Oldest Living Oscar Winners & Nominees

The recent death of Dame Angela Lansbury has been a bit of a shock, even given her advanced age it shouldn't be.  Lansbury is one of those figures that seemed immortal, someone who couldn't possibly die because they'd been around forever.  Indeed, a friend of mine noted this in conversation the other day, but given that Lansbury was 19 when she got her first Oscar nomination and was still making movies & theater right up until she died (she was in a major Disney musical as recently as 2019), she has literally been famous for as long as any of us can remember.

People are frequently quick to throw out the title "the last living Golden Age Star" and they've been doing it forever.  I remember people saying it about Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Olivia de Havilland...but you'd be forgiven for saying it about Lansbury.  Lansbury was the earliest still-living acting nominee from the Academy Awards and worked with every major figure in Hollywood during her tenure.  Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Elvis Presley, Paul Newman, Ethel Barrymore, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr...she starred with all of them.  You'd be hard-pressed to find another living person who can boast anything near that count (Mitzi Gaynor, who starred with Sinatra & Kelly, in addition to Marilyn Monroe, isn't far off, but even she'd have to demure to Lansbury's tenure).

This got me to thinking-who are the oldest-living Oscar nominees & winners right now, particularly with not only Lansbury's death, but the death of several other recent headliners (specifically Sidney Poitier)?  Here's a look:

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

The earliest (remember-it's not necessarily oldest but earliest for these) lists is Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals she has more than earned an Honorary Oscar that seems destined to never come at this point...she is, after all, the last living person to have danced with both Gene Kelly & Fred Astaire onscreen).  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 in very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who briefly came out of retirement in 2020 to make The Life Ahead).

Best Actor

Nominee: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
--Runner-Up: Dustin Hoffman (1967) for The Graduate
Winner: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Jack Nicholson (1975) for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The death of Sir Sidney Poitier earlier this year results in no living Best Actor nominees from the 1950's being still around, and no living winners from the 1960's as well.  This means that our oldest nominees are actually two men who are still working regularly: Michael Caine, who was just 33 when he got cited for Alfie (the first of six nominations he'd get) and Dustin Hoffman, who was only 30 when he put on the scuba gear in The Graduate a year later.  The winners are far more elusive-both Gene Hackman & Jack Nicholson are still with us, but are both retired & living relatively quiet lives (Nicholson has stated publicly he can no longer remember the lines well enough to be able to be in a movie).

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
--Runner-Up: Nancy Olson (1950) for Sunset Boulevard
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Shirley Jones, like Leslie Caron & Mitzi Gaynor above, made her early moments in musicals providing another twinkling light from that era's song-and-dance flicks (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?).  With Angela Lansbury's death, Ann Blyth, who is most-remembered for her role as Joan Crawford's spoiled daughter in Mildred Pierce, is the last surviving Oscar nominee from the 1940's (though it should be noted that Margaret O'Brien & Claude Jarman, Jr. won Juvenile Oscars during this time period and are still with us).  Blyth's costars number not just Crawford, but also Tyrone Power, Bing Crosby, Burt Lancaster, & Charles Boyer if you want to find someone with impressive Golden Age credentials, though because she was generally a leading lady (and therefore other than Crawford rarely worked with other big-name women) she can't really compare to Lansbury on that front.

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, given Jones, Gaynor, & Caron are all still living in addition to Russ Tamblyn & George Chakiris...perhaps the best recipe for staying alive is being an icon of the Hollywood musical?  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 eligible for Medicare 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 directed or produced movies in the past five years.

Angela Lansbury (1925-2022)

I don't remember a time in my life before Angela Lansbury.  This might be because there wasn't, actually, a time in my life before Angela Lansbury, and I don't mean this speciously since she's 60 years older than me.  I mean, Lansbury has been a presence in my life since I could form cogent sentences.  There is an amusing video of me at probably the age of about four fighting with my brother Luke.  He couldn't have been more than one, and had the audacity to sit on my yellow blanket while giddily laughing on his chair.  With one swift yank I pulled it out from him, saying "mine" and despite the fact that my dad (apparently the David Attenborough of parental videography) was behind the camera, Luke sat there crying, from what I remember actually falling out of the chair with the move.  I was yelling too, and then suddenly the magical words came from the television screen: "tonight on Murder, She Wrote."  Entranced, the crying & yelling stopped as we both sauntered over to the television.

Murder, She Wrote was and still is, one of my favorite shows, and as a child, I watched it religiously.  Oftentimes, this was in connection with my grandparents.  I remember visiting them on Sunday nights with my dad & brother, and telling my dad when Andy Rooney started to talk on their TV screens (for you young'ens, this was how 60 Minutes used to close), "we have to go-we're going to miss Murder, She Wrote."  I knew well enough that my dad wouldn't let us stay at my grandparents house for the full hour, so given our house was ten minutes across town, we'd miss the crime if we didn't act fast.  I remember my grandmother grinning, knowing that this dance would come to pass every week as she settled in her blue chair, never missing a second of the detective work.  Even when the rest of our family would watch Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman (when it went head to head with Murder, She Wrote in the years before DVR or us recording competing shows on our televisions), I stayed in my parents bedroom, watching their tiny 9" television, solving cases with Jessica Fletcher.

