Best Supporting Actress 1946: Getting to know the nominees
Monday, June 14, 2021 at 7:00PM The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1946 is fast approaching, and with it comes one of the most head-scratching lineups in the category's history. To call this bunch of films, performances, and legacies problematic is to undersell just how much racial insensitivity plays into this particular Oscar race. Still, what complicates matters further is that the nominated actresses are all artists with considerable talent, superlative careers – most of whom started on stage – and undeniable historical importance. Unpacking all this mess is too great a task, but I'll try to introduce you, dear readers, to this impressive quintet of Old Hollywood thespians...
ETHEL BARRYMORE (1879-1959)
Part of the famous Barrymore acting dynasty, Ethel Barrymore was born to stage performers and quickly grew into the profession herself, though she was initially reluctant to do so. Ethel had dreamed of being a pianist in her youth, but the acting business proved more reliable. At the dawn of a new century, she could already call herself an experienced theater actress who had performed on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1919, when Barrymore was a strong supporter of the Actor's Equity Strike, she had achieved the reputation of a grande dame of the stage. A thespian whose name inspired awe, her strong convictions and willingness to experiment were artistic and political, daring to play gender-bent roles and defending the rights of performing arts professionals. It's fair to say that, regardless of her later success on the silver screen, the stage was Ethel Barrymore's true home.
That is especially evident when one compares her incursion into cinema with her family members' professional paths. Brothers John and Lionel were especially quick to find success in motion pictures, while Ethel dallied behind, doing occasional appearances while never committing to a career in Hollywood. She did some silent work during the 1910s but came to abandon any celluloid dreams she might have had during the roaring twenties. It was only when age started to deprive her of theatrical opportunities that Barrymore followed her siblings into the heart of Tinsel Town. Her first talkie, Rasputin and the Empress, remains the only film to feature the three Barrymores, each actor trying to upstage their costars throughout the entire production.
While chewing the scenery with such voraciousness, it's a miracle the sets didn't collapse, the siblings also helped each other. Through brotherly advice, Ethel Barrymore devised the whispery soft-voiced delivery that would come to characterize all of her screen performances, an antithesis to the type of voice work required on stage. The 40s marked her final and most absolute attempt at a movie career, prompting a short but rich filmography full of wise old ladies. Barrymore won an Academy Award in 1944 for her supporting turn in None But the Lonely Heart and kept regularly working in film until she died in 1959. Ethel Barrymore injected pathos into every screen role, even when the pictures she starred in were beneath her.
Essential Viewing: Rasputin and the Empress (1932), None But the Lonely Heart (1944), The Paradine Case (1947), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Pinky (1949).
ANNE BAXTER (1923-1985)
Born in Michigan City to a well-to-do family, Anne Baxter was the granddaughter of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. However, the future Oscar-winner's artistic pursuits never really found their way into the world of design. Instead, from a young age, Baxter was fascinated by the craft of acting. When she was five, the family moved to New York, and it was there that the little girl became dazzled by the movies and the great entertainers she saw on stage. Reportedly, eeing Helen Hayes perform convinced Baxter to pursue acting as her life's purpose. By the age of 13, Anne Baxter had graduated from humble school plays to the Broadway stages, where she studied under Maria Ouspenskaya.
In 1939, Baxter almost played Katharine Hepburn's little sister in the original production of The Philadelphia Story. However, thanks to the older actress' dislike, Baxter was replaced before the show made it to Broadway. Around this time, she also tested for the role of second Mrs. DeWinter in Hitchcock's Rebecca but lost the part to Joan Fontaine. In spite of such setbacks, Baxter quickly secured herself a silver screen debut in the Fox adventure comedy 20 Mule Team. By 1942, she was already billed as a star in such projects as The Pied Piper and Jean Renoir's American directorial debut Swamp Water. That same year, she delivered one of her most fantastic performances in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. Even though the studios famously mutilated the picture, the genius of the young performer's ingenious work is still perceptible.
