The Verdict -- Best Supporting Actress 1956

#5. Mercedes McCambridge in Giant: If a performance can leave me feeling more ambivalent than Mercedes McCambridge's did, I haven't seen it yet. Luz Benedict in just not an Oscar character--despite the fact that she shouts, is rough around the edges, and has such contempt for seemingly everyone around her. The blame has to be placed on McCambridge for giving her such a lack of presence or any charisma. An utterly pointless nomination, that I can't see very many people fully supporting.

#4. Mildred Dunnock in Baby Doll: An instantly loveable performance that gives Mildred Dunnock a chance to take this bizarre character and have fun with her. Aunt Rose Comfort flutters about the film catering to her family's every whim, so by the time Dunnock gets her heartbreaking dinner scene you feel a real emotional connection with the character that is surprising considering her screentime. Though she doesn't have much to do, there is no deny the quirky charm that exudes from the screen whenever Dunnock enters a room. This is a delightful performance that doesn't quite extend into the realm of truly phenomenal acting.

#3. Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed: As the unlikely sociopath Rhoda Penmark, Patty McCormack is an absolutely terrifying and iconic screen villain. She balances the immaturity and youth of the character with a startlingly haunting side that you wouldn't expect from such an adorable little girl. She works well with Nancy Kelly, and makes you question why this girl has gotten away with being such a spoiled brat for such a long time. It reaches the point where you can tell that she is so bad in the 'good girl' scenes that you realize she is just pretending to be a good girl, and you realize it along with her mother. A confident, technically adept performance that leaves a huge impression on you.

#2. Eileen Heckart in The Bad Seed: In just two brief scenes, Eileen Heckart gives a devastating performance that makes her entire film better. She tackles her role fearlessly and isn't afraid to dip into the realm of overacting and theatricality, and it pays off in spades. Both of her highly emotional scenes require her to be drunk out of her mind, but she doesn't blink twice. Her accusations against Rhoda really moves the film along, and she opens both Rhoda's mother and you're eyes exactly to just how devious this little girl is. Probably the most challenge performance to make convincingly, but under Heckart makes it fantastic.

#1. Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind: The biggest shocker of this group was how much I loved Dorothy Malone's delicious performance as Marylee Hadley. It's one that shows how great melodrama can be, and expresses the complex emotional struggles of Marylee in a powerful way. She has sensuality of the performance down pat, but what is truly impressive is how well she navigates Marylee's complex emotional problems. Her deep sexual obsession with Mitch could have easily come off as simply creepy, but she makes you pity her and realize that her character has some very serious problems. One of the best surprises I've had on a rewatch.

The Year in Review: A very strong year, with all of the top four performances being absolute delights. I thought for sure that Eileen would be taking this one, but Dorothy Malone's victory just proves that I should not come into a ranking with any kind of preconceived notions, even on the performances I've already seen. All four films were very good too, which is a relief after 1983's lack of any really great films. My next year will start in a couple of days, but I'm hoping to get some other posts out before then, and it's only a couple of years away from this one. This time it only took me about a month, so I'm hoping to slow get a rhythm going on these so I'm not quite so slow.


All Supporting Actress Nominees Ranking:

1. Patty Duke in "The Miracle Worker" (1962)
2. Dorothy Malone in "Written on the Wind" (1956)
3. Linda Hunt in "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1983)
4. Anna Paquin in "The Piano" (1993)
5. Cher in "Silkwood" (1983)
6. Eileen Heckart in "The Bad Seed" (1956)
7. Emma Thompson in "In the Name of the Father" (1993)
8. Patty McCormack in "The Bad Seed"(1956)
9. Claire Trevor in "Dead End" (1937)
10. May Whitty in "Night Must Fall" (1937)
11. Mildred Dunnock in "Baby Doll"(1956)
12. Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate"(1962)
13. Alfre Woodard in "Cross Creek" (1983)
    
14. Anne Shirley in "Stella Dallas" (1937)
15. Amy Irving in "Yentl"(1983)
16. Shirley Knight in "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)
    
17. Rosie Perez in "Fearless" (1993)
18. Glenn Close in "The Big Chill"(1983)
19. Alice Brady in "In Old Chicago" (1937)
20. Mary Badham in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)
    
21. Holly Hunter in "The Firm" (1993)
22. Thelma Ritter in "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962)
    
23. Winona Ryder in "The Age of Innocence" (1993)
24. Mercedes McCambridge in "Giant"(1956)
25. Andrea Leeds in  "Stage Door"(1937)

Mercedes McCambridge in Giant

Mercedes McCambridge received her second and final Oscar nomination for her performance as Luz Benedict in George Stevens' Giant. 1956 seemed to be the year of the epic for the Academy Awards, with three films clocking in at more than three hours being nominated for Best Picture. Giant is the only one of the three I've seen, the other two being The Ten Commandments and Around the World in 80 Days, the latter obviously winning Best Picture while George Stevens won Best Director. I can somewhat see why that is, Around the World is the Shakespeare in Love or Chicago to Giant's Saving Private Ryan or The Pianist. The film was just an extremely long one that the Academy obviously respected and admired more than flat out loved. It is about the Benedict family, a filthy rich Texas ranching family and what happens after Jordan "Bick" Benedict (Rock Hudson) marries non-Texan Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor) on something of a whim. It's a towering achievement, even if it drags its feet a times, and you really get to know this family over the course of 201 minutes.

