OVP: Mrs. Parkington (1944)

Film: Mrs. Parkington (1944)

Stars: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Arnold, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper

Director: Tay Garnett

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Greer Garson, Supporting Actress-Agnes Moorehead)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

We conclude our week devoted to Best Supporting Actress with one of the category's most beloved figures.  Few actors have made a bigger name for themselves in this category than Agnes Moorehead, who throughout the years received four Academy Award nominations (and four losses, never getting a trophy despite some close calls, particularly 1964's Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte).  Moorehead is best-known for her work today on TV's Bewitched, but she was a presence in movies for decades, a key part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre (she played Charles Foster Kane's mother), and was the first woman to host the Academy Awards.  Today we go to possibly her least known nomination (and for me, the final one I hadn't seen), with her starring opposite one of Classic Hollywood's most beloved pairs, Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon, in Mrs. Parkington.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is told in large part through flashback, with Susie Parkington (Garson, both young & old) a wealth society dame, remembering her relationship with Major Parkington (Pidgeon), all while her relatives are visiting her, assuming she's near death's door & will soon be bequeathing their inheritance upon her.  As we see, Susie didn't have an easy life, starting her time in a boarding house and then meeting Major Parkington, a cutthroat businessman who cares little for the lives of his employees until his carelessness leads to Susie's mother's death, and he takes her under his wing, with the help of Baroness Aspasia Conti (Moorehead), his former lover who still has feelings for him.  The two have a troubled-but-happy marriage, oftentimes with Parkington's blunt demeanor & carelessness getting in the way of their happiness (even resulting in Susie having a miscarriage), but it's one that is built on love (eventually) and not money, and when Susie sees that money has corrupted her heirs, she tells them that she will disinherit them, giving the money to those her grandson-in-law has ripped off through a criminal enterprise, and will return to the modest beginnings she once had before she met Major Parkington.

Mrs. Parkington is, as you can tell from that star rating, kind of a catastrophe.  It's so boring, and I actually genuinely like Greer Garson (I know that this is a reaction a lot of people associate with the actress, who played similar roles across her heyday), but this movie is dense, and Pidgeon is at his charmless worst here.  The movie is preachy, frequently only valuing "the morals of the masses" and assuming that money is a completely corrupting force (it's preaching to the choir for the audience, but it's a little bit of an eyebrow raise to modern audiences watching these wealthy actors try to cater for profits in such a way).  It's also predictable, and most of the performances are wooden.

This is true for Garson (though worse for the non-nominated Pidgeon).  She doesn't bring much at all to Mrs. Parkington, and surely was a default nomination for one of the Academy's favorite actresses; her Susie is bland & without personality.  This isn't the case for Moorehead, the saving grace of the film.  Her Baroness steals every scene she's in, and while she's also tasked with a burdensome chore of a role (we know from the opening that these two women will be friends, but also that they're desperately in love with the same man but by sheer will of star billing Garson is going to get him), it's the one reason to see this film.  She's been better (her magnum opus two years earlier in The Magnificent Ambersons remains her career capper), but what a welcome relief in this unbearable movie.