It wasn't just Cabot Cove though-Angela found her way into every avenue of my life.  The first VHS tape I owned, which I got for my birthday at the end of a scavenger hunt, was a glossy plastic-ensconced Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which I watched so much I'm surprised it didn't wear out.  After watching Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris while my grandmother babysat me, my brother found a copy of it on eBay as a present for me and it would later become the most prized VHS copy I owned as it became rarer & rarer to find a copy.  I would sit in my brother's room listening to Lansbury's heavenly voice on his copy of the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack, one of my favorite Disney films.  In college, my honors thesis revolved around four movies, including Lansbury's magnum opus The Manchurian Candidate, still one of the greatest film performances, and perhaps the most shameful snub in Oscar's long history (Patty Duke is great, but...there's only one Mrs. John Iselin), though at least Oscar got it right with an Honorary Award eventually (something the Emmys somehow never got around to despite 18 losses for the TV legend).  I got to see Lansbury perform on her true love, the Broadway stage, in one of her final roles in The Best Man with James Earl Jones.  Even today, while I'm writing this, I see my desk lined with her face, every one of the Murder, She Wrote books by Donald Bain proudly situated behind my monitor.

I oftentimes think when an entertainer I genuinely care about dies that it feels indulgent to think of one's self in a time when the loss of a real-life person happens.  After all, it's hard to know what was real and what was felt with an entertainer, who was, of course, playing a part.  But as I got older and my grandmother got frailer, her memory starting to fade, & the person she was when I was a child began to become a memory of a time I would never get back, I was beyond grateful for how much my childhood with her involved Angela Lansbury.  They became so linked, that when my grandmother died two years ago, I rewatched Murder, She Wrote from start to finish as a tribute, remembering comments that my grandmother had made when we'd watched it together when I was young, little asides about Jessica Fletcher & Seth Hazlitt & Amos Tupper.  Lansbury's warmth, her talent & grace were so bright that they became appointment viewing for a midwestern Norwegian grandmother who knew little of pop culture & her beaming grandson who would make it his identity.  Thank you Angela, for your work and your decades of giving entertainment to the world...because of you, I can go to Cabot Cove whenever I need and feel like one of the people I loved most in my childhood is still in a blue rocking chair beside me.

OVP: Anastasia (1997)

Film: Anastasia (1997)
Stars: Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, Angela Lansbury
Director: Don Bluth & Gary Goldman
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Original Song-"Journey to the Past," Score)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All right, I think (I pray) that my stomach virus is officially gone (as it appears to be, knock on wood), but I will not be attempting a third week of Foreign Language Film as at this point it feels like it's tempting fate (to keep up with the 2005 OVP, though, we'll still do that write-up, as well as the writing categories from that year sometime between now-and-Sunday).  Instead, we're moving on to a different slate of films, at least one of which will be in a foreign language, but all of which will be animated.  This week every one of our five reviews will be of animated features, all but today's being films that I saw for the first time over quarantine.  Today, though, we're revisiting a film from the mid-1990's, a time when Disney was hitting its renaissance, but not without competition.  In 1997, Disney's success with princesses had spilled over to Fox, with a major hit that seemed to rival Disney's success that decade, a movie about a real-life princess named Anastasia.

(Spoilers Ahead) We start in Imperialist Russia, where the Dowager Empress (Lansbury) gives a music box to the young Grand Duchess Anastasia (Ryan as an adult, Dunst as a child), and bids her farewell before she goes to Paris.  The two are saved during the Russian Revolution by a young boy named Dimitri (Cusack as an adult) who takes them through a secret drawer.  We learn that the Revolution is caused by Rasputin (Lloyd), who has sold his soul to curse the Romanovs.  Ten years later, there are rumors that the young princess survived the night, and the Dowager Empress has put up a reward for her discovery, but no one knows who she is.  Dimitri and his associate Vlad (Grammer) find a young woman who resembles her, Anya, who it turns out is the real Anastasia despite them only hoping to impersonate her.  The film's final third is a standoff between Rasputin and the now-in-love Anastasia & Dimitri.

The film is loosely based on the real-life story of Anna Anderson, whom we discussed here (which, again, was a loose interpretation).  As I mentioned at the time, even as late as the 1990's the mystery of whether or not Anderson was Anastasia was coming to a close, but hadn't been shut at that point (and we'd wait a decade before there was confirmation of all five children's bodies having been discovered, proving that one of the great mysteries of the 20th Century, whether one of the Romanovs survived, had an unsatisfying & tragic answer of "no").  Still, this doesn't have the same "is she or isn't she?" question that the more historically-minded 1956 film did, and so it isn't ruined as much by knowing that Anderson was not Anastasia, and that the real Anastasia died at the age of 17 in 1918, since we know in the confines of the film that she is Anastasia.

The film, though, is not very good.  It's a bit sloppy, the comic bits are wrong-headed, but it has a great score, to the point where you'd be forgiven if this was a "guilty pleasure" (which it is for me, and which is why it's getting a 3-star even if it deserves a 2).  The opening ode "A Rumor in St. Petersburg" is hilarious and recalls something like "Belle" and "Once Upon a December" is a romantic, moody ballad that runs well through the film.  Honestly, it's a pity that one of the least of the film's songs "Journey to the Past" was the one that ultimately got a nomination because we could have done so much better.

Before we go I want to remind everyone that while many animation snobs spent decades pointing out that Anastasia was not a Disney Princess, with the Fox merger Disney now owns this property.  I've become mildly obsessed over if/when some of the major properties that Disney purchased (not just Anastasia, but also Rio, Ferdinand, and the mammoth (pun-intended) animated franchise Ice Age) will get rides or nods from the studio at their parks, but so far we haven't seen any hints that Anastasia will be added to the successful Disney Princess line or will be a character at the parks, but I have to imagine this is in the works.  If you want, sound off in the comments on which Fox property is the first to get a nod at Disney's theme parks.

