I have not seen any of these nominees. My picks:
1. Jane Wyman, All That Heaven Allows
2. Eva Dahlbeck, Dreams
3. Hideko Takamine, Floating Clouds
4. Karuna Bannerjee, Pather Panchali
5. Julie Harris, East of Eden
Best Actress 1955
-
Big Magilla
- Site Admin
- Posts: 19336
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
- Location: Jersey Shore
Davis' overall career is longer than Russell's - she outlived her by 13 years for one thing - and certinly more prestigious overall.
Although Davis had well deserved hits with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte and The Nanny, these were generally considered low rent endeavors made memorable chiefly by what she brought to them.
Russell's A Majority of One, Gypsy and The Trouble With Angels were box office hits and while the results of Five Finger Exercise and Rosie! were not good, they were considered prestige projects at the time they were made. Davis, sadly, wasn't offered those kinds of roles at that stage in her career. Her Broadway role in The Night of the Iguana was given to Ava Gardner. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which Edward Albee wrote with her in mind and for which she would have been ideal, was given to the much more marketable Elizabeth Taylor.
Although Davis had well deserved hits with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte and The Nanny, these were generally considered low rent endeavors made memorable chiefly by what she brought to them.
Russell's A Majority of One, Gypsy and The Trouble With Angels were box office hits and while the results of Five Finger Exercise and Rosie! were not good, they were considered prestige projects at the time they were made. Davis, sadly, wasn't offered those kinds of roles at that stage in her career. Her Broadway role in The Night of the Iguana was given to Ava Gardner. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which Edward Albee wrote with her in mind and for which she would have been ideal, was given to the much more marketable Elizabeth Taylor.
Both had long careers maybe, but they cant be compared. After Auntie Mame Russell not only never appeared in another hit, but the films you mentioned (which I saw) were not only flops, they were terrible and she's embarassing in them. Hepburn of course made some highly successful movies (and some good movies too) later in her career.
Bette Davis's career is not only longer, but even in the 60s she made more successful movies than Russell. But it's true that in the 50s Davis had some problems while Russell had a few good moments.
Bette Davis's career is not only longer, but even in the 60s she made more successful movies than Russell. But it's true that in the 50s Davis had some problems while Russell had a few good moments.
-
Big Magilla
- Site Admin
- Posts: 19336
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
- Location: Jersey Shore
There must be a reason that Hepburn and Rosalind Russell, both of whom were born in 1907, had the longest lasting film star careers of any of their female contemporaries and continue to remain so fascinating all these years later.
By the time Hepburn made Summertime and Russell Picnic the same year, Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert were finished as movie stars, turning to TV to sustain their careers, and while Jane Wyman and Olivia de Havilland, who were younger, would fade as film stars within in the next ten years as well, with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis sustaining their film careers only in what were essentially gloried B movies. Hepburn and Russell continued to headline prestige projects with only the resurgence of Ingrid Bergman in the 1970s and Meryl Streep today equaling their late career popularity in films.
It's true that the 1955 Oscar race was generally considered to be between Magnani and Hayward, both of whose performances in then more popular films were directed by the deadly Daniel Mann, with Summertime then considered an art house movie.
The film had been out of circulation for a while, possibly due to rights issues involving the 1965 Richard Rodgers-Stephen Sondheim musical version, Do I Hear a Waltz?, when it re-emerged in the early 1970s when Hepburn was well into her "beloved" period to be discovered by a whole new generation.
Hepburn herself had never been a top box office star until Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and The Lion in Winter not only won her long overdue back-to-back second and third Oscars, but made her marketable as well. The Broadway musical, Coco kept her in the headlines and even her obvious miscasting in The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Trojan Women and A Delicate Balance failed to derail her until TV triumphs in The Glass Menagerie and The Corn Is Green led to On Golden Pond and another Oscar.
Russell, though I think was even more fascinating in advanced middle age. Dismissed by critics as having delusions of grandeur, largely hurled at her for her inept performance in Mourning Becomes Electra, she re-emerged in the 1950s to repeat her earlier screen triumph in My Sister Eileen (a role originated on stage by Shirley Booth) in the musical version, Wonderful Town. Picnic, in which she received star billing despite her clearly supporting role, would be her only non-leading one. Auntie Mame, the biggest box office success of its day, as well as an enduring time capsule of the play, survives while the ill-conceived film version of its musical incarnation, Mame, does not. But Russell did not stop with Auntie Mame.
