Oscars 1952: Best Supporting Actress

Oscars 1952 was about 25 years of the Academy Awards, about Cecil B. DeMille (in addition to Best Picture, he also received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award), and, interestingly, about Gloria Grahame. Five years after her Oscar nomination for Crossfire, Grahame found herself with her busiest slate yet, four films that showcased her range. In The Greatest Show on Earth, she's the straightforward but good-hearted elephant tamer, a tough cookie but vulnerable - and knows a good man when she sees one. In Macao, she's a gangster's opportunistic sidepiece who tosses in with the hero when she realizes how expendable she might be. In Sudden Fear, she's a gal on the make who realizes, alongside Jack Palance, there's a potential fortune to be made in murder. And in The Bad and the Beautiful, she's the dizzy Southern wife of an author wooed to Hollywood by Kirk Douglas's manipulative producer, who entices her away from hubby and into the arms of a Latin lothario... More comic in pitch than the other roles, it's the one that got her the Oscar:

How does it stand against the others in this category? That's why we're here...

1950: Supporting Actress

A bit of business first: somehow, I neglected to mention the non-Oscar awardage for films nominated for the Music Awards, the Writing Awards and Director. If you revisit those pages, you'll see such info.

Now, on to the business at hand: Best Supporting Actress. An exquisite lineup. For Celeste Holm, it was the last of a series of nominations; for Thelma Ritter, it was the first of many. Hope Emerson, Josephine Hull, and Nancy Olson were one-and-dones, but from that trio came the night's Oscar winner:

All five gave great performances in fine films. Emerson as the butch matron in an all-female prison, Holm as the playwright's wife and best friend to the grande dame of the stage, Hull as the worried wealthy widow whose brother's mental state is an embarrassment, Olson as the script reader who wants to be a screenwriter, Ritter as the former vaudevillian turned dresser/housekeeper/assistant who sees her position threatened by Anne Baxter! Nothin' but riches I tells ya! Let's discuss:

Cinema '62: Best Supporting Actress

Today, we look at the nominees for Best Supporting Actress, with four movies we'll be seeing a lot more of - Bird Man of Alcatraz, The Miracle Worker, Sweet Bird of Youth, To Kill a Mockingbird - and The Manchurian Candidate. 

The original AFI List of the 100 Greatest American Movies included The Manchurian Candidate at #67, TIME named Mrs. Iselin among the 25 Greatest Movie Villains, and Screen Drafts called it the second-best Cold War film. It's a well-done noose-tightener about brainwashed soldiers, political manipulation, and the conspiracy that binds these two into one master plan. It's interesting because there's not a lot of mystery behind it, the movie tipping its hand pretty early as to what's going on, though not necessarily why it's going on. That seems a little muddled, particularly the cross and double-cross. Great performances from Laurence Harvey and Khigh Dhiegh. Ballsy finale. Great (Oscar-nominated) editing by Ferris Webster. I wish I liked it!

The nominees:

Day Six: Best Supporting Actress

This specific category - 1959 Best Supporting Actress - is a fun one. It marks one of the three times I participated in StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Smackdown. That was about nine years ago, and I have to say, my feelings from then do not necessarily reflect my feelings now. Anyway, check out the Smackdown, as well as my take on each individual film. Let's see how those have aged.

But first...my new rankings. After the jump.

1953 Retro Hollmann Awards: Part 2

It's Day Two of the Retro Hollmann Awards, honoring the best of 1953! 

Yesterday, The Cruel Sea, Pickup on South Street, Titanic, and The War of the Worlds all picked up one award each; The Importance of Being Earnest got two!

And this is a rare treat -- one of the acting categories here doesn't have a single Oscar nominee to correspond with! Is it Best Actor? Best Supporting Actress? Find out as the awardage continues...

BEST SCORE

3. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef
Bernard Herrmann


4. Invaders from Mars
Raoul Kraushaar


2. Lili
Bronislau Kaper


1. The Robe
Alfred Newman


5. Shane
Victor Young


So closes the entertainment portion. Continue after the jump for more...

Supporting Actress, 1953

Did you ever know that Best Supporting Actress is among my top five Favorite Categorie at the Oscars? If you've been a longtime reader, you probably did. If you're new here -- hi, I adore Supporting Actresses!

Of course, not all of Oscar's contenders are actual supporting roles. Geraldine Page is clearly the female lead of Hondo -- but I guess only pixie ingenues get lead campaigns for their film debuts. And Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner are co-leads of Mogambo, both vying for the affections of Clark Gable. Hers you could argue a little more about, but there's no doubt in my mind...

For more fun, check out Stinkylulu's write-up of this year -- he makes a strong case, even if I don't agree at all with his assessment of Kelly and her film. But you'll see. Just continue after the jump...  

The SMACKDOWN Arriveth

I still don’t know if I should have given Shelley Winters the edge over Juanita Moore. Maybe it would have been more honest to keep them at a tie. But if I did, does that give Juanita five stars or Shelley four?

I had a lot of fun doing this first smackdown. Two limited roles, two Mommas, two sets of great gams, two ladies from Imitation of Life. They liked having it a certain way, I guess. And it’s hard for me to believe these came out at the same time as Ben-Hur. I mean, Pillow Talk? Competing at the Oscars? With Ben-Hur? So strange.

