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.