Baxter's career from here on out is an odd mix of star roles and supporting parts. Unlike many of her colleagues, the actress never fully graduated to the status of perpetual leading lady. Her first Oscar nomination and sole win came in the supporting category (The Razor's Edge), but Baxter famously had to fight to campaign as lead for All About Eve. That might have cost her an easy win had she chosen a fraudulent route, though she was still nominated for Best Actress. During the 50s, Baxter became a freelancer, untethering herself from the exclusive studio contract and landed a variety of roles in projects as disparate as Hitchock's I Confess and DeMille's gargantuan camp epic The Ten Commandments. As she got older, opportunities waned in movies, and Baxter started working on TV, earning herself an Emmy nomination in 1969 for her performance in The Name of the Game. In 1983, Baxter even stepped in to substitute Bette Davis on the TV series Hotel when the older star became too ill to go ahead with the project. Anne Baxter died in 1985 after suffering a stroke, with her last episodes of Hotel broadcast posthumously.
Essential Viewing: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Razor's Edge (1946), All About Eve (1950), The Blue Gardenia (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956).
LILLIAN GISH (1893-1993)
By far the most controversial figure in this list, Lillian Gish is a cinematic personality of incalculable historical importance. Her body of work extends for over seven decades, tracing the evolution of American film and acting styles, from the visceral pantomime of 1916's one-reelers to the pseudo-realism of 1980s melodramas. Furthermore, many of her silent performances can be counted among the most outstanding acting achievements ever captured on celluloid. She was a master at using her outward fragility to evoke a sense of internal chaos, controlled hysteria, transcendent suffering. While it was alongside D.W. Griffith that she learned her film craft and honed the skills that made her famous, I'd argue it was with director Victor Sjöström that she delivered her most complex screen performances. I have a soft spot for her mighty freak-out in Griffith's Broken Blossoms, but few actors were ever as devastating as Gish in Sjöström's The Scarlet Letter and The Wind.
There's a masterful stillness, a shot of bruising naturalism, to her work for the Swedish director that's mostly absent from her Griffith pictures, where a more frenetic demonstrativeness was preferred. Still, every one of her silent screen appearances is an unparalleled acting gem. Even her work in the vile Birth of a Nation, whose legacy Gish spent a lifetime defending, deserves some begrudging praise. It wasn't just the matter of the evil epic's exaggerated innovation that she proclaimed. Gish went as far as claiming that the film wasn't racist, re-writing history as she so often did in both her memoirs and interviews. Lillian Gish worked more than most to preserve interest in silent film throughout the 20th century, but she was awfully fond of warping the truth into a self-serving myth.
Gish's politics were anything but inconsistent too. Not only did she keep on defending the movie that rebirthed the KKK in the 1910s, but she spent a good part of the 30s on the side of American fascist movements, later lending her support to white nationalist causes way up until she died in 1993. You may decide to separate the art from the artist or not, but I won't deny that Gish was an amazing actress. Her transition to the talkies after the silent era ended illuminated another facet of her talents. Comedy was her Achilles heel – Gish said she was as funny as a barrel of dead babies, and she wasn't too far from the truth – but, even then, she found ways around these handicaps. Indeed, she kept working almost until her end, always finding ways to challenge herself and her craft whether working with great auteurs like Robert Altman or facing the new world of television. In summation, for better and for worse, Lillian Gish will forever have a place in the pages of film history.
Essential Viewing: Broken Blossoms (1919), The Scarlet Letter (1926), The Wind (1928), The Night of the Hunter (1955), The Whales of August (1987).
FLORA ROBSON (1902-1984)
It's a pity that most movie awards fans will primarily know Flora Robson for her Oscar-nominated Blackface stint in Saratoga Trunk. Her career extends far beyond this shameful misstep and, like most other actresses in the 1946 Best Supporting Actress lineup, she was a respected diva of the stage before ever stepping foot in front of a movie camera. Flora Robson started doing recitation for audiences from an early age and, by 1921, made her stage debut. That same year, she won a Bronze Medal from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Unfortunately, the financial instability that comes with the acting profession forced Robson to split her time working as a factory welfare worker.
When the 30s arrived, those years of uncertainty were far behind her, with Robson having found success in the Cambridge Festival theater and the Old Vic. It was also at this time that the thespian made the transition from stage to screen. Her debut was as unglamorous as they come, an uncredited bit part in the 1931 crime drama A Gentleman of Paris. Her big breakout moment would come in 1934 when Alexander Korda cast her in The Rise of Catherine the Great as Empress Elisabeth. The royal grandeur of the role proved a perfect fit for Robson, and, just three years later, she once again played a famous royal to great success. This time, it was to be the iconic figure of Queen Elizabeth I in Fire Over England. Her take on the character, equal parts imperious and warmly severe, was such a smashing success that she returned to it in future projects, including the Hollywood swashbuckler The Sea Hawk.