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.

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.

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Film: Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
Stars: June Allyson, Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Van Heflin, Lena Horne, Dorothy Patrick, Van Johnson, Tony Martin, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Robert Walker, Cyd Charisse, Angela Lansbury
Director: Richard Whorf (Vincente Minnelli, Busby Berkeley, Henry Koster, & George Sidney all also directed scenes in what sounds like a rough shoot, but none were credited)
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lena Horne-click here to learn more about Ms. Horne (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For the past two weeks we have focused on the two major highlights of Lena Horne's film career during Classical Hollywood.  Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky were big deals, major motion pictures that starred African-American casts and were distributed by major studios.  However, these were anomalies.  For much of Horne's career in the 1940's and 50's, her film career was that of mere cameos.  Frequently she'd appear in films like Thousands Cheer, Swing Fever, and Ziegfield Follies as nothing more than someone that could belt out a classic tune, and then move on with the plot, oftentimes playing herself or simply a "famous singer."  This was because, since Horne was not playing stereotypical roles like maids or servants, she couldn't be seen in movies of the era in the South, and the studio couldn't afford to put her in major productions for risk that the lack of a southern box office would mean they couldn't recoup some of their investment.  This becomes particularly bitter with a movie like Till the Clouds Roll By, a 1946 MGM extravaganza, but we'll get to why in a second.

(Spoilers Ahead) Till the Clouds Roll By is the first of a quartet of biopics produced by the studio during this era where it's loosely based on the life of a famed composer (in this case Jerome Kern, as played by Robert Walker), but mostly it's an excuse for the studio to put its biggest musical stars into the picture singing the greatest hits of those composers (worth noting that the second of these films, Words and Music, also starred Lena).  As a result, the plot here is a bit thin, even by the standards of a 1940's musical.  We have Kern, falling in love with his wife Eva (Patrick), being mentored by another composer James Hessler (Heflin), and eventually trying to find some sort of path for Hessler's daughter Sally (Bremer) when she turns out spoiled & eventually, a runaway.  All of this is told in flashback by Kern to his cab driver on the night of Show Boat's premiere, which would help him to reach a new echelon of success.

The film on its merits is, well, a mixed bag (charitably).  I actually knew very little about Kern's life, and it's worth noting that while there are countless standards here, you might not be as familiar with him as you'd think either.  With the exception of Show Boat, while his songs are still well-known from other shows, none of his musicals are really done anymore, and so he's not recalled in the same way that someone like Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe might be today since their films/musicals are more frequently revived.  However, the acting in this portion is dreadful (even performers as gifted as Walker or Heflin can't sell this dreck), and you spend the entire movie wishing they'd get back to the singing.

That's because the musical numbers in Till the Clouds Roll By are sublime.  Angela Lansbury sings for the first time onscreen in the cheeky "How'd You Like to Spoon Me" and Judy Garland (very pregnant with Liza Minnelli during the shoot) is at her "awe shucks" best with "Look for the Silver Lining."  Some of the numbers are cut short (at 135 minutes, this is a particularly long film) to make way for the unnecessary plot, such as Dinah Shore's "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and, most regrettably, a ballet between Cyd Charisse & Gower Champion to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," but you'll leave being enchanted by these numbers.

And no songs are more enchanting than Lena Horne's two numbers, for my money the best in the production (and look at that cast list-this is hardly an ensemble filled with backbenchers).  Her "Why Was I Born?" is regal & glorious.  Horne once opined in an interview (with Judy Garland, oddly enough) that she always struggled to "sing pretty," but I don't know that anyone has ever looked so glamorous while singing in Classical Hollywood-if they have, I can't recall it.  Watching this scene, you'll either cry because you're moved, or because you are so angry that MGM couldn't have given Horne some proper classic musicals during this era.

Because, as the other song showed, Horne never really got a chance after Stormy Weather & Cabin in the Sky.  Here she sings "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat, one of the biggest numbers for Julie Laverne.  Horne desperately wanted the part when MGM decided to make the actual film, and in fact her costar here Kathryn Grayson (who plays Magnolia Hawks in Clouds' production of Show Boat) ended up playing the part she plays in this 1946 film when the big-screen Show Boat was made in 1951.  However, thanks to the Hays Code banning interracial romance onscreen, Horne's part was given to her friend Ava Gardner, a white woman despite the part being written for a biracial woman.  As a result, a role that Horne was born to play (and does so beautifully here) went to a woman who didn't even end up singing onscreen.  Combined with her regret over not getting the title role in Pinky (which won Jeanne Crain, another white woman playing a biracial performer, an Oscar nomination), Horne essentially left Hollywood for Vegas and the nightclub circuit.  Next week we will conclude our look at Horne with one last film role, far removed from the oppression Classic Hollywood put on her acting career.