Mercedes McCambridge plays Jordan's sister Luz, a masculine woman who is used to being in control of the house and is threatened by Bick's new wife. It's an incredibly brief performance, at least in relation to the incredible length of the film. Luz is a very straightforward woman, and McCambridge's performance is also very straightforward. Her brow is furrowed in literally every scene she's in and her voice has that impeccable southern drawl at all times. Luz is often seen only from the back, and it makes you notice how well McCambridge handles her rough physicality. That's....about it. The character is really not much of anything to speak of, so this is an exceptionally difficult performance to write about. Luz doesn't have much of an effect when she's on screen, so it's no surprise that when she inevitably dies, I found myself feeling nothing. I didn't hate her or love her enough to really care. Her death causes not profound effects on any character, and she really is almost never brought up again or spoke about for the rest of the film. I guess Bick didn't feel much for her either.

What I think the film was trying to go for was having us be somewhat happy to see Luz die because she essentially is a horrible racist towards Mexicans, but so is 95% of the characters in the film, so I didn't make much of it. The only major effect she has on the rest of the film is that she leaves Jeff Rink (James Dean), a sort of rival of Bick's, some land for  him to live off of and the other characters make it sound like she had some kind of romantic interest in him. But we never get to see any of that, and there is very little interaction between the two characters besides her screaming at him. Perhaps some more of McCambridge's scenes were cut from the film, but that would have given her some more potential to create a character out of the cliche that is Luz.

I don't really feel much of anything for this performance, either positive or negative. Everything is done convincingly enough, but this is not the kind of acting that I consider nomination worthy by any means. I don't know how McCambridge got the nomination, so I'm assuming she got swept along with the film into one. 2/5 Thelmas.

Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind

Dorothy Malone received her first and only Oscar and nomination for her performance as Marylee Hadley in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind. As far as melodramas go, Written on the Wind is at the top in terms of pure trashy soap opera-like appeal, in the best possible way. The film centers around the Hadley family after the heir to the company Kyle (Robert Stack) impulsively marries his secretary Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall). Kyle's best friend, Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), who his father prefers to Kyle, is also in love with Lucy, while his sister Marylee (Malone) pines after Mitch. It's all one big love square of sorts, and Marylee is always at the center of it. Of the four main actors, Malone has the juiciest role, as Hudson and Bacall are purposely bland, and Stack (despite earning an Oscar nomination) is almost laughable in that he fails completely at his pitiable role. Marylee is undoubtedly the most complex character, and Malone shoulders the brunt of the emotional weight of the film.

Of the two Hadley children's deep psychological problems, Marylee's is perhaps the most troubling in that she is essentially a nymphomaniac whose unhealthy obsession with Mitch has led her to the point of becoming the town slut. Malone really knows how to use her body, and that level of physicality is important to show that Marylee has a sexual appetite, and isn't just a blandly pretty girl. Malone manages to make even the most garish outfits in the film sensual, and handles that incredibly bizarre lake scene especially well, making it simultaneously orgasmic and painful. To go with her blatant sensuality, Marylee is given all the bitchy lines and attitude to go along with it. She's playful at the most awkward of times, working to increase the tension at all times. Marylee wears all the contempt she feels towards basically everyone besides Mitch on her sleeve, and Malone handles that side of the performance perfectly. She's the perfect balance of Va-va-voom and malice.

It's in the emotions where Dorothy Malone's performance elevates to another level, as she handles the complex emotional makeup of Marylee with a startling proficiency. It takes only a few moments to realize the source of Marylee's pain--her deep love for Mitch, and she doesn't hide that fact at all. Besides openly offering herself up to him and keeping pictures of him prominently displayed in her room, she has her father asking him if he'd reconsider marrying her. Mitch's rejection of her has clearly pushed Marylee to a point of being an utterly pathetic, desperate whore. It's a heartbreaking sight to watch her barrage him with proposition after proposition, most of them only offering to have sex with him as if she needs it desperately. Surprisingly, her and Hudson have a natural chemistry, and the only scene where I saw him coming out of the coma he seemed to be in the entire film was the one in his room. Malone conveys the hurt Marylee feels phenomenally, and at the end of the film when she tries to blackmail Mitch you can tell it's not real because of her skill in laying out the feelings Marylee has for him.

