Best Supporting Actress 1953

1927/28 through 1997
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Best Supporting Actress 1953

Grace Kelly - Mogambo
0
No votes
Geraldine Page - Hondo
2
6%
Donna Reed - From Here to Eternity
9
27%
Marjorie Rambeau - Torch Song
2
6%
Thelma Ritter - Pickup on South Street
20
61%
 
Total votes: 33

flipp525
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Re: Best Supporting Actress 1953

Post by flipp525 »

After a re-watch, I have to say that Torch Song is a campy gift from the Gods of cinema. The restaurant scene is very thrown together from other MGM movie sets, and Joan's lunch order is cinematic gold: "Lobster Newburgh....and COFFEE!"
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flipp525
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Re: Best Supporting Actress 1953

Post by flipp525 »

I finally caught Marjorie Rambeau's nominated performance in Torch Song. Oddly enough, I had just finished Magnificent Obsession a half hour before I started Torch Song and was surprised that they both featured blind/sighted love affairs. The former is certainly a bit of a sappy slog with Joan Crawford virtually operating as a one-woman show (her infamous blackface number "Two-Faced Woman" is certainly reason enough to see this movie if nothing else), but I do have to admit that the last scene got me. I'm a sucker for an ending like that (with "Tenderly" used to such wonderful effect). Rambeau's performance is entertaining, but it's quite hard to believe that that got a nomination this year. She has two brief scenes and basically functions as a catalyst for Joan's character finally getting a clue about Michael Wilding's feelings for her.
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bizarre
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Re: Best Supporting Actress 1953

Post by bizarre »

I've already posted my thoughts - three years ago - so I'll weigh in with my picks for this fantastic year:

1. Thelma Ritter, Pickup on South Street
2. Machiko Kyō, Older Brother, Younger Sister
3. Yatsuko Tanami, Wife
4. Ida Lupino, The Bigamist
5. Marilyn Monroe, Niagara
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Re: Best Supporting Actress 1953

Post by bizarre »

Thelma Ritter, easily. It deserves the hype, and I don't think the role is sentimental at all - or at least its scenes with the greatest potential for sap skilfully avoid it. She's very funny early on, establishing Moe's front and mechanisms for dealing with city life, but when she has her final scene she peels these layers away like an onion to reveal naked feeling. It is one of the best performances ever in this category.

The other nominees are generally lacklustre. Geraldine Page is a default 2nd place finisher for me. She glows in her debut role, and although it isn't a challenging role she is effective, especially in her moonlit conversation with Wayne. It is odd to see her here, quite unmannered, and compare it to her later performances which are as mathematical as can be.

Marjorie Rambeau is my third choice. A strikingly horrible film (most of these, save Pickup on South Street, are pretty poor pictures) only good nowadays for its camp value, Rambeau is still very funny in it. I wouldn't recommend watching the entire picture for her two mildly amusing scenes, though. Even if she stands out here it is because she uses typical 'comedy cameo' techniques effectively - there's nothing particularly fresh about this performance.

Grace Kelly was so-so - but when was she not? - but when you are up against an actress of such pure, earthy presence as Ava Gardner brittle technique will hold you in little stead. She looked uncomfortable on screen, although she had some moments of subtle bitchiness where she acquitted herself well.

Donna Reed might take the cake for the worst winning performance I've seen from this category. Either she's a blank slate or completely incongruous in her acting choices. She's like a sleepwalker in this film, catatonic until a bad dream provides a brief burst of awkward, uncomfortable energy. The tone of her big scene - "I will have that farmhouse in California/Iowa/Montana/wherever! I will!" is so strangely sinister that an evil cackle wouldn't be out of place. I can't imagine that's how anyone save Reed intended those lines to be delivered, but this film as a whole is full of moments like that, things that seem like unmet filmmaking goals resulting in reluctant artistic compromises.

Who else would have been in the running this year? I'd imagine Gloria Grahame stood a shot for The Big Heat but if they snubbed her for a nomination as random as Rambeau's I guess she didn't have the support.
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Post by Mister Tee »

I have to say I'm a bit surprised by the voting. I'd expected a runaway.

I sat watching Torch Song waiting for Rambeau to have at least a notable scene. She finally got it, near the end, but it wasn't nearly enough to truly compete with this field. We so often complain here about actresses in this category whose parts are too large, but this nomination -- and others in years ahead -- show the opposite can be a problem as well.

I frequently like Page, mannerisms and all, but Hondo isn't my kind of movie, and she does nothing special in it.

Mogambo also fails to engage me much, but the actresses are solid in it. This was a good springboard for Kelly to win the award the following year.

It's easy to see why Reed won -- a veteran undergoing a significant image-change and giving a memorable performance in the year's beloved film. My experience with From Here to Eternity tracks close to Damien's: I first saw it at age 14, and for several years it was my Favorite Film of All Time. Having till then been brought up on largely Disney and epics, I was bowled over by the emotionally engaging characters who weren't "winners". The injustice inflicted on, especially, Prewitt, rang incredibly loudly for my young self. And though, like Damien, I've found my overall opinion of the film waning in subsequent viewings over the years, that substantial emotional connection remains, and keeps it a special memory for me.

