). Inherit The Wind is good, but Elmer Gantry is better. I've never seen Sons And Lovers or The Alamo, but I've seen The Sundowners and am puzzled that it was nominated over Inherit The Wind.

Inherit the Wind should have replaced The Alamo.

Close on the Alamo. It was Chill Wills who campaigned hard. So hard in fact that after he got it nominated he upset a lot of people with his excessive campaigning and killed it's chances for the award. John Wayne and Chill didn't speak for years afterward as this was John's big shot at a major production and he took a big risk putting this movie together. John had put a lot of his own money and personal credibility on the line and Chill went and P.O.'d a lot of people, lots of hard feelings afterward. John thought the movie spoke for itself.

I've seen all 5 nom'd films and I think Inherit the Wind is better than all of them. In fact, The Alamo, to me, is a big unwieldy messI just think John Wayne had lots of friends and campaigned a lot. The others are fine films but this one just seems more important.

I have seen 4 of the 5 movies nominated in 1960. I think all were better than Inherit the Wind. For once academy voters got it right.

OKOf course the most praised movie in 1960 was also not nominatedPsycho which is certainly one of the finest pieces of cinema ever and the film Sir Alfred seemed to have all talents working on all cylinders. He made a relatively cheap b/w film for the kids and changed cinema history forever.
In terms on of not be nominated, I suspect the movie's one-sided view towards the teaching of evolution may have held back some Academy voters, who tends to be more conservative than traditional Hollywood. (It actually supports that creationism and evolution are not mutually evulsive if you assume The Book Of Gensis written in metaphoric language. That would not be a big stretch.) That said it certainly was a better movie than The Alamo but I would rank below the winner The Apartment & Psycho as a Best Picture. It certainly was strongest in terms of the acting talent but it does not measure up to The Apartment's script or Psycho's direction.

I've seen four of them. I've missed
Sons and Lovers
. For my money,
Inherit the Wind
is the best. Then again,
Inherit the Wind
remains the most socio-politically relevant - 49 years after the movie was released and 85 years after the trial on which the movie is based. I suppose that is not the test for an Academy Award. But I think that's a big part of the reason it is my favorite of the bunch.
Among the others,
The Apartment
is by far my favorite. I said in another thread I think Fredric March is one of a handful of the finest actors ever to appear on the screen. So is Jack Lemmon, and the more I think about it, the more I think maybe he's first on that list. And his performance in
The Apartment
is top-notch. Nobody plays a regular guy better than Jack Lemmon.
When I was very young,
The Alamo
was one of my favorite movies. Now I admit I can't help but view it through the prism of awareness of the socio-political history of Texas, and of the movie itself, and that hampers my enjoyment of the movie.
Oh, how I wish I could believe or understand that.

Yes, they are. Inherit the Wind just doesn't equal any of these films. Not even close. Sorry.

Maybe they didn't want two films with a religious theme nominated and chose Elmer Gantry of the two.
I guess it's like looking at clouds. You see one thing and I see another. Peace.

I saw the Apartment recently and thought it was fairly average, I liked Inherit the Wind much better.
There is NO Gene for the Human Spirit.

I've seen all of them and liked all of them, The Apartment the best of the lot of the nominees. Still I thought Inherit the Wind was better than any of them.