A Woman's Secret (1949)

Film: A Woman's Secret (1949)

Stars: Maureen O'Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams, Mary Philips, Jay C. Flippen

Director: Nicholas Ray

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the tangential themes of this month that we're encountering is a "filling in the gaps" with my filmographies, particularly of some of my favorite actors of the film noir genre, and few figures fit that bill quite the same as Gloria Grahame.  Grahame, an Oscar-winning actress with an honestly salacious & tragic life (she would be married to both her director of this film, Nicholas Ray, and his son Anthony), would star in a number of film noir classics, including In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat.  Our film today is one of her lesser-known works, and weirdly doesn't star Grahame, who spent much of her career alternating between lead & supporting parts in her movies.  Instead, it stars one of the most unlikely film noir femme fatales imaginable: Maureen O'Hara, in one of only two film noir roles the prolific actress would have in her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is largely told in flashback, after an opening scene where it looks like Marian (O'Hara) has shot Susan (Grahame), potentially to her death.  We learn a bit of their backstory, about how Marian once had it all-a promising career as a singer, all the while she was clearly in love with her pianist Luke (Douglas).  But when she loses her voice from an illness, she becomes involved with an aspiring young singer (Susan), and through her starts to live her failed dreams, becoming maddened by it, even as Susan wants to quit the industry after some success.  The film eventually ends with us realizing that Susan was attempting to kill herself, and in the scuffle she shot herself.  Marian, torn up by her selfishness over making Susan stay in the industry, takes the blame and would've gone to jail had Susan not been revived and confessed what really happened.

This confession is the best part of the movie not because of Grahame or O'Hara, but because of a pip of a performance from Mary Philips.  Philips, best-known today as Humphrey Bogart's second wife, was a character actress during the time and aces her role as a busybody amateur detective, whose husband (played by Jay C. Flippen) is the actual inspector on the case.  In a different era, this would've made a fantastic idea for a TV procedural, as the two have solid chemistry, and Philips steals every scene of the movie she's in as a Jessica Fletcher-type.  One of those little performances that shows up in the sides of film noirs that you can't help but admire.

If only Philips was adding to a better movie.  A Woman's Secret doesn't work, primarily because O'Hara is miscast.  O'Hara was not a poor actress, but she was occasionally a limited one, and it shows here as she really should've gotten the part given to Grahame, as she'd be better as the put-upon sainted character while Grahame would've sunk her teeth into the role of a woman driven mad with jealousy by giving another woman her dreams after they are stolen from her.  O'Hara, though, was the bigger star of the two at the time, and the studio never would've let them swap, so we get a promising concept (doesn't that plot sound good?), without enough execution.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Film: The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Stars: John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O'Hara, Ward Bond

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ward Bond: click here to learn more about Mr. Bond (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

With apologies to Ward Bond, I took a vacation this month, and so while we will get the full gamut of articles for him (he'll have a second film this afternoon), he'll only get two Saturday's.  Maybe this is okay though.  Ward Bond is an unusual star primarily because he wasn't.  We'll talk this afternoon about what it was like for Bond to briefly step into the spotlight in Wagon Train on television, but despite being in over a hundred movies, most of them with marquee stars from big studios, he almost always plays a small part in those films.  This was why I was excited for Wings of Eagles. It isn't because he has a big part (indeed, it's arguably the smallest role he'll have in our four films this month), but instead it was exciting because it might be the best performance we've seen from him all September.  Sadly, the movie that surrounds it is a complete dud.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of real-life naval aviator Spig Wead (Wayne), who is trying to prove that the Navy should value aviation in combat.  He does endurance races to achieve this, which means that his wife Min (O'Hara) and family are left at home, oftentimes for years at a time while he is off pursuing his professional ambitions.  After falling down a flight of stairs, he is paralyzed & rejects his family further, only hanging with his buddies in the navy like Jughead (Dailey), who finally are able to convince him to "move that toe" (seriously-there is a five-minute sequence of Dailey & Wayne singing and chanting "Move that toe" over-and-over to the point where you think it was a running joke or an inside drinking game between the two actors).  After this, he becomes a Hollywood screenwriter, even meeting famed director John Dodge (Bond), before eventually going back into the Navy one last time, before suffering a heart attack and being forced to fully retire from active duty.

The movie is not strong, and it's honestly the dullest John Ford movie I've ever seen (seriously-Ford is almost always a good time as a moviegoer...I'm confused how his name is on the picture save for the call sheet & the last twenty minutes, where we see some decent combat footage that apparently includes some stuff from real-life).  Wayne & O'Hara, movie magic in other films, are barely in the picture together (O'Hara is sidelined for giant swaths of the picture), and it stretches a thin (if heroic) story past the point of patience.  Worst of the bunch is Dan Dailey, an annoying figure and with the possible exception of Mickey Rooney, my most-loathed Classical Hollywood leading man.

The movie is saved briefly by Bond, who gives the film's best performance, albeit in a very small cameo.  He plays a fictionalized version of the director, and it's a riot.  He even dresses like Ford did in real life (with the sunglasses and omnipresent pipe), and given their extremely long working relationship, you can tell this is both accurate and a gas for Bond, who honestly looks like he & Wayne are about to bust into a blooper real the entire time that Bond is onscreen, it's so much fun.  Had we focused on this relationship, this might've been the rare Ford comedy (and one that would work).  Alas, we're stuck with two hours of tepid war cinema around it.

Sentimental Journey (1946)

Film: Sentimental Journey (1946)

Stars: John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, William Bendix, Cedric Hardwicke, Connie Marshall

Director: Walter Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Payne's film career, if it's remembered at all by modern audiences, is remembered for his association with a holiday classic.  In 1947, Payne played Fred Gailey, the romantic led in Miracle on 34th Street, which would become a major hit for 20th Century Fox and a huge player at the Oscars that year, nominated for Best Picture and winning Best Supporting Actor for Edmund Gwenn.  I've seen Miracle many times through the years, so it obviously doesn't qualify for a series where I'm only watching movies for the first time.  However, Payne made a film the year before that also featured Maureen O'Hara (his Miracle costar) and a young child, here Connie Marshall, called Sentimental Journey, which like Miracle was a box office success.  As a result, I figured that the combination of Payne & O'Hara felt like a good way to mark Miracle with something new.  Unfortunately for me, the costars are where Sentimental Journey ends its overlap with the celebrated Christmas perennial.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Bill (Payne) and Julie Wetherly (O'Hara), a childless couple who spend their days making beautiful New York theater together while summering in what appears to be a posh Hamptons home.  One day, Julie, who is a bit of a dreamer, meets a kindred spirit-a young orphan girl named Hitty (Marshall) who spends most of her time fantasizing about Camelot and other long-ago fantasy worlds.  Julie wants to adopt the girl, and though he's tepid to the suggestion, Bill goes along with it.  But's it's clear Bill & Hitty don't get along, with him not understanding the dreamworld that Julie shares with her, and their marriage is facing a strain to the point where Julie is going to give Hitty back to the orphanage...when suddenly she dies of a heart attack.  This sets up a bizarre third act where Hitty & Bill mourn Julie's loss in different ways, but instead of Bill growing to realize he needs to change his life for his adopted daughter, instead Julie's ghost teaches Hitty how to take care of Bill first. This results in them becoming codependent on each other in the same way they were Julie when they were alive.

