OVP: The Children's Hour (1961)

Film: The Children's Hour (1961)

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, Miriam Hopkins, Fay Bainter, Karen Balkin, Veronica Cartwright

Director: William Wyler

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Fay Bainter, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Shirley MacLaine-click here to learn more about Ms. MacLaine (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I once saw an interview with Shirley MacLaine (a recent one, so late in her career) where she basically had never experienced what it was like not to be the "headliner" on a set.  While MacLaine has taken on supporting roles, this is kind of right-she's always been a name on the billboards, even after The Trouble with Harry wasn't a huge success.  This was certainly accurate between 1955 & 1961, where we pick up our conversation with MacLaine as she accelerated her fame playing in a number of popular films.  She had leads in Around the World in 80 Days, Some Came Running, and The Apartment, all of which were moneymakers that gained significant Oscar glory (including two nods for MacLaine), and she basically became the sole female member of the Rat Pack (give or take Angie Dickinson) starring in Ocean's Eleven.  I, as I mentioned previously, am a Shirley MacLaine super-fan, though, so I've seen all of these movies & we can't use movies for this series I haven't already seen.  Instead, we're going to go to another major movie, one that was less financially successful but has grown in stature in the years since due to its groundbreaking subject matter, made at the tale end of the Studio System, The Children's Hour.

(Spoilers Ahead) Longtime friends Martha (MacLaine) and Karen (Hepburn) run an all-girls boarding school together.  Martha is excited that the school is finally starting to see a profit, but Karen is considering giving up the school to marry her longtime beau Joe (Garner).  When a spoiled young girl named Mary (Balkin), is punished, she decides to twist an offhand comment by Martha's aunt Lily (Hopkins) about both teachers being lesbians (Mary not entirely understanding what that means), to get out of the school when she tells her oblivious grandmother Amelia Tilford (Bainter) what happened.  Mrs. Tilford tells everyone about this alleged homosexuality, and soon every parent has taken their daughter out of the school, leaving the women destitute, and initially unaware as to why.  When they confront Mrs. Tilford, she repeats what Mary said, and the women (knowing that it's false), sue for libel.  But Mary blackmails a fellow classmate Rosalie (Cartwright) into vouching for her, and they lose the case, becoming national pariahs.  Afterward, confronted by Joe's doubts about their relationship, Karen leaves him, wanting him to have a different life than with her.  Rosalie eventually confesses to the lie, and Mrs. Tilford tries to apologize, but it's too late.  At this point, Martha has confessed her secret shame that she is, in fact, a lesbian & in love with Karen.  Knowing that there's no way for them to be together, and that her life (in her mind) will never be put back together, Martha hangs herself, leaving Karen to try & live in a world without her.

The movie is powerful, and it's quite shocking how they are able to keep much of the homosexual references in the film.  While there are some things that are said off-hand or off-screen (Mary's accusation is whispered so the audience can't hear it, the whole court case is just mentioned but not viewed), you do understand not only what the underlying issue is (that these women are accused of being lovers), but it's said out loud.  In 1961, this was pretty groundbreaking (consider that Basil Dearden's Victim, which was the first English-language film to use the word "homosexual" hadn't even been released yet in the United States when this movie came out), and the film feels shockingly progressive in the way the women treat not only each other but how the actresses handle playing women whose sexuality is either queer or strong ally.

This is in part driven by a great cast.  Bainter is the Oscar nominee of the bunch, and she acts her character perfectly.  She plays her character not as someone who aspires to be a villain, but as someone who could never think of herself as one, and that isn't her intention.  She plays her early scenes politely, and has correct doubt about the veracity of Mary's claims before finally succumbing to the tawdry gossip.  This makes her character more interesting, and more frustrating-she's not someone who intended to destroy two people's lives (like Mary is, and oh is Balkin good at making you hate her), but instead someone who did it without considering that's what she was doing.