Despite these forays into the American film industry, it was in Great Britain that Robson found her best roles, her most tremendous acclaim, and love. She even got a damehood in 1960. From Shakespearean tragedy to psychosexual thrillers, her range was remarkable even though most of her parts were relatively small. However, it should be noted that Saratoga Trunk didn't mark the only time Robson pretended to be other ethnicities on film. For instance, Nicholas Ray's 55 Days at Peking finds her doing yellowface for the role of Empress Dowager Cixi. Still, matters of racial insensitivity notwithstanding, Robson had a prosperous and remarkably long career. Her last movie was Desmond Davis' 1981 sword and sandal adventure Clash of the Titans, where she played a Stygian Witch. Dame Flora Robson died the following year from throat cancer.
Essential Viewing: The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934), Fire Over England (1937), Poison Pen (1939), Black Narcissus (1947), 7 Women (1966).
GALE SONDERGAARD (1899-1985)
As the first-ever winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Gale Sondergaard is a name that should be well-known to any awards-obsessive. Of course, the actor's cinematic legacy extends far beyond her Cheshire-grinning schemer in Anthony Adverse. Born to Danish immigrants, Sondergaard studied at the Minneapolis School of Dramatic Arts before finding work in the John Keller Shakespeare Company. Her theatrical pursuits took her on tour across the US before settling in New York, where she found a prosperous career that, eventually, won the attention of Hollywood filmmakers. Indeed, Sondergaard was a seasoned professional by the time she made her screen debut in the role that earned her the Oscar.
From then on, her career flourished, and she became a dependable character actress whose repertoire included an infinite array of snide, gossipy women with ill intentions towards some valiant protagonist. Occasionally, she got cast against type, as she was in The Life of Emile Zola and Sons of Liberty, but villains were her specialty. So iconic was her on-screen malignancy that she became one of the reported inspirations for the Evil Queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and one of the top contenders for the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. While most of her minor roles posed little challenge, Sondergaard often turned her typecasting fate into opportunities to savor deliciously mean lines. I'm especially fond of her take on a secondary feline antagonist in the 1940 Shirley Temple vehicle, The Blue Bird. Her performance as a transfigurated cat is the only reason to watch that particular flick.
Throughout her career in Hollywood, Gale Sondergaard was often cast in ethnic roles, donning on brownface and yellowface with frightful regularity. In 1946, she even nabbed a second Oscar nomination for one of these with Anne and the King of Siam. Her film career hit a significant roadblock around this time. Sondergaard supported her husband, director Herbert Biberman, during the HUAC hearings and was subsequently blacklisted as a communist sympathizer. During the 50s, she mostly stopped working but still helped produce Salt of the Earth, a seminal film about the fight for workers' rights in Latin communities. By the end of the 60s, the aged actor made a career comeback in all three actors mediums (stage, tv, and film). Her last film was the 1982 horror flick Echoes, also known as Living Nightmare.
Essential Viewing: Anthony Adverse (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Letter (1940), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Spider Woman (1943).
Don't forget to watch these actresses' nominated performances this week and send in your votes for the smackdown.
Reader Comments (31)
Fascinating article, thank you Claudio! And beautifully written as always. Interesting to hear about Hepburn's dislike of Anne Baxter, at least in terms of that role... I have to say I agree with Kate. For Gale Sondergaard viewing, I also recommend "East Side, West Side" (1949)--a Barbara Stanwyck picture with a wealth of interesting supporting actresses: Sondergaard, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse, Nancy Regan nee Davis, and Beverly Michaels.
Seriously, though, any personal feelings/attacks on any of the nominees?
Great piece, Claudio—necessary as well. To call these films problematic is understating the situation and it's good to have this to contextualize things for those unaware of what they're in with at least 3 of these films. I can't wait for this smackdown, it promises t be fascinating.
JH, we don't understand.
Anne Baxter had a fun episode of Columbo, basically playing herself. The episode is notable too because Anne asked her good friend, the legendary Edith Head to play, well, Edith Head, in her only tv appearance. It was fun seeing Edith just casually have her seven (she'd win her last Oscar that same year I believe) Oscars on her work desk.