If you're reading that paragraph and thinking "that sounds unhealthy, and a little creepy"...you'd be right.  Sentimental Journey is obviously a product of its time, and in 1946 women, even young girls, were trained from an early age to be wives-and-mothers, but even under that guise Julie telling her adopted daughter from beyond-the-grave how to make her widower husband's favorite meals and plays his favorite music...it's off-putting, and I hated it.  I'm usually onboard with a sudsy melodrama of this era and I try not to judge a movie too harshly if it is mirroring the morals of its time, but this one was a step too far, and I wasn't having it once O'Hara died.

It doesn't help matters that Payne is a completely asshole.  He plays his Bill as a louse who has to rely upon his wife for mothering as much as he does the wifely needs, despite being a grown man.  When he tries to bond with Hitty, he doesn't remotely try to understand this young girl's world of make believe, and the movie tries to frame it as perfectly understandable even if it's really about a grown man abandoning a girl to an orphanage because she's "a little different."  I'll admit it-with one more film left from Payne coming up next week, I'm really drawing a blank on finding a lot to love in his film career save for Miracle, where he gives like the fourth best performance in the movie as it is.

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Film: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Stars: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy

Director: Dorothy Arzner

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Lucille Ball click here to learn more about Ms. Ball (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our look at Lucille Ball's career a bit later in her career than she started making movies.  Ball moved from New York to Hollywood in the early 1930's as a Goldwyn Girl, and started getting bit parts in a number of movies including a lot of films with Ginger Rogers, one of which, Stage Door, gave her a larger part & put her in the company of people like Katharine Hepburn & Eve Arden.  After Stage Door Ball would start to get leading roles, albeit in properties that weren't particularly important to the studio's bottom line.  RKO at this time frame would've cared primarily about Ginger Rogers and Maureen O'Hara, the latter of whom teamed up with Ball in what would become one of the more important films in Ball's career at the studio, 1940's Dance, Girl, Dance.

(Spoilers Ahead) Dance, Girl, Dance is a dramedy focused primarily on two women: Judy (O'Hara), an aspiring ballerina who can't find success in that world, and Bubbles (Ball), a beautiful blonde chorus girl who only dreams of making money & finding stardom.  When Bubbles is discovered by a night club owner for a burlesque show, she jumps at the opportunity (even though Judy finds the prospect to be demeaning), and Bubbles turns out to be correct-she is rebranded as "Tiger Lily White," and suddenly finds herself the toast of New York City.  Bubbles incorporates Judy into her act to dance & essentially "act the stooge" to get the audience excited for Bubbles to return to the stage.  Judy resents Bubbles doing this to her, but she needs the money, and she goes along with it.  While this is happening, Judy is chased by an eccentric, emotionally-damaged (but very rich) man named Jimmy Harris (Hayward), fresh out of a relationship & looking for a rebound.  He initially sets his sites on Judy, but after Bubbles realizes he's loaded, she tricks him into marrying her, and gets a fortune in order to grant him a divorce. The film ends with Bubbles getting her act booed after Judy chastises the audience for reveling in her humiliation and the fleshy exposure of the dancers, but still getting her payday, and Judy finally becoming a proper star, one that will be famous for ballet & not for burlesque.

Dance, Girl, Dance was not a hit at the time, either critically or commercially, but it's grown in stature since it was first released, thanks in large part to the reputation of its director, Dorothy Arzner.  For those unfamiliar, that's not a typo-a woman was directing a major studio's films in 1940, and indeed Arzner regularly worked with key stars of that era (until the 1970's, she was one of only two women, the other being Ida Lupino, who had been an active member of the DGA).

This critical rescue is justified because Dance, Girl, Dance is pretty darn great.  The movie never talks down to its two leads.  While there is some sexually conservative messages toward the end of the film (it's always clear that the audience is supposed to be cheering for Judy), it never really shames Bubbles, and in fact in the end of the movie Bubbles gets everything she wanted-headlines & cash, even if she doesn't get her man.  The film also has some really fascinating sexual politics, not just in the way that Bubbles doesn't feel ashamed of cashing in, or the way that it calls out the audience (both onscreen & off) for celebrating these women who don't really have another option given to them to make this kind of money, but also in the bizarre way it makes Louis Hayward's Jimmy into a bizarre, sexually-obsessed loose cannon.  He screams in an early scene at Maureen O'Hara because he doesn't like her eye color, and it's clear throughout the film that he's basically just trying to find a replacement for his emotionally-manipulative wife.  The film is from 1940, but it's easy to see what Arzner is doing here, trying to show that a rich man can get away with such oddities because he's rich...but that doesn't mean he's not bizarre & potentially dangerous.

It's also worth noting that Lucille Ball is incredible in this movie.  O'Hara is badly miscast, not able to make Judy seem like anything other than a doormat, but Ball steals every scene she's in wholesale.  Bubbles in her hands is someone who knows when an opportunity shows up, milks it for all it's worth, and doesn't apologize.  Yes, she's a bit of a backstabber (basically tricking Judy into doing her show), but she also is a backstabber who isn't afraid to take the low road if it means she reaches her destination.  All of the trademark physical comedy skills Ball would later use in television are employed here, but so are some fine acting chops.  Lucille Ball, who would spend the next ten years as the "Queen of the B's" definitely deserved better.

Saturdays with the Stars Season 3 Finale

Two of our stars, Shirley & Grace

With this past week's viewing of The Seduction fo Joe Tynan, we are officially done with our third season of "Saturdays with the Stars."  I really like to find a moment before I start the new season (which, unlike past seasons, I haven't told you the theme of & will be doing so in the coming days, as we will indeed do a fourth season starting on Saturday) to discuss the season, talking about what I learned, and also focusing on some of the best of the year's movies/performances.

When I decided to do this theme, I wanted to see how it would turn out picking twelve women who had really nothing in common other than Alfred Hitchcock.  You couldn't find stars as divergent in the way that cinematic history or even contemporary audiences treated them as, say, Maureen O'Hara & Barbara Harris or Shirley MacLaine & Margaret Lockwood.  Hitchcock wasn't always successful with his leading ladies, but it does show what a versatile director he was that he continually tried new things, occasionally making masterpieces but just as often strange curiosities.

It also showed, especially in our month devoted to Tippi Hedren, how Hitchcock's legacy is at once peerless in quality but blemished by the director himself.  Hitchcock was a complicated man, one who brought the downfall of a career or two (Hedren's career, as we discussed, never flourished the way it might have with a less authoritarian mentor), but who also clearly made some of the best films ever made.  What was great about this year was not just focusing on him, but getting to see unknown chapters in these twelve women's lives (I love that I stick to the rule of seeing only films I haven't seen before, because it means every week I get to see a new facet of an actor I thought I knew well, but frequently have my perceptions changed).  As I continue to watch deeper and deeper cuts from Old Hollywood (after three seasons devoted to it on the blog, it seems like watching fresh viewings demands getting into the rafters of these icons' IMDB pages), I am reminded once again how this period of Hollywood has countless movies & careers left to explore.  Thank you so much for playing along!