But the rest of the cast deserved to be in the Oscar conversation.  Garner gets a tough role, this paragon of handsome masculinity, who is thrown asunder that there might be this woman (whom he loves) who prefers another woman to him.  I didn't love his eventual confession that he had doubts (mostly because it felt like an easy ploy to get rid of him in the script), but he does play those doubts well.  Hopkins is superb as a careless, cruel side character who sees the world only from her point-of-view-this is the definition of a strong supporting performance, someone who otherwise would've faded into the background but here she mesmerizes because she lets us see the ugliness to apathy, how she could've saved her niece but through prejudice & self-preservation simply couldn't bring herself to do so.

And our leads are grand.  I think I prefer MacLaine slightly here, if only for her final moments where she has to confess a love she's hidden her whole life, but both are good.  There's an authentic understanding to their friendship (you get the feeling that Martha's confession is not news to Karen, even if she has a modicum of surprise to it), one that occasionally happens when a straight person knows that the gay person in their life might be in (romantic) love with them, but where they love the person too much to ever acknowledge it for risk of the friendship.  I thought both women nailed the parts, and am shocked that Oscar didn't choose to cite at least one of them for these roles (Hepburn was Holly Golightly that year, so that wasn't going to be bested, but MacLaine should've been in the running for a nomination in 1961).

The remaining Oscar nominations are not quite as deserving as Bainter's, though they aren't without mention.  The sound is fine, moody & clear, but not all that memorable.  The cinematography is much more striking; the use of closeups is worth mentioning (think of the startled look on Mary's face when the jig is up), and I thought it set a somber tone, particularly in the outdoors sequences.  The same could be said for the art direction-the movie does a good job of making the school feel increasingly claustrophobic (also a trick of the cinematographer).  We initially think of the school as large, but as the movie continues & it becomes the only home of the teachers, we begin to understand how tiny it is, seeing how little privacy these women are afforded, first from the students & now from the world.  The only nomination I feel like was a bit of a miss was costume-these are fine, but there's nothing out-of-the-ordinary that's being done here, and this feels a bit like one of those "tail end" of the Black & White categories (several Oscar categories, including costume, were separated between Color and Black & White until the mid-1960's), where they were trying to find prestige black-and-white films in a world dominated by color ones.

OVP: Jezebel (1938)

Film: Jezebel (1938)

Stars: Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Fay Bainter

Director: William Wyler

Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Bette Davis*, Supporting Actress-Fay Bainter*, Cinematography, Scoring)

(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Only twice in Academy history has an actor scored five consecutive Oscar nominations, something that not even Meryl Streep herself can boast (Streep did, it's worth noting, go 5-for-6 from 1978-83, but didn't score anything in 1980).  The second of these two performers is Greer Garson, whose run is generally ignored today by cinephiles (somewhat unfairly, as Garson had the ability for great work, even though she was clearly overrated).  The other performer, though, was part of a legendary Oscar tour: Bette Davis.  From 1938-42, Davis was cited for Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, and Now Voyager, all of which are still considered to be triumphs, and combined they encompass a lot of what gave Davis the "greatest actor of her generation title."  Today we are going to discuss Jezebel, which is the first of these nominations and a movie that I hadn't seen in some 25 years until I chanced upon it this past weekend, the one film of this quintet she translated that nomination into an actual victory.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Julie Marsden (Davis), a spoiled, beautiful young southern belle who at the beginning of the film is mad that her beau Preston Dillard (Fonda) won't come to her dress fitting.  She decides to enact revenge on him by wearing a red dress to a local dance where all of the unmarried girls wear white, much to the chagrin of everyone around her, including her Aunt Belle (Bainter).  Though Pres protests, she goes to the dance dressed in red, and quickly realizes the error of her ways when she's shunned by virtually everyone, and becomes a pariah.  After this dance, Pres dumps her, and goes north.  When he returns, she's ready to placate him, but he's already married to Amy (Margaret Lindsay), a northerner who feels like an outsider to Julie, and competition she must squash.  She goes about this by dating Buck Cantrell (Brent), who is madly in love with her, and who consistently fights with Pres.  This goes awry when Pres's brother (Richard Cromwell) challenges Buck to a duel, and in the process Buck dies.  Later in the film, there is a pandemic breaking out, and soon Pres becomes infected.  Julie wants to treat him, fighting with Amy, and eventually convincing her that Julie will be better for Pres, that Amy won't have the strength to fight for him the way she will.  The film ends with Julie, defeated but ready to finally repay Pres for her slight, headed into an unknown future where they may well both die of the disease.