After that she successfully replaced legendary stage stars Gertrude Berg in A Majority of One, Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Jessica Tandy in Five Finger Exercise and Ruth Gordon in Rosie! She also had a major success (horror of horrors!) as a nun in The Trouble With Angels directed by Ida Lupino. If she hadn't been plagued by arthritis and cancer since Auntie Mame, and died in her late 60s, there's no telling how many more delightful starring roles she might have had like Hepburn well into her 80s.
Edited By Big Magilla on 1251037058
By the time Hepburn made Summertime and Russell Picnic the same year, Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert were finished as movie stars, turning to TV to sustain their careers, and while Jane Wyman and Olivia de Havilland, who were younger, would fade as film stars within in the next ten years as well, with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis sustaining their film careers only in what were essentially gloried B movies. Hepburn and Russell continued to headline prestige projects with only the resurgence of Ingrid Bergman in the 1970s and Meryl Streep today equaling their late career popularity in films.
It's true that the 1955 Oscar race was generally considered to be between Magnani and Hayward, both of whose performances in then more popular films were directed by the deadly Daniel Mann, with Summertime then considered an art house movie.
The film had been out of circulation for a while, possibly due to rights issues involving the 1965 Richard Rodgers-Stephen Sondheim musical version, Do I Hear a Waltz?, when it re-emerged in the early 1970s when Hepburn was well into her "beloved" period to be discovered by a whole new generation.
Hepburn herself had never been a top box office star until Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and The Lion in Winter not only won her long overdue back-to-back second and third Oscars, but made her marketable as well. The Broadway musical, Coco kept her in the headlines and even her obvious miscasting in The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Trojan Women and A Delicate Balance failed to derail her until TV triumphs in The Glass Menagerie and The Corn Is Green led to On Golden Pond and another Oscar.
Russell, though I think was even more fascinating in advanced middle age. Dismissed by critics as having delusions of grandeur, largely hurled at her for her inept performance in Mourning Becomes Electra, she re-emerged in the 1950s to repeat her earlier screen triumph in My Sister Eileen (a role originated on stage by Shirley Booth) in the musical version, Wonderful Town. Picnic, in which she received star billing despite her clearly supporting role, would be her only non-leading one. Auntie Mame, the biggest box office success of its day, as well as an enduring time capsule of the play, survives while the ill-conceived film version of its musical incarnation, Mame, does not. But Russell did not stop with Auntie Mame.
After that she successfully replaced legendary stage stars Gertrude Berg in A Majority of One, Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Jessica Tandy in Five Finger Exercise and Ruth Gordon in Rosie! She also had a major success (horror of horrors!) as a nun in The Trouble With Angels directed by Ida Lupino. If she hadn't been plagued by arthritis and cancer since Auntie Mame, and died in her late 60s, there's no telling how many more delightful starring roles she might have had like Hepburn well into her 80s.
Edited By Big Magilla on 1251037058
Right, dont forget that the Uris of the world are lucky enough not to belong to either of these sides, while the Marcos at least know very well ONE, and ok, it might be a metaphore as you say, but for a metaphore to really work it has to work on two aspects, the symbolic but also the realistic one, and it's on this second aspect that, I repeat, the movie certainly fails. Also, are we really sure that these two sides are so dramatically opposite? I dont think OUR personal encounter was so "impossible" for example.
I never mention Rossano Brazzi when I talk about this movie because while it's true that I'd personally prefer Italy to be represented by someone else, I can't deny that probably for an American woman of the time Brazzi (who in Italy had been replaced by other newer male sex symbols years before) could still be an object of desire. And honestly, especially now that we have Berlusconi representing us on an international level, I definitely cant complain about Brazzi.
Okri, I would go for May Robson, Hepburn, Davis and Magnani, which is I think a better, and more varied, line up than Hepburn, Hepburn, Hepburn, Hepburn.
I never mention Rossano Brazzi when I talk about this movie because while it's true that I'd personally prefer Italy to be represented by someone else, I can't deny that probably for an American woman of the time Brazzi (who in Italy had been replaced by other newer male sex symbols years before) could still be an object of desire. And honestly, especially now that we have Berlusconi representing us on an international level, I definitely cant complain about Brazzi.
