Category: Best Supporting Actress

1941 – Sara Allgood

How Green Was My Valley

Any movie that centers around a family and the love within that family, has to have a strong and caring matriarch, and Allgood fit the bill perfectly.  She played Beth Morgan, the mother of six boys and a daughter.  The entire cast was good, and she was no exception.  She looked the part, she played it well, and it was well-written, so I think her Oscar nomination was completely deserved.

Allgood created a multi-dimensional character, though a lesser actress might have easily made her flat and uninteresting.  She had the task of seeing her family through both good times and bad.  The movie said it pretty well when it said that if her husband, played by Donald Crisp, was the family’s head, she was its heart.  It was clear that the actress understood the character, knew her motivations, her strengths, and even her weaknesses.  Allgood did a fantastic job of bringing these things out, not just with her dialogue, but with her eyes, the way she carried herself, the intimate way she interacted with her sons and husband. 

Some of her most powerful scenes were near the end of the movie, when her husband is killed in a mining accident.  The way she was filmed, with her face lit from above so that her eyes were lost in shadow, was an intense image.  She looked almost ghostly, and yet you never saw a tear on her cheeks.  To me, that says that the character had long lived with the ever present possibility of such a tragedy hanging over her head, and when it happened, she was prepared.  Allgood really sold that moment, and she earned her nomination.

But then right after that, Beth has a vision of her husband’s spirit visiting her.  She knows he has died, and yet there is a smile on her face, a smile of real sadness mixed with pride and love.  It was a sweet and touching moment.  I’ve seen this movie several times, and each time, I like it more than the last.  It is the powerful performance of the incredible cast that speak to me every time.  They all did a fantastic job, and Allgood was no exception.

1941 – Patricia Collinge

The Little Foxes

I have to say, I have never heard of Patricia Collinge before now, but I was very impressed with her supporting roll performance in this movie.  She really stood out to me as a wonderful actress who did an incredible job creating a memorable character.  And the thing is, she did this without much screen time. She played Birdie Hubbard, the emotionally and mentally abused wife of Oscar Hubbard.  Before marriage, she had been the daughter and heiress of a wealthy cotton plantation, though she now knows, and is constantly reminded, that Oscar had only married her to take her inheritance for himself.  So she drinks.

Collinge was so good in this role. First, Birdie was a bit of a chatterbox, though her husband habitually chastises her to silence.  He publicly berates her in front of family and guests alike.  He treats her like dirt under his shoes.  Even her son, Leo, takes after his father, and is more-or-less apathetic about her.  The only solace she has from her miserable existence is her memories of her dear mother, and alcohol.  She has been treated like garbage for so long, she doesn’t know how to feel like anything else.  It was a sad and pathetic role, and Collinge played it perfectly.

From her mousy body language to her haggard and tired facial expressions, from the haunted, chaffed look in her eyes, to the clear and obvious depression, Collinge did a fantastic job.  There were two scenes that stick out in my memory.  The first was such a brief and subtle moment after a business dinner.  Her husband and brother-in-law were trying to schmooze a prospective business partner into going into business with the family.  She tried to contribute to the conversation, but was summarily shushed and chided for drinking too much and speaking too much.  After the businessman left, the conversation continued in the parlor, and you could see Birdie sitting alone in the background, looking forlorn and hurt to the point of tears.

The other was when she had an alcohol induced breakdown, admitting all her woes and sorrows, and ending up a sobbing mess.  Collinge did it all with pathos and desperation that was heart-wrenching to watch.  Her emotion really stood out, even next to the likes of Bette Davis and Teresa Wright.  I loved her performance.

1941 – Teresa Wright

The Little Foxes

I have always been a fan of Teresa Wright, ever since the first time I saw her on screen in 1942’s Mrs. Miniver.  She was young and fresh-faced, and an incredible actress.  She had a natural innocence in her appearance that not many actresses had and yet there was also a strength that was undeniable.  She knew how to turn on the emotion, but she was never over-the-top.  She seemed very at ease in front of the camera.

But I have to say, despite all that, and though I actually liked her performance in this movie, I think I was a little disappointed with her here.  Her character was a little one-note.  As Alexandra “Zannie” Giddons, the daughter of the callous and manipulative Regina, she was sweet and honest, though you could see the little ways in which she easily took after her mother.  This was her from the first moment she appeared on the screen.  She was petulant and immature in her innocence, and so she always had a look of self-righteous irritation on her face.  It was a very good acting choice, but the problem is that she stayed pretty much the same in just about every other scene in which she appeared, and it eventually got old.

