A Short Detour: Best Actress 1977 Anyone ?
Friday, January 9, 2015 at 9:31PM With Oscar ballots in and BAFTA nominations announced we'll shortly proceed to final predictions and finish the Film Bitch Categories that correlate with Oscar. In short, prepare for a busy week! But for tonight, before Golden Globes weekend, why not a brief detour from the right now?
The current Beauty vs Beast poll (ending Sunday night so get your votes in) on Annie Hall, has been prompting some unrelated Liza Minnelli comments regarding her Globe nominated / Oscar skipped work in New York New York. I also wish she'd been in the running that year since it's an amazing performance, much closer to her Cabaret brilliance than Oscar history would tell you. This threw me for an unexpected 1977 flashback. The average ticket price was $2.25. Hot damn. And it was a great year for Actress-led movies.
Unlike today when "women's pictures" are largely shunned by organizations (see the fates of Wild and so on each year), they were more common as competitors for the top prize back then. The 1977 Best Actress lineup had a 100% correlation with Best Picture after all -- 100%!!! -- And that was back when we only had five pictures nominated. Diane Keaton owned the year which was fine since she was statue worthy for either of her leading performances. Today her electric dramatic work in Looking for Mr Goodbar is underseen -- for reasons I can't comprehend it's never been on DVD despite having stars (Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenson, Tuesday Weld) and lurid retro marketing hooks.
So let's chat. Who do you love from 1977 and which of the 5 would have made your imaginary retro ballot?
Leading Actresses with US Releases in 1977
Disclaimer: BAFTA & César nomination years do not necessarily align due to different release dates in the UK & France but everything listed below is 1977 for Oscar correlative purposes / Key: Oscar nominees in red.
Anne Bancroft - The Turning Point (Globe, BAFTA & Oscar nominee. NBR Winner)
Catherine Deneuve - Le Sauvage (César nominee)
Diane Keaton - Looking for Mr Goodbar (Globe nominee)
Diane Keaton - Annie Hall (Globe, BAFTA, NYFCC, NSFC, KCFCC, NBR*, and Oscar winner)
Didi Conn - You Light Up My Life
Elizabeth Taylor - A Little Night Music
Ellen Burstyn - Providence
Gemma Craven - The Slipper and the Rose
Gena Rowlands - Opening Night (Globe nominee)
Irene Papas - Iphigenia
Isabelle Huppert - The Lacemaker (César nominee)
Jane Fonda - Julia (Globe, BAFTA, & Oscar nominee)
Jaqueline Bissett - The Deep
Kathleen Quinlan - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Globe nominee)
Lily Tomlin - The Late Show (Globe & BAFTA nominee, Berlinale winner)
Liza Minnelli - New York New York (Globe nominee)
Marie-France Pisier - The Other Side of Midnight
Marsha Mason - The Goodbye Girl (Globe winner, she tied with Keaton. Plus BAFTA & Oscar nominee)
Marsha Mason - Audrey Rose
Romy Schneider - That Most Important Thing: Love (César nominee)
Sally Field -Smokey & The Bandit (Globe nominee)
Shelley Duvall - 3 Women (Cannes & LAFCA winner. Plus BAFTA Nominee)
Shirley Maclaine - The Turning Point (Oscar nominee)
Sissy Spacek - 3 Women
Sophia Loren - A Special Day
Despite being a Jane Fonda nut overall, I'm quite cool on her Julia performance; she's easily overshadowed by her co-stars in just about every scene making her dominance (all major nominations!) quite strange unless you account for her superstardom and that Julia seemed very popular across the board -- how else to explain its Supporting Actor win for Jason Robards, one of the most perplexing Oscar acting prizes of all time. My list from the films I've seen -- admittedly not enough from this year by any stretch -- would be: Bancroft, Duvall, Keaton (and trust that if I could have her twice I would), Mason, and Minnelli but I regret to inform that I've never seen Opening Night and from everything I've heard Gena Rowlands would have to bump one of them. Perhaps 2015 will be the year I finally cave and get really schooled on Rowlands?
