Black Women and the Battle for the US House

Reps. Lucy McBath (D-GA) & Lauren Underwood (D-IL)

In 2018, Democrats saw a lot of potential future stars arise in liberal bastions across the country, as women of color won primaries (and even defeated incumbents) in blue districts across the country.  For all of the pejorative takes (including even using the term) from the press, the "Squad" felt historic for a reason-here was a group of young women-of-color who were not only winning seats of political power, but also were gaining incredible amounts of press while doing so.

But two women who didn't get the same level of media coverage stand out to me in particular, and their achievements in 2018 are what I want to talk about today as we conclude our trio of articles this week about "Women, Congress, and 2020" (if you missed the first two click here and here).  In 2018, now-Reps. Lauren Underwood and Lucy McBath did something that had never been done before-they defeated incumbents in a general election, both of whom, it's worth noting, were white Republicans.  Before 2018, no black woman had ever defeated an incumbent in a general; they'd done so in primaries (Ayanna Pressley, for example, or Carol Moseley-Braun), but never in a general election.

As we talked about on Wednesday, diversity in candidates is great-it increases the odds that underrepresented peoples might win an office, and it certainly helps add new voices to the public conversation, but it's still important to actually win.  There has been, for too long, a supposition that women of color cannot win seats in overwhelmingly white or Republican-held constituencies, and that if a black woman runs, they are not given the same level of support as a white woman or white man might in running in such a race.  Part of why this might have been supposed is because, until 2018, whether through this being a reality (some form of the "Bradley Effect") or because black women were not given this opportunity, it'd never been done.  What McBath & Underwood did was not just exceed expectations & defeat an incumbent Republican (which is hard to do, particularly in districts Donald Trump won), but they showed that they can win as black women running in districts with predominantly white constituencies.

The question becomes, then, did anything change from what McBath & Underwood did in 2018, and how the DCCC recruited in 2020.  Overall, there's some progress, though for my taste not enough-I feel like we should be seeing more black women getting opportunities based on the paths that McBath and Underwood have paved.  Still, it's worth noting that four women, and one in particular, could join them this fall if the Democrats have a strong enough wave.

Babylon City Councilwoman Jackie Gordon (D-NY)

In my opinion, the closest we have to a race that mirrors the circumstances of Underwood and McBath's races is in New York's 2nd congressional district.  This seat, in Long Island, voted for Trump in 2016 by 10 points but went for President Obama in 2012 by 4-points.  We're still trying to figure out exactly which of those states might be ones that will go back to Biden in 2020 (and which will stay in Trump's column), but suffice it to say it's potentially competitive, and the Democrats have scored a strong candidate, Babylon City Councilwoman Jackie Gordon, who is taking on State Rep. Andrew Garbarino.  Polls have been scarce, but Gordon has done extremely well with her fundraising-she's sitting on 10x the cash of Garbarino, and has out-raised him 4:1.  This isn't exactly the same as Underwood & McBath, as Gordon isn't taking out an incumbent Republican, but it is still a chance for a black woman to win a seat currently held by a Republican (Peter King).

The other three seats are longer shots, but they are at least somewhat competitive, and in all cases they are taking on an incumbent rather than an open seat race.  Of the three, I feel best about NC-8, though all are an uphill climb.  Pat Timmons-Goodson, a former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice, is running against Rep. Richard Hudson in a district that was recently redrawn, but still went for Trump by 9 in 2016 & Romney by 4 in 2012.  She's been out-raised 2:10, but the district has some new territory for Hudson, and she's still raised over $1 million with multiple high-profile endorsements, and is in a state that will get a lot of national money due to its Pres/Gov/Sen races.

State Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-AR)

The second race doesn't have that support-Democrats won't be spending money in Arkansas, which could hurt former State Sen. Joyce Elliot in the 2nd congressional district.  This is the bluest of the Natural State's districts, but it's still pretty red (an 11-point victory for Trump), so the main question is how much ground can Biden take back with Trump increasingly unpopular, and will that translate to Elliot (rather than crossover support for Rep. French Hill).  Elliott is also being out-raised 2:1, but has amassed over $1 million in donations.

The final race I want to mention is in Ohio's 10th.  This feels like the biggest stretch of the bunch, mostly because the Democratic challenger, former congressional aide Desiree Tims, has not raised the kind of money you expect from someone who will knock out an incumbent (in this case Rep. Mike Turner); Tims has only gotten $600k in this race, pretty low compared to Gordon, Timmons-Goodson, & Elliott.  That said, OH-10 has potential.  Trump won it by seven, but Obama only lost it by two points; it also includes the Cincinnati suburbs, and as we've seen in the past few years, Trump has hemorrhaged support in the suburbs across the country.  I wouldn't bet on Tims, but this race at least warrants a place on your Election Night scorecard.

So, it doesn't look likely that someone will match McBath & Underwood this year; Gordon is by-far the best chance the Democrats have of a black woman picking up a Republican-held seat, but not against an incumbent.  However, if the wave is strong enough, as I mentioned last week when we were taking a look at if the House Democratic caucus have 100 women, Elliott, Timmons-Goodson, & even Tims are in a position where they might be able to capitalize on such a wave.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Film: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Stars: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Charles Fleischer, Kathleen Turner, Amy Irving
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Oscar History: 6 nomination/4 wins (Best Film Editing*, Sound, Sound Effects Editing*, Visual Effects*, Art Direction, Cinematography...and a fourth Honorary Oscar for "animation direction")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

When I write these articles, you might have noticed I put "Snap" or "(Not So) Snap" Judgment Ranking for my star rating.  This indicates whether or not this is the first time I've seen a movie or whether this is something that I'm revisiting for a second (or hundredth) time.  On rare occasions, though, I don't actually know the answer as to whether or not I've seen a movie.  I am really OCD about movie lists and spreadsheets, but when it comes to specific movies, I don't know if it's just a case where I've seen parts of the film or whether I saw the whole thing.  That's the case with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a landmark 1988 film that was nominated in both Sound categories amongst six Oscar citations (this week our review theme is Sound nominees at the Oscars).  So full disclosure-some parts of Roger Rabbit had an air of familiarity (I knew the twist, and not because I'd read about it before), but by-and-large after watching, I feel confident enough that I haven't seen this movie full-through to warrant a "Not So."

(Spoilers Ahead) But enough of my minutia-let's get to the film at hand.  Roger Rabbit is a live-action/animated film that takes a lot of its cues from film noir.  The movie takes place in the late 1940's, and it's a world where "toons" and humans live side by side with each other, though there is some animosity between the two worlds.  One of the humans who struggles with toons is Eddie Valiant (Hoskins), a washed-up detective whose brother was killed by a toon during a bank robbery, and he holds prejudices against them.  He is forced into a situation of defending a toon, though, when after being hired to track film star Roger Rabbit (Fleischer) and his voluptuous wife Jessica (Turner for speaking, Irving for singing), Roger is framed for murder by Judge Doom (Lloyd), and they form an unlikely alliance as they try to clear Roger's name.

