Best Supporting Actor 1947

[Big Magilla]

I'd say New Year's Day or thereabouts.

[ksrymy]

Is it time to think about a seasonal moratorium on these? I know I've had difficulty keeping up with the last several; by next weekend I guarantee it'll be in fuhgeddaboudit territory.

I concur.

When should the '48 poll be posted then?

[Damien]

Is it time to think about a seasonal moratorium on these? I know I've had difficulty keeping up with the last several; by next weekend I guarantee it'll be in fuhgeddaboudit territory.

I concur.

[Damien]

This is a very tough one, I would have been happy with any of four of the nominees winning.

Not even in consideration is Thomas Gomez. Never a particularly interesting actor, he doesn't even have an interesting character to play in Ride The Pink Horse.

Robert Ryan was one of the great post-war film actors, and Crossfire put him on the map. It's a chilling performance because he's so blandly normal on the outside. But it's ultimately not that rich a character in terms of depth and scope. (I would have given him a lead nomination this year for Woman on the Beach.) Ryan, who was a great progressive and very active and lefty politics noted the irony that in so many of his movies he was doing things that he was fighting in real life. A great actor and a great man.

I love Charles Bickford and her performance as the butler in The Farmer’s Daughter is one of his warmest and he’s absolutely delightful. It’s the kind of role and performance this category was designed for.

But there are two other nominees who are first among equals. Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle is a lovely film icon. And it answers the thorny question of How exactly does one play Santa Claus? The answer is with dignity and understated warmth. He’s perfect. He’s also a lead, but the category placement was not his fault. (The best SUPPORTING performance in Miracle on 34th Street is Gene Lockhart’s as the judge. His scene with his grandchildren is priceless.)

If Edmund Gwenn created a beautifully realized embodiment of one of the most famous figures in the world, Richard Widmark took a fairly standard type role and made something unique and repulsively fascinating. There is no other movie gangster quite like Tommy Udo, with his creepy laugh. Widmark really convinces you that Udo truly gets off on his sadism – which must have been truly something for1947 audiences. This is one of the all-time best screen debut. (Widmark ws in his 30s at the time, and had a career as a radio actor.) It’s a great creation, and he also gets to utter one of my all-time favorite movie lines: “Sleep is for squirts.” Because, his is the most exciting performance of these four wonderful nominees, I vote for Richard Widmark. (It also shows his range as an actor that within two years he segued from a psycho to heroic leading men.)


My Own Top 5:
1. Richard Widmark in Kiss Of Death
2. George Lloyd in Singapore
3. Edmund Gwenn in Miracle On 34th Street
4. Gene Lockhart in Miracle On 34th Street
5. Charles Bickford in The Farmer’s Daughter

[nightwingnova]

Don't forget Widmark's superb Ratched in surely the best all-star murder mystery film ever made: Murder on the Orient Express.

Is it time to think about a seasonal moratorium on these? I know I've had difficulty keeping up with the last several; by next weekend I guarantee it'll be in fuhgeddaboudit territory.

Charles Bickford is fine, as usual, but can't compete with the other attention-getters in this group.

Considering this year was a high-water mark for noir-y efforts -- with such films as Out of the Past, Nightmare Alley and Dead of Night left out entirely -- it's odd that Thomas Gomez should get in for this likable but hardly earth-shaking film. Gomez was generally good, and is here, too...but his competition beats him on both career and current performance points.

For someone who was by all accounts a noble soul, Robert Ryan had a knack for playing truly repellent SOBs. He fires up Crossfire considerably. But he wasn't the best of the year's breakout villains.

Maybe the best thing about Edmund Gwenn's Miracle on 34th Street work is his delicate touch. Alot of actors would have made the part too twee for words, and the film insufferable as a result. There's a business-like quality to Gwenn's work that keeps the film grounded, and makes it the classic we all know.

But I'm going with Richard Widmark. When I first started watching movies -- late 50s/early 60s -- Widmark's time of peak hotness had passed. I mostly saw him play presidents or generals in mediocre thrillers, and he didn't impress. It was decades later that I saw the films that brought him to prominence -- Panic in the Streets, No Way Out, Pickup on South Street and of course this year's Kiss of Death -- and I was bowled over by the passion and fury he brought to them. His Tommy Udo was a frightening villain -- far more the sociopath with which we're now familiar than the standard screen bad guy of the era. The wheelchair-down-staircase is rightly remembered, but there' s far more to Widmark's work than that. He creates a full-bodied, terrifying creature...one whom I'm happy to salute as the year's best supporting performer.

[ITALIANO]

Ride the Pink Horse is a strange, at times fascinating film noir full of ambiguous characters, potentially dangerous women, etc - but especially interesting for its being set in a small Mexican town and for the expressionistic, intoxicating direction and cinematography. It should be seen by anyone interested in the American cinema of the 40s, and if his director were more famous (as a director) it would be today a cult movie. Oscar completists have another reason to find it, of course - and Thomas Gomez's almost Hemingway-esque character is, I think, a nomination-worthy creation.