OVP: Samson and Delilah (1949)

Film: Samson and Delilah (1949)
Stars: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Art Direction*, Costume Design*, Special Effects, Cinematography, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We will conclude our month-long look at Hedy Lamarr with Samson and Delilah, by-far the biggest movie of her career.  It's hard to understand now for a film that has largely been forgotten decades later, but Samson and Delilah was a huge hit for Paramount.  It became the top-grosser of 1950 (the movie was released in December of 1949), and was for a time the third highest-grossing film ever of the Sound Era (after Gone with the Wind & The Best Years of Our Lives).  It was also something of a zenith for Lamarr's career.  At this point she was 35, a dangerous time for actresses, but particularly for beautiful ones in Classical Hollywood.  She hadn't had a major studio contract for four years, having been dropped by MGM, and had had a series of flops with The Strange Woman and Dishonored Lady after she left the studio.  It's hard to underscore, then, how much Lamarr needed this to resonate with audiences, and it did.  Samson kicked off a new trend of biblical films in Technicolor that would dominate the 1950's, making eventually for the two best-remembered movies in this genre: The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.

(Spoilers Ahead) If you're like me and grew up in Sunday School, you don't really need to hear the cliff notes version of the Samson story, but I'll assume for a second here that you didn't.  Samson (Mature) is a noble but poor man who falls in love with a Philistine woman, here named Semadar (Lansbury).  Semadar's sister Delilah (Lamarr) lusts for Samson, and makes plots to eventually get him, but he rejects her, and in a brawl her sister is killed, for which Delilah blames Samson.  Eventually she gets her revenge when the Philistines, wanting to understand the secret of Samson's superhuman strength, promise her mountains of silver if she can stop Samson, and she does.  She seduces him, and in the process learns that his strength is tied up in his long hair, so she cuts it off.  They blind Samson and tie him up to work in a mill, but eventually Delilah helps him escape (this is not in the Bible, as an FYI-Delilah exits Stage Left after she cuts his hair in the source material).  Samson regains his strength one more time from God to be able to pull down the temple onto all of those who have captured & humiliated him, including a repentant Delilah, who cannot bare to be apart from him and so she dies with him even though he begs her to escape.  The film ends with Samson, Delilah, and all of the godless figures who turned their backs on Samson dead, with only the humble Hebrew figures who remained true (including a young Russ Tamblyn) left to remember Samson.

The movie, since it's early in a trend, shares a lot of the hallmarks of the future biblical epics, though it's not quite the template.  There's less focus on religion than you'd think (Samson is devout, but it's more a hallmark later in the film), and it's shorter than Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments at just over two hours.  However, there's a reason this was a blueprint and a colossal hit-the parts it does well, it does really well.  The costume work, which won Edith Head one of her Oscars, is sublime-Lamarr is radiant in slinky peacock gowns and a constant midriff, every color under-the-sun in use for her Delilah.  The technicolor shimmers, with each actor perfectly lit, and the action sequences are impressively mounted, particularly the scene at the beginning where Victor Mature's stunt double wrestles an actual lion (something that would never happen today, and though it's obvious in closeups that Mature is fighting a puppet of some sort, the scenes with the stunt double are real-there was an actual lion in this scene).  All-in-all, Samson and Delilah looks incredible for a 1940's epic, and the spectacle still holds up some 70 years later.

The acting is hit-or-miss, as is also a hallmark of the biblical epic.  You kind of have to grade on a curve of this genre, which values nobility and hamminess, and if you do you end up enjoying the film a lot more.  George Sanders, who plays the high-ranking Saran of Gaza, was kind of tailor-made for such a genre, his catty tongue perfect for a man you know will fall to his own hubris.  Lansbury is saddled with a throwaway part (as was her lot during this era), and is not really believable as the older sister to Delilah, considering she was 11 years Lamarr's junior when this was filmed.  Victor Mature is kind of dismissible as Samson-he's not a good actor, but he knows how to be strong, and is convincing as a man of a thousand muscles...he's just not a very good actor.

As for our Star of the Month, I thought Lamarr was the best thing about the movie.  Unlike future turns in biblical epics from Virginia Mayo and Anne Baxter, she doesn't let the hokey nature of her character overcome her performance.  Lamarr was never going to be Bette Davis (not in English, anyway), but she shows here someone who completely understands what Delilah is supposed to be-beautiful, cruel, and intoxicating, and she plays that part perfectly.  It seems mean to say someone was born-to-play a villain, but this is the role that shows off all of the gifts that Lamarr has shown in lesser parts throughout the month, and puts them front-and-center.  Delilah would bring her hosannas and attention she hadn't received in a decade, possibly not since Algiers, but sadly for her it wasn't enough to save a downward career spiral.  Within a year she'd be playing in now-forgotten flops again, and though she'd briefly foray into television, she'd be retired entirely from acting within a decade of her (film) career highpoint, though her scientific work would lead her to become an important figure in modern technology into the next century.  Next month we'll take a look at another actress whose career also took her outside of the world of acting, and who spent the 1950's as her own kind of pioneer.

OVP: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Film: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Julie Walters, Dick van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep
Director: Rob Marshall
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Costume Design, Score, Production Design, Original Song-"The Place Where the Lost Things Go")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We live in a world of sequels and remakes.  Hollywood is learning this the hard way this summer as we watch a perpetual list of movies like Men in Black International and Shaft fail to make an indent at the Box Office (pretty much anyone who isn't Marvel has been struggling with remakes/followups this year).  But I'm more curious, as we get to a culture where we're constantly remaking films, what the role of film criticism would be in this case, particularly when it comes to classic films being remade or reinvented, but largely having the same plot as before.  Remakes are not new (this was the fourth A Star is Born movie last year, after all), but they are nearly constant right now, and one has to wonder when it comes to truly landmark films like A Star is Born or Mary Poppins or (later this year) West Side Story, what sort of curve should you be judging on when you look at the film itself compared to its classic predecessor?  How do you judge a film that's essential a carbon copy of its original?