Roger Rabbit was a landmark production that took almost a decade to come to light as Disney was handling its own nightmares in its animation department, and the film ended up finally happening due to Steven Spielberg & Amblin Entertainment getting involved.  While the film's visual effects were groundbreaking at the time, it's actually the cartoons that are featured in the film that are truly jaw-dropping considering the copyrights at stake.  While it's not shocking to see Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck in a Disney animated film, them being alongside the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Betty Boop, & Porky Pig is insane, particularly since Spielberg amassed most of the voice actors that these characters are most associated with-the film is helped by adding in two instantly iconic cartoon characters (Roger & Jessica Rabbit), but even as a curiosity it's worth investigating.

That said, the movie's great-sure, it's cliche, but it's mining that cliche for some fun camp, and I loved it.  Bob Hoskins is perfectly cast as Eddie, using his tough guy persona to great affect and keeping the ridiculousness grounded, and Turner/Irving give a performance for the ages as Jessica, who gets away with jokes you couldn't dream are coming out of a Disney character's mouth.  It's a fun, joyous, predictable ride from start to finish.

The film won six Oscar nominations, as well as a special trophy for its landmark animation.  The visual effects are the best of these.  While the strings are clear still to modern audiences, this is a marked improvement on even a few years earlier where you had live-action figures alongside humans in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete's Dragon.  The sound work is also strong-this requires a lot of seamless voiceover work to make it compelling (mad props again to Hoskins for interacting with essentially a green screen so well, and creating such chemistry with Roger/Jessica), and the toon town effects are delightful & witty; this is also a credit to the editors, who took a plot that could have been a slog (parodies of noir oftentimes are) and kept it bright, but still moody.  The Art Direction is fine, if a bit played for parody (there's no set that feels like it wasn't plucked out of a Dashiell Hammett novel, and not always in the best way as there could have been more fun in recreating aspects of Toontown), and the cinematography also could have had more ambience or leaned in a little heavier into the noir aspects of the picture.  All-in-all, though, whether it was for the first time or the second, Roger Rabbit holds up.

Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

With the passing of Olivia de Havilland earlier this week, obviously we lost a film legend.  We also lost the answer to a lot of longevity questions when it comes to the Oscars.  De Havilland got her first nomination in 1939 for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone with the Wind), her first Best Actress nomination in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn, and her first win for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.  This meant that de Havilland was the earliest (not to be confused with oldest, though she was that too) living Best Supporting Actress nominee, Best Actress nominee, and Best Actress winner.  With her death, I honestly didn't know the answer to who was next in line for these three titles (though I had a correct guess for Supporting Actress), and so I figured it was time to do some research, cause I don't let Oscar trivia questions go unanswered.  Below you will find for the directing and four acting categories who are chronologically the earliest (again, not oldest) living nominees and winners.

Best Actress

Nominee: Leslie Caron (1953) for Lili
--Runner-Up: Carroll Baker (1956) for Baby Doll
Winner: Joanne Woodward (1957) for The Three Faces of Eve
--Runner-Up: Sophia Loren (1961) for Two Women

As you can tell, de Havilland's death truly put an end to the 1940's in terms of Best Actress, as there were no nominees after her that are still with us until 1953 with Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals, possibly alongside Mitzi Gaynor the only real figure left from that era's biggest films, that she should get an Honorary Oscar, and post-haste as she's 89).  Baker, who was just 25 when she was cited for Baby Doll, is next up, though you have to go to 1957 for a living winner with Joanne Woodward (who has been very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who has another movie coming out later this year).

Best Actor

Nominee: Sidney Poitier (1958) for The Defiant Ones
--Runner-Up: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
Winner: Sidney Poitier (1963) for Lilies of the Field
--Runner-Up: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection

Best Actor winners tend to be older than the other three categories, so it's not shocking to me that we have to go back further to find living recent winners here.  Technically Poitier is actually his own runner-up for Lilies of the Field, but I figured that wasn't fun to track so we're going with Michael Caine three years after Poitier's landmark win.  Unlike the Best Actress field, all of these men already have Oscars, though Caine is the only one that still works in film.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Angela Lansbury (1944) for Gaslight
--Runner-Up: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Scratch the above comment-Shirley Jones is also living and obviously in the same league as Caron & Gaynor in terms of classic Hollywood musicals (truly random aside, but I remember many years ago seeing an interview with Jones & her husband Marty Ingels where he let strangers that were there for a yard sale of some sort hold Shirley's Oscar-I can't have imagined this, but have never found the interview...any ideas internet?). Blyth actually ties Angela Lansbury for runner-up as Lansbury was nominated in 1945 for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Up until quite recently Joan Lorring who was nominated that year for The Corn is Green was also alive (she died in 2014) and the other two women nominated that year both lived into the 1990's, so this field might have a record for longevity at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominee: Don Murray (1956) for Bus Stop
--Runner-Up: Russ Tamblyn (1957) for Peyton Place
Winner: George Chakiris (1961) for West Side Story
--Runner-Up: Joel Grey (1972) for Cabaret

There are no provisos here for runners-up.  Don Murray is not only one of the longest-lived Supporting Actors ever, he's also one of the rare ones to have been nominated for his screen debut.  Also, with Tamblyn alive, maybe I should stop pointing out a lack of classic actors from major Hollywood musicals not being alive, but that we should still consider Caron for an Honorary Oscar-who wouldn't want to watch her thank Fred and Gene in the same speech?  Looking ahead here, it's weird to think that just eight years behind Joel Grey is Timothy Hutton, who was so young when he won for Ordinary People that he's not even sixty yet.

Best Director

Nominee: Claude Lelouch (1966) for A Man and a Woman
--Runner-Up: Norman Jewison (1967) for In the Heat of the Night
Winner: William Friedkin (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Francis Ford Coppola (1974) for The Godfather, Part II

Admit it-when I typed Coppola for Godfather II, at least half of you said "wait, what about the first one?" before you remembered Bob Fosse won that year for Cabaret.  Looking at this list, I had never put together that Lelouch was so young when he made A Man and a Woman (I loved this movie, and will surely have to see it again before we do the 1966 OVP, but when I saw it in college I found it intoxicating), being not even 30 when he was nominated for an Oscar for the film.  With the exception of Jewison (whose last film was 2003's The Statement with Michael Caine & Tilda Swinton), all three of these men have made movies in the past five years, though Coppola has threatened frequently to retire.