But you see, I know Wright was a better actress than that.  It was the script that failed the actress, not the other way around.  Of course, I know I’m over-simplifying her character a bit, and that there were several layers to her character.  These came out in her relationships with her father and her aunt Birdie.  But those scenes were too few and too brief.  Then, she was sympathetic and sweet.  Unfortunately for Wright, they sometimes required the same expressions of immaturity and confusion as did the scenes of innocent petulance.

But it was the final scene that really sticks out in my mind.  It was there that Wright’s exceptional skills as an actress began to shine.  She saw just how evil her mother really was, confronted her, and left her.  Just enough of the innocence fell away and she saw her mother with a contempt born of experience.  The flicker of a fire began to bloom in Zannie’s eyes as she stood up to Regina and left her alone with all her ill-gotten gains.  That was where she earned her Oscar nomination.

1941- – Margaret Wycherly

Sergeant York

OK, so I know I’ve been less than positive about the other two acting nominations for Sergeant York.  I’m not convinced that Gary Cooper or Walter Brennan should have been nominated.  But I believe this nomination for Best Supporting Actress was deserved.  The character of Mother York had an emotional range, had depth, and as a result, was interesting to watch.  From her first appearance on the screen, she did more to establish the general feel in the rural Tennessee community where the story took place than any other character.  From her, we learn that the people were stoic, strong, gentle, and religious. 

Wycherly was able to show all those things in the way she moved and the way she spoke.  She moved slowly and deliberately.  She never raised her voice.  She saw sad about her son’s disruptive behavior, and though she never shed a tear, you could see that they were being held back by strength of will.  She showed obvious love for her errant son, Alvin, but also didn’t make any excuses for his drunken tirades.  She even tried to defend him before asking the local preacher to have words with him.  That scene alone was enough to catch my attention.

But then, later on in the movie, her love for her son grows even deeper as she sees him turn his life around.  Her prayers for him to achieve his goal of buying the fertile bottomland he is after were heartfelt and passionate.  Wycherly really stood out in that scene.  And it didn’t hurt that she really looked the part.  She wasn’t pretty or glamorous.  She was just a mother who cared deeply for the welfare of her son, who was working so hard to improve his life.

And then, of course, there were the two scenes of parting and reuniting.  When Alvin left her to go to war, and her daughter asks “Maw, what are they a-fightn’ fer?” her response of, “I don’t rightly know child.  I don’t rightly know.” was perfectly delivered, as she knew that she might never see her son again.  And when he returns, the look of unvarnished relief and joy was brief, only taking a few seconds, but wonderfully portrayed.  Wycherly really did a fine job in her performance and I’m glad she was nominated for an Oscar.

1940 – Ruth Hussey

The Philadelphia Story

I was thoroughly delighted with Ruth Hussey’s performance in this movie.  It was a smart script in which nearly every character was intelligent and witty.  The main cast consisted of a quartet of characters.  A lesser known actress, Hussey had to contend with three powerhouses, Carey Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn, and I think she held her own quite well.  She was just as quick with the fast dialogue, the perfect comedic timing, and the slight emotional drama.

Hussey played the part of Liz Imbrie, a photographer for Spy Magazine, who is assigned to cover a wealthy socialite’s wedding.  The magazine’s editor uses blackmail to get her and the writer, played by Stewart, into the home, but they have to use their own wiles to stay there.  Hers was most definitely a supporting role.  She doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but she seemed to make the most of every second she got.  She was often in the background, observing a lot of the action, but she frequently chimed in with little comedic zingers that was perfectly delivered, making her a rather memorable character. 

But she wasn’t in the background all the time.  She had her own little subplot which gave Hussey the ability to create a fairly fleshed-out character.  She clearly had romantic feelings for Mike, played by Stewart, which were not completely returned.  The unrequited love angle gave Hussey the opportunity to throw a bit of light drama into the mostly silly romantic comedy.  I really enjoyed her calm, no-nonsense attitude when speaking about her feelings for Mike.

And there’s no doubt that she was beautiful, though not in the same haughty and aloof way as Hepburn, so she didn’t overshadow the film’s lead actress.  She had more of a common, comfortable beauty with an attraction that was all its own.  And there was an intelligence that could be clearly seen in her face that wasn’t just part of the character.  It came from the actress, and was a natural part of her.  It makes me wonder what else Hussey has done, and whether she typically played supporting roles, or if she generally played lead roles.  I’ll have to do a little reading.  Either way, I think she totally deserved her Oscar nomination.