(Spoilers Ahead) This was a question that I wrestled with when looking at Mary Poppins Returns, a movie that is lovely and pleasant on the surface of it, but it also is basically the same exact movie from 1964.  The problem is, that while I've seen the original film, it was not a cornerstone of my childhood the way that it was for so many people perhaps a few years older than me.  Julie Andrews was Maria von Trapp in my world, not Mary Poppins, and so I can understand the vast appeal of this movie to an audience that isn't enamored with the original.  The film's premise is that of a sequel even if it's basically a copy of the first film, with Mary Poppins (Blunt) returning years after taking care of the Banks children Michael (Whishaw) and Jane (Mortimer), and now must look after them again as Michael is about to lose their house and Jane is, well, in need of a man (Jane seems fine, but it's Disney so we need to throw in some heteronormative stuff rather than risk Jane being a lesbian).  She joins them as the nanny to Michael's three children after his wife dies, and they set off on a series of adventures across town with Topsy (Mary Poppins's cousin, played by Meryl Streep) and Jack (Miranda, whose character is an apprentice of Dick van Dyke's Bert) occasionally getting in on the fun.

This is a lovely little film.  The songs are not as memorable as the original, but that's a hard bar to clear, and you have such game performers all-around that you don't really notice that they aren't that good until you've left the theater.  Miranda & Blunt are a perfect odd-pair, with her cool standoffishness (a nice mirror of the original with Julie Andrews) and his unceasing nice-guy charisma working well together.  The supporting cast is lovely (Whishaw & Mortimer aren't really capable of being "not lovely") and the cameos are springy (in addition to Streep, we have Dick van Dyke playing a different character but still a true joy to see on the screen, and we also get the Balloon Lady ala Angela Lansbury).  The film won four Oscar nominations, and it's easy to see why as Disney assembled a top-notch crew to recreate one of their most seminal classics.

But it's basically the same movie as the 1964 version, albeit with less surprise and an almost constant need to make you swim in nostalgia.  This is Disney's MO recently, and I'm not inhuman-I liked it, I cried when Dick van Dyke got on that desk and started to dance, but it's also kind of manipulative.  It's objectively a lesser film than its predecessor, and it's genuinely hard to tell if it's actually any good because it only works with the previous movie, which it's wholesale ripping off.  But I liked it, so I'm going with 3 stars, which feels about right for a movie that I enjoyed, but can't really confirm if it's good or just trying to take me back to my childhood, even though my childhood didn't really feature Mary Poppins.  A conundrum of a film, but a good one for a lazy afternoon.

Oscar's Long-Suffering Bridesmaids

Glenn Close-will she go 0/7?

We are in the heat of precursor season, and while these awards are relatively pointless if all they're doing is trying to predict the Academy Awards, let's be honest-that seems to be what most of them are doing.  If that's the case, we could be looking at yet another year where Glenn Close & Amy Adams are trying to secure their long-awaited Oscars, and I thought "wait, Oscar trivia...there must be some way that I can turn that into a list!" and lo-and-behold, I was right.

A couple of things can be true about the Oscars at once-it's very hard to be nominated for an Oscar and if you're nominated once, it's likely going to be your only nomination.  However, if you can get in a couple of times, it's probable that you're also going to get a trophy.  There's almost certainly a mathematical explanation here (you can only have so many years where you've got a "20% shot of winning" and not actually win), but it's rarer, especially for living actors, for you to be nominated 3+ times and not have an actual trophy.  For women, there are currently only fifteen actresses to hold this distinction, two of them being Close & Adams.  Were they to die without having ever won, they would join a small group of actresses ranging from Irene Dunne to Thelma Ritter to Deborah Kerr, but it's a short list.  Only 11 women have ever been nominated for at least three competitive Oscars and died without winning one, so it's very probable that most of the women on this list eventually take home a trophy.  Let's take a look and guess how many will actually win, and see who has come the closest to Oscar, shall we?

Note: These are ranked first by how many nominations an actress made, and then by who most-recently got her latest nomination.

15. Saoirse Ronan (1994-Present)

Nominations: Atonement (Supporting Actress in 2007), Brooklyn (Actress in 2015), & Lady Bird (Actress in 2017)
She Lost To: Tilda Swinton, Brie Larson, & Frances McDormand
Closest to the Win: Maybe Atonement?  Brooklyn is more likely that she got second place, but Larson was so far-out-in-front that year that 2007, which was a genuine question mark headed into Oscar night, might have actually been her closest.
Well, She Still Won...: Ronan lost the Oscar for Lady Bird, but she still won the Golden Globe that year (and let's be honest, should have won the Oscar).
Is This Happening Someday?: She's 24 and already a three-time nominee who appears almost constantly in Oscar BAIT-y projects (just this year she's playing a queen who spends most of the film giving passionate speeches).  This is the easiest call of the bunch-she's probably going to win, likely in the next 4-5 years.

14. Laura Linney (1964-Present)

Nominations: You Can Count on Me (Actress in 2000), Kinsey (Supporting Actress in 2004), & The Savages (Actress in 2007)
She Lost to: Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett & Marion Cotillard
Closest to the Win: None of these were particularly close.  The Savages was a shock nomination, and no one could beat Julia in 2000, so it's probably 2004, though she would have had to get through Natalie Portman & Virginia Madsen to even have a shot at Blanchett.
Well, She Still Won...: Linney wins Emmys, not Oscars.  Linney has been nominated for five Emmys, and taken home four of them (her only loss came to Melissa McCarthy in 2011, where she famously stood on the stage in a mock-beauty-pageant), and she's also picked up two Golden Globes, though again for her TV work, not film.
Is This Happening Someday?: Probably not.  Linney isn't as famous as Adams or Julianne Moore, where she could launch a campaign out-of-nowhere and suddenly she'd be on a stampede to Oscar, and she doesn't really make the sorts of movies that get this kind of attention, particularly with TV being considerably kinder in terms of fame than movies ever have been (she's currently starring on the acclaimed Ozark for Netflix).  Never say never for a 3+ nominee, but I don't see this happening.