OVP: Pal Joey (1957)

Film: Pal Joey (1957)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Barbara Nichols
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Art Direction, Film Editing, Costume, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It wouldn't be a week devoted to the category of Best Sound at the Oscars without us having at least one musical, and that comes to us this Wednesday, as we tackle the 1957 film Pal Joey.  For those who are familiar with the original Broadway show (spoiler alert-I was not), the film takes a bit of a departure from the original, particularly with the lead character, turning him from an anti-hero into a more traditional stand-up guy, which makes sense considering in 1957 there were few matinee idols who could approach Frank Sinatra.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is basically a love triangle, and not with a lot of twists.  We have Joey, a womanizing singer who has dreams of opening up a club called "Chez Joey" that will be successful because they do it "his way," but he doesn't have the money to finance the club.  Just as he's starting to make something happen with romancing a beautiful chorus girl named Linda (Novak), an old flame of Joey's walks into the picture: Vera (Hayworth), who was once a showgirl but is now a society matron, a wealthy widow who doesn't want to admit her seedier past, but is also madly in love with Joey.  She starts financing Joey, but Joey can't get Linda off of his mind, so she gives him an ultimatum-pick Linda or Chez Joey.  After much hemming-and-hawing (and the mandatory stormy breakup scene), he goes after Linda & real love.

As you might already be able to tell, I didn't like Pal Joey.  For starters, the movie is too long, and frequently doesn't know what to do with its two female leads, which is a bummer because Kim Novak & Rita Hayworth are far more intriguing screen presences than Frank Sinatra, who always plays some version of Frank Sinatra.  Novak, just a year away from giving one of the truly great performances of the 1950's in Vertigo, plays her Linda as a bored showgirl, someone who has seen a guy like Joey a dozen times...and yet she falls for him pretty quickly.  Vera is the more intriguing character, but she's ancillary to the plot.  Despite Hayworth getting top billing (Sinatra graciously gave it to her since she'd gotten it on every film she'd made at Columbia for a decade), she's not important to the plot, and doesn't get the sort of wry moments that Hayworth was so good at nailing.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including of course for Best Sound, which was by far its most warranted citation.  Sinatra might not be breaking the mold as an actor here, but he was in the best years of his singing career, and is breathtaking crooning "The Lady is a Tramp" or "I didn't Know What Time It Was."  Musicals get de facto nominations for Sound specifically because of films like Pal Joey, which do a great job modulating and calibrating each number & scene to be perfectly balanced & bring forth the great serenading that's happening onscreen.

As for the rest, I'm less-impressed.  The sets are weirdly claustrophobic.  This isn't a bad thing, but for a film that has the budget & the star power to ensure that we don't feel like it's a staged play, it shows its Broadway roots in a way few musicals of the era did, and I thought that was at once creative and perplexing.  The costumes are fun, if here a bit repetitive-oh look, here's another shot of Hawyorth or Novak in an evening-length gown with a body that looks like a track at Daytona...there's no look in the film that feels classic even from two fashion staples.  And the editing...Pal Joey could have trimmed twenty minutes off and no one would have missed it (the film's biggest problem is it drags & repeats)-the musical numbers aren't impressive enough visually (even if they sound good) to warrant this based on those pieces alone.

Can Republican Women Break Their House Losing Streak?

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)

Last week we took a look at the chances of the House Democrats to potentially make history and elect 100 female members to their caucus.  This week, we will not be making history, but we are going to look at the other side of the chamber in the House, the House Republicans, and their inability to grow the number of women in the House GOP, and how they're hoping to change that in 2020.

The differential between House Republican women and House Democratic women wasn't always so stark (currently there are 88 Democratic women in the House and just 13 Republican women).  Up until the mid-90's the numbers between the two were much more even.  Since then, though, Republicans have not kept pace, and even seen the percentage of Republican women in their caucus drop (they hit a high of 25 women twice in the past two decades).

It's worth noting that in 2020, the House Republicans are at least acknowledging this problem.  Rep. Elise Stefanik has made a point of supporting women in primaries, and pushing NRCC Chair Tom Emmer to better highlight women to close some of the gap in terms of gender inequity in their caucus (as the Republicans are not going to start winning back women voters if would-be female Republicans don't see a place for themselves in the party).  This cycle has seen, as a result, the largest ever number of women running for the House as Republicans.  But there's a big difference between fielding female candidates and actually electing them, and it's worth asking if this is all for show or if it will actually yield tangible results.

So we're going to take a look at the women here in the same way we did the House Democrats, by breaking down the three ways that women are able to improve their numbers in the House-through winning open seats that the party currently holds, through reelecting their current members, and by supporting challengers to vulnerable incumbents (that "vulnerable" part is crucial, because it doesn't matter if a Republican woman is running in a seat that she has no chance of actually winning).  Since we put a question around the House Democrats (will they hit 100?), we'll do the same here-will the House Republicans have twenty female members come November (a net gain of seven)?

Mayor Beth van Duyne (R-TX)

1. Nominating to Open (GOP) Seats

There are significantly more Republican retirements this year than Democrats, a strong indicator that (at least in DC) the mood indicates that the Republicans will not regain control of the US House.  However, the best way to increase the number of Republican women would be through nominating them for safe open seats.

There are two Republican women (Martha Roby & Susan Brooks) who are retiring this cycle, so take that down to a net two for a second, and so far, the Republicans have nominated just three women for the 27 open seats, only one of whom (Mary Miller in Illinois) is nominated in a seat she's guaranteed to win in November.  The other two candidates (Victoria Spartz in IN-5 and Beth van Duyne in TX-24) could win, but it's worth noting that the Republicans put them in two open seats that pretty much every pundit considers a tossup.  This was a problem in 2018 as well, where Republicans put up female candidates in tossup seats in Arizona, California, and South Carolina where they ended up losing on Election Day (which won't get them any actual new members in the US House).

Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Tennessee all have primaries still to come that feature female challengers, so we could be seeing more Republican women there, but looking deep into the races, not all offer promising options.  Marjorie Greene (whom you may remember) could be nominated in Georgia, but the GOP would prefer she not be for obvious reasons (again, click the link), and unless there's an upset there's no other race that feels like a female candidate could get nominated.  It's worth noting that Lauren Boebert defeated incumbent-Rep. Scott Tipton in Colorado, but Boebert's far-right views & links to the conspiracy theory group QAnon put that district at risk.  All-in-all, the Republicans at best are going to get a net of 1-2 seats here, and it's possible they actually lose ground with Republican women in the caucus based on just open seats.

