What's So Bad About Feeling Good?

Film: What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968)

Stars: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Thelma Ritter

Director: George Seaton

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Mary Tyler Moore: click here to learn more about Ms. Moore (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Mary Tyler Moore, as we pointed out when we kicked off this month, is very much a TV star first and a film star second.  Though other actresses we've talked about this year (such as Doris Day and Annette Funicello) had success in TV, Moore is the only actress we're going to discuss that the public almost exclusively associates with television.  That's because small screen success came pretty early.  She made her cinematic debut in Operation Mad Ball as a non-speaking nurse opposite Jack Lemmon, but it wasn't until 1961 that the public seemed to care who she was when she got the lead in The Dick van Dyke Show as the titular van Dyke's onscreen wife Laura Petrie.  Moore was a sensation, as was the show.  A now beloved series (if you've never seen it, you're in for a treat), it was a Top 10 hit for three seasons, and won 15 Emmys, including one for Moore as Best Actress.  The show went out on-top (van Dyke was begged by CBS to continue, but he wanted to end with the audience wanting more...something modern actors should have the class to consider), and Moore briefly turned to movies under a contract with Universal Pictures.  One of the first films she made was What's So Bad About Feeling Good?, our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a pandemic sweeping across New York, where a toucan has come into the harbor and infects people with a disease that makes them unabashedly happy and euphoric.  It initially lands in the loft of a group of beatniks, including Pete (Peppard) and Liz (Moore).  Pete is infected, and suddenly he goes from being a glum, downtrodden pessimist to a joyous optimist.  The rest of their commune follow the same pattern, except for Liz, who is immune to the bird...but with so much positivity around her, she feels happy and in love with the new Pete.  The government (including John McMartin as a besotted Mayor and Dom DeLuise as a bumbling scientist) eventually stops the plague, given the worry that it'll hurt productivity and capitalism (one person in the Mayor's office suggests tearing down Wall Street to build a park, to the Mayor's horror).  Pete goes back to normal, but Liz can't-this change was real for her, and she leaves...but not before Pete decides to change too, and they rush and steal the toucan from the zoo, potentially to bring back the infection somewhere else and go live in bliss.

If you're reading that description and thinking "this feels prescient," you're not alone.  An episode of This American Life in 2020 talked about the film's bizarre similarities to the Covid-19 crisis, including how mask-wearing was encouraged in this film.  Of course, this is a lighthearted, silly comedy (and the disease isn't fatal).  It's also not a particularly good movie, unfortunately.  The film needs considerably more humor.  My thought has always been about comedy that, more than any other genre, it dates horribly, particularly when it's doing cultural commentary, which this does (the paranoia of the 1960's, the grooviness & pointlessness of hippie culture).  Dom DeLuise, in particular, feels like he's missing a pretty big opportunity by coming into the film late and not getting much in terms of visual comedy except at one point wearing a space helmet to protect himself from the virus.

Moore also isn't great here.  One of the things I'm curious about with Moore is that, for an actress who was very, very famous on television (and also quite gifted), her film career really only boils down to one movie (Ordinary People) in terms of critics' & audiences' memories.  I thought there might be a hidden gem here, but I was wrong.  The chemistry between she and Peppard is too strained, with Peppard's bland handsomeness not a good pairing with her cheerful spunk.  The ending should be more fulfilling, but we've had too little growth, especially from Peppard, to really land the plane on that front, and so you just are like "that was cute" rather than getting all of the feels.  A missed opportunity, but almost worth watching just from the curiosity perspective (in relation to the Covid pandemic).

The Misfits (1961)

Film: The Misfits (1961)
Stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach
Director: John Huston
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