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Madeleine Carroll-The General Died at Dawn

February: Sylvia Sidney-Sabotage

March: Margaret Lockwood-Cast a Dark Shadow

April: Maureen O'Hara-Rio Grande

May: Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

June: Anne Baxter-The Luck of the Irish

July: Ingrid Bergman-Autumn Sonata

August: Grace Kelly-Dial M for Murder

September: Shirley MacLaine-The Children's Hour

October: Julie Andrews-Thoroughly Modern Millie

November: Tippi Hedren-Marnie

December: Barbara Harris-Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Ingrid Bergman

Barbara Harris

Margaret Lockwood

Carole Lombard

Shirley MacLaine

5 (err-6, I couldn't corner down) Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata

Ingrid Bergman, Journey to Italy

Margaret Lockwood, Cast a Dark Shadow

Margaret Lockwood, The Wicked Lady

Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

Shirley MacLaine, The Children's Hour

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Autumn Sonata

Cast a Dark Shadow

The Children's Hour

Dead End

Dial M for Murder

Journey to Italy

The Lady Vanishes

The Trouble with Harry

Twentieth Century

The Wicked Lady

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Diane Baker, Marnie

John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Dirk Bogarde, Cast a Dark Shadow

Humphrey Bogart, Dead End

Sean Connery, Marnie

Audrey Hepburn, The Children's Hour

George Sanders, Journey to Italy

Claire Trevor, Dead End

Liv Ullmann, Autumn Sonata

John Williams, Dial M for Murder

Big Jake (1971)

Film: Big Jake (1971)

Stars: John Wayne, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Hara, Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum, Bobby Vinton

Director: George Sherman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Maureen O'Hara's career is too big to properly go across one month, and in hindsight, I should've realized that.  An actress where I'd seen most of her major films before this (which makes it harder to ground you in her career if you don't have the context of How Green Was My Valley or The Quiet Man), she might have been a better fit for a full summer or at least a month with five Saturday's (which May is, so I'm hoping you're enamored with our star, as she's with us for a while) as I think we kind of skipped over some of her leading lady work in the 40's.  It's possible that O'Hara is one of the rare actors we'll go back to in the future if the theme fits, as there's lots of room to bring back more of her pictures.  But for now, we're going to end her career in the early 1970's, when O'Hara retired from the industry (though not forever-more on that in a second).  O'Hara after her heyday in the 1940's & 50's attempted a number of second careers.  She tried a musical career (with limited success) and a theater career (with no success).  She found more success in the 1960's working in family-friendly films, most notably The Parent Trap, and she saw her career shift from the beautiful Irish maiden into a hip 1960's mother.  By 1971, though, she was tired of Hollywood, and it seems thought (at least for a time) the best way for her to exit the screen was opposite one of her most frequent leading men, John Wayne, in Big Jake.

(Spoilers Ahead) Set in the early 20th Century, Big Jake initially starts on Martha McCandles (O'Hara), a wealthy ranch owner working with her sons.  When the Fain Gang, led by John Fain (Boone) ransack the ranch, killing many of their employees & kidnapping Martha's grandson little Jacob (Ethan Wayne). Martha is told she must pay $1 million in ransom to get the boy back, and she asks her estranged husband Jake (John Wayne) "aka Big Jake"  to bring the ransom to the other men, accompanied by two of his sons James (Patrick Wayne) and Michael (Mitchum), both of whom have a fractured relationship with their father.  As the men hit the road, they start to bond, and it's revealed that Big Jack & Martha had no intention of paying the ransom (even though they could afford it), as they instead decided to kill the kidnappers/murderers who pillaged their farm.  The men eventually kill the kidnappers, with Big Jake meeting his grandson for the first time, and the McCandles family reunited, now ready to live together again.

The film doesn't break any new ground with the western format.  Wayne has played this part a hundred times (considering how many movies he'd made in his career, that might not even be an exaggeration), and O'Hara wasn't far behind him.  So your tolerance for this type of film relies on how much you're willing to overlook in Wayne's toxic masculinity universe (there is none of the nuance that he'd bring to The Searchers or Liberty Valance here), but I liked it.  I generally like Wayne's persona onscreen, even if it could get cartoonish, and he brings a rough charm to this role, and it's fun to see him play off of his real-life sons Patrick & Ethan.  O'Hara is only in this movie for a bit (she gets "and Maureen O'Hara" billing, which is always a crapshoot in terms of actual screen time), but she does well with the limited role.  At this point, she seems to understand the history that she brings just by standing onscreen or appearing opposite John Wayne in a movie, and she leans into it rather than trying to discourage it, letting the moviegoers fill in the blanks through past onscreen collaborations between the two...the script doesn't have to do all the work at this point.

O'Hara would retire from film after Big Jake.  Her offscreen commentary is frequently a bit prudish by modern standards (and bordering on the vain when it comes to describing her own work), as she thought Hollywood only made "dirty pictures" during this era.  Weirdly, though, O'Hara had a second act, and it was opposite someone you would have never guessed considering her leading men numbered icons Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, & Charles Laughton: Canadian comedian John Candy.  O'Hara loved playing his mother (she remarked he was one of her favorite leading men), and she got better reviews than the film did (I've never seen it, but I'm kind of surprised she didn't get more Oscar buzz in a similar fashion to Don Ameche, Jack Palance, & Lauren Bacall at the time, as it feels like that kind of role...anyone who has seen it weigh in in the comments).  O'Hara would eventually get her long-coveted Oscar, an Honorary trophy from the Academy in 2014; she would die less than a year later at the age of 95.

Rio Grande (1950)

Film: Rio Grande (1950)

Stars: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman, Jr., Harry Carey, Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carrol Naish, Victor McLaglen

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are halfway through the month, and I'm going to confess something here.  While I am enjoying getting a Maureen O'Hara retrospective onto the blog (she had good taste in scripts, and occasionally made a big impression onscreen), she might have been a mistake for this kind of format (for two reasons).  The first is that Maureen O'Hara's career was too long to fit into four Saturday's, and I'm going to miss too many chapters with the actress.  After her work with Hunchback, she languished with abysmal parts at RKO, and only after she took on a key role in Fox's smash success How Green Was My Valley, did American films finally start using her properly.  The other problem, though, with O'Hara is that many of her biggest classics I've already seen, and the "rules" of this series are that I can only profile movies I've never seen, so I'm "discovering" the star along with you.  This means that we're going to skip How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man, all some of O'Hara's best work & the three films which she's most associated.  Today, though, we are going to look into a chapter of O'Hara's life that would come to define her career throughout the 1950's & 60's with a film I haven't seen-Rio Grande, her first film with director John Ford and actor John Wayne, both of whom she would work with consistently for the next twenty years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the third of Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" and is about a troupe of US Cavalry who are stationed on the Texas frontier to guard against Apaches.  They are led by Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (Wayne), whose son Jeff (Jarman) has been kicked out of West Point but still joins up as a private, and is assigned to his father's regimen.  While initially Jeff is mocked by his fellow soldiers (with them assuming he gets special treatment from his father), he is instead held to a higher standard, and they start to respect him.  Things become more tense when Kirby's estranged wife Kathleen (O'Hara) joins them, trying to convince Jeff to get out of the army as she fears for his safety, but she can convince neither father nor son, and she stays on, growing back in love with her husband.  The film's climax involves the Apaches stealing a number of children from the troupes, and them having to get back, with Jeff risking his life on the mission & Kirby being wounded, though not killed, during battle.  The film ends with Jeff receiving accommodation for his efforts (finally making his parents proud), and Kathleen & Kirby happily in love again.