The performance I haven't seen that I'm the most curious about from this batch is Lily Tomlin's in The Late Show since it was obviously well regarded. I'm completely unfamiliar with this one.
*Hilariously Diane Keaton won the "supporting actress" award from the NBR for Annie Hall. Category Fraud has always been with us.
Reader Comments (57)
I'd rank them this way:
1. Marsha Mason - The Goodbye Girl - I always thought it was unjust that Mason never won an Oscar. Maybe we'll see her win an Honorary one, but I feel like it'll be a long time before that ever happens, or if it happens.
2. Diane Keaton - Annie Hall - Great performance in a great movie, but I'd give her the Oscar for Reds in 1981 instead.
3. Jane Fonda - Julia - One of my favorite performances and movies of hers, but I think her best is The China Syndrome.
Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point never did anything for me. There's a scene at a bar that I think ends up on a rooftop if I remember correctly, and that's the best part of the film. Otherwise, the ballet and the other two Oscar nominated performers from this movie didn't appeal to me that much
Alternates:
Diane Keaton - Looking for Mr. Goodbar - I know someone can't be nominated twice in the same category, but it's worth mentioning this Richard Brooks movie that isn't discussed much today. Still, the Academy picked the better performance with Annie Hall.
Kathleen Quinlan - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden - nominated for Screenplay, Quinlan was 23 when the film was released.
Lily Tomlin - The Late Show - neat comedy/detective movie with Art Carney.
Sophia Loren - A Special Day - The Academy nominated Marcello for this movie, so Loren had a shot.
Barbara Bach - The Spy Who Loved Me - Some love for one of the sexiest Bond Girls of all time, but I know no one will ever get an acting nomination for a Bond movie.
Sean: Great shout-out for Barbara Bach! And don't be to sure that no one will ever get nominated for a Bond movie - I bet Javier Bardem was close for Skyfall, and who knows what will happen with Spectre?
Nathaniel: As far as category goes, Ann-Margret could have gone either way in "Joseph Andrews" . But since she had the largest female role - and top billing, I wound up placing her among the leads.
So nice to see a couple of fond mentions for Barbara Bach. Maybe not what Oscar was looking for in '77 - but boy was she beguiling! Traffic stopping beauty, charisma, sex appeal,charm and loads of classy can-do attitude. As Bond girl royalty, she had no equal - at least until Eva Green turned up several decades later..
I must correct my post. There was one other year that all the actress nominees were exactly right: '39--Davis, Dunne, Garbo, Garson, Leigh. Perfection.
Barbara Bach was a terrible bond girl... the worst; she was supposed to be a tough spy and yet I recall a scene in which she girly-squeals when she has to go into some water, and when she handled a gun it looked as if she was more worried about breaking her nails.
She was more out of her element as a spy
than Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.
But Eva Green was a great Bond girl, though, probably the greatest, her chemistry with Daniel Craig was terrific.
I love the idea of retro posts for *any* of the acting categories. Not to say it has to be for every year that it correlated with Best Picture (because that it's only happened a few times in retrospect), but it's so interesting to look back and find which years stand out as more interesting than years.
Shelley Duvall for 3 WOMEN, hands down!! Diane Keaton really showed both sides of what made her such an un-tapped dynamo (at the time) for both ANNIE HALL and (especially) MR. GOODBAR. Sissy Spacek (also for 3 WOMEN.) and DEFINITELY Kathleen Quinlan in I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN! That was REALLY some powerful shit, that was! Most people still have never even seen it! Pity! I would also like to mention, in addition to all of those wonderful and talented women who gave such tremendous performances back in the year of film 1977, the POSITIVELY INCREDIBLE Susan Tyrrell, who really bared her soul and gave it all up (for the audiences benefit) in both the aforementioned ROSE GARDEN and also in ANDY WARHOL'S BAD.