13. Joan Allen (1956-Present)

Nominations: Nixon (Supporting Actress in 1995), The Crucible (Supporting Actress in 1996), & The Contender (Actress in 2000)
She Lost to: Mira Sorvino, Juliette Binoche & Julia Roberts
Closest to the Win: Surely it was Nixon, where a win was actually very much in the cards (that year was a threeway heat between Sorvino, Allen, and Kate Winslet for Sense & Sensibility).
Well, She Still Won...: While her long list of screen credits have gotten her a lot of nominations, the only major award that Allen has ever won was for her years on Broadway, taking the Tony for Best Actress in 1988's Burn This.
Is This Happening Someday?: Amy Adams, take note, as Joan Allen could very easily be your future.  From 1995-2005, Allen regularly appeared in major contenders (in addition to her three nominations, she plausibly could have been cited for The Ice Storm, Pleasantville, and The Upside of Anger), but the roles dried up as did the Academy's love of her, and she couldn't even get a surprise nomination in 2015 for playing a struggling mother in a Best Picture nominee (which would have been a gimme back in her heyday).  I don't think she is a priority for Oscar anymore.

12. Debra Winger (1955-Present)

Nominations: An Officer and a Gentleman (Actress in 1982), Terms of Endearment (Actress in 1983), and Shadowlands (Actress in 1993)
She Lost to: Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, & Holly Hunter
Closest to the Win: Probably none of these.  In a different world where Sophie's Choice didn't exist I could make an argument that she could take it for Officer and a Gentleman (her career was sort of inching to an Oscar at that point, and Lange didn't need two), but she had three really impossible-to-beat actresses she had to go toe-to-toe with during her three AMPAS competitions.
Well, She Still Won...: Winger is perhaps the only actress on this list to never win a major award of any kind.  She's picked up a couple of critics prizes, but despite Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Emmy nominations, she's never won any of them.
Is This Happening Someday?: No.  Winger famously quit acting in the 1990's, inspiring the film Searching for Debra Winger, and she still has the goods to deliver a role (she was superb in 2008's Rachel Getting Married), but there's no momentum for her to win again, and she was famous for too brief of a period in the 1980's to have a "she needs an Oscar!" movement from the public.

11. Michelle Pfeiffer (1958-Present)

Nominations: Dangerous Liaisons (Supporting Actress in 1988), The Fabulous Baker Boys (Actress in 1989), & Love Field (Actress in 1992)
She Lost to: Geena Davis, Jessica Tandy & Emma Thompson
Closest to the Win: I'd assume it would be Fabulous Baker Boys, where she was the only real competition for Tandy, and had won a host of precursors that year, likely meriting the win over Tandy, who was the sentimental favorite.
Well, She Still Won...: Pfeiffer took the Golden Globe for Baker Boys as well as a BAFTA Awards for Dangerous Liaisons, so she's hardly lacking in hardware.
Is This Happening Someday?: Unlike some of our previous actresses, Pfeiffer still has a great deal of pop culture cache, and is the sort of person who is famous enough to launch a Still Alice-style campaign and actually pull it off.  One has to assume that if mother! hadn't divided critics so last year that she could have snuck in for a fourth nomination (and with Russia House, The Age of Innocence, and White Oleander as near misses, a fourth nomination has been in the cards for a while).  She's notoriously press shy & doesn't make a lot of movies, but the fame is still there if she wanted to make a run for this, and quite honestly she's the level-of-famous that she could someday take an Honorary Oscar.

10. Diane Ladd (1935-Present)

Nominations: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Supporting Actress in 1974), Wild at Heart (Supporting Actress in 1990), and Rambling Rose (Supporting Actress in 1991)
She Lost to: Ingrid Bergman, Whoopi Goldberg, & Mercedes Ruehl
Closest to the Win: Bergman's win in 1974 seems to have been something of a surprise, with the precursors all-over-the-map, but they do somewhat hint that Ladd was a probable favorite here along with Valentina Cortese, so I think her first outing was her best option.
Well, She Still Won...: Ladd won the BAFTA Award for Alice..., and then took a Golden Globe Award for the TV series based on Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, called Alice.
Is This Happening Someday?: I'd say no considering her age and her stature as a character actress, but if her daughter Laura Dern can get a revival for her father, why couldn't she get one last hurrah for mom?  Ladd clearly has wanted this for a while (her campaign to get a nomination for Wild at Heart is the stuff of Oscar legend).