The movie starred Wayne & O'Hara together for the first time, one of five times they'd make a movie together (they would later be remembered as one of the most beloved pairs in Classic Hollywood) and one of three films they made with director Ford.  While it has auspicious beginnings, the movie wasn't one that Ford really cared about.  The studio forced him to make the movie in order for him to secure the funding for The Quiet Man, which the studio (incorrectly) assumed would be a dud & they wanted the western as an insurance policy.  As a result, this is oftentimes the "odd man out" in Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, as the other two films (Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) are generally considered some of his masterpieces, a reputation Rio Grande doesn't enjoy.

Upon viewing, while there are elements to lend itself, this is correct & the movie doesn't number amongst the best of Ford's career.  The film's finest elements are its moody cinematography from Bert Glennon (making good use of Ford's obsession with Monument Valley, particularly in nighttime scenes), as well as the overuse of old songs; some criticized this at the time, but I quite liked the constant musical interludes where the troupes will sing army songs & love ballads to Kathleen.  The film's chemistry between Kirby & Kathleen is good, but underwritten.  While they have a tense backstory (Kathleen, a Southerner, watched as her husband burned down her plantation when he joined the North in the war), it's not particularly explored, and there are a lot of inconsistencies in their relationship.  It's one of those movies where you thank heavens for the chemistry as this could have been a clunker with actors who didn't work together.  But they do, and next week we'll see how well they interact as we explore one final chapter in O'Hara's epic career.

OVP: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Hampden, Alan Marshal, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O'Brien, Cedric Hardwicke, Harry Davenport

Director: William Dieterle

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Maureen O'Hara is a strange choice to do in a retrospective about Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1939, she did have her first major role in his Jamaica Inn, but it didn't bring the kind of mainstream success that later films would bestow on Hitchcock's leading ladies, and as a result it's not one of the films that we'd consider a "major" picture in her career (O'Hara might be the only actress all year where if I was making a list of her most important movies, I'd skip Hitch).  The first really important film of her career, instead, came about in 1939, and would star her Jamaica Inn costar Charles Laughton in one of his most iconic roles, as Quasimodo in a retelling of Victor Hugo's classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of the most famous (and longest) stories in all of fiction, so I'm going to breeze through this, but for those who are new to the story, get ready to head to 15th Century France.  Here we have King Louis XI (Davenport) who is overseeing tumult in Paris as a group of gypsies have entered the city, some without a permit.  One of these is Esmerelda (O'Hara), a beautiful young woman who takes refuge in Notre Dame Cathedral (where she can claim "sanctuary" from the law) and it's here that she meets Quasimodo (Laughton), a man suffering from facial deformities & deafness who spends his days ringing the bells of Notre Dame.  She also meets young Captain Phoebus (Marshal) with whom she falls in love, Gringoire (O'Brien), a young man she marries out of pity, and the cruel Claude Frollo (Hampden), who becomes obsessed with her even though he assumes her beauty is a temptation from the devil to drive him mad.  This is indeed the case, as he murders Phoebus out of jealousy, but frames Esmerelda for the crime.  Quasimodo saves Esmerelda from the gallows, and watches as people lay siege to Notre Dame Cathedral as he defends it...all-the-while the king realizes that Frollo was the one who murdered Phoebus, and sets the guards on him, with Esmerelda to go free.  The film ends with Esmerelda joining her husband Gringoire, now in love with him, and Quasimodo looking on from afar, wishing to be a stone gargoyle so he does not feel the abandonment of Esmerelda, his love.

The film is considered a landmark today, and did launch O'Hara's career, but little about her rings true for Esmerelda.  Her performance here requires her to be beautiful (check), but not much else, and O'Hara wasn't always at her best when the script wasn't asking more from her.  She also has the slightest hints of her Irish accent here, which reads even more ridiculous for a woman playing a gypsy dancer.  Charles Laughton is considerably better, and genuinely inhabits his Quasimodo...I know this might be controversial both because it's a bit overacting & also because his portrayal of Quasimodo strips the character of a good chunk of his humanity (especially toward the end), but I was fascinated by his work here, and think it's one of the better performances that Laughton gave.  It's him who lifts this story to classic status in a way she doesn't, but it's a middling classic at best...in a year like 1939, you gotta stand out.

We're going to jump quite a bit ahead in O'Hara's very long career next week, so I'll talk more about what her life was like after Hunchback then, but I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the film's two Oscar nominations.  Of the two, the Sound nomination feels better.  The siege of Notre Dame, and of course the infamous, omnipresent bells add presence & a bit of depth to the film, and I was impressed with the way that the designers found ways to make them gain some of the symbolism of Hugo's novel.  The Scoring nomination feels odd.  Yes, Alfred Newman did a fine score, but that's not really what the goal of the "Scoring" category is, which is a look at both the score itself but also additional original music (usually this featured musicals or films with musical plots, which Hunchback isn't).  Church music does show up to a slight degree, but it does feel like this was simply nominated on Newman's reputation alone, and while his score is good, it is a strange fit for this category.

Jamaica Inn (1939)

Film: Jamaica Inn (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Marie Ney

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to start our conversation about Maureen O'Hara with the film that elevated her to leading lady status, if not entirely star status; not by coincidence, it is also the film that connects us to our 2021 theme of Alfred Hitchcock movies, as Jamaica Inn was the sole film that O'Hara made with the Master of Suspense.  At this point she was under contract to Charles Laughton, and his fledgling production company, and so was cast as his leading lady (the two were good friends, and O'Hara considered him a father-figure throughout her career).  The film has an interesting reputation as perhaps the worst movie Alfred Hitchcock ever made, and O'Hara's onscreen persona (stubborn, redheaded, fiery) is the antithesis of what we'd consider the "Hitchcock prototype" for his leading ladies, so I was definitely more intrigued than usual to understand what might be happening in this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) I will try to ground you a little bit in the plot here, but I'll be real-the story is kind of a mess, and as a result it's hard to summarize.  Joss (Banks) is a boorish innkeeper who lives with his meek wife Patience (Ney).  Their beautiful niece Mary (O'Hara) has come unexpectedly to live with them at Jamaica Inn, a place of ill-repute that houses thieves who purposefully ground ships against the shores of a nearby port, plunder what's onboard & kill the seamen (basically, pirates).  What is not known is that respectable justice of the peace Pengalian (Laughton) is actually behind their criminal enterprise, and has become somewhat obsessed with young Mary.  As the film unfolds, Mary & a new gang member Jem (Newton) are involved with accusations of betrayal from the gang, and accidentally out themselves to Pengalian, who captures them.  He then kills Joss & Patience after they escape, kidnapping Mary & wanting to take her as his captive (it's 1939, but you get the impression he wants her to be his sex slave), but after she escapes & he's cornered, he jumps off of the mast of the ship they are on, to his death.