When I watched Duel in the Sun as a kid, I thought it was incredibly stupid. But looking over the cast list—Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, Charles Dingle, Sidney Blackmer and Butterfly McQueen—I need to rewatch this silliness.
Great write up. I thought I was familiar with all the actresses in this lineup but there was information that was entirely new to me. Should be an interesting smackdown coming up.
I think that we should stop judging the films of years ago with the current mentality of 2021. If we start judging them with the mentality of today, practically every movie since the cinema was born would be problematic. I'm even sure the 2021 movies are going to be judged and considered a problem within a few decades.
harmodio -- If you research the original reception of these films, you'll see that a lot of then-contemporary writers and filmgoers did recognize their so-called "problematic" aspects. To think only 2021 viewers will see the racism in THE BIRTH OF A NATION or these many instances of yellowface, brownface, blackface, etc., is to have a very limiting view of the past and the intelligence of movie audiences of yore. I think it's fair to acknowledge these things, both when studying film history but also when judging the worthiness of artistic achievements from days gone by, as we always do in the Best Supporting Actress Smackdowns.
Initially, I had planned on writing a more unilaterally positive overview of these actresses' careers and biographies. I wanted to praise them while ignoring these more complicated matters. However, doing my research and watching as many of their films as I could, it quickly became apparent that brushing these issues aside would be dishonest, wrong, and historically irresponsible. I think we can recognize that artistic merit and troublesome prejudice, politics, and values, can often coexist. It doesn't demerit these artists' work, though it complicates their legacies.
I loved this article. I totally agree that it's a shame Flora Robson should be remembered for this when she was such an on-screen marvel.
Yikes this line-up. All great, or at least striking actresses, none of whom should be remembered for these respective performances or films. It's a little sad this was Gish's only nomination. I realize there wasn't exactly a plethora of work in the talking era that would have been nomination worthy, but still.
While it's likely she was sympathetic to Griffith, I do think she was in the long run in an awkward position. Her association with Griffith was her legacy and basically insured her status into old age. I guess I am defending her a little bit. It's a shame she revered him so but their collaborations are, for better or worse, the films that she'll always be best known for and that was the case long before she became his cheerleader. Without those movies in her back pocket, it's highly unlikely she would have become essentially a spokesperson for silent film and advocate of film preservation. Those things are to be admired and while her work with Griffith is in no way her best work and of course the content of the material can be nauseating, it is the work that basically keeps her name known. It's a quandary. But I don't think it's really that simply morally in her case.
I also should day that I'm in complete agreement that using "it was a different time" as an excuse doesn't work, especially when someone like Gish was controversial in her own lifetime and when movies Like Birth of a Nation were subject to much debate when they were released. However I'm not sure I would necessarily lay the blame with the actors. Not that they were blameless. But someone like Sondergaard, who never even approached genuine movie stardom and whose career post 1940 was essentially that of a b movie character actress, most likely had little no say in the material she was offered/essentially forced to make during the studio system and racism made it highly unlikely that an actual person of color would have been cast in either her or Robson's roles.
Sondergaard FWIW actually was supposed to be the lead in Salt of the Earth and voluntarily pulled out because both she and her husband didn't think it was appropriate for a white actress to be playing that role and that it would be take away from the stated intention of the film. So she evidently saw the problem to some extent.
harmodio and peter and claudio and all -- i guess i'm somewhere in between all of you. I agree that "it was a different time" is often just an excuse but at the same time, people are completely, for better and worse, of their time... including you and I. People of the year 2045 will have different views of politics that we currently have and what that view is will depend in a lot of regards on their environments and the state of the world they're living in (again they will be of their time). We might not even know our blindspots right now because they are, well, blind. Think of how rapidly understanding of the trans community and their issues is changing in just the past 10 years. I think it would be entirely unfair to time travel back to 1970,, to choose a random year, and expect anyone therein -- even trans people -- to parrot back to us what we like to hear now.
So even though it's fine to criticize past blindspots it's also ignorant, i'd argue, to assume that any of these people had the same understanding (NOWHERE NEAR!) of racial relations or politics or race theory that exists today. The entire culture was different and the voices we like to champion now are naturally those that are closer to how we feel now but were probably at the time, much more "fringe" if you know what I mean.