9. Sigourney Weaver (1949-Present)

Nominations: Aliens (Actress in 1986), Gorillas in the Mist (Actress in 1988), & Working Girl (Supporting Actress in 1988)
She Lost to: Marlee Matlin, Jodie Foster, & Geena Davis
Closest to the Win: Weaver became the first actor ever to be nominated for two Oscars in the same year and lose both of them (since then it's happened three times, though only once, 2002 with Julianne Moore, did the Oscars doubly-snub someone who hadn't won before).  I would assume considering that 1988 had two winners that were somewhat surprising at the time that her best shot was that year, and perhaps she split her own vote too much to take it.
Well, She Still Won...: Weaver won both of the Golden Globes in 1988, a flip of her eventual Oscar night, and also took home the BAFTA for 1997's The Ice Storm (starring #13 on our list, Joan Allen).
Is This Happening Someday?: While she's not really famous enough to ever win an Honorary Oscar, she still is famous enough from her work in the Alien franchise to demand attention, and could get a fourth nomination if she had the right kind of movie.  Considering she's one of the few actors patient enough to work with Jim Cameron more-than-once, he owes her another juicy role in a movie at some point, if he ever stops making the nonexistent Avatar sequels.

8. Piper Laurie (1932-Present)

Nominations: The Hustler (Actress in 1961), Carrie (Supporting Actress in 1976), & Children of a Lesser God (Supporting Actress in 1986)
She Lost to: Sophia Loren, Beatrice Straight & Dianne Wiest
Closest to the Win: I'm genuinely not sure.  All of these nominations predate my involvement with the Oscars, and I haven't read any of these races as being particularly close.  Were it 2018 when The Hustler came out, she surely would have won Best Supporting Actress for the movie, denying Rita Moreno her iconic win, and proving why category fraud is so dangerous as one of Oscar's best choices would be ruled out as a result.
Well, She Still Won...: Laurie took an Emmy for 1987's Promise and won a Golden Globe in 1990 for Twin Peaks.
Is This Happening Someday?: Laurie still acts (she's seen in the Matthew McConaughey film White Boy Rick this year), but has never been a consistent presence in film, frequently taking long detours on the stage (she didn't appear in a Hollywood movie from The Hustler to Carrie), so I doubt it.  She's not well-known enough to win an Honorary Award, so I'm guessing her next mention with AMPAS will be at the In Memoriam (morbid, but accurate).

7. Angela Lansbury (1925-Present)

Nominations: Gaslight (Supporting Actress in 1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Supporting Actress in 1945), & The Manchurian Candidate (Supporting Actress in 1962)
She Lost to: Ethel Barrymore, Anne Revere, & Patty Duke (don't you love that there's still someone living who once competed against Ethel Barrymore?)
Closest to the Win: Lansbury was the heavy favorite for her dragon-lady mother in 1962's The Manchurian Candidate, but she had to go against Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker, which is pretty much a lead role and a sympathetic one at that, so she ended up losing as a result (Duke's very good in the movie, but nowhere near as marvelous as Lansbury).
Well, She Still Won...: Lansbury won an Honorary Oscar in 2013 for her body-of-work, a well-deserved honor that the Emmys should duplicate considering her 18 nods without a win there.  She also has five Tony Awards & six Golden Globes...Lansbury has a complicated history with awards ceremonies, with some adoring her while others consistently keep her in her seat.
Is This Happening Someday?: The Honorary Award was a great nod from Hollywood to one of its most enduring stars, but it was also an indication that Lansbury's time in the competitive categories is over.

6. Michelle Williams (1980-Present)

Nominations: Brokeback Mountain (Supporting Actress in 2005), Blue Valentine (Actress in 2010), My Week with Marilyn (Actress in 2011), & Manchester by the Sea (Supporting Actress in 2016)
She Lost to: Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep, & Viola Davis
Closest to the Win: Probably her first at-bat?  The other films had pretty strong frontrunners, but 2005 could have gone a few different ways, including toward Williams as the "long-suffering wife."
Well, She Still Won...: Williams picked up the Globe for her work in My Week with Marilyn (I remember Seth Rogen making fun of the "hilarious" movie while presenting and then having to sheepishly hand the statue over to his Take This Waltz costar).
Is This Happening Someday?: Only 13 women have been nominated four or more times for acting without actually winning a trophy, so we're entering very good odds territory, especially for someone who works as often as Williams who has made the move from leading lady to supporting parts relatively seamlessly.  She's admittedly turning forty in a couple of years so it'd be smart to score soon, but this is still achievable.

5. Annette Bening (1958-Present)

Nominations: The Grifters (Supporting Actress in 1990), American Beauty (Actress in 1999), Being Julia (Actress in 2004), & The Kids Are All Right (Actress in 2010)
She Lost to: Whoopi Goldberg, Hilary Swank, Hilary Swank (again), & Natalie Portman
Closest to the Win: I distinctly remember there being a lot of conversation in 1999, when Bening was just north of 40, that "it's time" for her to win for American Beauty, which she didn't do but had to be close.  While in hindsight that was ridiculous considering the body-of-work she's put out since, it has to be noted that women around the age of 40 frequently have their flourishing acting careers disappear if they can't transition into playing the grittier, indy films that Hollywood's sexism relegates them toward.
Well, She Still Won...: Bening took home the BAFTA for American Beauty (Boys Don't Cry feels a more "American" story than American Beauty, so this makes sense though it's weird they didn't go with Julianne Moore for the "more British" End of the Affair), and nabbed Golden Globes for both Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right.
Is This Happening Someday?: Yeah, I think it is, though it's probably going to have to be supporting.  While Bening has missed in the past two years, she scored major precursor nominations (Globes & BAFTA) proving the love is still there, and she's the rare actress in her sixties that still headlines movies.  I think she's quite likely to get this, and it doesn't hurt that she's married to Hollywood Royalty, as Warren will clearly push for his wife to win this if she's close.