As I mentioned above, I had seen Jezebel, but it had been a really long time since I watched it; it was surely something I recorded off of AMC with a VHS tape when I was a child at the beginning of my Oscar-watching.  I did remember it better than I expected, I will say, particularly the fuss over the red dress, Bainter's title character speech, and the defiant Davis headed off with a handsome, scruffy Hank Fonda into near-certain death.  What I didn't recall, and quite frankly this might be because I hadn't seen it yet, was how similar it feels to Gone with the Wind.  Jezebel the film preceded Gone with the Wind, and the play on which it is based preceded Margaret Mitchell's novel.  But it's hard to watch this film & not think of it as a lesser chapter compared to the magnum opus, and not just because most movies feel dwarfed by Gone with the Wind, the Grand Teton of what Hollywood can do when everything goes for the widest possible angle.

After all, in Gone with the Wind there's a section where Scarlett also has to wear a red dress, albeit less of her own volition & more because she's being punished for (trying to take) another woman's man, which Julie eventually attempts in this film.  So much of the plot is ripped wholesale it almost feels unfair to punish Jezebel, but in Wyler's film it all feels so slight compared to Gone with the Wind, and the few ways that the later Fleming film should be improved, specifically around racism, are not addressed in a movie like Jezebel.  If anything, Julie uses the slaves in her film more as props than Scarlett did, at one point singing with them gaily as she starts to lose her grip on her sanity, in a scene that feels uncomfortably like she's using a group of black people as metaphors to indicate her straying from reality.

The movie also doesn't really know how to treat the central romance, and Julie herself.  Unlike Scarlett, who has a sense of purpose not with Rhett or Ashley or the war, but to her home (to Tara), Julie doesn't really have that guiding light.  She's obsessed with Preston, but we don't entirely know why other than he's the one thing she can't have.  It doesn't feel like they're actually in love, particularly since Preston Dillard is a massive dud of a character.  This is weird to say about Henry Fonda (if you've read this blog long, you know I'm a fan-this is not an actor I criticize frequently, if at all), but he is totally wrong for this part.  The two reportedly had an affair in real life, but Davis & Fonda have zero chemistry onscreen, and he feels all wrong for this part.  There's no charisma, and while Davis is knee-deep in an authentic southern accent, the Nebraska-born Fonda does little to buckle his home-spun Midwestern cadence.  The result is a central romance that never takes off, and feels like a total failure, quite frankly-Fonda is actively bad in this movie.

Davis is good, though upon revisit she's not as good as I remembered, mostly because I've seen a lot more of her work in the years since and I know what she's capable of doing.  Few actresses of this era (perhaps no major stars of this era, period) committed to a role like Bette Davis, and that's certainly the case here.  She plays Julie to the hilt, but she doesn't give her quite enough purpose.  Yes, it's marvelous to behold: her soliloquies are wonderful, the way that she glances at Fonda as he forces her to dance, suddenly becoming aware that she's in over-her-head and as a rich, privileged girl this isn't a feeling she's used to, her gigantic saucer eyes somehow stretching wider...that's breathtaking and the kind of minute character work that Davis is so freaking excellent at.  But there are other scenes later in the film that don't feel quite right.  The callous way that she basically sends her "one true love's" brother off to his death feels like a weird editing choice, and she can't sell the final moments with Amy...there's not enough to her relationship with Preston to make her pleading work.  Davis is very good, but this is not the best performance in her run, and it's hard to compare this with the heights she was about to hit with The Letter and Now Voyager, some of her best work without coming away with a slight whiff of "she's been better."