So i guess i say BOTH "fair game" and also "cheap shot" to criticize people of the past using modern rubrics. And that's especially true for actors since we have learned over and over and over and over again that many of them in the studio system (especially the non-headliners like supporting actresess) did not have a ton of choice about the projects they did.That's why Bette Davis "difficulty" and Olivia de Havilland's court battles are so lauded today because they were big stars fighting against the practices that basically deprived actors of much artistic say in their own careers.
Very eloquently put, thanks!
among the nominees Baxter is actually my fav. Barrymore is always noteworthy and I love Gish and Robson. They gave us through the years several fab perfs. Of course, they deserved to be Oscar nominees and, I should add, also Oscar winners. Unfortunately they only nominations didn't arrive for their finest works (it happens quite often, actually). Since Sondergaard had already won an Oscar for ANTHONY ADVERSE, I would have loved to see my beloved Virginia Mayo or some international goddesses, such as Magnani (ROMA OPEN CITY) or Casares (CHILDREN OF PARADISE), fill her spot
PS: do you think Sondergaard's co-star, the ever undervalued LINDA DARNELL, was ever in contention for her work as the ill-fated Tuptim (the role in the following versions played by Rita Moreno and Bai Ling)? Or being top-billed prevented her to be considered as supporter?
I was never a fan of Barrymore’s until this past year. I always felt she played the same version of a stoic doyenne. However, seeing her in Moonrise, THAT is where her Oscar should’ve come from. A brilliant movie, and a very informed turn…if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend seeking it out.
Mirko, I don't think Darnell was ever considered an awards contender for anything other than A Letter to Three Wives and maybe Fallen Angel. She had a very bad relationship with the studio she was working for and a lot of the roles she was cast in were either roles she didn't want to play or was forced to make as punishment for turning down other parts. I got the impression this was one of those films. But Zanuck and she did not have a good relationship.
I actually kind of like Gish in Duel. Given what she's given to work with I think she gets a lot farther with it than would seemingly be possible and she's got a great death scene. Barrymore has a level of authority and gravitas that makes all of her nominated performances "good" performances. But like Gish it's not a role that requires much and I find that movie only marginally less slipshod than Duel and much less interesting. She's got more to do than Gish and comes off the best in her movie. I supposed she and Gish would be jockeying for my vote. It seems like many are pro Baxter but I find her garish in the extreme and very self-consciously awards baity.
Wouldn't mind reading one like this per decade.
Thankfully I think this lineup makes the proper winner unable to be robbed. But us Smackdowners lived through Tandygate. #Neverforget #Bitter89ersWillNotDefeatUs
Claudio and Peter are right in some respects and so is harmodio. The truth may not lie in the middle, but Claudio's youth and being of the woke generation is a bias that said generation never examines. Claudio's black and white prism could use just a dab.of the reality of harmodio's grey.
Baxter seems to be the only one walking away proud of her nomination from this lineup. All the actresses gave better performances but it is a shame that these roles are what they will be remembered for. As reported above, Robson had a storied career and should have been nominated for Fire Over England, Wuthering Heights, and Black Narcissus. Saratoga Trunk actually had a lot of buzz around it- it was supposed to be the new Gone With The Wind- Warner Bros had spent more money on it than any other movie at this point. Sondergaard had a range that Hollywood rarely employed outside of villains or other races (Sondergaard refused to wear prosthetics for the movie and the studio basically supervised tanning sessions for her instead) but she could be remarkably tender when she got the right part (see the above mentioned Life of Emile Zola) Barrymore was known for playing deathbed dowagers, but she had so much spirit in her other nominations. Gish was a pioneer in early cinema but I agree that the criticism she gets regarding her stance on Griffith and race is warranted.
Despite her talent and gorgeous looks, Baxter was relocated to character actress by Hollywood. They really never seemed to know what to do with her. She was deemed too young for Rebecca but Hitchcock cast her I Confess and she developed a close friendship with him and his wife.
Luckily (for me at least) when someone gets a nomination, one is naturally curious about their career and sometimes this leads to discoveries that would not have been watched if not for the nomination.