Okri, I would go for May Robson, Hepburn, Davis and Magnani, which is I think a better, and more varied, line up than Hepburn, Hepburn, Hepburn, Hepburn.
Being the kind, gracious, benevolent person that you are, Marco, I'm sure you'll allow us, the prudish, emotionally and sexually repressed miserable creatures to have our own tailored made Divas the way hot blooded, free spirited Latins do.
As for Summertime. David Lean is no Daniel Mann. He didn't cautiously and unimaginatively cast and film a stage play. He took a (rather negligible) piece and turned it into a personal study of themes he was intrigued by. Summertime is the harbinger of Kwai, Lawrence and especially A Passage to India. It is about a clash of different mind sets, cultural, spiritual and psychological approaches to life - the Anglo Saxon vs. the mysterious, often sexually charged, Other - set against distinctive and unnerving exotic location. So here Jane Hudson is not a realistically depicted Mid Western spinster but an idealized and stylized representation of the idea of Americanism. And yes, as it turned out she is unsurprisingly the consummate New Englander. And yes, Hepburn had a built in sophistication about her. But, as you'd be the first to acknowledge, scratch the having-lunch-with-Cukor surface, ignore the I'm-a-Bush-hater-socialist shtick, see beyond the oh-I-adore-Dario-Argento-films façade, and you're left with this basically prim, naïve and frightened human specimen, The American. (Yes, yes, I was - mostly - joking). Summertime is about the impossible if delightfully titillating encounter of the Uris and the Marcos of this world, and yes, it's perfectly understandable you'd find it unsatisfactory since you got Rossano Brazzi to represent you, but we were blessed with Hepburn.
Edited By Uri on 1251004856
As for Summertime. David Lean is no Daniel Mann. He didn't cautiously and unimaginatively cast and film a stage play. He took a (rather negligible) piece and turned it into a personal study of themes he was intrigued by. Summertime is the harbinger of Kwai, Lawrence and especially A Passage to India. It is about a clash of different mind sets, cultural, spiritual and psychological approaches to life - the Anglo Saxon vs. the mysterious, often sexually charged, Other - set against distinctive and unnerving exotic location. So here Jane Hudson is not a realistically depicted Mid Western spinster but an idealized and stylized representation of the idea of Americanism. And yes, as it turned out she is unsurprisingly the consummate New Englander. And yes, Hepburn had a built in sophistication about her. But, as you'd be the first to acknowledge, scratch the having-lunch-with-Cukor surface, ignore the I'm-a-Bush-hater-socialist shtick, see beyond the oh-I-adore-Dario-Argento-films façade, and you're left with this basically prim, naïve and frightened human specimen, The American. (Yes, yes, I was - mostly - joking). Summertime is about the impossible if delightfully titillating encounter of the Uris and the Marcos of this world, and yes, it's perfectly understandable you'd find it unsatisfactory since you got Rossano Brazzi to represent you, but we were blessed with Hepburn.
Edited By Uri on 1251004856
No, well, I must be honest and admit that Hepburn could be VERY good (and very bad too, but that's another story). As I wrote in another thread, Magnani herself considered Hepburn to be one of the greatest actresses of her time. She just doesnt impress me in anything she does, and I always felt closer to other actresses, women like Magnani, Signoret, Bergman, even some Americans. Maybe it's her tight puritanical side which makes me feel distant from her, a basic frigidity which by the way she used very well in some of her best performances (really, rarely has lack of sexuality been used in a more interesting way by an artist ever), but which I find a bit tiresome for my tastes (and honestly, can anyone imagine Hepburn having sex with ANYONE, man or even woman, including Spencer Tracy? I am not talking about the real Hepburn, whom I dont know anything about, but what she projected in her screen performances of course) .
She's not my kind of actress but she could be brilliant, and for example here I will vote for her in Alice Adams (one of the best performances ever given by a young American actress) and Lion in Winter, and I would even vote for her for Long Day's Journey Into Night if I didn't think that, frankly, two Oscars for Katharine Hepburn are enough. Anyway, on this board she will get at least five.
She's not my kind of actress but she could be brilliant, and for example here I will vote for her in Alice Adams (one of the best performances ever given by a young American actress) and Lion in Winter, and I would even vote for her for Long Day's Journey Into Night if I didn't think that, frankly, two Oscars for Katharine Hepburn are enough. Anyway, on this board she will get at least five.
