Cinema: The Winners

As usual, the critics and the public did not quite see eye to eye on the year's best in films. Fifteen critics for New York City's newspapers voted for Warner's version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Other New York critics' choices:

Best Actress: Vivien Leigh, for her portrayal of Streetcar's faded, tippling, Southern heroine.

Best Actor: Arthur Kennedy, for his characterization of a blinded war veteran in Bright Victory.

Best Director: Streetcar's Elia Kazan.

The National Board of Review placed A Streetcar Named Desire sixth. Its first choice: A Place in the Sun, Paramount's cinematic version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

In the mass, the paying customers appeared to have other ideas. John Wayne, announced the Motion Picture Herald after a nationwide poll of exhibitors, was the top drawing name in the business. Actor Wayne, 44, who has been in pictures for 20 years, usually playing a leathery, drawling hero, won the same distinction last year. Next in order as top box-office draws, according to the trade magazine:

3) Betty Grable

4) Abbott & Costello

5) Bing Crosby

6) Bob Hope

7) Randolph Scott

8) Gary Cooper

9) Doris Day 10) Spencer Tracy

Variety's list of the 150 films that grossed over $1,000,000 each in 1951, announced this week, showed that the public still has a special fondness for the big, the colorful and the spectacular. The top ten box-office hits of 1951:

1 ) David and Bathsheba ( 20th Century-Fox), $7,000,000

2) Show Boat (M-G-M), $5,200,000

3) An American in Paris (M-G-M), $4,500,000

4) The Great Caruso (M-G-M), $4,500,000

5) A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner), $4,250,000

6) Born Yesterday (Columbia), $4,150,000

7) That's My Boy (Paramount), $3,800,000

8) A Place in the Sun (Paramount), $3,500,000

9) At War with the Army (Paramount), $3,350,000

10) Father's Little Dividend (M-G-M), $3,100,000