Jamaica Inn isn't your typical Hitchcock film, despite coming a year after his first real masterpiece, The Lady Vanishes.  Hitch rarely worked in period pieces, and part of that's easy to see here, as his most indulgent ticks are on full-display here (the older man obsessed with a beautiful woman, the cheeky asides & indulgent humor, the many misdirects) don't work in a different era.  Jamaica Inn's plot is tonally imbalanced, particularly when it comes to Laughton's dastardly villain-is he a joke?  Is he a rake?  An evil genius, or just mad?  You can't really tell, and the film falls apart in a way that I've never seen from a Hitchcock film.  On top of that, well...it's super boring, and movies with Charles Laughton might be off-the-rails, but they are never boring.

O'Hara in her first really significant role doesn't make much impression.  She's beautiful, almost shockingly so (you honestly gasp the first time you see her onscreen), but her character is overwhelmed by a meandering plot & Laughton chewing the scenery.  Laughton & O'Hara would be good friends, and make a number of films together, but based on this film alone you have to wonder why-it wasn't like this was a hit (it was ravaged by critics at the time & as I said above is generally considered to be Hitchcock's worst movie,  which after watching it it's definitely the worst I've seen), but perhaps the next film they did together (which we'll look at next week) will give us more clues as to their chemistry.

Saturdays with the Stars: Maureen O'Hara

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we looked at the unusual career of British actress Margaret Lockwood.  This month, we'll venture into our first star this season that would be identifiable not just to cinephiles, but even the most casual of film lovers, an actress who did work (very) early on in her career with Alfred Hitchcock, but became far more well-known for her work with a different director who would come to dominate her career for the coming two decades.  This month, our star is Maureen O'Hara.

Born Maureen FitzSimons (she would be renamed by her frequent costar Charles Laughton before her big break in Hollywood), Maureen grew up in Dublin, the second of six children.  She was a high-spirited child, and was intent from a very young age to become an actress, eventually joining Irish theatre companies, and studying music in London.  It was during her time in one of these touring companies that O'Hara did a screen test, which would be noticed by none other than Hollywood film star Charles Laughton, who signed her to a contract for his new production company, Mayflower Pictures, and which would lead to quick stardom when she starred opposite Laughton in 1939's Jamaica Inn and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

While O'Hara definitely became a star as a result of Hitchcock's film, more than any other actress that we're going to profile this year, O'Hara's work with Hitchcock is not considered supremely important to a very, very long career, and she poses a genuine challenge to me, to the point where I almost didn't include her.  After all, if I was going to limit the films of Maureen O'Hara to 4 or 5 Saturdays, I wouldn't include Jamaica Inn.  It launched her career, sure, but it was her later films with John Ford that really got her noticed & are considered the most important of her career; even with me excluding How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man (her three most well-known pictures, all of which I've seen & thus are "ineligible" for this series), Jamaica Inn wasn't as big of a film for her.  However, O'Hara represents the first time that Hitchcock would work with a truly legendary actress, someone who would be known for films outside of his purview for much of her career (even though he wouldn't have known that at the time), and so I think it'll be fascinating to watch O'Hara work here with both Hitchcock and Ford (we'll watch one of her pictures with Ford in a few weeks), to see how she matures as a performer from two very early pictures in her career and then two more from when she was a very well-established star.  I hope you enjoy this little twist on our Saturdays with the Stars series as we look at the work of Maureen O'Hara this April.

Everybody's Linking for the Week

I had family in town so we're doing the rare "Everybody's Linking for the Week" rather than the weekend.  Still, though, we have a lot to cover here so let's get started!

In Entertainment...

-Obviously the saddest news out of Hollywood this week was the demise of screen legend Maureen O'Hara at the age of 95.  The actress, most noted for her collaborations with director John Ford and actor John Wayne, was a major headliner of the Golden Age of Hollywood and a wonderful actress.  My first interactions with O'Hara were as a kid, particularly in one of my collective family's favorite movies McClintock!, a comedy western with Wayne where she plays a stuck-up woman coming home with her daughter for a divorce.  The sight of O'Hara in that gorgeous dress sliding down into the mud made me uproarious with laughter.  As I got older I got to see some of the other facets of her personality, especially in film classics like Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man.  The Academy Awards thankfully honored O'Hara just last year with an Honorary Oscar after years of fans pleading with them to give her that trophy.  It was a career capper for a career like few others.

-Reese Witherspoon is either A) in need of another $10 million or B) recently suffered amnesia as she is advocating for a Legally Blonde 3 for some inexplicable reason.  For those who may remember, Witherspoon nailed her ditzy blonde legal savant act in 2001, but the followup was an absolute train wreck.  Witherspoon's coming off a truly great performance in Wild, but I really wish she'd continue that line of thought before coming back to this character, as I'm tired of us getting long after-the-fact sequels to films that weren't that good in the first place (see also Men in Black III).

-In time for her latest book as Robert Galbraith (I have my copy of Career of Evil staring at me from a shelf nearby), JK Rowling will be doing her first interview as Galbraith on November 2nd, discussing why she wrote under a pseudonym and discussing the Cormoran Strike novels.

-And in news you might have missed regarding everyone's favorite chanteuse, Adele made history once again with her spellbinding "Hello" video.  Directed by Canadian filmmaker (and master of the world's greatest hair) Xavier Dolan, the video is apparently the first music video ever shot in iMax.  I previewed the song last week on the blog-now that we have the full version, anyone want to give their opinions of the full thing?  Comments are below...

In Politics...

-One of the biggest stories of the week surrounded Canadian heartthrob (and also, the new Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau and his huge win for the liberals in Canada.  The Nation looked at how Hillary Clinton may be able to emulate this, with a focus on taxing the rich, infrastructure investment, and an embrace of diversity.  Clinton has made the diversity angle a key part of her campaign (every stump speech will name-check African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays, the military, and senior citizens with utter abandon), and thanks in part to Bernie Sanders influence, Clinton has gone after a more progressive economic platform.  However, infrastructure, an issue that we do need to address in the country does seem like a major winner, particularly as it's a way to start addressing economic issues in poorer areas of the country and might help Clinton with blue-collar male voters, a group she needs to improve her status with in order to take the White House.

