Oscar Files: Best Supporting Actress

Lesbian film theorist Patricia White has written sensationally about the odd predisposition of other film theorists, even the queer ones, to overemphasize the starring players, as though no one ever identified with anyone else in a movie, except under duress. Why, she asks, in the context of classic Hollywood, would anyone want to be Jane Wyman or Olivia de Havilland or Susan Hayward when you could be Agnes Moorehead or Thelma Ritter or Mercedes McCambridge? Not just for queer audiences, the supporting cast is often the place where all the interesting stuff in a movie is happening. Freed from the obligation to "carry" the film or conform to an archetype, actors can flex, lurk, suggest, insinuate, imply, surprise, conceal, and entice. And where most films have no more than one or two leads, especially female leads, the supporting cast can be a Whitman's sampler of diverse delights, from heavily showcased second-tier roles (Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce, Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist, Virginia Madsen in Sideways) to piquant sideshows or single-scene accents (Eve Arden, Amy Wright, and Mary-Louise Burke in the same films).

So while I'm beavering away at the 100 past nominations for Best Actress that I have left to see, don't you know my eyes are just as keen on their supporting sisters. Most recently from this bunch, I saw Edith Evans lord it over her hellion granddaughter Hayley Mills and cryptic governess Deborah Kerr in The Chalk Garden (1964), one of those movies whose title metaphors is a real groaner, though the movie itself is an odd sort of fun, like nothing they'd ever make anymore; and, too, the nominated duo of Celeste Holm and Elsa Lanchester in Come to the Stable (1949), a pleasant but featherweight entry in that genre of pop sanctimony that gave us Boys Town and Going My Way. Holm speaks in a French accent and plays tennis in a full wimple and habit, while Lanchester wields a paintbrush and some especially marmy wire-rims as a pastoral artist, and though sheer likability is always in favor of both actresses, it's hard to know how they distracted Oscar from the absent Miriam Hopkins in The Heiress or Ann Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives, both of them in Best Picture nominees.

So if it's symmetry you seek, you'll find it here at Nick's Flick Picks, because surprise surprise, I have exactly 100 Supporting Actress nominees left to go, too. After yesterday—the single best-attended day ever at this blog, thanks to all you idol worshippers—you all know the drill. Comment away. List-make, and list-monger! And don't omit that by total coincidence, another blog you should be reading, by the self-deprecating StinkyLulu, is about to get into the same mischief. He'll be following a strict once-a-week diet of Sunday posts, as though going to Best Supporting Actress is like going to church, and reader, that is an attitude that Nick's Flick Picks vehemently encourages. But you know this blog: it's more of a feast or famine gig, so expect big binges with ample digestion times.

Winners I Have Left to See: 15 — Gale Sondergaard (1936), Mary Astor (1941), Teresa Wright (1942), Katina Paxinou (1943), Ethel Barrymore (1944), Anne Baxter (1946), Josephine Hull (1950), Gloria Grahame (1952), Jo Van Fleet (1955), Miyoshi Umeki (1957), Shelley Winters (1959), Margaret Rutherford (1963), Goldie Hawn (1969), Eileen Heckart (1972), and Tatum O'Neal (1973)

My Six Favorite Winners So Far:
1) Vanessa Redgrave in Julia, 1977
2) Rita Moreno in West Side Story, 1961
3) Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986
4) Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966
5) Mercedes McCambridge in All the King's Men, 1949
6) Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath, 1940

My Six Favorite Losing Nominees: (this was murder to whittle down!)
1) Celeste Holm in All About Eve, 1950
2) Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street, 1953
3) Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear, 1991
4) Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain, 1952
5) Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives, 1992
6) Susan Tyrrell in Fat City, 1972

My Least Favorite Winners:
1) Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue, 1965
2) Helen Hayes in Airport, 1970
3) Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express, 1974
4) Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain, 2003
5) Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind, 2001
6) Maggie Smith in California Suite, 1978

Years in Which I've Seen Every Nominee: 20 — 1949, 1956, 1986, 1988, and every year from 1990 through the present

From Among These Years, the Best Overall Fields...:
1) 1995 – Allen in Nixon, Quinlan in Apollo 13, Sorvino in *Mighty Aphrodite, Winningham in Georgia (my pick), and Winslet in Sense and Sensibility
2) 1996 – Allen in The Crucible, Bacall in The Mirror Has Two Faces, *Binoche in The English Patient, Hershey in The Portrait of a Lady (my pick), and Jean-Baptiste in Secrets & Lies
3) 2005 – Adams in Junebug (my pick?), Keener in Capote, McDormand in North Country, *Weisz in The Constant Gardener (my pick?), and Williams in Brokeback Mountain

Hon. Mention to 1940, where I'm still missing Rambeau in Primrose Path, but just about the best acting field ever is shaping up amongst Anderson in Rebecca, *Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath, Hussey in The Philadelphia Story, and O'Neil in All This, and Heaven Too (my pick)

...and the Worst:
None of these are awful, but great winners emerged from lame packs
1) 1949 – Barrymore and Waters in Pinky, *McCambridge in All the King's Men (duh), and Holm and Lanchester in Come to the Stable
2) 2000 – Dench in Chocolat, *Harden in Pollock (duh), Hudson and McDormand (the only other viable nominee) in Almost Famous, and Walters in Billy Elliot
3) 1993 – Hunter in The Firm, *Paquin in The Piano (duh), Perez in Fearless, Ryder in The Age of Innocence, and Thompson in In the Name of the Father

Six Remaining Nominees I'm Most Psyched To See...:
1) Thelma Ritter in The Mating Season, 1951
2) Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden, 1955
3) Marjorie Rambeau in Primrose Path, 1940
4) Grayson Hall in The Night of the Iguana, 1964
5) Barbara Harris in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, 1971
6) Alfre Woodard in Cross Creek, 1983

...and Six I'm Putting Off:
1) Edna May Oliver in Drums Along the Mohawk, 1939
4) Miyoshi Umeki in Sayonara, 1957
3) Margaret Wycherly in Sergeant York, 1941
4) Glenn Close in The Natural, 1984
5) Mildred Natwick in Barefoot in the Park, 1967
6) Aline MacMahon in Dragon Seed, 1944