Each month before the Supporting Actress Smackdown Nick Taylor selects performances for an alternate ballot...
Of the Golden Globes’ Supporting Actress nominees in 1965, three of their five were transplanted to Oscar’s lineup. Globe winner Ruth Gordon in Inside Daisy Clover, Joyce Redman in Othello, and Peggy Wood in The Sound of Music (who we all agree was not the best option from her movie) all made the cut, while Redman’s co-star Maggie Smith was imported from the Globes' Lead Actress-Drama category. Only Shelley Winters, who wound up winning the damn Oscar for A Patch of Blue, failed to show up anywhere at the Globes. The two Globe nominees left out to pasture come Oscar nomination morning were NBR winner Joan Blondell in The Cincinnati Kid and never-winning Academy regular Thelma Ritter in Boeing Boeing. Both of the unlucky actresses co-starred in films that were blanked by the Academy completely. But should they have made the cut? Let’s find out...
Joan Blondell in The Cincinnati Kid
It’s hard to watch Joan Blondell waltz into the second half of The Cincinnati Kid as beloved card dealer Lady Fingers and not wonder what’s kept us from meeting her sooner. There’s a lot of stuff in this movie, ostensibly designed to add even more stakes to a poker game between the titular rising young upstart (Steve McQueen, whose glower reads like a milquetoast trial run for Michael Shannon) and reigning best-in-the-business Lancey “The Man” Howard (Edward G. Robinson, welcome as always). Relationship troubles, adultery, blackmail, game rigging, a cock fight, a bathroom brawl - lotta things happening for sure, each one intriguing on its own terms while doing very little in terms of solidifying a tone or explaining what any of this is doing here. The Cincinnati Kid might have benefitted from spending more time establishing how vets like Howard, Lady Fingers, and Shooter (Karl Malden) are operating in a world increasingly dominated by fresh faces with something to prove.
Fortunately, The Cincinnati Kid is also the kind of semi-weightless film whose most effective elements are strong enough to not just compensate but give the whole thing a retroactive boost, making the bumpy bits feel worthwhile as stepping stones on our path to the good stuff. Lalo Schifrin’s bold, moody score, imparting real emotional resonance even in the film’s vaguest passages, is absolutely the pinnacle of its achievements. Meanwhile, Karl Malden wrings real tension out of a fully superfluous plotline, and Robinson’s subtle, reflective performance only gets better as the film gives him more to play. It may take a few scenes for Norman Jewison to make poker compelling on screen, but boy is it riveting when he finally figures it out.
Still, it’s Blondell who turns the film into something special as she’s greeted by an adoring crowd of players and spectators eager to see her deal for The Big Game alongside Malden. Decked out in furs and a very fun hat, Blondell imbues Lady Fingers with a warm, gregarious sense of familiarity, conveying decades of pro work in the business by being chummy with everybody. It’s a big entrance, premised on the kind of goodwill Blondell has cultivated throughout her career before she slides to the film’s edges. What elevates this further is how much zest Blondell adds in her voice and expressions, adding character to Lady Fingers in the purest sense of the word. It’s a fairly blank role, one she makes real with mood and personality rather than pointedly conjuring a backstory. Minus some key figures like Lancey, who she needles for basically the whole game, Blondell doesn’t clarify whether Lady Fingers has a deeper relationship to any of these people, doling out fond memories and tidbits about dead friends with equal aplomb to whoever she’s talking to. Her scene-by-scene choices register as incredibly specific without ever coming across as overworked. I also appreciated how Blondell is able to wring so much humor out of her performance without turning Lady Fingers into pure comic relief - she’s funny without being a cartoon, and we take her seriously for it, not just as a professional card player but as someone who knows everyone in the room like the back of her hand. When she tells Lancey the Kid’s got him on edge in the same offhanded yet perfectly goading way she’s talked all night, it registers as a truthful observation rather than the empty barb it might’ve been in a more overtly venomous interpretation.
Thelma Ritter in Boeing Boeing
“Personality” is an equally apt summary for what makes Thelma Ritter such a welcome presence in Boeing Boeing, a frequently grating film that benefits from the ballast she provides. The film is about a Paris-based American journalist named Bernard (Tony Curtis) who is juggling three gorgeous, dim, blonde stewardesses (with Dany Saval as The French One, Christiane Schmidtner as The German One, and Suzanne Leigh as The British One) working for different European airlines. The women are engaged to him, live at his house when not working, and their schedules ensure only one of them is ever in Paris at any given time. Bernard can date all three stewardesses without one ever knowing the others exist, what with his put-upon housekeeper Bertha (Thelma Ritter) swapping out portraits and underwear drawers belonging to whoever just showed up. Obviously, this will all go wrong, in no small part due to Bernard’s rival Robert Reed (Jerry Lewis), who alternates between helping keep Bernard’s scheme afloat and trying to steal his setup for himself.
I confess that Tony Curtis has never been my cuppa, nor is this particular tone of farce or brand of gender politics, but that doesn’t excuse what a visually inert, inconsiderate, and unpleasant film this is. Director John Rich is completely taken in by the men’s rampant misogyny and insincerity, goading the leads towards one-dimensional, gendered archetypes. The men are scheming and girl-obsessed, while the women are as suspicious as they are gullible. It’s just not fun, even if it’s got some good jokes and a remarkable amount of confidence.
Hiring Ritter to play the fretful, conspiratorial, yet increasingly fed-up maid reads as ludicrously easy typecasting. Rich clearly agreed, relying on Ritter doing her thing to such a degree that he doesn’t bother getting her performance on the same tonal wavelength as the rest of Boeing Boeing. Occasionally she comes across as somewhat under-directed, her loose gestures and unhurried line readings looking out of place next to the antic precision around her. But given how glibly annoying everything else is, these deficiencies are more than acceptable considering what a breath of fresh air Ritter’s tangy, grounded work is. Ritter is by far the funniest part of the film, nailing Bertha’s air of comic grievance even as she’s complicit in some morally dubious stuff. She single-handedly justifies Bertha’s inexplicable hatred of the British One, as well as the recurring gag of walking into the living room chirping “What?” every time someone says her name, interrupting conversations with the same tone and inflections in a way prescient of Adam Driver shouting “Outer! Space!” in Inside Llewyn Davis. She also commits to Bertha’s exhaustion, getting the audience to sympathize with her plight and putting real weight behind her threats to leave. The single best acting beat in Boeing Boeing comes when Bertha accidentally shatters a glass bowl, and Ritter projects such a total, bone-deep exhaustion at this mundane fuck-up that we’re taken out of the film for a moment. A shame her final choice about whether she stays or not is so tossed off, but damn if I didn’t miss her.
I would not call either of these role the strongest, most challenging of either actress’s careers. The writing and direction don’t help, though they still find ways to successfully showcase both of them. But even taking these caveats into consideration, Blondell and Ritter deliver detailed, likeable characterizations that work as platonic distillations of what these consummately skilled actresses bring to virtually every performance they’ve given us. Blondell gives a full, unexpectedly entertaining turn in a film that needs all the moxie it can get. Ritter isn’t showing us a new side of her persona, but she still thrives in inhospitable circumstances. We’ve got another week until the Smackdown panel evaluates which nominees have stood the test of time, but both of these actresses add value to their films without ever overwhelming them, which is exactly what good supporting actressing is supposed to do.