4. Jane Alexander (1939-Present)

Nominations: The Great White Hope (Actress in 1970), All the President's Men (Supporting Actress in 1976), Kramer vs. Kramer (Supporting Actress in 1979), and Testament (Actress in 1983)
She Lost to: Glenda Jackson, Beatrice Straight, Meryl Streep, & Shirley MacLaine
Closest to the Win: Straight was a big upset in 1976, with most people assuming the trophy would go to Alexander or Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.  Her other three options she wasn't one of the main contenders, so I think this was her best option even though it's not the most memorable of parts in All the President's Men.
Well, She Still Won...: Alexander took home the Tony for the stage version of The Great White Hope and won Emmys for her work in Playing for Time and Warm Springs.
Is This Happening Someday?: No, I don't think so.  Alexander still works regularly, but mostly in TV (I'd totally buy that she has another Emmy win in her), and was never a household name in the way that Bening is, so there's less pressure to give her an Honorary trophy.

3. Marsha Mason (1942-Present)

Nominations: Cinderella Liberty (Actress in 1973), The Goodbye Girl (Actress in 1977), Chapter Two (Actress in 1979), & Only When I Laugh (Actress in 1981)
She Lost to: Glenda Jackson, Diane Keaton, Sally Field, & Katharine Hepburn
Closest to the Win: It's hard to tell, but it'd be one of her first two nominations.  Jackson's win in 1973 was considered a big surprise (if you've never seen the looks of shock and not-so-veiled disgust on Mason's, Joanne Woodward's, and Ellen Burstyn's faces when Jackson won at the 1973 Oscars, do yourself a favor).  Mason seemed happier being beaten by Diane Keaton, though considering the Annie Hall wins weren't a foregone conclusion that night (Mason & Jane Fonda were both in the running), she might have just been acting.
Well, She Still Won...: Mason picked up Golden Globes for both Cinderella Liberty & The Goodbye Girl, but is one Tony nomination away from having been nominated for every leg of the EGOT but not winning any of them (only Lynn Redgrave has ever pulled off this feat).  Considering how often she treads the boards, this is not out of the question (weirdly Redgrave also won two Golden Globes in her career).
Is This Happening Someday?: Doubtful.  Mason is very active, one could argue more active than even Alexander, but her days as a leading woman are largely forgotten by modern audiences, and so there's no way for her to easily get in on pop culture cache.  She'd need to land a really good film role, which is tough for a woman nearing eighty.

2. Amy Adams (1974-Present)

Nominations: Junebug (Supporting Actress in 2005), Doubt (Supporting Actress in 2008), The Fighter (Supporting Actress in 2010), The Master (Supporting Actress in 2012), & American Hustle (Supporting Actress in 2013)
She Lost to: Rachel Weisz, Penelope Cruz, Melissa Leo, Anne Hathaway, & Cate Blanchett
Closest to the Win: I don't think Adams has ever actually been close to a win.  Her best shot would have been in 2013, where she was competing against four former winners so a movement to "make her one of the club" was definitely possible, but it never panned out.  She's more consistently in 4th place when she's nominated.
Well, She Still Won...: Adams took an expected Golden Globe for American Hustle and then a shock win for Big Eyes (she clearly hadn't prepared even a "I can't believe I won" speech that year).
Is This Happening Someday?: Only five women have gotten to the 5+ club without taking home a competitive trophy, so Adams is in rare company if she never wins, but I kind of think she will.  Her fame and age indicate it should happen soon, and Oscar's love of her may be waning (she missed for Big Eyes & Arrival despite ample precursor attention), but Vice this year has a solid recipe for a trophy (supporting part, biopic, showy work) if its reviews don't bury her chances alive.

1. Glenn Close (1947-Present)

Nominations: The World According to Garp (Supporting Actress in 1982), The Big Chill (Supporting Actress in 1983), The Natural (Supporting Actress in 1984), Fatal Attraction (Actress in 1987), Dangerous Liaisons (Actress in 1988), & Albert Nobbs (Actress in 2011)
She Lost to: Jessica Lange, Linda Hunt, Peggy Ashcroft, Cher, Jodie Foster, & Meryl Streep
Closest to the Win: In 1988, Close was the frontrunner for this win.  Most people assumed she'd take it after a decade of headlining major films, perhaps joining Sigourney Weaver on the stage (getting two women off of this list), but Jodie Foster pulled off the upset, and Close would have to wait another 23 years before she finally was invited back to the Oscars.
Well, She Still Won...: Close has won two Golden Globes, three Emmys, and a trio of Tony Awards-the only thing left to cap off an incredible career would be an Oscar...
Is This Happening Someday?: Close joins Thelma Ritter & Deborah Kerr as the only actresses to ever hit six nominations and never win the Oscar.  As a result, it's hard not to see a movement happening for her if she gets a citation this year since she'd be in uncharted territory for a woman if she got seven nods & never won.  In a normal year, I'd argue that Olivia Colman or Lady Gaga or even Emily Blunt would have more steam than Close's quiet, introverted turn in The Wife, but that's the sort of performance that eventually won Geraldine Page her Oscar too after losing seven times previously (though Close is better than Page was in The Trip to Bountiful), and honestly at this point the movie behind her name might not matter-they are likely just voting for Glenn Close, Oscar Winner, at that point.  I think if she gets in there's a very strong possibility the Oscars decide to avoid another Richard Burton situation and just gives her the trophy.  If not, expect an Honorary Oscar soon, though Close famously wants this so I doubt she settles for an Honorary if she can help it.