Best Supporting Actress 1948

[ksrymy]

I'd like to cite Anna Svierkier in Dreyer's Day of Wrath which was released in the States in 1948 here. Absolutely stunning and heartbreaking as Herlof's Marte.

[Aceisgreat]

No disrespect to the lovely Jean Simmons who was quite haunting when she could have easily been grating. But if a forty-something Olivier could play Hamlet and a twenty-something Eileen Herlie could play his mother, I don't see why a thirty-something Vivien Leigh, still gorgeous and sufficiently youthful, couldn't play Ophelia as she desperately wanted to.

[ITALIANO]

In those days spinster roles were considered to be the ultimate proof on an actress's - especially a supporting actress's - talent, and this - plus maybe her unconventional looks: back then NO actress looked like her - explains Ellen Corby's nomination (yes, I know, her character does get married, but it's still basically the "spinster aunt" role). As for Barbara Bel Geddes, she has the kind of role - the writer's point of view - which is never the most interesting in a movie and is often more passive than active. It's a competent performance though, and a pleasant one, but it's true that Bel Geddes's best roles would come later and not always in this medium.

Anyone even remotely connected with Johnny Belinda was nominated that year, and certainly Moorehead did profit from the success of the movie. Hers is the kind of performance which rarely gets nominated - less showy than the ones she'd been nominated for before and, God knows, far less showy than the one she would be nominated for many years later - but it's a very good example of what a solid, reliable "supporting actress" can do even with a character who lacks a "big scene".

But this year it's really between Jean Simmons and Claire Trevor - two completely different actresses in two completely different roles (and movies). Ophelia is one of the most beautiful, but also most complex, female characters in the history of theatre; it's a challenge for any young actress (Helena Bonham Carter tried it years later and failed), and I'd say that Simmons was reasonably and appropriately affecting and dealt well with it. Still, Claire Trevor - as quintessentially American as, say, Anna Magnani was quintessentially Italian - deservedly won, as she will do here, both for her performance, which is great, and for her career. And while there weren't clips at the Oscars back then, she has a scene in Key Largo which is one of the best example of what an "Oscar clip" is, or could have been (those who have seen the movie know what I'm referring to).



Edited By ITALIANO on 1274279977

[Reza]

Claire Trevor easily towers over all the other nominees and was a very worthy winner.

I liked Jean Simmons as Ophelia, a part that was instrumental in her eventual stardom. Moorehead was also pretty solid as Wyman's sympathetic aunt.

I'm not too fond of the other two nominees. Bel Geddes, although pleasing, hardly did anything exceptional to warrant a nomination. Corby's nod was a real head scratcher.

My top 5:

Claire Trevor, Key Largo
Ethel Barrymore, Portrait of Jennie
Agnes Moorehead, Johnny Belinda
Jean Simmons, Hamlet
Joanne Dru, Red River

[Big Magilla]

My connection to Mama goes back to July, 1949 when I was 5 and we got our first TV.

Mama starring Peggy Wood was broadcast on live on CBS on Friday nights at 8 P.M. It was a TV staple through the mid-50s. If I didn't see every episode I certainly saw quite a few so these characters were pretty much seared into my brain at any early age. It's possible when I finally discovered the film version many years later that I was therefore able to see more in Bel Geddes and Corby's performances than were actually there but I'm not so sure.

I wasn't very impressed with Oscar Homolka's hamola performance as the rich uncle, which was also Oscar nominated, but I did like Dunne, Bel Geddes and Corby in roles that I had long identified with other actresses. Thirteenth billed Corby, let's not forget, won the Golden Globe over Trevor and Moorehead so it's not as though this was a nomination that came out of the blue.

[Mister Tee]

I have an attachment to I Remember Mama totally unrelated to its quality. When I was a kid, I found the book Mama's Bank Account in the children's section of the library, and read it, utterly unaware it had been subsequently mounted in basically every medium then existing. It's slop, but slop I discovered unguided, and I can't quite toss out those 12-year-old memories.

On these two performances, though, I'm generally in agreement with Damien. Bel Geddes, who I like alot, doesn't seem to do much more than sit there and tell the audience what happened next. And every time I've watched a bit of the film, I've waited in vain for Corby to do anything that makes her stand out from the crowd. One of the other aunts could as easily have been cited.