The film's other nominations, save for Best Picture (you already saw the star rating-you know where I landed) were totally earned (and for the record, while I'm not done with most of the viewings from 1938, Davis is in the running for me for both an OVP & a My Ballot nomination).  Fay Bainter was the first performer ever nominated in both lead and supporting in the same year, and she got this award in part as a consolation prize for not besting Davis.  It's not as showy of a role as I remembered, though she does get that great scene about "a woman called Jezebel" that would've been her Oscar clip if such things existed in 1938.  She's good, subtle, the sort of woman who knows that her niece is beyond her control & she's not entirely certain how much effort she wants to put in anymore-it's a strong role that stands out because of the stellar actress behind it.  The Max Steiner score is marvelous, combined with some Strauss & Stephen Foster to give us a full southern push (Steiner reportedly won the job of scoring Gone with the Wind based on this picture), and the cinematography, particularly in the last ten minutes is moody & wonderful.  Kudos also have to go to the costume designers (Davis is exceptionally glamorous, and that red dress, really bronze in real life, is a showstopper), and art directors, neither of whom had this category in 1938 but surely would've been in the running.  But overall, Jezebel is a movie that's fine, and might even be good, but it's impossible to escape the weight of what was to come the following year & redefine the southern saga for always in Hollywood.

OVP: Quality Street (1937)

Film: Quality Street (1937)
Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone, Fay Bainter, Eric Blore, Cora Witherspoon
Director: George Stevens
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Growing up, one of my favorite discoveries was the fact that Katharine Hepburn is at her best when she's funny.  Between Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn surpassed her finest dramatic work and gave, in my opinion, her two very best performances.  This revelation was followed in turn by disappointment when it became apparent that these also happen to be two of the best films ever made, and Hepburn would occasionally flounder into overacting when given less structured or elegant humor.  As a result, I was not expecting Quality Street to bewitch me so ferociously when I caught it recently.  The film, based on JM Barrie's play, is a delight from start to finish, and features some prime Hepburn comedy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot to the picture itself is simple enough.  We have Phoebe (Hepburn), a young woman of some means who is in search of a bachelor, desperately in love with the local doctor, Valentine Brown (Tone).  Phoebe, however, cannot seem to tell Dr. Brown how she feels, and when he says he's off to fight in the Napoleonic Wars (when she thought he would propose), she assumes a life of spinsterhood.  Ten years pass, and Phoebe is dressed as an old maid, which surprises Dr. Brown, who says she's aged more than she expected, to which she's rightfully furious.  Phoebe then dresses in a beautiful gown and makeup, making herself look younger and passes herself off as her imaginary niece Livy.  Shenanigans ensue as Dr. Brown first is smitten with Livy, then realizes that he's actually in love with Phoebe, and all the while Phoebe and her sister Susan (Bainter) are trying to stave off the neighbors, who are certain that Phoebe and Livy are one-and-the-same.

If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it is.  The movie's plot is thin, and it's hard to imagine Dr. Brown not realizing instantly that Livy is Phoebe in disguise.  But once you move beyond that, this movie is actually quite delightful.  Hepburn and Tone are fine together, but it's really her chemistry with Bainter that sells the movie.  I loved every second of them trying to pull a fast one on their nosy neighbors, and their conviction that they will be able to both maintain the ruse and perhaps make their neighbors look the fools is marvelous.  Honestly-the film is filled with such lovely and delightful touches (even a very early-in-her-career cameo from Joan Fontaine), and at 83 minutes is deliciously spry, that you don't really care if you know exactly where it's going every step of the way.  Chart this one up in the Kate Hepburn comedic win column.

The film received one Oscar nomination, one of those truly random nominations for music that seemed to happen so often in the 1930's and 40's when studios could basically buy a nomination in the category there were so many nominees.  The actual score is omnipresent, accompanying almost every angle with bouncy strings and a playful attitude.  It's hardly groundbreaking or iconic, but it fits the movie itself like a glove, and it also led me to a picture I probably would have never seen otherwise (thus is the joy of the Oscar Viewing Project even if it thrusts upon me a movie like Suicide Squad in the same breath), so I'm grateful for the nomination even if it feels somewhat unearned.

Those are my thoughts on this charming little picture-has anyone else seen it?  If so, share your thoughts, and if not, please give me some of your favorite Kate Hepburn performances, either dramatic or comedic!

