Best Supporting Actress 1970

[Damien]

I suspect that Bob Rafaelson came very close to getting a nomination. At the time Russell was getting a lot of attention -- as was Women In Love itself with its nude wrestling scene -- as an edgy, demonstrative, flamboyant filmmaker, so he may have been considered more of an "auteur" than the more self-effacing Rafaelson. But at least the Directors branch showed the good sense not to nominate George Seaton for Airport. (I hadn't realized this, but I recently read that when its release was finished, Airport was the then-3rd highest grossing movie of all time, after Gone With The Wind and The Sound of Music.)

In 1971, Ken Russell was a household name, at least in well-educated, artistically conscious households, and in college dorms. As was Eric Rohmer. Now people talk excitedly about Pixar. Somewhere along the line popular culture took a wrong term and became pathetic.



Edited By Damien on 1280910926

[Precious Doll]

Fellini, of course, but Women in Love was the first time I'd ever been aware of Ken Russell.

Probably true for most or all of the Academy as well, but in this case, perhaps a blank slate is better than being known as the guy who made Head, and then one more critically well-liked movie.

Also, according to imdb, the Music Lovers had already arrived stateside in time for Oscar nomination season, so Russell might have been seen as a promising auteur even if his 1960s work was unknown.

Perhaps some of the more adventurous members of the director's branch may have been familiar with Russell's television work of the 1960's which was and still is highly regarded.

[ITALIANO]

Was Karen Black really MUCH less talented than, say, Jane Fonda? Or much less beautiful?

On the first, an emphatic yes, but everyone has the right to his own opinion.

On the second -- let the straight guys decide this, ok? Fonda -- in Klute period -- by a friggin' landslide. Even right-wingers would have excused her politics and made that call.

But it's not like gays are blind...

Mine were questions, and, I admit, a bit on the provocative side. Jane Fonda was definitely a better actress - beauty is something more subjective. But for a (short) time it seemed like Black could have become an A-list actress - not a mega-star like Fonda, but a respected actress working in interesting and even important movies. It didn't happen, actually it didn't very quickly, and it was probablu, at least partly, her fault.

[rain Bard]

Fellini, of course, but Women in Love was the first time I'd ever been aware of Ken Russell.

Probably true for most or all of the Academy as well, but in this case, perhaps a blank slate is better than being known as the guy who made Head, and then one more critically well-liked movie.

Also, according to imdb, the Music Lovers had already arrived stateside in time for Oscar nomination season, so Russell might have been seen as a promising auteur even if his 1960s work was unknown.



Edited By rain Bard on 1280907790

[Eric]

I guess I should null vote, given I haven't seen one of the two clear tasters' choices in the running here (Grant). The other one, Karen Black, I've got a lot of affection for, but I guess I prefer a lot of her work throughout the remainder of the '70s. And, yes, Five Easy Pieces is one of the supposed greats of this new golden age that unfortunately seems to stress the boys' club undertow of the whole New Hollywood mystique. At least Cassavetes' Husbands, from the same year, is grating enough to be read as an auto-critique. Does Black ultimately deserve to win this? Yes. I know I'm in the minority on this one.

M*A*S*H comes pretty close to falling in the same boat as Five Easy Pieces. If there's one Altman "classic" whose appeal is lost on me, it's this one. I mean, Jesus, even Patton, by virtue of its deconstruction of the foibles of its hypermasculine lead, is arguably more feminist than the Altman picture. A nomination for Sally Kellerman seems, to me, a gesture of pity for having endured an entire movie-length version of Gwen Welles' striptease in Nashville. Another blind spot? I guess, but one that I can't make allowances for, given my love for almost every other Altman movie I've ever seen.

So that leaves the two much-demeaned Airport matrons. Hayes is an unmitigated chore, and not even much fun at that. The only gesture I remember taking away from the entire performance is when she hesitates before showing Jean Seberg the tools she uses to stow away.

Conversely, I'm perplexed by all claims that Maureen Stapleton brings "a touch of humanity" to the entire plastic enterprise. Her three or four scenes are like a virtual encyclopedia of campy tics. Which is to say, I don't see that she brings any humanity to the movie, but she does bring a refreshing, solid dose of camp. ("He ... was sick!") Granted, this would be a moot point if they had managed to slip Holly Woodlawn's unimpeachable performance in Trash into this lineup.

With apologies to Grant's purportedly great performance, I'm throwing a vote to Auntie Fester.

Andrea Feldman, Trash
Margaret Hamilton, Brewster McCloud
Jennifer Salt, Hi, Mom!
Edy Williams, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Holly Woodlawn, Trash



Edited By Eric on 1280892139

[Big Magilla]

Well I still think Hayes was the best thing about Airport but Lovers and Other Strangers is my second favorite film of 1970 after Five Easy Pieces and Arthur and Castellano are about 90% of the reason so your argument that one without the other doesn't make sense hit a nerve.

[Mister Tee]

I'd throw in Bea Arthur in Lovers and Other Strangers. She and Castellano were very much a team, and it puzzled me why he was cited but not her. The film doesn't seem as funny now as it did to me then, but their segments hold up best.

OK, I'm convinced. Out goes Helen Hayes and in comes Bea Arthur in my Oscar Shouldabeens. Not the first change I've made, but the first time I've taken a nomination away from Hayes.

Magilla, I'm touched my remarks held such sway with you.

A further thought on that picture/not director nomination for Five Easy Pieces: I realized there is a similar case a few years down the road, when Taxi Driver was nominated bit Scorsese ignored. And, much as in the 1970 case, the replacements were from overseas-made films -- this time both non-English-language films. We think of lone-director as representing hipper choices, and often it has been. But in that era, particularly, it largely reflected the directors' branch's greater familiarity with and affection for foreign efforts.