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO)

2. Holding Their Incumbents

You would think, considering there are just 11 women running for reelection in the House GOP, that there would be no chance that the Republicans could lose ground in a second bucket, but you'd be wrong.  Most of the Republican women are, in my opinion, pretty safe, including people like Stefanik whom Democrats wish were vulnerable (and are funding her opponent as if she was, basically setting a stack of money on fire), but there's no evidence that Stefanik won't win another term in her seat short of a proper scandal or a much bigger Biden landslide than any polling currently suggests.

Where the Republicans are vulnerable, though, is in Missouri.  Rep. Ann Wagner is a powerful incumbent, but she's running for reelection in the type of seat that Donald Trump not only didn't win by as much as Mitt Romney (a drop from 16-points to 11), but also that he's lost serious heat in since the 2016 election: it's a wealthy, college-educated suburban district surrounding St. Louis.  This is a seat that Claire McCaskill, even while she was losing statewide, still carried in 2018, and even against an under-sung opponent in 2018, Wagner only won by four-points.  It remains to be seen if MO-2 will vote for Trump or Biden, but Wagner can't count on Trump winning here like she did in 2016, and her opponent is much better-touted in 2020.  Some will also claim that Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington is vulnerable, but if a House GOP woman loses this cycle, it's going to be Wagner.

State Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA)

3. The Republican Challengers

All of this is to say that the Republicans might, in the first two buckets, have at best a net of 1-2 seats-not great considering how hard they're touting all of the women who are running for the House, and a pretty steep climb if they want to hit 20 when the popular vote seems certain to go to Joe Biden, and likely by a decent margin.

Looking at the 25 or so Democratic-held districts that feel plausibly competitive (and not just "stretch" competitive, which in 2020 with the current GOP environment I don't think is an option for the Republicans unless there's a late-breaking scandal for an incumbent), the GOP did put up some female challengers.  CA-39, CA-48, GA-6, IA-1, IA-2, MN-7, NY-11, NY-22, OK-5, PA-7, and SC-1 all either have nominated Republican women or seem destined to do so (MI-8 could go with a female Republican, but I'm not betting on it), so a little less than half of these seats will have female challengers.

The big problem here is this-it is very hard to beat a House incumbent during a presidential election if that incumbent's party's nominee (Joe Biden) is winning the district, even if it's by just a slim margin.  The power of incumbency combined with increased straight-ticket voting basically requires a scandal in this case, which none of the Democrats in these districts have.  As Joe Biden is performing better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton, it's not a stretch to assume that Biden will carry every district that Clinton won in 2016 (this might not happen, but I'd put money on it happening).  This would take both of the California seats and PA-7 off of the menu.  It's also not a stretch to assume Biden will win GA-6, so I'd remove that from the lineup as well.

That leaves just seven seats that the Republicans could take with female challengers, and that's assuming that Biden doesn't take some stretch seats (other than MN-7 and NY-22, it's plausible he could have enough strength to carry any of the others, particularly the two Iowa seats or NY-11, which all three went for Obama in 2012).  I think that at least a couple of Republican women will win here.  Ashley Hinson in IA-1, Michelle Fischbach in MN-7, and Stephanie Bice in OK-5 are strong candidates, and ones we shouldn't count out here.  But it's pretty telling that unless the Republicans can pretty much sweep their targets here, they won't hit 20 Republican women in the House this November, and it's possible they don't gain almost any ground with only Mary Miller assured a freshman seat in the next Congress.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)

4. What About the Senate?

The Republicans are playing almost entirely defense this year, so it's difficult to imagine them improving on their count in the Senate, which is nine senators (a significantly more impressive ratio than in the US House).  However, it's almost certain that the Republican women will lose members in the US Senate in 2020.  That's because some of the biggest opportunities for Democratic pickups are happening in seats held by Republican women.

Sen. Martha McSally (AZ) is the most vulnerable.  McSally hasn't led in a non-partisan poll since July of 2019, and has been routinely out-raised by her opponent, astronaut Mark Kelly; in fact, Kelly frequently beats McSally in matchup polls by double digits.  I struggle to see Kelly getting to double digits in a presidential election even in shifting Arizona, but I also can't see a path for McSally to win reelection-I think this is an obvious net loss for the Senate Republican women.

The other incumbents are on better ground, but still shaky.  Sens. Joni Ernst (IA) and Susan Collins (ME) are both in tossup races, and will be lucky to win at this point (neither have led in a non-partisan poll in their states since their states' primaries), and while Sen. Kelly Loeffler's seat might not be as vulnerable, her hold on it certainly is.  Polling shows Loeffler consistently losing to Rep. Doug Collins (R) in a top-two runoff, and while she can hope that the Democrats don't coalesce around Rev. Raphael Warnock (who so far has struggled to put away the Democratic lane of this primary), Warnock is sitting on a fortune & my instincts say that he'll make it to a runoff even if he might ultimately lose said runoff.

The one sure gain for the Republicans in the Senate comes from Wyoming.  There, Sen. Mike Enzi is retiring, and will be replaced by a woman, former-Rep. Cynthia Lummis.  Unless Ernst wins (and the Republicans pickup one of the Dem-held House seats in Iowa), this will make Wyoming & West Virginia the only states in the nation to have Republican women in both the House & Senate come November.

OVP: Apocalypto (2006)

Film: Apocalypto (2006)
Stars: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Raoul Trujillo, Gerardo Taracena, Morris Birdyellowhead
Director: Mel Gibson
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Makeup)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Does anyone else remember when Apocalypto was being advertised for the first time?  How the trailers for it seemed confusing, as if Gibson wasn't willing to give any of the plot to the film?  It's weird to revisit this, and remember that at the time it was A) a big hit and B) Gibson was still a filmmaker who could command major box office (this was his followup to the gargantuan haul of The Passion).  Gibson, of course, has had a lifetime's worth of career problems in the years since, cancelled repeatedly (but still managed to get a Best Director Oscar nomination in the meantime-go figure), so revisiting him comes with a gigantic amount of baggage we might have had hints of in 2006, but would soon become central to his public persona.  Gibson doesn't appear in the movie (he hasn't appeared in one of his directorial efforts since Braveheart), but his fingerprints are all over it as you'll see below.

(Spoilers Ahead)  Apocalypto takes place during the Mayan empire, and is about one man, Jaguar Paw (Youngblood) who sees his entire tribe raped, destroyed, imprisoned, and murdered by a stronger tribe.  The captives are taken to a large city, though along the journey we see terrifying cliffs & a diseased girl who curses Zero Wolf (Trujillo), the leader of the tribe that imprisoned Jaguar Paw's people.  In the city, the women are sold into slavery, and the men are sacrificed on a bloody alter to the sun, though when Jaguar Paw is to be killed, a solar eclipse occurs, which stops him from being sacrificed.  Instead, he and the remaining men are used for target practice, and in the process Jaguar Paw escapes, headed back to his wife & son whom he left in a pit during the raid.  He is tracked as he goes back, but through ingenuity kills them by knowing the jungle better.  The climactic scene of the film, though, happens later when Gibson throws a curveball at the audience.