This performance was overall a huge surprise for me, because the first time I watched Written on the Wind, I don't remember being quite as enamored with Malone and the film in general. It's a surprisingly emotionally complex performance, and the melodrama of the film only helps to make her performance better. It's a high difficulty performance, only because of the extreme melodramatic nature of the film, and the fact that it would be easy to make Marylee a one dimensional slutty character, but Malone hits all the right notes in elevate herself out of that stereotype. The only real criticism I can give to her is the fact that her dancing is pretty dreadful, but that isn't much of anything. If you've only seen this performance once, I'd recommend you go back and take another look at it, because you may just find yourself liking it as much as I did this time around. 5/5 Thelmas.

Mildred Dunnock in Baby Doll

Mildred Dunnock received her second Oscar nomination for her performance as Aunt Rose Comfort in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll. Films rarely get as unassumingly erotic as Baby Doll was, and as someone who doesn't feel that vibe from movies too often, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed the film. The film is about a poor cotton-gin owner named Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) and his desire to have sex with his wife Baby Doll (Carroll Baker, Oscar-nominated for this performance), who he agreed to have sex with when she turned 20. After he burns down a rival's cotton gin, the man gets revenge by attempting to seduce his wife. All the performances were great, but Eli Wallach's performances as the business rival was particularly delicious (I never thought I'd find this guy so attractive). How does Mildred Dunnock fit into all this? She plays Baby Doll's daffy, slightly senile aunt who spends the film doing crazy things and being picked on by Archie Lee.

Of all the performances in the film, Mildred's is easily the one with the least to work with, but she turns her slight role into a completely loveable one with ease and grace. When we first meet Aunt Rose Comfort, it's in a scene where she is afraid to answer the phone because it scares her too much when it rings and from that moment on I knew that I was going to absolutely adore Aunt Rose whenever she came onscreen. Dunnock imbues her with a baby animal-like innocence that makes her hard to resist. The character doesn't actually spend a whole lot of time on screen, though, and when she is she's often in the background of the scenes. I imagine this was a somewhat difficult role to make convincing, and she does it handily thanks to her dedication to the insanity growing in Aunt Rose.

However, I can't help but feel her performance as a little bit slight, especially compared to the hefty roles of her co-stars. Her character is almost an afterthought throughout the film, and there were times that I even found myself forgetting that we hadn't seen her in awhile, which is never good. It's almost as if Dunnock was loveable when on screen, but not so vital a presence that I missed her when she wasn't. There was one notable exception to this overarching feeling I had, though, and that was during the big dinner scene. Aunt Rose, being absolutely insane, forgot to start the stove while cooking dinner (why put you're crazy aunt in charge of cooking?), and is mercilessly attacked by Archie Lee as being worthless. He decides that she needs to move out because they cannot afford to take care of her any longer, and Dunnock's heartbreaking reaction is one of the highlights of the film. The mix of resolve and sensitivity is just right, and it's a touching moment.

Ultimately, Mildred Dunnock's performance is a tough one to fully get a read on. She's at times adorably bizarre and at others forgettable and borderline unnecessary. Her heart-wrenching final scene and overall elegance in the role has me leaning towards the positive in this performance, though I certainly understand the people who do not like this performance. Aunt Rose Comfort is a character that may not be for everyone, but I love me some craziness. 4/5 Thelmas.

Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed

Patty McCormack received her first and only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Rhoda Penmark in Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed. This film (along with the novel and play) is famous for introducing the term 'bad seed' into pop culture, and that it has enduring so many years and is still common today can be at least partially credited to McCormack's chilling performance. Rhoda Penmark has many of the same qualities of iconic villains such as Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates, in that she has a magnetic, almost seductive quality with a hint of deviousness that makes her off putting and sweet at the same time. Obviously she doesn't quite reach the level that those villains do, mostly because of her (and McCormack's) inexperience and youth, but many time during the film it felt like you were getting a look at at the origins of a sociopath as she learned the tricks of her trade.

The most admirable aspect of this performance is the balance that McCormack strikes between Rhoda's charming little lady side and her cold and heartless side. Throughout the film numerous characters comment on how well-behaved and mature Rhoda is for her age, as she always curtseys when an adult enters the room, and her disinterest in playing with other kids who are 'childish'. But it's her mother Christine (Nancy Kelly) who starts to see the cracks in this facade, and as the film goes on we also begin to see Rhoda's is one of the kids who got away with everything as a child because of the obliviousness of the adults around them, but with a darker twist.. Some of her dialogue starts to sound horribly scripted and fake, as she says what she thinks will get herself out of trouble though she doesn't mean it. 'Nice' Rhoda is all an act. It's a difficult aspect of her performance to judge, because she is supposed to sound fake and unnatural, which is usually something that would lose points in my book from a performance. So you just have to take it for granted that this was McCormack's intent, and in that she succeeds.