OVP: The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942)

Film: The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942)
Stars: Fay Bainter, Edward Arnold, Richard Ney, Jean Rogers, Sara Allgood, Spring Byington, Van Johnson
Director: Harold S. Bucquet
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

World War II had a profound effect on the films of the 1940's.  During the era, most of the biggest stars, particularly the male stars, were off fighting and as a result, the films made during the era were predominantly about women, and oftentimes didn't even need to revolve around a man.  Such is the case for the bulk of The War Against Mrs. Hadley, yet another one of the OVP films that I haven't heard of that Turner Classic Movies has graciously put in front of me this month.  Here we have Mrs. Stella Hadley (Bainter) a woman who has decided that, despite the fact that everyone around her has gotten into the war spirit following Pearl Harbor, she herself is going to go on with her life as usual, and make a personal stand against everything going against her.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film elicited a few strange reactions in me, quite frankly.  Being as it's from the 1940's I expected sexism to rear its ugly head, but oddly enough it came about in ways I hadn't quite anticipated.  Fay Bainter, an actress I know little of other than her trio of Oscar-nominated performances, is the title protagonist of the story, and she is frequently finding herself at odds with those around her, including her daughter Pat (Rogers), son-in-law-to-be Mike (am I the only person who never found Van Johnson attractive?), friend-who-is-in-love-with-her Elliott (Arnold), and her drunken son Ted (Ney, who is Minka Kelly's grandfather if you want a truly random fact for today).  The others rally quickly to the war effort, but Mrs. Hadley has no intention of seeing her life turned upside-down by the war and doesn't see why everyone else behaves differently as a result of it.

It's actually a pretty interesting conundrum, particularly when seen through the lens of World War II and when this film was made.  After all, in 1942 the war had just started and having someone who wasn't aiding the war effort was bordering on the illegal, certainly stamping into unpatriotic territory.  And yet, Mrs. Hadley, though the screenwriter tries to stop her from being so, is occasionally quite reasonable.  While she's made to be a silly, flitty character, Bainter instills in her enough sense and decorum that she never feels completely inauthentic in her grievances.  After all, her daughter comes to her saying she wants to get married to a man that Stella has only known for a very short while, and wants her blessing instantly, which feels a tad rushed.  The same could be said for Elliott, who lies to her repeatedly in order to stave off a frustrating confrontation, and one has to have sympathy for her trying to keep her son, who has shown himself to be a wastrel for much of the movie, out of a war before he's matured.  Honestly, it feels like for most of the film Mrs. Hadley is being unduly pressured to support a war she didn't agree with politically and befriend herself to people she's never cared for in the past, and seemingly with good reason (she disagrees with them politically and likely is upset with the way her late husband lost his business and job).

It's an interesting conundrum because the script doesn't really allow for us to think of Mrs. Hadley as anything other than hard and proud, and we get that from Sara Allgood as the weirdly-violent Mrs. Fitzpatrick (she threatens both to beat her son and to have her son beat her daughter-in-law in jest, but it still feels quite outlandish in the moment) who is in charge of the "shape up" scene that was inevitably coming.  The ending of the film has her abandon all of her principles and marry Elliott while going off to war, which is unfortunate because in many ways it feels like Mrs. Hadley had an approach that wasn't totally out-of-sync with some pacifists at the time.  I couldn't help but think of Jeanette Rankin, the only member of Congress who voted against World War I and World War II, who was pilloried by the press and her constituents afterward, but she later used her Pacifist leanings to great use in standing against the military involvement in Vietnam.  Mrs. Hadley would read like bad propaganda at the time, quite frankly, but the questions it raises after enduring less popular wars than World War II (like the Vietnam Conflict and the Iraq War) is interesting, particularly with a very non-judgmental Fay Bainter playing Mrs. Hadley as a human being and not a caricature.