-Easily the most press-shy of the former presidents, George W. Bush was all over the news this past week.  First it was his comments about Sen. Ted Cruz, whom he attacked in a pretty harsh way for a former president who has eschewed political fights constantly since he left the White House six years ago.  This is a bit surprising not only because Cruz is a former Bush employee (he was a domestic policy advisor to the then governor when he ran for president in 2000), but also because Cruz isn't exactly who Jeb Bush has been attacking on the stump.  The Florida governor has been most heartily going after Donald Trump, and most pundits (including yours truly) view Marco Rubio as the candidate that poses the biggest issue between Jeb and the nomination, so it's strange that President Bush decided to attack his home state's junior senator instead, as this was clearly a calculation from the governor's team.  The second thing that came up was the continued attacks on Jeb Bush for his defense of his brother, particularly in regard to how he "kept America safe" while he also attacks Sec. Clinton for her role in Benghazi.  The Atlantic wrote a piece agreeing with Donald Trump that George W. Bush didn't do enough to protect the United States in the months preceding 9/11, something that has become taboo to discuss in most corners of American politics.  Personally I think this may be one of the few advantages Trump's candidacy poses for the GOP-his stances on positions and ability to call out what he considers BS (which occasionally is and occasionally isn't just that) is more valuable than the ludicrous assertions of Ben Carson which just go as hard right as possible without more valuable discussion as a result.

-At the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past weekend, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went after Sec. Hillary Clinton by name about her stances on the big banks.  Sanders attacks on Clinton are the most pointed so far of the campaign, and a surprising change-of-pace for the senator, as #feelthebern has been celebrating his atypical approach to politics.  As a result of this, I wonder how this will do for his campaign, particularly for a man that has been using his bully pulpit to decry negative campaigning.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-With the news that Gilmore Girls is back (HOORAY!!!), I want to know why Pushing Daisies isn't next.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-This video is super long, admittedly, but if you wanted to understand everything about the new paid YouTube (or YouTube Red, not to be confused with RedTube which is VERY different and highly NSFW) and why ESPN can't put YouTube videos out any more, please watch Hank Green explain it as only he knows how:

Just One More...

-The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at what scientists are doing to try and save the snow leopard as climate change has resulted in much of their territory being decreased.  This is particularly important considering articles like these, where they list out species that have gone extinct only in the past 15 years.

2014 Honorary Oscar Winners

Oscar Winner-to-be Maureen O'Hara

Sorry for a bit of the radio silence over the past few days.  I decided to have a proper Labor Day holiday and spent some time relaxing and getting a bevy of things done around the house (it's amazing how going through your closets can sometimes feel like an archeological dig), so I wasn't able to spend as much time on the blog as I was hoping for, but I am now back and throughout September we'll be having posts every day, finishing up a couple of series (including the 2013 OVP and getting the final three installments of my favorite television shows done), as well as hitting the fall movie season and getting back to a few more film reviews and maybe even a Bechdel Test, so stick around!

However, to make up for me being gone, I figured it was a good time to point out a major Oscar story that I missed while I was out: the announcement of this year's honorary Oscar winners.  AMPAS announced that this year Maureen O'Hara, Hayao Miyazaki, and Jean-Claude Carriere will receive the Honorary Academy Awards, while Harry Belafonte will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (given in recognition of Humanitarian Efforts from an individual in the world of cinema).

We were just discussing O'Hara the other day, and it's an absolute joy that she's getting this Oscar at long last.  Never nominated despite roles in such pictures as How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man, O'Hara becomes only the second actress ever to receive the Honorary Award without a previous nomination (the only other actress being Myrna Loy, who is appropriately also listed in that link).  I look forward to her speech, and the likely references to the two John's of her career: Wayne and Ford.

Belafonte is also a wonderful choice for an Honorary Award for his longtime contribution to a number of causes in Hollywood.  Though more noted for his musical career, Belafonte has starred in a number of films including Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge, Island in the Sun with Joan Fontaine, and Odds Against Tomorrow with Robert Ryan.  Belafonte is probably most known in his career for his humanitarian work, though, being a major force in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's and the fight against AIDS in the 1980's.  Being an extremely outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy (particularly in regards to Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Iraq), his speech could also be quite memorable (even though, and I know this is something we complain about every year and I will complain every year to infinity or until they correct, but why aren't they including these awards in the telecast?  At least get Turner Classic Movies to show the Governor's Awards!).

Miyazaki and Carriere are both wonderful choices too, but I say that with a caveat that I don't share for Belafonte and O'Hara.  Miyazaki is the groundbreaking and legendary director of such films as The Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and The Wind Rises, and Carriere was the screenwriter of The Tin Drum, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Birth, as well as most of Luis Bunuel's most classic films including Diary of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.  My only problem with giving either of these two men an Honorary Oscar is that they both already have a competitive one (Miyazaki for Spirited Away in 2002 and Carriere for Happy Anniversary in 1962), so what's the need to give them a second one for career achievement?  If this were for a specific recent achievement or for the Jean Hersholt or something I'd buy it, but career achievement seems slightly inappropriate considering both men already have trophies and so many talented individuals are still waiting for their moment in the sun.  Save the Honorary Awards for people who have never won a competitive Oscar, says I.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  What are your favorite films of Carriere's, O'Hara's, Belafonte's, and Miyazaki's?  Whose speech are you most looking forward to seeing (on YouTube, grumble, grumble)?  And whom should the Academy recognize next year with an Honorary Oscar?

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 4

We have now counted through the women on the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Actresses list (click here and here and here and then return to us so that you're all caught up with the actress love-in that has sprung up this week in celebration of the life of Lauren Bacall).  You may be asking what's next?  What else could you possibly have to say about a 15-year-old list?  The answer is, well, plenty.

Since the internet was in its toddler stage fifteen years ago and because this blog didn't exist yet, I wasn't able to discuss that most critical of questions-who just missed the cut?  The requirements at the time were that it had to be a woman that had made her film debut in or before 1950, or had completed their body of work (had died).  With only 25 women listed, certainly a number of the overall nominated women (250 actresses were contenders, all listed here) just barely missed the cut, and Ava, Mary, and Carole probably had some stiff competition.

The question is-who was in 26th place just waiting to be given this honor (it's worth noting that every single one of these 25 women have the "greatest star" title listed on their Wikipedia page, so clearly some of these women probably would have wanted the citation, even posthumously).  Looking at the list, you find that the AFI isn't just weighing the 25 greatest actors of the era, but also those that had significant cultural impact and longevity within the public consciousness.  Someone like Grace Kelly, for example, didn't have a particularly robust filmography, but her position in Hollywood was astronomical.  Therefore, in choosing the ten women below, I didn't just go for strong actors, but also for people that have permeated modern movie consciousness and some who were more celebrities or stars than they were thespians.  I have listed the ten below in alphabetical order, as well as my postulation as to why they missed the cut.  In the comments, if you're feeling inclined, take a guess at which of these women were the closest to making the list and which one I'm insane for assuming could be so close to the AFI's greatest.

(Side note before we get in-I get a teensy bit negative in the "Why She Missed" sections, so keep in mind that this isn't my opinion that they should have missed (I'll save my favorite actresses of this era list for a different (very distant) day), but simply why I think they were skipped by the collective AFI voting committee; conversely, the "Why She Was Close to the List" section is arguing why they would have voted for these women, not whey they should have)

Jean Arthur (1900-1991)

Oscar Nominations: One nomination, for The More the Merrier (she lost to Jennifer Jones)

Why She Was Close to the List: Like Carole Lombard, she was one of the leading ladies of the 1930's in comedies, and in particular starred in three major motion pictures from Frank Capra: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  She was a major star of the screwball comedy and a significant box office draw in her day (she even starred late in her career in the classic western Shane).