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

Few films have productions as steeped in lore as The Misfits.  If you study film history at all, The Misfits shows up in a lot of texts about this era.  It was, as we'll discuss below, the final film of two Hollywood legends.  It also had pretty much everyone on the set at each other's throats, from Clark Gable & John Huston quarreling throughout the shoot (weirdly in the first & only film that they ever made together) to Marilyn Monroe & screenwriter Arthur Miller's marriage falling apart on the set of the movie they were making together to of course the continued "slow suicide" of Montgomery Clift after his car accident.  Pretty much everyone on the set suffered from some form of alcohol abuse, and production delays abounded.  But what of the film itself?  I have weirdly, despite having read about this movie for most of my life (and having written in college a 120-page paper about American cinema in the 1960's), never actually gotten around to seeing it, and if I was going to do a month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, there was no way I wasn't going to plug this gap in my film-watching.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Misfits is a little hard to explain in a conventional way, but let's give it a shot.  The picture starts with Roslyn (Monroe) getting a divorce in Reno from her husband for emotional neglect (her husband is played by Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy in a truly 1-minute cameo, if not less).  She is staying with a local landlord named Isabelle (Ritter), and being as she's played by Marilyn Monroe, Roslyn quickly gets attention from the men of the town, including two cowboys: Gay (Gable), a rough-and-tumble guy and his driver best friend Guido (Wallach).  Roslyn & Gay move in together in Guido's house, even though it's not entirely clear that they are romantically linked (it's treated in many ways throughout the movie not as a love story, but more as a father getting a chance to raise the surrogate daughter that he gave up for his cowboy ways), though Guido clearly lusts after Roslyn.  At a rodeo, they meet Perce (Clift), a dumb rider who nearly kills himself and decides to join up with Roslyn, Gay, and Guido as they wrangle mustangs in the desert.  Slowly, Roslyn understands the cruelty of these men's lives as she sees them basically track and nearly murder a bunch of wild mustangs.  She calls them out on it, and in the dark with Perce she frees them, angering Gay.  Guido, still obsessed with her, tries to make a move but she says he's heartless, and it turns out she's right-he encourages Gay to leave her, but instead, after an extended shoot where he tries to tame a stallion, he lets them loose, driving off into the sunset with Roslyn, their future uncertain but knowing they love each other.

The Misfits is a strange film.  Honestly-I didn't really know what to expect considering its place in film lore and its position in the early 1960's, when even westerns that would be conventional like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would challenge some of the assumptions we have about heroes and villains.  It's more avant-garde than you'd think.  While yes, at its center this is the story of one man (Gable) struggling with modernity, aided in that struggle by a beautiful woman (Monroe)-basically the plot of most westerns-we also realize that it's Monroe's Roslyn who was right the whole time, not just about him needing to give up this life, but that perhaps this life wasn't necessary to begin with.  The film is brutally violent in scenes (the mustang wrangling is disturbing, particularly since with John Huston in the director's chair, there's no assurance those horses weren't injured at some point), and sex permeates the movie.  Aside from a scene where Monroe is topless (you see her from the back), you have Eli Wallach's Guido lusting after Monroe in a way that I don't remember seeing in a movie like this, at least not very often.  It feels carnal, and is a big payoff for the later scene where Monroe tells him off.

Because honestly-this movie is fantastic.  You can quibble over whether certain sequences go too long, or whether it's too much mood, but I loved it.  The script is tight-Miller was writing it as he went along, but it doesn't show as his vision comes together in the end.  The direction is glorious-Huston enjoys the action sequences the most (and they're thrilling if also gut-wrenching), and the score is divine.  Best of all is the acting.  Wallach, as I mentioned, is out-of-this-world good; if this movie hadn't been considered a disappointment at the box office, it's easy to see him getting an Oscar nomination.  Ritter is great as ever; there's this weird, odd scene in the center of the movie where she opines about the husband who left her for her best friend, and everyone is confused about why she's happy to see them, but it works.  Ritter's face & gestures indicate an understanding of love, even love that's lost or mistreated, that I found so moving.  And then there's Clift, who finds an authenticity in his rodeo clown that feels genuine.  Clift occasionally feels like he's about to forget his lines (and indeed, that might have been the case-if I had to pick a weakest link in the cast, he'd be it though he's still solid), but at least he picked a character where that is convincing.

Gable & Monroe are sensational in the leads.  Even with the box office disappointment, I'm kind of stunned Gable didn't get a posthumous Oscar nomination for this-it might be the best performance he's ever given (give or take Rhett Butler), and I like Gable in a lot of movies.  As he's worn down, you find a man who has long since lost his youth & his reason for even existing, but he keeps on living, and has to find a way to acknowledge that he's still living.  It's so profound, and while Gable is an A+ movie star at his best, I didn't really know he was this good of an actor.  The same has to be said for Monroe.  This could be another dumb blonde where men do crazy things to sleep with her, but it's not.  She finds something there in this lost soul, a woman who has something to say but doesn't understand how to get it out.  Monroe, deeply introverted in real life, rarely played such characters onscreen (there are actually very few introverts in Classical Hollywood cinema), but here it suits her grandly. This is possibly Monroe's best performance too (give or take Sugar Kane), and it's a bummer she didn't think so (Monroe disliked the movie & her work in it).

