1972: Eileen Heckart and Best Supporting Actress

The 45th Annual Academy Awards held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles began with an Angela Lansbury musical number, as everything should (Seventh Heaven! What a callback!). Father-and-son team Eddie Albert (nominated for The Heartbreak Kid) and Edward Albert (star of Butterflies Are Free) presented Best Sound to Cabaret, Merle Oberon gave The Poseidon Adventure a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects, and Beatrice Arthur and Peter Boyle (of The Candidate) did the short subjects. Now it was time for reigning champion Cloris Leachman and The Godfather's Robert Duvall to present Best Supporting Actress:

What a group of films to honor! There's The Heartbreak Kid, painfully hilarious in its depiction of a newlywed abandoning his bride (Jeannie Berlin) during their honeymoon. Fat City is a depressing drama about a fading alcoholic boxer repeatedly falling off the wagon alongside a barfly (Susan Tyrrell). Pete 'n' Tillie is a rom-com with dramatic elements about the relationship between two people, brought together by a mutual friend (Geraldine Page). The Poseidon Adventure is a disaster epic, more an effects showcase than a performance one, and yet its large ensemble (Shelley Winters, et. al.) is undeniably superb. Finally, there's the winner, Butterflies Are Free, whose synopsis about a young hot blind man falling in love with a kooky free spirit, much to his mother's (Eileen Heckart) chagrin, makes you wanna roll your eyes...and then you see it and realize what a thoughtful, effective film it really is! Five very good movies. And as for the performances...:

Day Nine: Supporting Actress, 1956

In a move that's exactly opposite the Best Supporting Actor race of the same year, 1956's Supporting Actress lineup had already been predetermined by the Globes - with one exception...

That was Marjorie Main, Golden Globe nominee for her cameo as the widow Hudspeth in the Quaker drama Friendly Persuasion. Main's only flirtation with Oscar came in 1947, when she was nominated in this very category for her performance in The Egg and I. She didn't win (she should have!), but she did get the eight-film Ma and Pa Kettle franchise out of it - not bad for a then-57-year-old character actress! Indeed, following Friendly Persuasion, Main would only make one more film - The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm.

So. Main in at the Globes, out at the Oscars. In her place: Mercedes McCambridge, in her only nomination following her win for All the King's Men. And besides Main, McCambridge, and the four actresses nominated here and at the Globes, only one other performer was in the conversation: Debbie Reynolds, National Board of Review nominee for The Catered Affair, a film in which she is, arguably, a co-lead with her screen parents Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine. Clearly, it was a year of terrific options. Still, with 1.5 exceptions, this is a marvelous lineup: