We finally begin our 1960 Oscars coverage with Best Supporting Actress:
Glynis Johns, The Sundowners
Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry
Shirley Knight, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Janet Leigh, Psycho
Mary Ure, Sons and Lovers
All five were first-time nominees; three came from Best Picture nominees, including the eventual winner, Shirley Jones:
At this point, Jones was best known as the heroine of Rodgers & Hammerstein: as the first - and only - singer ever under a personal contract for the famous songwriting duo, she was hand-selected by them to lead the film adaptation of Oklahoma! when she was but 20. That was five years ago, and now, in her sixth movie role, Jones finally got to quit playing the good girl and start being bad. In Elmer Gantry, she plays Lulu Bains, a prostitute who learns of the growing fame of traveling preacher Elmer Gantry...and remembers his younger days when he used his charms on her and, as she says, "rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps!" Now she has a way to pay him back...
That's the kind of narrative that gets you an Oscar: young up-and-comer established in one kind of role gets to flex her acting muscles with a "de-glammed" one. And in a Best Picture nominee! And a prostitute, Oscar's favored profession for women! And you can't say she didn't make good on it: while she was never nominated again, she did achieve pop culture immortality - and a Grammy nomination! - as the momma behind The Partridge Family.
Her competition? Golden Globe winner Janet Leigh in Psycho, who dominates the first half-hour before taking the most legendary shower in movie history; Mary Ure in Best Picture nominee Sons and Lovers, as a married yet liberated woman in turn-of-the-century England; Glynis Johns in Best Picture nominee The Sundowners, as a pub owner who entertains romance with Peter Ustinov; and Shirley Knight as the daughter in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the only nominee here who was nominated a second time.
Did the performances merit their nominations? My thoughts, from fifth to first:
5. Glynis Johns as Mrs. Firth
The Sundowners
only nomination
Many's the time I felt Johns would make a deserving nominee in this specific category - she was probably my #6 in 1964 for Mary Poppins, and made it to my 1952 ballot for The Card. But I have to confess, while I recall her infectious face behind the counter, otherwise I've completely blanked out her performance. Nothing. Nothing at all. And it's not the only aspect of this movie that has me so.
4. Shirley Knight as Reenie Flood
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
first of two nominations; Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress
As the daughter of embattled parents Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire, navigating her own romance with a Jewish boy - quelle scandal! - Knight is...well, I almost said she's exactly what she needs to be, but Knihhy slesyd gives more, doesn't she? This is no exception, she makes you wish she was the whole movie, as she fills in the worries and hopes within the blanks of this young woman. I get why, if one was required by law to nominate someone from this movie, they went with Knight, though Angela Lansbury gives the film's best performance.
3. Mary Ure as Clara Dawes
Sons and Lovers
Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress
I was so happy when I learned she was nominated for this film - I watched it because it was a Best Picture nominee, I did not realize who Mary Ure was until after the film - especially since hers was the performance I expected to be most taken for granted (turns out, that was a different performer altogether). But I love Ure in this, she's the married woman who, separated from her husband, advocates for women's suffrage in the streets and dilly-dallies with Dean Stockwell in the sheets. She's assertive, she's confident, you even see her inner conversations with her doubts and worries, just the way she sets her face and moves her eyes. Wonderfully underplayed.
2. Shirley Jones as Lulu Bains
Elmer Gantry
only nomination; National Board of Review's Best Supporting Actress of 1960; Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress
The unsubtle, undisguised emotions of Lulu, a child who never got to fully grow up, whose innocence was taken the night she opened herself up to the predatory charms of Elmer Gantry - even when she tries to entrap him, she can't disguise the emotions on her face, the anger and lust and instant regret. It's such a naked (but not that naked) performance, so different from her restraint in the musicals that made her famous. Her line about Elmer ramming the fear of God into her is so shocking both because of the daringness of the line and her go-for-broke delivery of it: Lulu's performing for her fellow sex workers, and you hear the bitterness in the telling even as she smiles through it.
1. Janet Leigh as Marion Crane
Psycho
only nomination; Golden Globe winner for Best Supporting Actress
People debate whether she's Lead or Supporting; it is my opinion that you could safely include her in either category. Anyway, Leigh's phenomenal. Much of her performance is non-verbal, close on her face while driving as she imagines the fallout from her spontaneous go at theft. On her face is determination, surprise, fear - even, at times, a cynical, humorous smirk, a dark amusement at the expense of the man whose money she's lifted...and at the daringness of her own action. She plays the Woman on the Run, hitch in her voice and all, magnificently - the way she says "Los Angeles" while signing in at the Bates Motel, the quick panic when she suspects the car dealer of suspecting her. The cautious way she navigates conversation with Norman, the professional way she navigates conversation with Tom Cassidy. We are rooting for her, we want her to get away with it, with anything she chooses to do, because Leigh (and Hitchcock and Stefano) wins us over. It's why we feel so protective of her in that shower scene, even before the scream...
Tomorrow, the nominees for Best Supporting Actor: Peter Falk (Murder, Inc.), Jack Kruschen (The Apartment), Sal Mineo (Exodus), Peter Ustinov (Spartacus), and Chill Wills (The Alamo).
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