We're celebrating the centennial of Shelley Winters. Here's Nathaniel...
Int. Nathaniel's apartment. Two best friends are bored, realizing it's another "exciting" COVID summer night of what will we eat for dinner / watch on TV?. Nathaniel presents a few movie options (inevitably related to whatever TFE projects are in development). His friend's choice surprises him, "I think I'm really in a Shelley Winters mood." Nathaniel wonders for a split-second what a 'Winters mood' is before realizing he already knows... and approves! Up goes the movie and within seconds they glance at each other. "Shelley is going hard!" Nathaniel proclaims, half-stunned. He really shouldn't be. Going hard is, after all, a Winters mood and specialty.
Still and all, performances that begin at the pitch the Oscar winner risks for her introductory scene in A Patch of Blue rarely have anywhere go to thereafter...
Who's been guzzling my gin?
We meet Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) as she's returning home from her hotel maid job, rubbing her feet and bitching that her dinner isn't ready yet. She views blind Selina (Elizabeth Hartman, Oscar nominated for Best Actress) as her personal maid, cook, and tenant. As the scene progresses, Shelley deftly winds Rose-Ann up rather than the wind-down you'd expect after a long day at work. It's very smart, if actressy, work. Is her second job punishing her daughter for their sorry lot in life? It's unpaid work but she clocks in for that
At this point in the narrative we don't actually know that they're mother and daughter (it's cleared up a few scenes later). See, "maternal" Rose-Ann just ain't. Still, Winters shrewdly softens her voice from time to time in the middle of barking as if she's remembering to "mother," however crudely her idea of the act is. Or perhaps she's just vaguely curious about why her daughter hasn't done her chores or wondering what's distracting her.
Rose-Ann's hostility is not exclusive to her helpless daughter. Her own father "Ole Pa" (Wallace Ford) is also relentlessly builled and belittled. Unlike Selina, though, he often fights back.
The 'Monster Mom' has long been a specialized menu item from showboat actresses that Oscar voters will reliably devour. What's remarkable about Winters work throughout A Patch of Blue, is how hot the oven stays and how unerringly she commits to the fire. Winters isn't just cooking up a juicy character, she's warning you that Rose-Ann would burn down the world if it meant keeping her feet warm.
The brilliance of the performance is best discovered in a few quiet beats in Winters performance that suggest the cruel depths of Rose-Ann's misery. In these moments, you can see her actively considering and plotting against her daughter's new unfamiliar happiness. Rose-Ann doesn't know about Gordon (Sidney Poitier) a kind man that her daughter has been spending each day with in the nearby park, but she doesn't like the change in her daughter. A barely visible but frightening smile crosses Winters' lips. Misery loves company and she isn't going to let her daughter go without a fight.
Gordon: Did you ask her why?
Selina: When Rose-Ann gets going you don't bother about why. You just keep out of the way.
The plot escalates as you'd expect -- Movies have to have a conflict and climax and Rose-Ann is A Patch of Blue's villain -- but somehow as she becomes yet more monstrous, she loses power and appears more pathetic. Winters famed lack of vanity pays strong dividends. The climax unites the movie's two biggest stars (Poitier and Winters) for their only scene together. This monster mother goes full "Karen" in the park, shouting racist words at Sidney Poitier, and threatening to call the cops on him.
In 1965 Shelley Winters was a respected veteran and already an Oscar winner. Though three men had won multiple supporting statues by Oscar's 38th year (Walter Brennan, Anthony Quinn, and Peter Ustinov) and five more men would follow, Oscar has almost never felt the need to honor a character actress twice. Rose-Ann, however, proved too potent a creation for them to pass up and the Academy happily handed Ms Winters a second golden man. It's a rare enough feat that only one woman after her, Dianne Wiest, has ever managed it.
Thank you for attending TFE's Shelley Winters Centennial!
Nathaniel on The Starlet in A Double Life (1947)
Eric on The Pro in Lolita (1962)
Nathaniel on The Champ in A Patch of Blue (1965)
Claudio on The Actor's Actor Bloody Mama (1970)
Baby Clyde on The Old Crone Pete's Dragon (1977)
Glenn Dunks on The Memoirist "Shelley II" (1989)