Now, if this whole category was a Casting Coup, subject….


Fran Drescher as Petronella Van Daan
She actually does quite well in drama. Her voice and mannerisms would help with the annoying aspects of the performance. She is also still attractive, so that we can hear remembering the boys and know what she’s talking about.


Loretta Devine as Annie Johnson
I love Loretta. There is a sweetness to her that I think few other actresses of her caliber have. She can play the good-natured Annie good-naturedly, but you bet that she would also pack a wallop in that final scene with Sarah Jane.


Sarah Parish as Elspeth
She can sing, she can do cockney, she can play subtle drama. And it would be a hell of a cameo.


Lily Tomlin as Alma
can certainly toss out a line like nobody’s business, and there is this harder edge to her that would serve the character well. But I also think she would remember to keep it interesting and within the screwball comedy dynamic.

??? as Sarah Jane Johnson
I ain’t even touching that one.

For more awesomeness, trip on over to StinkyLulu's blog.

Pillow Talk

Today, I started on that crazy, kooky adventure known as Smackdowning. Having signed up for StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1959, and with so little free time on my hands, I used what moment of leisure I had to catch a rom-com that I've been wanting to for ages. It won the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen, which was the 1959 way of saying Original Screenplay. And it's a fun gem, too.



The movie itself is awesome. Some naughty bits here and there with that split-screen, and those innuendos make me envy the talent of the writers. "A man with his own mountain doesn't need the city." Tee-hee. "Not every man finishes a sentence with a proposition." Ha! "I never met a boy with so many arms." Oh, heavens!

Rock Hudson is great as always, playing a New York City playboy (Brad Allen) posing as a Texas farmboy (Rex Stetson) while also getting a chance to "play" gay. Doris Day was Oscar-nominated (rightfully so) for the role of interior decorator Jan Morrow, and Tony Randall -- well, if ever there was a character based on me, this would be one of them, and he plays me beautifully. Great job!

A catchy title tune, a few songs in a bar, and even a musical interlude that takes place entirely within Doris Day's head (!) are all very well and good, but they do get kind of distracting. As does a running joke involving an obstetrician's office, a joke that is a little "Ehhhhhh," to quote August: Osage County.

Meanwhile, there is the question of the Oscar-nominated performance of Miss Thelma Ritter, here playing the role of Jan's maid, Alma.

And I gotta tell you, it's a puzzling nomination.



This is how we meet Alma: struggling to stay on two feet while nursing a hangover. The elevator operator is concerned, Jan seems to be taking it in stride, and Alma is on her way to do the cleaning. End of first scene. We barely even get to see her face.

In fact, we barely get to know anything about Alma at all. We know she's an alcoholic, we know she listens in on Jan's phone (she shares a party line with Brad, and Alma finds his wooing of the many ladies in his life intriguing), and we know that she cracks wise. I guess.



See, I like Thelma Ritter. I thought she was wonderful in Miracle on 34th Street and Rear Window, and in Titanic, she was all I noticed (until we turned off the movie, as it was late and it was a school night -- this is going back twelve years or so). When I know she's in a movie, I'm ready to settle in and let the adoration flow.

But this...this isn't anything. The role, I mean. And I can't decide if Thelma's doing nothing or doing everything. On the one hand, she looks bored to tears; on the other, this could be a very shrewd portrayal of a sad, lonely woman who can only gain joy from living vicariously through the telephone and drinking herself into a stupor night after night. Which is intriguing, and if this is what she meant to go for, than it's a very subtle, good performance -- that is out of place.



I mean, I hate to limit the tone of a film, but this is a sex comedy. Tony Randall is practically overselling it, but it works. Rock Hudson and Doris day are having a dandy good time. Everything is frothy and fun, and then: this. A sad drunk. Every time she showed up, she slapped me in the face with both her lonely presence and her 1959 attitudes:

ALMA: "If there's anything worse than a woman living alone, it's a woman saying she likes it."
JAN: "Well, what am I missing?"
ALMA: "If you have to ask, you're missing it!"

Thelma Ritter scenes should not be the only ones in which I don't laugh. In fact, as I recall, there was but one bit with Alma that I enjoyed:



Brad goes to Alma for advice on how to win back Jan. He decides to take her out for drinks, and after she directs him to a much better bar, there's this shot. Alma is still sitting up straight, and the scene is just her divulging a plan as Brad wearily tries to keep afloat. But the biggest laugh from this scene comes after it, when Brad recounts to his friend, "I made it through a bottle of Scotch, but I lost her during the Vodka." Or something like that. Anyway, it was hilarious, but it was said after she was out of frame.

This was one of six nominations Thelma Ritter received from the Academy, all for Supporting Actress. And there are some actresses that are default nominees (Ritter), who sometimes give performances that wouldn't be noteworthy if it wasn't for the actress and the film. This is one of those times. I wish I could have loved Thelma Ritter's Alma more. Maybe in another movie.

The Movie: *** (out of 4)
The Performance: ** (out of 5)