These are the 1960 nominees for Best Actress:
Greer Garson, Sunrise at Campobello
Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners
Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment
Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday
Elizabeth Taylor, BUtterfield 8
What a storied race this was! Melina Mercouri made a splash for a Greek film but refused to "campaign", saying the publicity from the nomination made her miserable. Greer Garson, absent from the ceremonies since her neat five-in-a-row run in the 1940s (I didn't realize when I chose Hitchcock nominations I'd be getting Garson history, too!), got a final nod (and a Golden Globe!) in a biopic. Deborah Kerr believed she should have won the Oscar this time around. And Shirley MacLaine had as good a chance as any, with her Golden Globe win and the lead role in a Best Picture nominee.
Then there's Elizabeth Taylor, in a huge moneymaker that received good enough notices. And more to the point, she was at death's door. While filming Cleopatra in Europe, Taylor fell ill with a number of issues, with pneumonia finally delivering a near-fatal blow that had the world holding its breath. When news broke that she received an emergency tracheotomy and made a miraculous recovery...everyone else declined their invitations. Watch her category at that year's Oscar ceremony, she's the only nominee who showed up...or had reason to:
And did she deserve it, whatever the quality of the film itself? My rankings, from fifth to first:
5. Deborah Kerr as Ida Carmody
The Sundowners
sixth and final nomination; NYFCC Awards winner for Best Actress; BAFTA Award nominee for Best British Actress
She's the wife of Robert Mitchum, first billed, ready to lay down some roots while hubby's still determined to live nomadically. I believed her. I just couldn't get into this movie, and I don't remember much of it, it's been a few months since I saw it (mind you, it's been longer since I've seen Never on Sunday, but I recall that one pretty clearly). She's fifth not because she's bad, but because...well, it's a movie I just didn't click with, for some reason.
4. Greer Garson as Eleanor Roosevelt
Sunrise at Campobello
past winner, seventh and final nomination; Golden Globe winner for Best Actress - Drama, National Board of Review's Best Actress of 1960
I hope I don't have to tell you who Eleanor Roosevelt is, but let me remind you that here, she is not yet First Lady, but the wife of a rejected politician experiencing a medical crisis. And Garson's performance? Strangely stilted, but I also wasn't around then, nor have I seen a lot of archival footage of Mrs. R. I think she's more fine, perhaps hemmed in by the prosthetic teeth and expectations. And despite some focus not just on her feelings as a wife, but on her development as a public speaker, it doesn't scream LEAD to me, y'know? A good performance, an understandable nomination, somehow I like this as Garson's final nod...but I don't know that I love it.
3. Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous
BUtterfield 8
fourth of five nominations; Golden Globe nominee for Best Actress - Drama
To Taylor's credit, she's the whole reason to watch the movie. She understands Gloria's past traumas, how they've been internalized and reasoned into a whole state of being - OK, she's been a sex object since puberty, why not use that to her advantage? Of course, we all know why that's a bad thing, and so does Taylor, she plays that conflict beautifully, complexly. She cares more than the movie does. Stupid character name. Love how she plays her scene where she digs her foot into Laurence Harvey.
2. Melina Mercouri as Ilya
Never on Sunday
only nomination; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Foreign Actress, NYFCC Awards runner-up for Best Actress
The Medea scene, wherein Ilya refuses to see the tragedy and imagines it all as a farce perpetrated by mischeivous children, is a bit much, and yet Mercouri manages to sell it. She manages to sell every moment, in fact, a beguiling performance of a woman who is effortlessly sexy, the center of any room she enters. She’s not stupid, but she’s made the choice to live simply, openly, proudly. And there is an inner life, too, one that is not recognized or even offered to the uncaring Jules Dassin, but real feeling, secret intimacies you can't fully know.
1. Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik
The Apartment
second of five acting nominations; BAFTA Award winner for Best Foreign Actress, Golden Globe winner for Best Actress - Comedy/Musical
Oft said, but it's more difficult to explain why something works for me than why something doesn't. Like...I don't know, she's perfect. Casting-wise, she's cute as a button, and performance-wise: she's melancholy enough where her suicide attempt is no surprise, you see in her posture that she's not too hung up on herself, but when she smiles just so, her eyes seem to sparkle. She provides the gravitas without disrupting the comedy, and ends on a note of .. possibility. Maybe this isn’t forever, but this will do, this is better. “Shut up and deal.”
Tomorrow, the nominees for Best Picture: The Alamo, The Apartment, Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, and The Sundowners.
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