But, much as I still like the film and Reed's contribution, for me this is Thelma Ritter's time. Mo is the most substantial (but still supporting) role she got during this period, and, by me, she hit it utterly out of the park. She's vivid in a way that utilizes all her strongest qualities as an actress but is not bound by them: she's her funny self, but also heartbreaking in her fatalism. It's the best of her six nominations, and she should have gone home with the trophy.
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Post by Damien »

FilmFan720 wrote:
Damien wrote:Thelma Ritter, dear Thelma Ritter. She does her patented Thelma Ritter stuff in Pickup On South Street, but the role is embarrassingly sentimental, even if Sam Fuller was the best director she ever worked with.
I love Samuel Fuller, but really better than Hitchcock?
Whoops! :D
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Post by ITALIANO »

Torch Song is one of those desperate 50s vehicles for not-so-young-anymore Joan Crawford, mainly memorable today because at some point she wears a blackface make-up a la Al Jolson. Marjorie Rambeau has indeed only two scenes as Crawford's mother. She sits. She talks. She doesnt do anything really interesting.

Grace Kelly has a rather thankless role in Mogambo, and of course that's Ava Gardner's movie. But she would soon become a big star, they knew that, and this may explain her nomination.

I wouldnt say that Geraldine Page was already that mannered in Hondo - and it's nice to see her still so young, and playing opposite - of all actors - John Wayne. Unfortunately there's not much chemistry between them, and the movie itself isnt the best western ever.

Donna Reed had that warm, friendly American face which was used quite well in countless, often not-very-good movies. This time the movie is good though, and she's certainly not bad in it, but still too healthy and wholesome to be really convincing as what Hollywood censorship back then liked to call a "dance hall girl".

This is the best chance we have to vote for Thelma Ritter though, for once not as a wisecracking maid, in Samuel Fuller's film noir, and cult movie, Pickup on South Street. A very good, solid turn from one of the best character actresses American cinena ever produced.




Edited By ITALIANO on 1275661667
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Post by FilmFan720 »

Damien wrote:Thelma Ritter, dear Thelma Ritter. She does her patented Thelma Ritter stuff in Pickup On South Street, but the role is embarrassingly sentimental, even if Sam Fuller was the best director she ever worked with.
I love Samuel Fuller, but really better than Hitchcock?
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Post by Damien »

Worst of the 5 is Geraldine Page. Mannered, miscast and irritating as hell. She seems completely out of place in the Old West, in a role so many other actresses could have nailed down easily.

Marjorie Rambeau, as I recall, only has 2 scenes in Torch Song, and neither is a dramatic highlight. She was always a likable presence, though, and has a great line that starts: "Your father wasn't just somewhat bald . . .'

Thelma Ritter, dear Thelma Ritter. She does her patented Thelma Ritter stuff in Pickup On South Street, but the role is embarrassingly sentimental, even if Sam Fuller was the best director she ever worked with.

Grace Kelly is very good in Mogambo, a film in which Ava Gardner is great.

Donna Reed is just wonderful in From Here To Eternity. This is a film I've seen half-a-dozen times. The first time, when I was 14, I thought it was a great work of art. In my 20s, 30s and 40s, it continually seemed to me to be a movie about nothing other than what it's about. In other words, it tells the story of a group of individuals in Hawaii during and after Pearl Harbor, but it had no overreaching themes, no greater points attempting to be made.

Seeing it again a year ago, I felt that it was still is too emotionally distanced (in the Fred Zinnemann way -- sorry, Precious) to be effective but this time I did detect -- and was affected by -- a feel for emotional connections, and a sub-text examining lonely, emotionally-isolated people reaching out for connections. A good movie, not a great one.

Although her prostitute character was watered down, Donna Reed gave the film's most vivid, emotionally honest performance. Her counterbalancing a stoical acceptance of who and what she is with palpable dreams for a better life is completely affecting, and what's most memorable is the anger that is percolating below the surface. Reed was always a fine actress, even when cast in such MGM drivel as Gentle Annie, and here she had the opportunity to show that to audiences.

My Own Top 5:
1. Marilyn Monroe in How To Marry A Millionaire
2. Anne Crawford in Knights Of The Round Table
3. Donna Reed in From Here To Eternity
4. Moira Shearer in The Story Of Three Loves
5. Celia Johnson in The Captain's Paradise
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Post by Reza »

I would like this to be a tie between Reed and Ritter but if I had to choose between the two I would go for Reed, who is heartbreaking in her scenes with Montgomery Clift.

I prefer other performances that year over that of Rambeau, Page and Kelly.

My top 5:

Donna Reed, From Here to Eternity
Thelma Ritter, Pickup on South Street
Moira Shearer, The Story of Three Loves
Gloria Grahame, The Big Heat
Jean Arthur, Shane

My 6th spot goes to Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (yes she was considered a lead in the film and nominated in that category although she does not have a very large role as compared to both Lancaster or Clift). I don't know why I feel Kerr was wrong for the role...........maybe it was because the actress was British. I can't remember if they explained her accent in the film. Was the character in the book a Brit?? And does anyone know if the tv version of Eternity (with Natalie Wood) is available on DVD?
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Post by Big Magilla »

Donna Reed successfully plays against type as the "dance hall girl" in love with soldier Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity. She is especially moving in her final scene aboard the departing ship with Deborah Kerr. She would be a deserving winner were it not for the fact she was up against Thelma Ritter also playing against type as the informant in Pickup on South Street, the role which brought her a fourth consecutive nomination and should have brought her the Oscar itself. Alas, it was not to be.

Marjorie Rambeau is too over the top as Joan Crawford's money-grubbing mother in Torch Song to warrant consideration and Grace Kelly and Geraldine Page were exciting newcomers but both would go on to better things.

Among the runners-up this year: Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat; Jean Arthur in Shane; Teresa Wright in The Actress; Allyn Ann McLerie in Calamity Jane and Marie Windsor in Trouble Along the Way.
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