Before we discuss that scene, I want to talk through what we've seen already.  Apocalypto is the sort of movie that I would never watch again, even if I didn't hate it.  The film's acting is okay (too much two-dimensional emoting, especially from the villains), but the action sequences are impressively mounted, and Gibson definitely knows how to use every dollar in his budget by overcrowding and extending key shots in the film.  The movie, though, is upsettingly, nauseatingly violent.  This is the problem with all of Gibson's films post-Braveheart, where he is obsessed with human suffering onscreen.  He knows how to lens and construct a movie-his films, while basic in plot, make sense and this isn't just a cascade of fight scenes, but they're so gross to watch as they are just too indulgent in the human suffering angle, and I can only stomach so much of that, particularly when the film seems to be celebrating the violence.  The sound work here makes sense (it's the kind of film that would get nominated), but it's not impressive.  The mixing doesn't work for me-some of the dialogue is muffled in the crowd scenes to the point where it's difficult to hear, an unforgivable sin unless it's a key part of the plot, but the editing is better than the mixing (particularly during the marketplace scene).  The makeup might be realistic, but if the actual work is taking me out of the picture repeatedly, I'm not here for it.

That said, Apocalypto has one really unbelievable scene at the end of the movie that almost makes up for the rest of the picture.  Jaguar Paw is being chased by two more men in Zero Wolf's tribe, the last two, and as he keeps running he suddenly leaves the jungle, the first time we've really done that other than the scenes in the city.  Exhausted after having killed so many men, he collapses on the beach...and looks up in seeming shock.  The two men who are chasing him easily catch up, but also give up on their chase & look up at what Jaguar Paw is staring at.  In a great tracking shot, we see Spanish conquistadors on row boats, and in the distance billowy sales.  Jaguar Paw leaves to save his wife, while the other two men, so blown away by what is happening, forget their chase and just stare on into the suddenly populated sea.

This feels like the kind of shot that you'd want to build a movie around, and it almost makes Gibson's movie, had it not been for the abject violence of the first 90% of the movie, worth it.  It's a testament to how immersive Gibson makes the film that we don't see what is in hindsight an obvious twist coming, and the way that it's filmed, with the actors reacting in the same we would if we found aliens in our front yard (not in initial horror, but in sheer, utter shock) is smart.  It's a great scene buried in a paltry movie.

OVP: Sound Editing (2005)

OVP: Best Sound Editing (2005)

The Nominees Were...

Mike Hopkins & Etahn van der Ryn, King Kong

Wylie Stateman, Memoirs of a Geisha

Richard King, War of the Worlds

My Thoughts: We are celebrating Sound all week at the blog with film reviews, and to stay on theme we're going to go out-of-our-traditional order with the OVP this week (normally we'd do the music categories right now, but we'll do this next week instead), and kick off the aural categories with Sound Editing.  As I mentioned when we kicked off 2005, a lot of categories we normally associate now with five-wide had only three nominations fifteen years ago, and so we only have three nominees to discuss today.

We're going to commence with Memoirs of a Geisha, because it's one of those nominations in this category that I don't get at all.  I understand that sound work is not my forte (I watch a lot of movies, and do a bit of research before these articles, but I am not an industry professional), but where exactly is the sound editing in Memoirs of a Geisha?  The only sequence where we feel like there's something there that's non-manufactured sound (rather than just sound mixing or John Williams' score) is the fight scene that causes the burning of the okiya, which isn't impressive at all-movies have fire/fight scenes all the time, and while Gong Li's bombastic dialogue might make this more memorable than most, it's not impressively-mounted, and the rest of the film doesn't have anything to really recommend its sound mixing.  I feel like this happened because the Academy loves Wylie Stateman (though with nine losses to date, clearly not enough to give him a trophy), and wanted him to come to the ceremony.

On the opposite end of this conversation is King Kong, not only a film with obvious sound editing, but one with pretty formative sound work.  The film has several predecessors it needs to differentiate itself from (not just the 1933 & 1976 versions of the movie, but also the Jurassic Park franchise), but it does so well.  The bug scenes are instantly creepy, and the Kong work is precise.  The sound editing needs to work well here because Andy Serkis' performance needs some realism in how the ape is portrayed onscreen; this emotional, dimensional creature isn't going to work if he simply feels like Andy Serkis in motion-capture, and that's where the sound work is going to help.  King Kong is a consistent home run in terms of its sound work, meticulously designed.

War of the Worlds falls somewhere in-between these two films.  Unlike Geisha, there are clear sequences in War that would require Sound Editing, so we aren't competing with nothing, but it never rises to the "next level" work of Kong.  The film's best sequences are when the aliens are unknown (think of the barge cry of the aliens' ship before they literally start frying human beings on the ground)-this is great sound work, though it's oftentimes overshadowed by the score, which is pretty loud during crucial sequences.  That said, the aliens themselves are a bit of a disappointment.  The sound work is just a series of uninspired whirls, and there's not enough newness or freshness for such a major film-this isn't an alien that we're going to remember in the movie pantheon, and there's no sound that feels specific to these creatures, showing a lack of creativity.

Other Precursor Contenders: The 2005 Golden Reel Awards separated their nominations into animated and feature films (foreign film appears to be a category that was added later).  The animated films (none of which scored with Oscar), had Wallace & Gromit besting Chicken Little, Corpse Bride, Howl's Moving Castle, Madagascar, and Robots, while the feature winner was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, over Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Downfall, King Kong, Kingdom of Heaven, Kung Fu Hustle, and The Constant Gardener.  2005 was the last year this category had a shortlist, so we know the runner-up was Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Walk the Line, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, or Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith...I'm going to assume Narnia since it made Sound Mixing (along with Walk the Line), and unlike the country musical, it had significant sound effects.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Well, I wouldn't have included Memoirs of a Geisha, I can say that right out.  To start, I would have thrown in Batman Begins.  People forget because the followup was better, but Batman Begins is a proper technical achievement, and has some really distinct gadgetry (and sounds to match) that were influential beyond this picture.  I'd also toss in The New World which does a remarkable job of making its sound editing seem seamless with the movie-the film only works the way Malick intended if it feels truly immersive, so the sound editing needs to not only be exact, it also has to feel organic.  It hits both of those achievements.

Oscar’s Choice: This was a pretty easy call for King Kong, especially with Star Wars and Harry Potter out of the mix.

