Shelley Winters @ 100: A Double Life (1947)

For the next few evenings we'll be celebrating the career of Shelley Winters for her Centennial. Here's Nathaniel R...

Shelley as a young starlet (1943) and as a prestigious character actress (1968)

Shirley Schrift had been kicking around showbiz for eight years before the needle moved. At just 19 years of age, before she had any real professional credits, she auditioned for Scarlett O'Hara (like virtually every aspiring actress of the time) during the famed nationwide search. Director George Cukor himself (the initial director of Gone With the Wind) advised her to get acting lessons. She did and her work ethic and ambition paid off. Broadway roles followed and Hollywood soon after. The first years of her movie career were mostly filled with uncredited bits in Columbia and MGM pictures. With studio jobs came the usual tinkering with persona starting with a stage name. Shirley became Shelley and the Schrift became Winter and then Winters. Though some screen icons were given the instant star treatment, Winters career was closer to the norm of working actors in studio-era Hollywood. You were just one of thousands of faces but if you were lucky, charismatic, talented, or if executives took an interest (all four was naturally ideal), they'd work carefully on your image and groom you for larger roles.

At twenty-six the actress's luck changed suddenly -- as it does if it changes at all -- with two roles that launched her to stardom...

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The Furniture: Olivia de Havilland Embroiders Her Fate

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Olivia de Havilland was in nine films that were nominated for the Oscar for Best Production Design. It’s not the record, but it’s quite something. I’ve covered three of them: Hold Back the Dawn, My Cousin Rachel and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. But none of those actually won the award, so I still have some work to do. I haven’t got time for Gone with the Wind, and The Adventures of Robin Hood can wait a few weeks until our 1938 celebration, so I dove into The Heiress.

I hope you’re ready to think deeply about embroidery.

Granted, I’m not entirely sure director William Wyler was thinking deeply about his protagonist’s favorite pastime. The emphasis on Catherine Sloper’s (de Havilland) stitching can feel like little more than shorthand for “spinster” status. And the mid-19th century was a high point for this association, as embroidery was a standard part of the girls’ school curriculum.

Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson) sent Catherine to the finest boarding schools, where she would have learned the art of the sampler from an unmarried teacher. The end of the film bluntly zooms in on one of these stitched alphabets, which in this context might as well read “OLD MAID”...

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Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020)

by Nathaniel R

We have long dreaded this day coming so it's with heavy hearts that we share that the iconic Olivia de Havilland has passed away. We have celebrated her several times here at The Film Experience, most notably in 2016 with a multi-film retrospective for her Centennial. Having been a true screen immortal for the past (gulp) 80 years, it was hard to picture this woman as an actual mortal. Pictures of her happily bicycling in Paris in her centenarian years were popular around the web but all things eventually end. The Oscar winner, who had just celebrated her 104th birthday on July 1st, died peacefully yesterday in her Parisian home...

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P.S. I'm off to read "The Brick Foxhole"

by Nathaniel R

We hope you loved listening to the Smackdown Podcast and discussing various 1947 movies this month. It means a lot when you watch, vote, listen, and share these events. Another round of applause to our returning guests Dana Delany (she previously guest-starred on "1973"), Angelica Jade Bastién (she previously guest-starred on "1941"), and the newbies, actor Patrick Vaill (Netflix's upcoming Dash & Lily) and lyricist Tom Mizer (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel S3). Dana wanted to send a note to listeners that she was sorry for accrediting the direction of To Kill a Mockingbird to Richard Brooks rather than Robert Mulligan... the names just got jumbled because it was Richard Brooks who wrote "The Brick Foxhole" which she was also discussing.

I was so into this conversation that now I have ordered a copy of "The Brick Foxhole" to understand Crossfire in a fully homosexual way. I didn't know until the panel educated me that the movie changed the issue from Homophobia to Anti-Semitism! 

Up next in our supersized Smackdown summer: "2002" on Wednesday June 17th  -- Chicago, The Hours, Adaptation, About Schmidt -- and "1957" on July 6th, so queue up Peyton Place, Witness for the Prosecution, Sayonara, and The Bachelor Party.

THE FULL 1947 CONVERSATION ICYMI
At the bottom of this post 👇 or on iTunes.

1947 Discussion

Smackdown '47: Anne, Ethel, Marge, Celeste Holm and noir goddess Gloria Grahame

IT'S HERE! Welcome to the Supporting Actress Smackdown, a summer festival in which we investigate Oscar shortlists from years past. 1947 was a fine cinematic vintage and Oscar made room for a ghostly judge's wife, a countrified mother of 15, a jaded dance hall girl, a single New York City fashion editor, and a righteous rock of a mother in the Supporting Actress race. What's most historically interesting about this particular set is that it's a who's-who of character actress superstars of the 1940s. Get this: all but one of them won this category and received multiple nominations within an eight year span from the mid 40s to the early 50s.

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS
Here to talk about these five nominated turns and the movies and Oscars of 1947 are, in alphabetical order: critic Angelica Jade Bastién (Vulture), actress Dana Delany (China Beach, Desperate Housewives), lyricist and librettist Thomas Mizer (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), and actor Patrick Vaill (Broadway's Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma), And, as ever, your host at The Film Experience, Nathaniel R. Let's begin...

1947
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST  
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...

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