Jean Simmons, another long-time favorite, is a perfectly good Ophelia, but not an extraordinary one.

I've made my disaffection for Moorhead clear in previous threads, but even I'd have to say this was one of her better efforts.

But Claire Trevor was truly special in Key Largo -- on the skids, but saved from being utterly pathetic by her clear awareness of her state. A fine actress who got the role of her life and ran with it; my easy choice.

[Damien]

There are no turgid movies more turgid than George Stevens turgid movies, and I Remember Mama is a prime example. Barbara Bel Geddes was a lovely actress but she actually has very little to do except gush about how wonderful her mother is -- to the point you want to smack her and tell her to shut up -- we all think our mothers are special, and her's wasn't even particularly interesting

Ellen Corby is barely competent in a spinster role that could have been both very funny and touching but with her, Aunt Trina is neither -- she lacks the understated slyness the character needs, but then again she was also a phlegmatic screen presence.

I love Jean Simmons and she makes for a first-rate Ophelia, but I have seen many equally fine Ophelias in various film, TV and stage productions of Hamlet.

Claire Trevor is superb in Key Largo, bring humane depths of feeling to a somewhat stock role. She effortlessly conveys a wide range of emotions, including the seemingly contradictory ones of self-loathing and pride. Definitely an Oscar caliber performance.

But even better is Agnes Moorehead in Johnny Belinda. It's probably her most subtle performance, and she doesn't seem to be acting as much as inhabiting the skin of a weary, stoical woman, so much so that she makes the gruff exterior/warm heart seem like a brand new creation. She gets my vote.

I will say, though, that Ethel Barrymore in Portrait of Jennie is one of my all time favorite supporting actress perforamnces -- and the actress's best film work -- and she would have received my support had she received a deserved nomnayion. (They nominated Ellen Corby instead of her???!!!???)

My Own Top 5:
1. Ethel Barrymore in Portrait Of Jennie.
2. Agnes Moorehead in Johnny Belinda
3. Claire Trevor in Key Largo
4. Joanne Dru in Red River
5. Minerva Urecal in Good Sam



Edited By Damien on 1274168080

[Big Magilla]

Claire Trevor was one of Hollywood's great dames. No one could play the down but never out gals of the 30s, 40s and early 50s quite as well as she did. Whether good, bad or somewhere in-between in films that were good, bad or somewhere in-between she always gave it her best and always made her fellow actors look their best as well.

It would be nice to have her Emmy winning performance as the flighty wife in the 1954 TV version of Dodsworth in which she starred with Fredric March and Geraldine Fitzgerald available on DVD, but until that happens we do have many of her big screen accomplishments to rejoice in, not the least of which is her Oscar winning turn as the boozy ex-night club singer in Key Largo.

Bogie and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Lionel Barrymore were all at their best but it was Trevor you couldn't take your eyes off in the kind of role if they didn't already have one for supporting actresses they would surely have to invent. No one this year, or perhaps in the last five or six years, deserved it more, not that her competition was all that shabby.

Agnes Moorehead was at her best as Jane Wyman's stoic aunt in Johnny Belinda, the first of several films in which she would lend strong support to Wyman.

Ellen Corby, usually found way down on the cast list if cited at all, had the best role she would find as Irene Dunne's sister in I Remember Mama until TV's The Waltons made her a household name.

Barbara Bel Geddes was memorable, too, as the ingenue in I Remember Mama.

Only Jean Simmons doesn't quite belong in this group. Simmons, who would become one of my favorite actresses of the 50s and early 60s showed great promise in her early career, but I don't think her Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet quite fulfills that promise. I would rather have seen the fifth slot go to Ethel Barrymore in her second best late career performance (after The Farmer's Daughter) nominated for Portrait of Jennie.

Others I liked more than Simmons this year include Angela Lansbury in State of the Union; Aline MacMahon and Jarmila Novotna in The Search; Florence Eldredge in An Act of Murder and Another Part of the Forest; Ann Blyth and Betsy Blair in Another Part of the Forest and Jessica Tandy in A Woman's Vengeance.