Those are my thoughts on this film, which was nominated for an Original Screenplay citation, though really its interest is only sustained through Bainter's fine work in the lead.  How about yours?  Do you ever find films that, thanks to history, have a completely different lens as a result?  What do you think of the films made in the height of the war, when the B-and-C-Grade stars got their moments at the tops of the marquee?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Oscar's Late-Blooming Actresses

Next week I'll be giving you an article about the overall Best Actress race and my thoughts on how crazy-awesome it looks this year (so many possibilities!), but before I get there I want to focus on one woman in particular who might be able to make a significant impression on the race: Sandra Bullock.  Bullock has a major film coming out that she's getting strong reviews for in Our Brand is Crisis, and at this point it's hard to imagine that she spent most of the Aughts wandering through the wilderness before finally making a major comeback and scoring an Oscar for The Blind Side.

Bullock was 45-years-old when she received her first nomination, which is actually pretty old for an acting nominee, particularly a female nominee.  Most women tend to be nominated in their twenties (I have read the average age for a Best Actress nominee is around 29), and especially those women who are going to be nominated multiple times will have started early.  As a result of this, I was wondering if Bullock gets her third nomination this year (she was also cited for Gravity for those keeping track at home), will she make the list of the Top 10 3+-nominees in terms of age at their first nomination?  Let's take a look at the top ten, shall we?

10. Anne Revere

Age at First Nomination (we'll be going age at the Oscar ceremony): 40
First Nominated Film: Best Supporting Actress in The Song of Bernadette (1943), followed by supporting citations in National Velvet (1945) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
Did She Win?: Yes, Revere pulled off the win for playing Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet, besting two women who are still alive to hold grudges, actually (Dame Angela Lansbury, the youngest person ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards and Ann Blyth, Joan Crawford's demon spawn in Mildred Pierce).
What Took So Long?: Revere was most noted for her work on the stage (she would eventually win a Tony Award for Toys in the Attic), and was more just a contract player who gained steadily in stature in the years that followed Song of Bernadette until she was forced to resign from the Screen Actors Guild because she refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Also Worth Noting: Revere played opposite Taylor six years after her Oscar win as Montgomery Clift's mother in A Place in the Sun.  Despite the film being a huge hit with Oscar and the Academy's penchant for both women, neither would be nominated for the film.

9. Agnes Moorehead

Age at First Nomination : 42
First Nominated Film: Best Supporting Actress in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), followed by Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), and Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte, all in supporting.
Did She Win?: No, Moorehead never made it.  Based on some readings I have done she was probably closest either for The Magnificent Ambersons (where she may have fallen prey to the Orson Welles-hate that was still reverberating from the year before) or for 1964's Hush...Hush, where she was the sentimental favorite but Oscar was very international that year, going with all non-Americans for the first time ever that year rather than the Massachusetts-born Moorehead.
What Took So Long?: Moorehead really struggled early in her career, frequently going without work and even food.  She eventually found success in radio, working with Orson Welles and his Mercury Players.  This resulted in her getting the two most iconic roles in her film career: as Charles Foster Kane's mother in Citizen Kane and her marvelous work as Fanny in The Magnificent Ambersons.
Also Worth Noting: She didn't do particularly well at the Emmys either, never winning for Bewitched, her best-known role overall to modern audiences, though she did pick up an Emmy for her role on The Wild Wild West of all things.

8. Kathy Bates

Age at First Nomination: 42
First Nominated Film: She was first noted for her iconic breakthrough as Annie Wilkes in 1990's Misery, followed by supporting citations for Primary Colors (1998) and About Schmidt (2002)
Did She Win?: She won in a bit of a surprise on her first outing for Misery, a very atypical role for a Best Actress contender, though it's hard to tell if Joanne Woodward or Julia Roberts was her bigger competition.  Eight years later she'd nearly pull off an upset over Judi Dench when she was the only American in a field of Brits (which frequently results in a win for the Yank).
What Took So Long?: Bates was initially one of those character actors who never really popped.  Though she appeared in films for prestigious directors (Milos Forman and Robert Altman), she had more success on the stage, winning a Tony nomination for 'night Mother and eventually transferring to television in a series of soap roles.
Also Worth Noting: In one of those great "what could have been" sorts of moments, Anjelica Huston was originally offered the role of Annie Wilkes, and wanted to do the movie but was committed to making the film The Grifters.  Huston would go on to lose the Oscar for her Grifters performance to Kathy Bates.