Why She Missed: Arthur had a short reign in Hollywood, but unlike some of the other short reigns, hers was self-designed.  Arthur was an intensely private person and loathed interviews, and so as a result her public persona is almost entirely based on what she brought to the screen, unlike most of the other women that made the list.  I mean, she spent a good chunk of her late career as a teacher rather than a performer (she actually taught a young Meryl Streep at Vassar).

My Favorite Performance: Surely her bubble gum snap in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is the quintessential Jean Arthur performance (though Shane is by far my favorite of all of her films...and one of my favorite films, period).

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the George Stevens' classic The Talk of the Town with Ronald Colman and Cary Grant, which would go on to win a Best Picture nomination.

Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)

Oscar Nominations: Ms. Bankhead never received an Oscar nomination or win.

Why She Was Close to the List: If you're going for iconic stars whose work still stands (Theda Bara isn't on this list because almost none of her films still exist to perpetuate her legend), you cannot get much better than deliciously scandalous Tallulah.  The daughter of Speaker of the House William Bankhead, she was a sensation both internationally and in the United States for her daring private life and fluid sexuality (almost every major star of the era has been rumored to an affair with her).  She also had an extremely iconic role in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

Why She Missed: While Mae West was also more known for her bawdy behavior and celebrity, she did manage to make a film or two.  Bankhead was more noted for her stage work, and in particular for originating roles that would go on to be played onscreen by Bette Davis (Dark Victory and The Little Foxes).

My Favorite Performance: I mean, isn't everyone's favorite performance by Tallulah in Lifeboat?  You'd be hard-pressed to find a more significant film in her oeuvre.  

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: It'd have to be Devil and the Deep, an early film in her career where she managed to get top billing over Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Charles Laughton (quite the combination).

Doris Day (1922-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Despite a dazzling career and being a major public draw for fifteen years, she only received one nomination in 1959 for Pillow Talk (she would lose to Simone Signoret).  Every year, though, like clockwork, the rumors spread that she'll win an Honorary Award.

Why She Was Close to the List: Probably the most surprising exclusion from the list, Day was at one point the most financially successful actress in Hollywood.  A Box Office superstar, she was all the public could demand from the mid-1950's to the mid-1960's and starred in a string of romantic comedy hits.  Even today her name is extremely well-known with audiences (even if her movies aren't necessarily) and everyone knows her as one of America's Sweethearts.

Why She Missed: It may be that her role and persona could be too dated?  Most of the other women toward the bottom of the initial list had either more artistic (such as Gardner or Lombard) or pioneering (Pickford) credit that Day, who was merely a titan of her industry.  Still, this is definitely the most surprising exclusion and was (my hunch) 26th place.

My Favorite Performance: I've seen many Doris Day films through the years (my mom was a big fan of hers), so I'm going to go with a childhood favorite right now in Calamity Jane.  It doesn't age particularly well (some of the songs are pretty sexist), but the music and sets and in particular Day are incredibly game and "Secret Love" is heavenly (and an oddly resonant coming out song for anyone who reads between the lines).

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: There's a few options here, but since I've seen some of the biggest pictures of her career, I'm going to go with one that intrigues me most: Move Over, Darling, where Day is united with James Garner and Polly Bergen.  The film was a huge hit and kept the lights on at 20th Century FOX after Cleopatra (not to mention I want to see how Day does in a role that was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe).

Olivia de Havilland (1916-Present)

Oscar Nominations: De Havilland would receive five Oscar nominations during her career, winning twice in 1946 and 1949 for To Each His Own and The Heiress, respectively.

Why She Was Close to the List: Both Olivia and her sister Joan Fontaine could arguably have made this list without much fuss, but despite Joan being Hitchcock's great muse in Rebecca and winning the Oscar first, it was Olivia who enjoyed the more enduring star.  The second female lead in the great Gone with the Wind, she was a major movie star in the 1930's with her wildly successful string of eight pictures with Errol Flynn (the most critically-celebrated of these being The Adventures of Robin Hood) and had a long line of highly successful dramatic pictures in the 1940's and early 1950's.  Plus, considering that the AFI collected film scholars and actors, most of them would be aware of her landmark 1943 legal victory which gave greater control to performers in their contracts with studios.

Why She Missed: De Havilland was always seemingly sharing the spotlight with someone, and frequently another actress.  Whether it was playing second place to Vivien Leigh (it doesn't help that on a list of actresses where all 25 were leading ladies, de Havilland's most famous role was a supporting one) or her longtime feud with her sister, she never seemed to take the spotlight entirely onto herself.  Her name endures more today with casual film fans for Gone with the Wind and her longstanding rivalry with Joan rather than her initial celebrity.

My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche with her bravura work as Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, though I've always had a soft spot for her work as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress.

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen The Adventures of Robin Hood, which is one of the few classic films of that era that I haven't caught yet that I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing, and I believe that it's actually toward the top of my Netflix queue, so we'll be getting there pretty quickly.

Greer Garson (1904-1996)

Oscar Nominations: A staggering number of them in her career, she received seven nominations, including five of them consecutively, and won as the titular Mrs. Miniver in 1942's Best Picture.

Why She Was Close to the List: Seven Oscar nominations is a spectacular number for lead actress, and Garson was one of the most significant stars in the MGM lot throughout the 1940's when she was amassing that collection.  She starred in a number of iconic roles during this period, particularly Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (had she been Oscar-nominated for that role, which very well could have happened considering the critical acclaim, she would have been nominated seven years in a row).  The only other actress with a five-in-a-row streak was Bette Davis, and she landed in slot number two.

Why She Missed: For some reason there are actresses from every era that seem to slip into the background of history (think Garbo, Crawford, and then Norma Shearer), and Garson's luster never was quite as iconic as Davis's and Hepburn's following this time period.  It probably doesn't help that her frequent collaborator (all of the women of this era seemed to have one) was Walter Pidgeon, a name that is far less known than Garson's today (whereas Hepburn got someone like Spencer Tracy).  Garson also was almost exclusively a dramatic actress during her years at the top, and most of the women on this list either have a comic off-screen persona (Davis) or frequently starred in comedies onscreen (the Hepburns).

My Favorite Performance: Probably Mrs. Miniver, which was the exact right moment to give a major motion picture star her Oscar, as she totally nailed that role (and managed to carry it to a Best Picture win).

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have long thought that if I ever actually saw it Random Harvest would be the sort of Waterloo Bridge-style picture that I would latch onto pretty quickly, so I'll say that.

Lena Horne (1917-2010)

Oscar Nominations: Ms. Horne never won an Academy Award nomination or trophy during her long career, though one could have argued pretty validly that she deserved an Honorary Oscar toward the end there.