My Choice: And I'm in the same boat-King Kong towers over the competitors here and Oscar made it easy with its choice of other nominees.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Can we all just agree this one was Kong's or does someone want to fight for a different nominee?  What exactly am I not seeing in how Memoirs got in here?  And which film franchise was the fourth place finisher-Narnia, Harry Potter, or Star Wars?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2005: Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Sound Editing Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: The Candidate (1972)

Film: The Candidate (1972)
Stars: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Melvyn Douglas, Don Porter
Director: Michael Ritchie
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Original Screenplay*, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

After a week off, we are back with more film reviews this week, and we're also going to return to an Oscars theme week.  For our 2005 OVP write-ups, we're going to be discussing the sound categories this week, and so I thought it would be fun to complement that with a collection of "Best Sound" Oscar nominations on the blog.  Every weekday this week we will be discussing an Oscar Sound nominee that I watched (or in one case, re-watched) for the first time during quarantine.  This will be the only thing that these films may have in common-we're going to discuss dramas, animation, musicals, and action films, but all of them were Oscar-blessed.  The first film of this bunch is going to be 1972's The Candidate, a movie that feels quite prescient when we look at what would happen in the ensuing years in terms of politics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around the campaign of one man running for office, and what happens when he suddenly becomes viable.  Marvin Lucas (Boyle), is a Democratic operative who needs to find someone to take on Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Porter).  No Democrats want to run against the popular Jarmon, so Lucas is looking for someone who can be a sacrificial lamb so that the bottom half of the ticket doesn't get blown out.  He recruits Bill McKay (Redford), the handsome son of former Gov. John McKay (Douglas), to run for the seat, and promises him that he can run on his own issues-since he's going to lose, he can be as progressive as he wants to be without issue.  However, when polling shows the younger McKay is going to lose in a landslide (thus hurting the bottom half of the ticket), McKay has to moderate his stances to help the party.

You see where this is going, right?  The platitudes and banality of McKay's message starts to resonate with the voters (alongside the fact that he looks like Robert Redford), and what was once a lost cause election suddenly becomes one where Bill has a chance to win.  McKay is forced to abandon his principled stand on key issues, and even begrudgingly speak to his estranged father.  When McKay nearly abandons his moderate platform by insisting the campaign discuss poverty & civil rights, the campaign is able to distract the media by having Bill's father show up at the debate, endorsing his son in the process & giving them a shiny object to keep the real issues of the campaign away.  McKay ends up winning the election, but realizes (there's a famous quote at the end of the movie where Redford states "what do we do now?" to Boyle's campaign manager with no answer in reply) that in the process of the campaign he has lost anything that made him authentic, thus winning without it meaning anything.

The film in many ways foreshadows the ugliness of politics in the modern era.  The scene where McKay's father endorses his son to keep the heat off of what his son actually said (what actually will matter to the voters), is particularly compelling in a week where a congressman called one of his colleagues a "bitch" but the focus from the media was more on whether he'd publicly apologize or not, not whether or not he is fit for public office after such an outburst (spoiler alert: he's not).  The movie was written by Jeremy Larner, who worked for the Eugene McCarthy campaign in 1968, and so therefore knows of what he speaks, and also was clearly issuing an indictment of the then-modern Democratic Party for picking a more palatable middle-of-the-road candidate (Hubert Humphrey) over the outsider (McCarthy) that he had championed.  The script is great, knowingly looking at politics (even if it rarely gives us much to go off of in terms of lead performances, though Redford is a smart casting decision as an "empty vessel" that everyone can project their dreams off of given his universal handsomeness & natural affability), and is that rare movie that ages beautifully (if depressingly).

The film's sound nomination, though, is weird.  The 1970's if you look at the Sound categories oftentimes did this with prestige films, nominating films that we wouldn't normally consider a "Sound" nomination today, but instead just a movie they liked.  The film doesn't sound bad, but it also reads like a normal political drama, with sound occasionally coming forward in the crowd or debate scenes (but that'd been done before so this wasn't a new thing), but most of the movie is conversation, standard-issue.  Therefore while it obviously fits our theme (it was nominated!), it's a weird fit, especially considering its competition (The Godfather, Cabaret, The Poseidon Adventure) is much more what we'd assume would show up in a production category like this.

Olivia de Havilland and the Last 14 AFI Stars

Olivia de Havilland was not, despite what you might read on news releases and tributes to her, the last major star of Hollywood's Golden Age (or Classical Hollywood, as it also known).  The Classical Hollywood era's beginning is up for debate (some say as early as the 1910's, others say it began in the early 1930's, still others state it began in 1939).  Either way, there is a solid amount of agreement that the era ended in the early 1960's, so not only are there still actors alive from this era who were headlining films in the 1950's & 60's, there are some (like Harry Belafonte & Shirley MacLaine) who are still working today.

But de Havilland is probably the last major star of the 1940's and certainly of the 1930's to have still been alive, and with her passing, I wanted to discuss something we haven't done an update on in about two years on the blog (not since the death of Tab Hunter).  In 1999, the American Film Institute created a list of 50 (25 male, 25 female) of the greatest stars of Classical Hollywood, capping requirement at people who made their film debuts in or before 1950 (so people like Belafonte & MacLaine wouldn't have been eligible).  They did so from a list of 500 performers, most of whom at that point were already dead.  Though she didn't make the Top 25, one of the actors that was among those 500 was Olivia de Havilland.  We have in the years since checked in on those 500 stars, arbitrarily thrown together but significant enough to make the ballot, and since de Havilland has passed away, I wanted to see how many were left still from the list.  This is not an all-encompassing list of all of the actors who made their debut before 1950 and had a significant role in Hollywood (off the top of my head Arlene Dahl & Glynis Johns come to mind as actresses who would've qualified for this list but aren't on it), but it is a reminder of the few actors from Classical Hollywood (enough so that the AFI took note), who are still alive.

(For the curious, in addition to de Havilland, Kirk Douglas, Max von Sydow, and Doris Day have also passed since we last looked at this list.  Also, quite a few of these people still don't have Oscars of any kind, so hopefully the Academy takes note!)

The Living Actors...

Sidney Poitier (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: His first credited screen appearance came in 1950's No Way Out, which launched his landmark film career in a big way.
Oscar Nominations: Poitier received two Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (becoming the first black man to win Best Actor).  Poitier also won an Honorary Award in 2002.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being an iconic and celebrated figure in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and along with Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Harry Belafonte, being one of the very first black movie stars (he was also Ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan, as he actually has dual citizenship with both the Bahamas and the United States-random fact!).  Poitier is one of the most widely-respected actors in the industry, and one of its most enduring stars.
Is He Still Working?: Poitier quit acting in 2001, with the television movie The Last Brickmaker in America-his final theatrically-released film was 1997's The Jackal with Richard Gere & Bruce Willis.
My Favorite Performance: I know that some like to quibble about how Poitier never received an Oscar nomination for In the Heat of the Night, but part of me thinks it was more to do with vote-splitting (he also had Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love out that year) than racism.  Still, he certainly deserved an Oscar nomination for his iconic Virgil Tibbs.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never actually seen the movie that landed Poitier his Academy Award.  For whatever reason Lilies of the Field has never made it to the top of my queue, though I've seen a lot of Poitier films through the years.