The intentionally robotic delivery gives way to the real Rhoda, where we see her being a heartless little girl, who seems to have absolutely no remorse in any way for the crimes she's committed. McCormack can't help but be slighty campy in her handling of the character--but that only works to increase the strength of her performance. That camp element is really what makes Rhoda memorable, and lifts the film from banality. There is one particular scene where she finally spills the beans to her mother, and Rhoda's emotions come out for a second in a shocking and bone-chilling way, only to disappear as she attempts to return to the 'sweet girl' persona once more. The way she leaps praise on her mother just moments after revealing that she basically killed a little boy is horrifying and well-acted. The confidence in which Patty handles every scene is surprising considering her age, but she really knows her stuff and commits to every single second of the film.

You don't expect such an unnerving performance to come from Patty McCormack, but she delivers an iconic turn as future sociopath Rhoda Penmark. Her surprising amount of confidence in the role frees her up to give a type of performance that most child actors (such as Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird) would make unconvincing. She handles the duality of the role with ease and authenticity. Yes, the role is one that doesn't quite have the difficulty level as many other nominated performances, but is harder to elevate to the iconic status that McCormack achieves. She's stiff and unnatural in the best way possible. 4.5/5 Thelmas.

Eileen Heckart in The Bad Seed

Eileen Heckart received her first Oscar nomination for her performance as Hortense Daigle in Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed. The film is definitely a departure from the usual Oscar-nominated films, in that it technically is a thriller film that borderlines on dipping into full fledged horror. It's easy to see why the Academy may have gotten confused though, because the film retains a lot of the theatrical elements from the original play and more often feels like a drama pretending to be a thriller. The performances are across the board solid, and I even liked Nancy Kelly's performance even if it had moments of extreme overacting. The two ladies who were nominated for Best Supporting Actress were Patty McCormack, playing the eponymous 'bad seed' Rhoda, and Eileen Heckart, who has significantly less screen time as the mother whose son dies at the beginning of the film. Heckart has an role that begs for an Oscar nomination--she gets to stumble around drunk, scream her lungs out, change emotions within a matter of seconds, and literally point fingers.

But oh, how well she does with each of those aspects of the performance. It's a role that she clearly knows inside and out, having played Hortense countless times on stage with the exact same cast. It's still no less impressive of an achievement. Hortense Daigle comes into the film at the exact right moment, and from the second Heckart walks in the door you feel a palpable change in the tone of the film. After forty minutes of faux pleasantries from every other character, Heckart ushers in a burst of reality that really gets the film moving. It's clear from the beginning that Hortense is viewed as 'common' by even the teachers at her son's school, and Eileen's lanky physicality and unique vocal quality support that downtrodden 'white trash' persona.

Being that this performance was born on the stage, there is an overt staginess to Heckart's performance, but I think it works completely in her favor. By allowing her free reign to stagger across the room and display her emotions freely, Eileen Heckart gives a performance of emotional devastation that will stick with you long after the film is over. She navigates the swift changes of emotion with ease and grace making some of the most unsuspecting moments, such as a hug with Rhoda both haunting and sweet at the same time. She overpowers every other person she's on screen with, and Nancy Kelly might as well have disappeared when Heckart sauntered on screen. She's like a storm set loose on the Penmark household, and the effect she leaves on both the audience and Kelly's Christine is much appreciated.

Eileen Heckart's performance is one that shows the true greatness a supporting actress can achieve with a minimal amount of screentime. Hortense Daigle is a great tragic figure, and I think The Bad Seed would be much worse off without her presence. Her experience in the role and the general theatricality of the performance make this one just shy of a perfect score, but I can't deny that the mark Eileen has left on will be with me for quite some time. Tackling this role with abandon and force, she manages to be calculated and loose in her performance at the same time, and mostly importantly so memorably tragic. An energetic performance that is not easy to pull off. 4.5/5 Thelmas.

Best Supporting Actress 1956

And the nominees were....

• Mildred Dunnock in Baby Doll as Rose Comfort
• Eileen Heckart in The Bad Seed as Hortense Daigle
• Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind as Marylee Hadley (winner)
• Mercedes McCambridge in Giant as Luz Benedict
• Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed as Rhoda Penmark

The Field: After covering four years of Best Supporting Actress contenders, I have yet to have two women get the same score in a single year, thus creating very little suspense or hard choices so here's hoping this year gives me harder time. It seems to be a somewhat crazy year with every performance but McCambridge's having some kind of deranged or melodramatic aspect associated with it. This is the first year I've covered with two nominees coming from one film which means I'll have to figure out how exactly I'm going to make that work. All that being said, Heckart will be the first lady I'll be reviewing. I'm excited to get going on Year #5. Anybody have any thoughts on this group of ladies?