Best Supporting Actress 1950

[Reza]

Tonight I am hosting a mini film festival of classic films from Hollywood's Golden Age at a local club and by coincidence the first film to be screened is All About Eve. Having recently viewed the film yet again in preparation for the showing, I couldn't agree more about Celeste Holm's character being the only ''real'' one and she brings a great deal of natural charm to it in her performance. I didn't know this bit of trivia about the offscreen relationship between Davis and Holm and shall mention it when I introduce the film tonight. Thanks Magilla.

I love Thelma Ritter in this film and always felt she should have won instead of Josephine Hull, but I shall vote for Ritter for one of her subsequent performances.

Olsen is good but she was obviously swept up, and nominated, along with everyone more deserving in Sunset Blvd.

Emerson is superb and deserved the nod.

Never thought much of Hull's performance.

Voted for Celeste Holm.

My top 5 of the year:

Celeste Holm, All About Eve
Thelma Ritter, All About Eve
Gloria Grahame, In a Lonely Place
Hope Emerson, Caged
Ann Harding, The Magnificent Yankee



Edited By Reza on 1274785702

[Big Magilla]

Hope Emerson may be best known today for her hard-bitten role in Caged but during her lifetime she was justly applauded for her lighter side.

She had another high profile role in the 1950 Oscar year as the woman who lifts Spencer Tracy up in the courtroom in Adam's Rib. She was Emmy nominated in 1959 for her role as "Mother", the proprietress of the waterfront jazz hangout in Peter Gunn - the equally marvelous Minerva Urecal replaced her the second year of the show's run. Most delightful of all, however, she was the voice of Elsie the Cow in Borden's Milk commercials, one of three unforgettable iconic commercial characters of my childhood along with Conchita Banana and the giraffe who wanted a Clark bar.

[ITALIANO]

Her boundless friendship with Bette Davis

I must have seen a different movie.

But it's true that Celeste Holm is very good in All About Eve - probably the second-best performance in a very well acted movie. Of course, like all her co-stars, she had the advantage of a wonderful, subtly-written character, but only an intelligent actress could have explored each of its nuances in such a seemingly effortless way. As for Thelma Ritter, she would have played this kind of role again and again, but rarely better and certainly rarely in a better movie; yet it's definitely a less complex character, and while I think that one should vote for Ritter at least once, I know that I will do that on another year.

Nancy Olson had a pleasant screen presence and showed some talent in Sunset Boulevard - but in a movie full of interesting, powerful roles, hers isn't the most interesting for sure. She does an acceptable job, but it's one of the many cases when you feel that, had she been in a less good or less successful picture, she wouldnt even dream of a nomination.

Josephine Hull's performance is rather funny in a quite predictable theatrical tradition; this year she didnt deserve to win.

They all talked a lot. But movies are also about silences - and images. And this is why I'm voting for this strange-looking actress, Hope Emerson, who had the role of her life as the tall, sinister, cynical prison matron in Caged - a character that was imitated in countless, often very bad movies in the following decades, but never played so well. It's not only that she was physically right for the part - the way she plays it, her unforgettable facial expressions full of scorn and despise, make for a memorable portrayal of power, not of immense power but, what's worst, of the small, greedy power that a human being, because of his or her position, can have on other human beings, and how devastating it can be if badly used. Both Caged and Emerson's performance are classics, and for once they deserve to be.

(P.S. Gloria Grahame SUPPORTING in In a Lonely Place? Despite her billing, NEVER).



Edited By ITALIANO on 1274785405

[Big Magilla]

Only Humphrey Bogart was billed over the title in In a Lonely Place. Gloria Grahame shared co-star billing with Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell and Martha Stewart.

[dws1982]

The other nominees were decent enough, but none really held a candle to the Eve ladies or Gloria Grahame who should have been nominated for In a Lonely Place.

Yeah, in Lead.

[Big Magilla]

Finally a Celeste Holm performance I can vote for.

The other actors had better lines, but Holm's down to earth non-show biz wife of playwright Hugh Marlowe in All About Eve was the most real character in the film. Her boundless friendship with Bette Davis seemed so genuine it was a shock to learn in recent years that the two actresses didn't like one another and spoke only in character in their scenes together.

Thelma Ritter could have won on wisecracks alone if her role had been larger, but she disappears halfway through the film.

Anne Baxter, who took a leaf from Eve's book and got herself nominated as lead was really a supporting player in the film and belonged in this category with Holm and Ritter.

The other nominees were decent enough, but none really held a candle to the Eve ladies or Gloria Grahame who should have been nominated for In a Lonely Place.

Josephine Hull won for recreating her stage role as the uptight sister in Harvey but the movie really belongs to Jimmy Stewart and the invisible rabbit.

Hope Emerson had a field day as the sadistic prison matron in Caged and she's fine, if more than a bit predictable.

Nancy Olson was lucky to be even noticed in Sunset Bouelvard in the wake of Swanson, Holden and von Stroheim but she does manage to hold own in her scenes with Holden with whom she would make several more films.

Aside from Grahame, there wasn't really anyone of note who was overlooked this year.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1274761894