Dean Stockwell (1936-Present)

Screen Debut: 1945's The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson & Gregory Peck
Oscar Nominations: Stockwell has received one Oscar nomination, for 1988's Married to the Mob (he lost to Kevin Kline).
Most Famous For: The career of Dean Stockwell is a fascinating one, as he is one of those rare child actors who went on to have a very strong career as an adult, though in this case in character actor parts. Starting acting as a cherubic-faced youth in movies like Gentleman's Agreement and Anchors Aweigh, he eventually became a hit actor as an adult, dropped out of acting to get involved in the hippie subculture, reappeared in the 1980's in the art house cinema of David Lynch and Wim Wenders, and is most well-known today for playing Al Calavicci in Quantum Leap and Brother Cavil in the revival of Battlestar Galactica.
Is He Still Working?: Stockwell suffered a stroke in 2015, and has since retired.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've actually seen a few Stockwell pictures, and thought he was terrific if terrifying singing Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in the exceptional Blue Velvet.  I'll go with his Oscar-nominated work as my missing piece, though I have always meant to watch the revived Battlestar Galactica.

The Living Actresses...

Claire Bloom (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1948's The Blind Goddess
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: For her long and illustrious career on the British stage, as well as her many tabloid romances.  Ms. Bloom made her stage debut at sixteen opposite John Gielgud and a young Richard Burton, whom she had a passionate love affair with (Burton claimed he loved two women before Liz Taylor-his wife Sybil and Claire Bloom).  She would perform on in the West End for decades, and continue having tabloid-worthy relationships, including marriages to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth, as well as affairs with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brynner.
Is She Still Working?: Yes!  Her most recent work was in the BBC Miniseries Summer of Rockets as Aunt Mary opposite Toby Stephens & Timothy Spall.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With Bloom it's hard not to pick her first international starring role in Limelight, where she plays a suicidal ballerina in the only film that features both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Ann Blyth (1928-Present)

Screen Debut: Chip off the Old Block (1944) with Donald O'Connor & Peggy Ryan
Oscar Nominations: 1 nomination (for Mildred Pierce)
Most Famous For: Portraying the selfish daughter from hell in Mildred Pierce.  Her work opposite Joan Crawford won her an Oscar nomination early in her career, and she eventually went on to become a major star of musicals, at one point being a rival for Kathryn Grayson at MGM.  She eventually moved completely away from the cinema, instead starring in a series of television guest spots, including a memorable turn as a potential murderer opposite longtime friend Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote and as an actress with a secret on The Twilight Zone in "Queen of the Nile."
Is She Still Working?: Blyth quit working in film after her role in The Helen Morgan Story with Paul Newman.  She quit television in the 1980's, though she does occasional do interviews still.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen Mildred Pierce and The Great Caruso, the two most important pictures in her filmography, so maybe Brute Force with Burt Lancaster, where she plays a woman dying of cancer whose husband is in prison.

Rhonda Fleming (1923-Present)

Screen Debut: While she did work before then, her first onscreen credit was in Spellbound, making her the (only?) person to play a significant role in one of Hitchcock's films of the 1940's.
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being the "Queen of Technicolor."  Along with Maureen O'Hara and Arlene Dahl, Fleming's red hair made her a major motion picture star, and one that photographed particularly well in Technicolor, which was very in fashion during the height of her fame.  Her best known films are probably from the 1940's, when she had supporting roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and the brilliant Out of the Past, but she was a bigger headliner in the 1950's when she appeared opposite Dana Andrews, Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas.  Like a number of women on this list, she was an ardent Republican in her personal life, particularly as an advocate for school prayer.
Is She Still Working?: No-her most recent film would be 1990's Waiting for the Wind with Robert Mitchum, her Out of the Past costar.  She still frequently makes appearances, though, and has participated in the Turner Classic Film Festival.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: In case you missed it, Rhonda Fleming was one of our Saturdays with the Stars actresses last year, so I'm actually very familiar with her work.  As a result, I'll pick the curiosity of Fleming playing Cleopatra in Serpent of the Nile as the next of her movies I want to investigate.

Mitzi Gaynor (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1950's My Blue Heaven (which we talked about earlier this year when were discussing Betty Grable in February)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being Krusty the Clown's go-to name drop?  Just kidding (Simpsons reference!).  Gaynor was in fact one of 20th Century FOX's biggest stars in the 1940's and 1950's, starring in a number of hit musicals.  While she could boast costarring roles with Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly, it was with Rossano Brazzi, a little-known Italian actor, that she enjoyed her biggest and most enduring cinematic success.  The movie?  Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, with Gaynor as the main character of Nellie Forbush, forever washing that man right out of her hair before a very enchanted evening.  She also had one of the most famous numbers in Oscar history (though she wasn't nominated for or even in the film) when she got the longest-standing ovation in the history of the ceremony for her performance of "Georgy Girl" in 1967.
Is She Still Working?: While she no longer acts, she frequently is featured in documentaries chronicling the Golden Age of the musical, and actually won an Emmy for her 2010 documentary "Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle!"  Also, she's on Twitter!
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Gaynor was also one of our stars last year, and so I've seen most of her major movies, though I have not caught the big-screen adaptation of Anything Goes.

Marsha Hunt (1917-Present)

Screen Debut: The Virginia Judge (1935)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Her politics.  A star for both Paramount and MGM in the 1930's and 1940's who watched her career unravel during the 1950's as part of the blacklist, Hunt was a vocal advocate for free speech and freedom to petition, and refused to denounce her activities protesting Congress on behalf of the blacklist...and therefore didn't work for most of the 1950's, extinguishing her career.
Is She Still Working?: It doesn't appear so-Hunt quit acting in 2008, but does make some public appearances and grant interviews despite her advanced age.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm going to go with Born to the West, starring an extremely handsome John Wayne in his twenties, which gives Hunt an unusually robust screenplay to work with for a love interest role in the 1930's.