The film, as I mentioned above, was the end of the road for two Hollywood legends.  Gable died 12 days after shooting of a heart attack.  He wasn't that old all-things-considered (the film would be released on his 60th birthday, a few months after shooting), but you can tell that decades of smoking & drinking had worn down the matinee idol.  Monroe, 24 years his junior, also would never complete another film.  Though she had started shooting the (yet-another-troubled-shoot) film Something's Got to Give, Monroe died before it was completed, of a drug overdose, a potentially intentional one.  We've discussed the many conspiracies surrounding Monroe's death before (click the link if Hollywood true crime is your jam), but in the light of just watching The Misfits, it feels especially tragic, and adds a sense of anguish to the final scenes of Gable & Monroe driving off into the sunset that John Huston never could have intended.  Here we have two of the true legends of cinema, uniting for the only time, in some of their best ever work, and soon to die tragically young.

That ends our month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential sex symbol in a year-long series devoted to cinematic sex symbols.  As we'll see in July, though, we aren't entirely abandoning Marilyn-her legacy will be felt next month, both in terms of heightened, sexualized glamour...and unfortunately, even more tragedy.

OVP: Pickup on South Street (1953)

Film: Pickup on South Street (1953)
Stars: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Richard Kiley
Director: Samuel Fuller
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Thelma Ritter)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

Thelma Ritter was, as we stated in our A Letter to Three Wives review last month, in 1949 so little known that even with a pretty large part, she didn't merit a screen credit.  By 1953, though, she had amassed four Academy Award nominations consecutively, a huge deal for a character actress in her fifties-she'd do it twice more before her career ended.  Ritter famously never won the Oscar itself, making her the most-nominated actress in the history of the Academy to never win a competitive trophy (up until this last year, when she was overtaken by Glenn Close), and one of the questions I've frequently asked myself in the years since was-when did she come the closest?  There's no actual way of knowing this, but Ritter usually was a sturdy side presence, a whip-smart comic persona who gets the last laugh, but was largely inconsequential to the plot.  Then I chanced upon 1953's Pickup on South Street, and it became very apparent what the "crown jewel" of Ritter's career was, and where, if she was ever going to win an Oscar, it was going to come from.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses, like so many of our noir pictures this month, on a down-on-his-luck guy, here named Skip McCoy (Widmark).  In the opening scenes of the film, he steals the wallet of Candy (Peters), who is carrying around a top secret government microfilm for her ex-boyfriend Joey (Kiley).  Joey is, in fact, a Communist spy, and selling these secrets to the Russians.  Candy has been promised that Joey will leave her life forever if she gets back the microfilm, so she goes to his small one-room shack on the waterfront to find it, and tries to seduce Skip, but in the process she's both A) roughed up by him and B) suddenly falls in love with him (feminist this film is not).  Unsuccessful in getting the documents back, she goes to Joey, who then intends to kill Skip.  Eventually, after a lot of back-and-forth, Skip does the proper, patriotic thing, and turns in the microfilm rather than trying to blackmail Joey to get cash for it, and he & Candy go on their merry ways, Joey headed to jail.

This is pretty standard-fare film noir, and while it's good (Peters & Widmark both are great, and have terrific chemistry), I'd argue that its best element is Ritter as a side character.  Ritter plays Moe, a professional informant for the police who will sell out her friends...for a price.  She's the one who initially pinches Skip for the robbery (something he doesn't begrudge her-she's gotta eat too), and for a while you kind of assume it's yet another washerwoman style role for Ritter, who is too kindly for this world of thugs.  But as the film progresses, she gets to show her dreams, and really fleshes out her side character in a way you wouldn't expect from such a part.  She gets a killer (literally-she dies) monologue at the end of the film with Kiley, who is intent on murdering her if she doesn't finger Skip, and just aces it.  She's trying to save for a fancy funeral, a way to send her off in elegance that she never got to enjoy in life, and gives a great soliloquy to Kiley about being old, being tired, but not understanding a way of not continuing on.  It's marvelous-in one great scene she shows the entire life of a woman, totally selling her as someone worthy whom life kept giving bad hands.  It's the best I've ever seen Ritter, and makes this her most deserving Oscar nomination.