Why She Was Close to the List: I may get an eyebrow raise here as Lena Horne wasn't particularly well-known outside of the 1940's and even then had only a handful of film roles, but A) Grace Kelly had less roles in the movies and she made the list and B) as we've seen with a few women on the list, it's not just about the size of their filmography, but also their historical importance.  Horne was a pioneer during her era, the first African-American performer to sign a long-term contract with a Hollywood studio, and likely the most important black actress of her generation.  She starred in a couple of major MGM musicals, including Stormy Weather and The Cabin in the Sky.

Why She Missed: Her filmography, as I illustrated above, is pretty light when you throw out those two movies, and she didn't seem as smitten with Hollywood in the years after her heyday, instead preferring music and the stage.

My Favorite Performance: I'll admit right now, I have never seen a Lena Horne movie, though I've seen her perform many times in television specials and will sing her version of "Stormy Weather" in the shower at least once a week.

Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Either Stormy Weather or The Cabin in the Sky would seem appropriate, though considering that shower comment I'll probably select the former.

Deborah Kerr (1921-2007)

Oscar Nominations: Six nominations for Best Actress, never winning.  Only Thelma Ritter and Glenn Close have been nominated as an actress as many times and never won (and Kerr is the only person to have done so exclusively in the lead category).  She won an Honorary Academy Award in 1993 "in recognition for a full career's worth of elegant and beautifully crafted performances."
Why She Was Close to the List: Like Greer Garson, Kerr has a long history with the Academy Awards and is widely recognized as an actress of great talent and poise from this era.  Unlike Garson, though, Kerr has some films that have actually survived in the modern popular culture.  Films like The King and I, An Affair to Remember, and of course From Here to Eternity are frequently referenced today, and her wave-soaked make-out session with Burt Lancaster in the latter film in particular has been lampooned as frequently as Janet Leigh's shower and Darth Vader's paternal confession.  Kerr was also a frequent collaborator with Robert Mitchum, who did make the cut on the men's side (most of the famous cinematic "pairs" made it on both sides of this list-Kerr/Mitchum is one of the few that didn't).
Why She Missed: Like Garson, she isn't quite the iconic figure that some of these other women were, particularly offscreen where she had a relatively stable marriage for the latter half of her career to Peter Viertel (and she was never married to a movie star, which helps in boosting your legend).  It also has to be said that Kerr was always a bridesmaid with Oscar, and winning an Oscar does tend to help the immortal ones have an extra aura.
My Favorite Performance: I could and probably should go with Anna, but An Affair to Remember is one of my all-time guilty pleasure movies, and I love the way that only Kerr can sell some of the clunky and yet terribly romantic dialogue.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, much like Random Harvest, is one of those movies I'm near certain that I will love, and probably will as soon as I get to it, so I'll go with that.

Myrna Loy (1905-1993)

Oscar Nominations: Loy is one of the most famous cases of the Oscars completely missing a major star (she's frequently toward the top of the list of actors who were never nominated).  Loy never received a competitive Oscar nomination, but the Academy made up for it in 1991 when she received an Honorary Academy Award for career achievement.
Why She Was Close to the List: Wildly popular in her day, she is survived today by her indelible Nora Charles, the drunken half of one of the cinema's best-known detective teams.  Even if it weren't for The Thin Man, she would have a pretty solid filmography with The Best Years of Our Lives and Cheaper by the Dozen amongst them, and was one of the most significant leading ladies of the 1930's and 1940's.  She was also insanely well-liked in Hollywood (something not all actresses can claim), and was noted for her work with the United Nations.
Why She Missed: She never had that "star turn" moment that seems to transcend all decades.  While very beautiful, she wasn't a glamour doll like Marilyn and she lived a fairly conventional life, even if she went through husbands and lovers with Liz Taylor-like regularity.  I guess she's the sort of actress that everyone slaps their forehead and says "of course, include her on a greatest list," but not necessarily when they aren't prodded to do so.
My Favorite Performance: Of course it would be Nora Charles in The Thin Man, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen-her chemistry with William Powell in these films was electric.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen Myrna Loy with Gable and Powell, but never with Cary Grant, so I'd be interested in seeing her in the classic comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, which was cited by AFI for the Best Comedies list the year after the stars list was made.

Maureen O'Hara (1920-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Despite starring in a host of Oscar-nominated films (including the lead in a Best Picture winner, making her the extremely rare actress to not get nominated despite leading a Best Picture winner), O'Hara herself has never won or been nominated for an Oscar.  Like Doris Day, every year cinephiles complain that she should get one, but unlike Day I think she'd actually show up to receive it so I don't know what the hold-up is here.
Why She Was Close to the List: Iconic for her red hair and fiery onscreen personality, O'Hara has starred in a number of classic films through the years.  How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man are toward the top of the list, but like several women on both the official list and this "runners-up" list, she's starred with almost every major leading man in Hollywood.  Also, like Bacall, Kate Hepburn, and Ginger Rogers, she had a frequent onscreen collaborator in John Wayne (who did make the male list), making her a likely candidate to make it (if Wayne made your ballot...).
Why She Missed: For some reason I've never been entirely certain of, O'Hara hasn't ever had the sort of respect with cinephiles or awards bodies that she seems to have deserved.  I don't know if it's because she gave up her career for stay-at-home-momdom (unlike someone like Bette Davis or Ingrid Bergman who kept working right up until the end) or if it simply was that her skills were too comedic, but she's never quite landed compared to some of her dramatic counterparts.
My Favorite Performance: Sure, everyone's going to pick The Quiet Man, which is a great movie, but I grew up watching McLintock! at every family get-together, so if I'm going to go with a personal film, it would have to be this one.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Most assuredly it would be The Hunchback of Notre Dame (seriously, another classic-get on this AMPAS!), uniting her with her pre-John Wayne frequent collaborator, Charles Laughton.

Natalie Wood (1938-1981)

Oscar Nominations: Wood received three Oscar nominations in her career, though she lost for all three.
Why She Was Close to the List: Iconic actress still referenced today.  Check.  Critically-acclaimed.  Check.  Incredible beauty.  Check.  Tragic demise.  Sad check.  Wood manages to hit all of the things that the AFI was going for, and was a star in three absolute classics of American cinema (Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel without a Cause, and West Side Story).
Why She Missed: Perhaps she was too young?  While she technically qualified under the rules, she'd have one of the smaller filmographies of any of the actors on the list and would be easily the youngest.  Plus, she had most of her impact in 1960's cinema, toward the end of Classical Hollywood, and Sophia Loren was really the only person on the list who could boast that.
My Favorite Performance: I mean, can you really top the sexual frustration of Splendor in the Grass?  Completely mesmerizing work, with Wood going through all of the stages of youth (and being driven insane by the prospect of losing a 1961-era Warren Beatty...which is surely understandable).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've honestly seen all of the major pieces of Wood's filmography, so I'm going to go with Gypsy, which she has a supporting part in if only for the curiosity of how Rosalind Russell handles one of the most iconic roles in the American theater.

And there you have it-my guesses as to the ten runners-up for the AFI list.  We've got one more quick addendum to this series, but before we go-which of these women do you think was the closest to AFI's list?  Which do you think I'm off my rocker for assuming was close?  And what other women do you think may have been in strong contention that I don't check-point?  Share in the comments!