1940 – Jane Darwell

The Grapes of Wrath

This was an Oscar that was well-deserved.  Darwell owned this character and she was even a scene stealer at times.  She had such a strong on-screen presence and her performance was so authentic that she was simply captivating on the screen.  She played Ma Joad, the matriarch of the family, the strength and determination of them all.  She is the woman who can bend, but never break.  She keeps going when everyone else is ready to quit.  She has more than enough cause for anger or depression, and yet is filled with a stalwart sense of right and wrong, and love enough to care for the world.  This is what Darwell brought to thr screen. 

She had several scenes in which it clearly came to the surface.  The first of which was the scene where the Joad family is forced out of their home and off their land, and they are loading up a truck for the move to California.  As she is burning the contents of a box of memories, letters and the like, she finds an old pair of earrings.  She holds them up to her ears, and you can see in her eyes the memories of when she was young, of happier times when such adornments were taken for granted.  Then her expression changed to one of sadness, as the present returned, and I could imagine her wondering if she would ever have occasion to wear them again.  There was no dialogue in that scene, but Darwell didn’t need any to show us what Ma Joad was thinking.

The other scene that stood out to me was the one in which she wakes in the middle of the night, only to find that her son, who must go on the run from the law, is leaving.  The sadness and motherly love Darwell brought to the scene was amazing to watch.  This was really the film’s climax, and in the very next scene, as the remaining members of the family are moving on, themselves, she expresses Ma Joad’s strength yet again, proving that she is the glue that holds the family together through good times and bad.

Darwell really understood the character and she acted the hell out of the part.  This is one of those times when I completely agreed with the Academy’s choice in the awarding of an Oscar.  Even looking at her fellow nominees, I’m glad she won.

1940 – Judith Anderson

Rebecca

This was a truly remarkable performance.  Judith Anderson was perfectly cast as the villain Mrs. Danvers.  In this psychological thriller, she is a creepy character, who actually doesn’t commit any crime until the end of the movie, where she burns a mansion down, and intentionally stays to die in the fire.  On the one hand, she is mentally unstable, and on the other hand, she is very cold and calculating.  She has a lack of morals, but, if you look at what she does in the movie, she didn’t break any laws or commit any actual crimes.

She is actually a pretty complex character on the surface, but a simply motivated one at her core.  She was the housekeeper of the estate, and Rebecca’s personal maid when she had been alive.  Mrs. Danvers had become disturbingly obsessed with her employer, with an obsession that absolutely crossed the line into utter adoration and intense sexual attraction.  From her first appearance on the screen, where she is introduced to the Second Mrs. de Winter, it is clear that she disapproves of her, because she is not Rebecca. 

She treats her new mistress coldly and with open distain.  There are two scenes in particular which stood out to me as phenomenal.  The first is the one where she is showing off Rebecca’s bedroom to the Second Mrs. de Winter.  She is truly creepy in how she shows off Rebecca’s fur coat, then her underwear drawer, and then her see-through nightgown.  This is the scene where her strong sexual desire for Rebecca was clearly stated without ever actually being stated.  When showing off the nightgown, she says, “Look.  You can see my hand right through it,” implying that she used to love seeing Rebecca’s naked body when she had worn it.

The other scene that she was amazing in was the one in which she tries to convince Maxim’s new wife to commit suicide.  She first manipulates her into upsetting Maxim, and then, when she is in tears, she invites her over to the open window and whispers in her ear, calmly suggesting that she has nothing to live for.  Maxim doesn’t really love you.  How could he?  It would be easy to just let go and die.  It would be best if you did.  Wow.  Anderson played such a convincing villain!

1940 – Marjorie Rambeau

Primrose Path

I’ll start this off by saying that the character of Mamie Adams, as played by Marjorie Rambeau surprised me, and that was a good thing.  At the beginning of the movie, she comes on the screen and into the plot like a bit of a whirlwind.  It is clear, right from the start that she is cheating on her sloppy drunk of a husband, though it is just as clear that she loves him at the same time.  But then, as the film progresses, her character deepens and shows complexity and even a bit of pathos.

I can see why Rambeau was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award.  She created a real character with both good and bad characteristics.  She was multi-layered.  At first, I didn’t like her, but by the end I did.  And when it came to her death scene, I felt for her.  All that being said, there seemed to be those two sides to the character of Mamie that Rambeau nailed.  The good and the bad.

The way Rambeau played the bad girl was wanton and unapologetic.  She was a party girl who liked to go out and have a good time.  Her first appearance on the screen had her coming home from a festival, bragging to her family about the rich man she’d fooled around with.  She’d spent money on frivolous things that could have been better spent feeding and clothing her children.  And when tending her drunk husband, she carelessly coddled him and gave him money to go buy more alcohol, feeding his addiction and perpetuating his inebriation.  Rambeau easily made her seem flippant and unapologetic.