7. Fay Bainter

Age at First Nomination: 45 (for those interested, Bullock was slightly older when she landed her first nomination by a few months and so would knock out Bainter if she were nominated again)
First Nominated Film: Bainter became the first actor nominated in two different acting categories in the same year, being cited for lead actress in White Banners and supporting in Jezebel in 1938.  She would go on to get a very late-in-her-career supporting nod for The Children's Hour in 1961.
Did She Win?: She did-Bainter set a longtime pattern of actors who were nominated for two different categories in the same year winning the supporting trophy, a trend that would last for fifty years until Sigourney Weaver broke it in 1988 (to this day she's the only actor to have been nominated twice in one year to have never won an Oscar, thanks to Julianne Moore's recent victory).
What Took So Long?: Like several women on this list, Bainter got her start and much of her success on the stage, appearing in a number of major New York productions before MGM finally convinced her to give film a try, and she became wildly successful pretty quickly.
Also Worth Noting: Back in the day, supporting actors would occasionally present the category they won the previous year, rather than the alternating genders we see today.  As a result, Bainter was the first person ever to present an Oscar to an African-American when she handed the statue to Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind.

6. Thelma Ritter

Age at First Nomination: 48
First Nominated Film: Like most of her costars, Ritter scored a nomination for the classic 1950 film All About Eve, and followed that up with five supporting bids for The Mating Season (1951), With a Song in My Heart (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953), Pillow Talk (1959), and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).
Did She Win?: Ritter is the most-nominated woman without a competitive Academy Award trophy to show for it, tied with Deborah Kerr and Glenn Close (though it's worth noting Kerr eventually got an honorary Oscar).  Despite the plethora of options, it's hard to tell if Ritter was actually ever close or just the female equivalent of Arthur Kennedy.
What Took So Long?: Ritter, though she was classically-trained, never really popped, working largely in radio and stock theater until she managed to have small parts three Best Picture nominees (Miracle on 34th Street, A Letter to Three Wives, and All About Eve), which brought her to the attention of casting directors.
Also Worth Noting: She was nearly able to make a fifth nomination in a row in 1954 for the classic Rear Window, which would have tied her with Greer Garson and Bette Davis for the most consecutive nominations.  Considering that she would have almost-certainly lost to Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront, perhaps the miss was for the best for a woman who said her many losses meant she "knew what it was like to be a bridesmaid, but never a bride."

5. Helen Mirren

Age at First Nomination: 49
First Nominated Film: Mirren scored a bit of a surprise nomination for The Madness of King George in 1994, but followed that with three expected citations for Gosford Park (2001), The Queen (2006), and The Last Station (2009).
Did She Win?: Mirren stampeded to basically every award known to mankind in 2006 with The Queen, a performance so noteworthy that she ended up winning a Tony for the same role nearly a decade later.
What Took So Long?: One of the most unexpected movie stars of the past decade, Mirren worked steadily in films in the 1980's, but almost always in character roles.  She also took frequent time off to do theater, and wasn't one of the Merchant-Ivory go-to's at the time, which probably hurt as that was what British actors were being cited for during the era.
Also Worth Noting: Mirren is well-known for her work as a monarch.  In her lifetime she's played 5 Queens: Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Queen Charlotte of Mexklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Gertrude (in Halmet), and the Queen of Egypt in The Prince of Egypt.

4. Gladys Cooper

Age at First Nomination: 54
First Nominated Film: Cooper's first nomination came for her nightmarish work in Now, Voyager (1942), and she earned two more supporting nods for The Song of Bernadette (1943) and My Fair Lady (1964).
Did She Win?: Cooper never pulled this off.  I wonder if she was pretty close for Song of Bernadette (it's a show-y part), but the other two seem unlikely.
What Took So Long?: Cooper spent much of her earlier career as one of the biggest theatrical draws of the 1930's, frequently finding herself headlining shows in the West End and on Broadway.  It wasn't until she moved to Hollywood in 1940 that she made her mark in film, and all things considered got on with Oscar pretty damn quickly.
Also Worth Noting: Is one of the rare actresses to have been nominated for the Tonys, Emmys, and Oscars without winning any of them.  Had she been nominated for a Grammy and lost, she would have joined Lynn Redgrave as the only person to have been nominated for all four awards and never won a trophy.