But this is a good group of nominees, with the least impressive - Bickford - still giving a dignified performance. While Edmund Gwenn's was, I'm sure, a popular win (though his movie is much less known in Europe than it is in the US), today it's certainly between the two villains, played by very good actors who sadly were never again Oscar-nominated. Both would deserve to win; but as we must give just one vote, I'd say that Widmark's is the more memorable turn.

[Sabin]

I haven't seen Bickford or Gomez so that means I can't vote, which is a shame because the rest of the lineup is incredibly strong. Yes, Gwenn makes for a perfect Santa Clause, but my sensibilities are more in line with Robert Ryan and Richard Widmark (no surprise). Were I to vote, I'd have no problem with either one, but Widmark is more dear to me than Ryan so he'd get my vote for an incredibly iconic piece of work.

[Reza]

My picks for 1947:

1. Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street
2. Richard Widmark, Kiss of Death
3. Finlay Currie, Great Expectations
4. Robert Ryan, Crossfire
5. Charles Bickford, The Farmer's Daughter

The 6th Spot: Hume Cronyn, Brute Force

[Mister Tee]

Is it time to think about a seasonal moratorium on these? I know I've had difficulty keeping up with the last several; by next weekend I guarantee it'll be in fuhgeddaboudit territory.

Charles Bickford is fine, as usual, but can't compete with the other attention-getters in this group.

Considering this year was a high-water mark for noir-y efforts -- with such films as Out of the Past, Nightmare Alley and Dead of Night left out entirely -- it's odd that Thomas Gomez should get in for this likable but hardly earth-shaking film. Gomez was generally good, and is here, too...but his competition beats him on both career and current performance points.

For someone who was by all accounts a noble soul, Robert Ryan had a knack for playing truly repellent SOBs. He fires up Crossfire considerably. But he wasn't the best of the year's breakout villains.

Maybe the best thing about Edmund Gwenn's Miracle on 34th Street work is his delicate touch. Alot of actors would have made the part too twee for words, and the film insufferable as a result. There's a business-like quality to Gwenn's work that keeps the film grounded, and makes it the classic we all know.

But I'm going with Richard Widmark. When I first started watching movies -- late 50s/early 60s -- Widmark's time of peak hotness had passed. I mostly saw him play presidents or generals in mediocre thrillers, and he didn't impress. It was decades later that I saw the films that brought him to prominence -- Panic in the Streets, No Way Out, Pickup on South Street and of course this year's Kiss of Death -- and I was bowled over by the passion and fury he brought to them. His Tommy Udo was a frightening villain -- far more the sociopath with which we're now familiar than the standard screen bad guy of the era. The wheelchair-down-staircase is rightly remembered, but there' s far more to Widmark's work than that. He creates a full-bodied, terrifying creature...one whom I'm happy to salute as the year's best supporting performer.

[Big Magilla]

I wouldn't totally discount Thomas Gomez who was a long time member of the Board of Direcotrs of the Screen Actors Guild and who had another acclaimed performance in 1947 as the priest in Captain from Castile, but there were a couple of actors I would consider over his Pancho in Ride the Pink Horse. Chief among them were Hume Cronyn as the mostrous chief prison guard in Brute Force and Finlay Currie as Magwitch in Great Expectations.

The other nominees are all marvelous. Crossfire wasn't a B movie. It was a major release that opened in New York at the Rivoli, one of the city's largest theatres. A film noir, it was based on Richard Brooks' The Brick Foxhole about the hate-filled murder of a gay man, a subject Hollywood wouldn't touch in 1947. Changing the victim to a Jew the film was not only the first major film about anti-Seminitsm but beat the high profile Gentleman's Agreement into theatres and gave that film a run for its money in the Oscar race for Best Picture. Robert Ryan's venomous villain was one of the chief reasons for its success. I would not begrudge this undeniably great actor his only Oscar nomination.

Richard Widark makes an impressive screen debut as the psycopathic killer in Kiss of Death, elevating a standard noir to screen immortality. Incidentally, the legendary Ben Hecht wrote the screenplays for both Kiss of Death and Crossfire.

Charles Bickford gave what was probably his smoothest, most urbane performance as Joseph Cottten and Ethel Barrymore's butler in The Farmer's Daughter, but the best performance of the year in any categroy was veteran character actor Edmund Gwenn's Kris Krinle in Miracle on 34th Street. Only a Scrooge would deny him the week before Christmas.

[ksrymy]

I haven't seen Gomez but I feel it's the stereotypical, playing-a-foreign-character early Academy nomination.

Of the four I have seen, I'll first get rid of Robert Ryan. I was very unimpressed with Crossfire and the only reason I saw it, despite its two acting nominations, is because I heard it was the first B-movie to be nominated for Best Picture. I don't think Ryan is even the best supporting actor in that movie. That title belongs to George Cooper.

It's between the last three for me. This is the only time I can vote for Bickford, Gwenn is classic, and Widmark is terrifying and at his best.

I'll choose Gwenn. It's Christmastime anyway. Widmark is terrifying but a bit too one-note for me. Gwenn creates an award-winning character out of a person who qwe know too much about as it is. He doesn't get typical-Santa on us as is so easy to do. He creates a full character and he gets my vote.