[Mister Tee]

Was Karen Black really MUCH less talented than, say, Jane Fonda? Or much less beautiful?

On the first, an emphatic yes, but everyone has the right to his own opinion.

On the second -- let the straight guys decide this, ok? Fonda -- in Klute period -- by a friggin' landslide. Even right-wingers would have excused her politics and made that call.

[Big Magilla]

I'd throw in Bea Arthur in Lovers and Other Strangers. She and Castellano were very much a team, and it puzzled me why he was cited but not her. The film doesn't seem as funny now as it did to me then, but their segments hold up best.

OK, I'm convinced. Out goes Helen Hayes and in comes Bea Arthur in my Oscar Shouldabeens. Not the first change I've made, but the first time I've taken a nomination away from Hayes.

[Big Magilla]

She continues to work steadily ... in low rent garbage.

I know, and that's my point.

And my point is that she gets work whereas a lot of her contemporaries don't. I guess it pays to be a member in good standing of the "Church of Scientology".

[ITALIANO]

She continues to work steadily ... in low rent garbage.

I know, and that's my point.

[Big Magilla]

But the Oscar should have certainly gone to Karen Black. The 70s were a decade of actors and especially actresses going up and then suddenly down - luck played a role, definitely, but there were also personal reasons, bad choice of roles, and, in some cases, they probably just didn't really care about becoming stars. Was Karen Black really MUCH less talented than, say, Jane Fonda? Or much less beautiful? Maybe, or maybe not - in Five Easy Pieces she's famously very good, and she was later impressive in other movies, including the unjustly forgotten Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean directed by Robert Altman, But then, of course, Jane Fonda would have never played the heroic flight assistant in Airport 1975 - and by 1979 poor Karen Black was finished enough to accept a role in Antonio Margheriti's Killer Fish, a cult movie for lovers of Italian Z-movies, but not a work of art. I don't know what went so wrong and why - I just know that she had the potential and, based on Five Easy Pieces, the talent to do mich more.

I wouldn't feel too sorry for Black. She continues to work steadily even if it's in low rent garbage.

[Big Magilla]

Rafelson and David Lean (Ryan's Daughter) were DGA nominees replaced by Fellini and Russell in the Oscar race. I imagine Rafelson at least appealed to the same voters who nominated Fellini and Russell instead. Hiller would have appealed to another segment of the voting bloc altogether.

[Mister Tee]

Question for Oscar scholars: Can you explain Rafelson's exclusion from the directors' list while being cited for best picture? Wouldn't one think it'd be, if anything, the other way around?

Good question. But weren't the two directors (Fellini and Ken Russell) who DID get "other way around" director-not-picture nods that year, much more established and/or respected as auteurs? Fellini's nomination this year, in particular, must be for the most unpalatable-to-mainstream film ever nominated in this category. Seems that in this year anyway, the likes of Rafelson was not iconoclastic enough for a nomination.

Fellini, of course, but Women in Love was the first time I'd ever been aware of Ken Russell.

I can imagine Five Easy Pieces made the best film list simply because it won the NY Critics' prize. Every single NY winner till then had been nominated by the Academy, and, except for the foreign winners of '73-'74 (which weren't eligible till a year later), that trend held true until 1992. So, a form of inertia may have been at work there.

And it may be, as you suggest, that the directors were working from an entirely different pile. (Satyricon was certainly omitted everywhere else, including the decor slots where Fellini films had done well in the past) It's just I can't think of another hip film of the era that managed a best picture nod and was left off by the directors. Love Story seemed a far more likely omittee -- except, of course, it was too strongly in the best picture race to be snubbed.

[ITALIANO]

Only one year after Midnight Cowboy, the old Hollywood (or is it the old America?) showed that it was still alive and in fine shape by giving Best Supporting Actress to Helen Hayes for her truly embarassing turn in Airport. Ok, they had gone with John Wayne as Best Actor the year before, but that was Laurence Olivier compared to Hayes. Let's face it - as great as Helen Hayes may have been on stage, it's not like her few film appearences have been unforgettable (I have never seen Madelon Claudet though), and TWO Oscars for her seem honestly too much. This second came for a dreadful performance in an elephant of a movie - both must have seemed prehistoric even then, both are unwatchable today. Stapleton, who has a thankless role in the same movie, is at least able to portray something similar to a human being; Hayes's is just a collection of old, artificial acting tricks.

Lee Grant is good as Beau Bridges's rich mother, and intelligent enough to get dangerously close to caricature without really falling into it, but I doubt that she'd have been nominated for that little movie if she hadn't had that admittedly honorable political past.

M.A.S.H. is one of those movies that I should see again because, unfortunately, when I saw it as a teenager I didn't really get it, and, considering its reputation, I found it a bit disappointing. But Kellerman's performance certainly deserved the nomination it got.

But the Oscar should have certainly gone to Karen Black. The 70s were a decade of actors and especially actresses going up and then suddenly down - luck played a role, definitely, but there were also personal reasons, bad choice of roles, and, in some cases, they probably just didn't really care about becoming stars. Was Karen Black really MUCH less talented than, say, Jane Fonda? Or much less beautiful? Maybe, or maybe not - in Five Easy Pieces she's famously very good, and she was later impressive in other movies, including the unjustly forgotten Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean directed by Robert Altman, But then, of course, Jane Fonda would have never played the heroic flight assistant in Airport 1975 - and by 1979 poor Karen Black was finished enough to accept a role in Antonio Margheriti's Killer Fish, a cult movie for lovers of Italian Z-movies, but not a work of art. I don't know what went so wrong and why - I just know that she had the potential and, based on Five Easy Pieces, the talent to do mich more.