3. Judi Dench

Age at First Nomination: 63
First Nominated Film: Dench, like so many British actresses of a certain age before her, got in for playing a queen, in this case Victoria in Mrs. Brown.  She followed that turn with six more nominations for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006), and Philomena (2013).
Did She Win?: She did, for Shakespeare in Love, the second-shortest performance ever to win an Academy Award after Beatrice Straight in Network.
What Took So Long?: Dench didn't really do film prior to her major breakout in Mrs. Brown, focusing principally on television and theater (she's in the Royal Shakespeare Company).  However, it is worth noting that she won a BAFTA eleven years prior to her turn in Mrs. Brown for the Oscar-blessed Room with a View.  Had her costar Maggie Smith stuck to lead like she did at the BAFTA's for the Oscars, Dench may well have gotten to Oscar eleven years earlier than expected (which still would have kept her on this list, for the record).
Also Worth Noting: Dame Judi has never been able to pull off an Emmy, perhaps the only major acting trophy she hasn't bagged, despite three nominations (for The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, Cranford, and Return to Cranford).  Dench nearly got a Razzie nomination for her bizarre appearance in The Chronicles of Riddick (she was on the shortlist), but the bizarre list of Britney Spears, Condoleezza Rice, Carmen Electra, Jennifer Lopez, and Sharon Stone kept her from such a dubious distinction.

2. Ethel Barrymore

Age at First Nomination: 65
First Nominated Film: The Grand Dame of the American Stage got her first Oscar nomination in None But the Lonely Heart in 1944, followed by The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Paradine Case (1947), and Pinky (1949).
Did She Win?: Yes, Barrymore won on her first try with None But the Lonely Heart.
What Took So Long?: Barrymore made a few silent films very early in her career, but largely stuck to the stage and was actually quite snobbish about the cinema, sticking to the theater and doing the likes of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Maugham in the process.  She was bought by a major paycheck for None But the Lonely Heart, her first film in over a decade, and the acclaim that followed convinced her to stay in Hollywood.
Also Worth Noting: Barrymore turned down a marriage proposal from Winston Churchill because she thought he wasn't going anywhere.  That has nothing to do with movies or Oscars, but is a good anecdote so use it at your next dinner party.

1. Edith Evans

Age at First Nomination: 75
First Nominated Film: In the only year where three women were nominated in Supporting Actress for the same film, Evans joined her costars Diane Cilento and Joyce Redman in being nominated for Tom Jones (1963).  She followed that citation with nods for The Chalk Garden (1964) and The Whisperers (1967).
Did She Win?: No, Evans never won.  She likely came the closest in 1967 after picking up a number of precursors and getting numerous plaudits (she's superb in the largely forgotten film).  However, sentiment won the day and the inferior Guess Who's Coming to Dinner got Kate Hepburn her second trophy in the wake of Spencer Tracy's death.
What Took So Long?: Evans was one of the biggest names on the British stage, playing numerous Shakespearean roles and debuting roles in plays by the likes of Noel Coward and Bernard Shaw.  Though she dabbled in film, she didn't really take off until her small role in Tom Jones.  After that she stuck with film and gained a large amount of success during the 1960's and 1970's.
Also Worth Noting: Though she didn't win in 1963 (fellow dame Margaret Rutherford was successful), she did get to pick up Tony Richardson's Best Director award for him as he wasn't there.

It's worth noting before we go that Bullock isn't the only actress that is in contention for being included in this list (though she's the only one with a film that's an immediate threat).  Brenda Blethyn, Jacki Weaver, Catherine Keener, Viola Davis, and Melissa Leo also all are sitting at two nominations and would crack this Top 10 if they scored a third.  Do you think Bullock or any of these women will be able to go-the-distance and get a third nod?  Share your thoughts in the comments!