I dunno - I quite like Hepburn in Summertime. It's an interesting flipside to her usual stridency. This is coming from someone who finds her largely underwhelming (I think Cate Blanchett's Hepburn is as good as any Hepburn performance, for example). What do you think of Hepburn in general - your comment "Watch a Magnani movie and you'll forget about Hepburn," suggests to me you don't think highly of her.
Anyway, Magnani is my favourite of this line-up as well.
Anyway, Magnani is my favourite of this line-up as well.
Katharine Hepburn, huh? If it were for this board, she'd get ten Oscars. But thank god, as we all know, we on this board are so often completely wrong.
It's not that she's bad in Summertime. This is not Dragon Seed or Iron Petticoat. She's just miscast, terribly miscast. When you watch photos from the original stage production, you understand immediately that Shirley Booth WAS the true thing, this provincial naive little lady for the first time in a ronantic European city. As soon as you see Hepburn in the movie, you see a woman who clearly has lunch every sunday with George Cukor and who, even if she's never been to Venice, was certainly told everything about it by Thomas Mann in person. She's too beautiful, too obviously intelligent, her dresses are too sophisticated, and, as Arthur Laurents pointed out, she goes around with a movie camera that maybe only Samuel Goldwyn would have brought with him to Europe. She is simply wrong, and nobody I think can deny this.
Back then by the way Anna Magnani's main rival for the Oscar was considered to be not Hepburn, but Susan Hayward for her Lillian Roth movie, so you can imagine. The others being Jones and Parker not at their best, the only possible winner here can be Magnani.
She's not at her best either, true. The Rose Tattoo isnt Open City or Bellissima, but she's still Magnani, a unique combination of technique and passion, an absolutely brilliant "movie animal" if you know what I mean. What I love about Magnani is that even in her most cliched roles, and in America but not only in America this is the kind of roles she was often given, she could show not only the predictably "sunny", fiery, earthy side of Italy, but also its more tortured, intimate side, especially of course of THAT Italy, which had survived Mussolini and the II World War, hurt, wounded, but alive. It's all there, in her flesh, in her eyes.
Watch a Magnani movie and you will forget about Katharine Hepburn.
But then again, if you prefer your female star to be unthreatening, ok, vote for Hepburn, I will understand.
Edited By ITALIANO on 1250948554
It's not that she's bad in Summertime. This is not Dragon Seed or Iron Petticoat. She's just miscast, terribly miscast. When you watch photos from the original stage production, you understand immediately that Shirley Booth WAS the true thing, this provincial naive little lady for the first time in a ronantic European city. As soon as you see Hepburn in the movie, you see a woman who clearly has lunch every sunday with George Cukor and who, even if she's never been to Venice, was certainly told everything about it by Thomas Mann in person. She's too beautiful, too obviously intelligent, her dresses are too sophisticated, and, as Arthur Laurents pointed out, she goes around with a movie camera that maybe only Samuel Goldwyn would have brought with him to Europe. She is simply wrong, and nobody I think can deny this.
Back then by the way Anna Magnani's main rival for the Oscar was considered to be not Hepburn, but Susan Hayward for her Lillian Roth movie, so you can imagine. The others being Jones and Parker not at their best, the only possible winner here can be Magnani.
She's not at her best either, true. The Rose Tattoo isnt Open City or Bellissima, but she's still Magnani, a unique combination of technique and passion, an absolutely brilliant "movie animal" if you know what I mean. What I love about Magnani is that even in her most cliched roles, and in America but not only in America this is the kind of roles she was often given, she could show not only the predictably "sunny", fiery, earthy side of Italy, but also its more tortured, intimate side, especially of course of THAT Italy, which had survived Mussolini and the II World War, hurt, wounded, but alive. It's all there, in her flesh, in her eyes.
Watch a Magnani movie and you will forget about Katharine Hepburn.
But then again, if you prefer your female star to be unthreatening, ok, vote for Hepburn, I will understand.
Edited By ITALIANO on 1250948554
Like 1962.Damien wrote:What's so interesting to me about 1955 is that 3 of the Best Picture nominees (Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, Mister Roberts and Rose Tattoo did not receive eithe Director or Screenplay nominations. Meanwhile, East of Eden and Bad Day At Black Rock received both but missed out on Picture nominations. And David Lean received a Directing nom for Summertime. One of the most fractured years ever.