But on the opposite side of that coin, she actually did love her husband in a strange way, just as she loved and cared for her two daughters.  Rambeau brought out a kind of strength and compassion in the woman who made no secret about her extramarital affairs.  And upon learning that her eldest daughter had fallen in love, she sat with her and tried to give her a bit of advice, misguided as it might have been.  And she even cried for her daughter as the girl took her first steps into womanhood and the dangerous world of men and love.  Rambeau pulled it all off with confidence and even a bit of flare.  She made me like Mamie Adams, despite her flaws, and that can’t be an easy thing to do.

1940 – Barbara O’Neil

All This and Heaven Too

Barbara O’Neil played her part and she played it well.  The problem is that at the end of the film, I didn’t have a very comprehensive sense of who the character was.  And I don’t think that was the actress’s fault.  It was the script.  But what was wonderful about O’Neil’s performance was that she made the character memorable and strangely believable, despite the over-the-top performance.

You see, the character of Françoise, duchesse de Praslin was just crazy.  She was an emotional roller-coaster.  She had so many negative qualities that were written into her, it was hard to keep track of them all, or put reasons behind any of them.  She was arrogant, over-privileged, entitled, self-centered, cruel, spiteful, jealous, suspicious, antagonistic, and constantly angry.  She had the unfounded idea that the world was out to hurt her, and so she made a point of hurting others first.  And that was about the totality of the character, as it was written.

But O’Neil put a shred of humanity into her performance that made her interesting to watch whenever she was in a scene.  And she was able to hold her own against the two Hollywood powerhouses, Bette Davis and Charles Boyer, without ever getting lost in the background.  There was once a pop song written about Bette Davis’s eyes, but in this movie, O’Neil’s eyes were just as expressive, if not more so.  They had the emotionally unstable gaze, the frantic glimpse, the suspicious glance.  They had the fire of anger that was often softened by an uncertain sanity.

Because that was most of what the role required, the moments of calm, of wholeness, stood out more than they might have, otherwise.  O’Neil did a pretty good job of transcending the script that might have made a lesser actress into a one-note character.  This includes her… slightly ridiculous death scene.  Spoiler alert!  So her husband has finally had enough.  He advances on her slowly with murder in his eyes.  There is a slow zoom in on her terrified face as she pleads, “No!  No!  You couldn’t!  Please, no!”  Like something out of a silent movie, she mugs for the camera, raising her hands to her face in fear.  Ok, that was a little over-the-top.  But I’m blaming that on the script and the director.  O’Neil was fine.

1939 – Maria Ouspenskaya

Love Affair

I want to start off by saying that even though she only had a few minutes of screen time, Ouspenskaya really deserved her Oscar nomination.  She was so good, and she added so much to the movie.  True, she was typecast into the role of an old, but loveable foreign grandmother, but she was so perfect.  She stood out, even against her incredibly famous co-stars.  Seriously, she only shared the screen with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, but it’s her that I really remember in that scene.

It is significant to note that this was not Maria’s first Best Supporting Actress nomination.  She was also nominated in 1936 for her performance in Dodsworth.  But unlike her part in that film, here, she just had such a warm and inviting presence.  She is the kindly grandmother we all want to have.  Part of me wants to say that it was all in her eyes, but that wouldn’t be true.  It was her whole presence.  She had an incredibly expressive smile.  Her posture displayed nobility and strength of character, if not strength of body.  She moved slowly, as an elderly woman might, but not so slow that she was a caricature.  She was frail, but not ridiculous.  She was just lovely on so many levels.

She played the character of Grandmother Janou.  She is Michel’s dear grandmother who lives in a darling chateau in Madeira.  Her love for her grandson is clearly evident in their interactions, and she forms a quick bond with his love interest, Terry.  And when it is time for the lovers to return to the boat, the tears that roll down her cheeks were real and very touching.  She played her part to perfection.

Something else wonderful about her performance was that at one point, she had to play the piano.  I can usually tell if a person in a film is actually playing their instrument, or if they are being dubbed.  I think Ouspenskaya was actually playing the piano, or if not, she was faking it incredibly well.  Her fingers actually appeared to be playing the correct notes, and I call that impressive.  As a matter of fact, it was a very sweet moment in the film.  When Terry begins to sing along with Grandmother Janou, it made Michel really fall in love with Terry.  It was such a beautiful scene, and Ouspenskaya really did a fantastic job in her brief role.