Tom G-I don't know about his wife but Hitchcock all but openly hated Baxter, at least according to Baxter. She wasn't his first, second,third etc... choice for the role and was imposed on him after Anita Bjork showed up with a lover and and child and was promptly fired because the studio feared another Ingrid Bergman situation. Baxter's casting came about because she was available, cheap-ish, and the studio didn't want to have to push back the start of the production. Hitchcock was apparently very excited about Bjork and then very chagrined when she was replaced. Baxter repeatedly told a story about going out shopping with Alma and returning late, forcing Hitchcock to have lunch alone which he apparently hated doing. This shows up in multiple Hitchcock biographies, at least one has the story being told by her. She said she felt there was nothing she could do to please him and that he basically made her feel like she was a drag on the film. They did not have a good working relationship. Maybe things mellowed later on, I have no idea. But she did not remember him or that movie fondly.
Personally I'm not a Baxter person, including the performance she won the Oscar for, even though it's very obvious why she won and one can't begrudge her. But I don't really see the talent or intricate "something" in her work aside from Ambersons and Eve and I'm willing to give a lot of the credit to the writer's and directors there.
Also, I'm sorry but when Gish said she was as funny a barrel of babies, I immediately jumped to the often repeated scene in Intolerance of her sitting there watching a baby carriage rock precipitously back and forth. Someone get the baby out of there!
@ Peter- Baxter became a kind of confidant of Alma's. That story about the late lunch was true and Alma confessed to Baxter later that she believed Hitch simply couldn't function without her for long periods of time and perhaps had a panic attack. Baxter and Alma remained close and thus by proxy she was close to Hitchcock. She invited them to her house many times, although now thinking about your comment, she may have done that to be polite to her friend Alma and simply included Hitchcock to avoid causing drama.
It’s also possible they became friends once shooting ended. I didn’t get the impression they actively fought on set and I don’t think anyone was happy with the finished film and it’s not like he had a particularly successful relationship with Clift either. It seems like he either vibed with the actor or he didn’t.
Go Nathaniel. Claudio has the makings of an all time great but you just made it clear how necessary your tutelage still is to the very young man. It's really hard for those who haven't lived through mass ignorance and intolerance just how difficult and slow societal change is. Almost everybody of a certain time would be calously cancelled by today's lot, despite great change and works for the better. The first chink in Claudio's armor has appeared. Stay with Nathaniel a little longer with an open mind and the sky is the limit!
I don't get the Cláudio hate going around here. He presented his research eloquently about the problematic nature of some of the nominees (esp Gish) with proper contextualization and concrete examples from the time and you resort to accusing him of simplification and not understanding the times, as if his research is not exhaustive. To judge him as a writer simply because of an article you don't agree with (nd to even use his age against him, wow!). You people are condescending at best and hypocritical at worst.
Madge --Claudio and I are not in competition. Nor am I training him. I'm frustrated that people keep trying to project stuff onto our relationship or "rank" us (which I'm not saying you're doing -- thankfully some of that has subsided). He wanted to write for the site which he'd enjoyed for years and I continue to be thrilled to have him because I love his writing. End of story.
I think contextualization is a really important and even fun part of Smackdown events. I dont even disagree with him on this 1946 article very much: Gish is a problematic figure (full stop) with a rich film legacy ... the only thing I'm really saying is it's a bit unfair for modern audiences to judge *everything* with the now lens. Especially in the case of Sondergaard & Robson as this was during the studio system. Back then actors were assigned to projects and "choice" was quite dissimilar to how we understand it now. The more successful and well-liked by the bosses contract players may have had some choices at some times ("this one or that one?") but in general they were under contract and expected to be compliant.
Tom G -- lol.
Peter -- i'm not much of a Baxter person either but it's the last film I need to watch to be ready for the event and I'm really hoping it's my favourite because if not... yikes ;)
With all the negativity heaped onto these five performances, I wonder if there was any chance for a sunny, 'over there' performance like Donna Reed in It's A Wonderful Life. There's nothing really scene-chewery at all about Mary Hatch, but she is the ideal wife. James Stewart was nominated and even the film was selected for Best Picture.
@TOM- Maybe category confusion? Is she lead or supporting? Both sides could present a good argument. If she was campaigned as lead, she had a poor shot to get nominated as that category was overly competitive that year.
Claudio has nothing to apologize for.