Angela Lansbury (1925-Present)

Screen Debut: Gaslight (1944) with Charles Boyer & Ingrid Bergman
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as an Honorary Oscar in 2013).
Most Famous For: Lansbury has enjoyed an incredible amount of succcess throughout her career, principally on Broadway (she has won five Tony Awards) and on television (as J.B. Fletcher on the long-running CBS show Murder, She Wrote).  Of course, Lansbury has had a plethora of film roles as well that have become part of her own personal lore.  Her work in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Disney's Beauty and the Beast would be toward the top of the public consciousness.
Is She Still Working?: Yes-one of her most recent rolls was as the Balloon Lady in Mary Poppins Returns just two years ago.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Here I've seen enough of her work (I've even seen her on-stage) to have a favorite performance (The Manchurian Candidate, though honestly I've loved almost everything-she's a personal favorite) and have all three of those Oscar-nominated roles done, so I'll go with the comic classic The Court Jester, which I have for some reason never gotten around to and in which she plays Princess Gwendolyn opposite Danny Kaye & Glynis Johns.

Piper Laurie (1932-Present)

Screen Debut: Louisa (1950) with Ronald Reagan & Ruth Hussey
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God)
Most Famous For: Laurie is most known to film audiences as the mother from hell in Carrie (oddly enough, Angela Lansbury arguably plays the cinema's other most famous mother from hell on-screen in The Manchurian Candidate).  Laurie also was Paul Newman's love interest in The Hustler, and got a Best Actress nomination for it and was Catherine Martell on Twin Peaks.
Is She Still Working?: After an eight year absence, Laurie was on movie screens opposite Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh in White Boy Rick in 2018.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I have somehow never seen The Hustler, one of those great films from the 1960's and one of the most important roles of Paul Newman's (and of course Piper Laurie's) careers.  I should get on this quickly.

Gina Lollobrigida (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: Return of the Black Eagle (1946)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Look at the picture to the left and I'll give you one (err...two) guesses.  Lollobrigida was the Italian sex symbol, a counterweight to the American Marilyn and the French Bardot.  She did make a handful of films with the leading men of the era (Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra), but quite frankly it was her incredible beauty and her bizarre change in careers late in life (she became a journalist, and eventually managed to land an interview with Fidel Castro of all people in the 1970's) that made her a household name.
Is She Still Working?: She is not acting, but she does still stay in the tabloids for her charitable giving and bizarre love life (as well as the occasional public snipe at her longtime rival Sophia Loren).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't know if I've ever actually seen a Lollobrigida film, so I would probably make it a bit of a marathon to catch up.  I'd start with her Golden Globe-winning work in Come September with Rock Hudson, follow it with her Esmerelda opposite Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finish things with her Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, which has the distinction of being King Vidor's final film.

Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

Screen Debut: Bluebeard's Six Wives (1950)
Oscar Nominations: Loren received two Oscar nominations in her career, winning for Two Women in 1961 (the first person to win for a foreign-language film).  She would go on to win an Honorary Oscar in 1991 for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: For starters, thankfully being alive and still working (the only woman on the Top 25 still with us, and along with Poitier the only person who charted on either list).  Loren's most recent film is Rob Marshall's Nine, but is probably best known for her enduring beauty.  Consistently considered one of the most striking and attractive women in the history of cinema, she was a major star at the height of America's fascination with foreign language cinema. (Completely Random Aside-I once had a car that I named after Loren because the car was so pretty...my brother still drives it).
Is She Still Working?: After an 11 year absence, Loren is returning to the movies with The Life Ahead, which has a significant part for her (could this be a third Oscar nomination if it's done well?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Let's go with The Fall of the Roman Empire, which was a huge film for Loren, and made her the second (after Elizabeth Taylor) actress to receive $1 million for a film.

Rita Moreno (1931-Present)

1950: The Toast of New Orleans (1950) with Mario Lanza & Kathryn Grayson
Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1961's West Side Story)
Most Famous For: For thoroughly enjoying life in Ame-RIC-a.  Moreno starred in one of the great American musicals in 1961, taking over the role made famous by Chita Rivera on Broadway and becoming a household name as a result (as well as an Oscar-winner).  Though at that time she had been featured in three of the best-loved musicals of all-time (she was also in Singin in the Rain and The King and I), she didn't star in a lot of high-profile films again (a Latina actress in the 1960's frequently had to rely on stereotypical roles, which Moreno refused to partake of).  Instead she forged a bold multi-platform career, winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony in the 1970's to complete her EGOT.  She is best known from this period for her work on The Muppets and The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman).  Moreno also had a pretty spectacular personal life, being romantically involved with both Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley during her career.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely-she was one of the key players in One Day at a Time and supposedly has a role in Steven Spielberg's upcoming West Side Story.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her three iconic musicals, so I'm going to go with The Ritz, which earned Moreno a Tony Award on Broadway and a Golden Globe nomination on film.

Margaret O'Brien (1937-Present)

Screen Debut: Journey for Margaret (1942)
Oscar Nominations: None, though she won the Juvenile Academy Award in 1944.
Most Famous For: Being one of the biggest child stars on the planet.  Margaret O'Brien was to the 1940's what Shirley Temple & Judy Garland were to the 1930's.  She even appeared opposite Garland in the most famous of O'Brien's movies: Meet Me in St. Louis, where she played Tootie.  O'Brien was a major star, but couldn't jump to adult roles like Garland, whom she is oftentimes compared to, and instead only made the occasional television or film appearance.  If you ever want a fun story, read about O'Brien's Oscar and how she lost it for some fifty years before it finally returned to her.
Is She Still Working?: I think so-it looks like she has a relatively long recent IMDB cast page but it's not entirely clear if these are just clips of her in her youth or her actually playing a role.  If the 2017 movie where she stars opposite Mickey Rooney in a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde actually exists, I need to see it immediately.  Her last roles you'd have heard of would have been guest spots on The New Lassie and Murder, She Wrote in the early 1990's.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably go with the film that made her a star, Journey for Margaret with Robert Young and Fay Bainter, as I've seen (and loved) Meet Me in St. Louis before.

Jane Withers (1926-Present)

Screen Debut: Bright Eyes (1934)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being insufferable.  Or rather, playing insufferable, in the Shirley Temple classic Bright Eyes, where Withers plays her bratty nemesis.  Withers became one of the biggest stars of the late 1930's, joining Shirley Temple as a major box office draw despite being a child star, and then eventually going into supporting roles, like her work in Giant (she and James Dean were good friends) and eventually commercials, taking on what would become her most famous role for the Baby Boomer generation: Josephine the Plumber in the Comet commercials (for comparison's sake, think of Flo from the Progressive commercials and her ubiquity).  And continuing our streak, she was in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
Is She Still Working?: From what I can tell her most recent work would be voiceover contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, which happened almost 18 years ago, so she does appear to be retired.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I think Bright Eyes, Withers' most noted work, would probably have to be at the top of the list.