This is what stuck out to me while watching the movie.  The film is noted for its deeply anti-Communist plotline, taken at the height of the Red Scare, which might rub some people the wrong way (though to my knowledge no one associated with this picture "named names"), but it's interesting and has fun dialogue.  However, it's Ritter that makes this film worthwhile, creating a woman emerging where most people just saw shadows.

Previous Films in the Series: Gun Crazy, Night and the City, In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep

OVP: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Film: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Stars: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Jeffrey Lynn, Paul Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Thelma Ritter
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Adapted Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

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

It's occasionally difficult to know where to end our months with each star-do we go with their final major success, as we did with Ann Sheridan & Alice Faye, or do we go to the depths of their film careers like Virginia Mayo and Cyd Charisse?  Considering how tragic Linda Darnell's life ended up being, with her eventually going into bouts of alcoholism and being burned alive in one of Hollywood's most horrific deaths, it felt wrong to wade through the final stages of her career, when she would have the occasional lead role, but was perhaps most well-known in the 1950's for the part she didn't get (despite a love affair with Jopeph L. Mankiewicz, it was Ava Gardner who won the lead in The Barefoot Contessa even though Darnell was certain she would be its star and her life may have profoundly changed if she'd gotten the part in the picture which was a smash hit for United Artists).  We will instead leave her at arguably the professional peak of her career, the Best Picture-nominated A Letter to Three Wives, featuring what many consider to be her finest performance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the lives of three friends: Lora Mae (Darnell), Deborah (Crain), and Rita (Sothern), all of whom are frenemies with a woman who is never seen but has made passes at each of their husbands at some point named Addie Ross (an uncredited Celeste Holm does the narration, recalling in many ways Mankiewicz's magnum opus All About Eve).  All three women are chaperoning a school field trip when they receive a letter from Addie Ross, cattily pointing out to them that she has decided to skip town...and is taking one of their husbands with her.  The movie progresses with each woman wondering, silently, on the trip whether or not their husband is the one who ran away with the woman, and recalling scenes from their marriage that could have led to such infidelity.  Rita, after all, is a career woman (considering it's 1949, this is handled with less sexism than you'd think though it's obviously still there), Deborah is a bit dowdy & doesn't fit in with her husband's friends, and Lora Mae's husband thinks she's just a gold-digger, waiting for her chance at his fortune.  None of the marriages seem to be in particularly strong shape, though it's pretty clear that Rita's to George (Kirk Douglas, when he was still taking supporting roles of a sort) is in the best shape, and they lay down the cards pretty quickly that he isn't the culprit.  It turns out that, despite Deborah's husband not showing up at the country club dance, it was Lora Mae's Porter (Paul Douglas, who was only in his first year of moviemaking at the time despite being 42) that had run off with Addie, only to change his mind.  The film ends with Lora Mae & Porter admitting that they love each other, and a happy ending, with Addie saying "good night" to the audience as they all dance.

The movie is charming from start-to-finish.  It's hard not to make easy comparisons to All About Eve, not only because it shares several cast members (Holm, of course, and Thelma Ritter in a role so early in her career she didn't even get onscreen billing despite a substantial part that might have won her an Oscar nomination a few years later), but because it's the rare classic Hollywood movie that genuinely just puts women out in front, with all of the male actors relegated to supporting roles.  Eve is better, but that's an impossible bar to compare to, and this is a rich screenplay filled with witty asides (Darnell, Sothern, Ritter, & Holm all bat the one-liners out of the park), and is equally funny and dramatic.  The movie never shies away from the stakes here-the women all are in troubled marriages, and all don't want their marriages to end, but are aware that this isn't an ideal situation.  I liked that Mankiewicz didn't just go around blaming these three women for the problems in their partnerships, having the men own up to such things as well as the female characters, and while it just missed the Best Picture win to All the King's Men, it certainly would have made a worthy capper to the 1940's.

It's impossible not to compare the three lead actresses.  At first, I liked Sothern the best, as she was having the most fun with Mankiewicz's dialogue and in the first half it's hard to tell why Darnell's Lora Mae seemed so distant compared to the other actresses' closeness.  As the film goes on, though, we find that Lora Mae is the most interesting part of the three, and Darnell (in the best performance we've chronicled from her all month) aces it.  Lora Mae isn't a gold digger, but she is someone whom men just see as cheap and there "for a good time."  Ravishingly beautiful, but a poor girl, she's someone Porter thinks can be had for a steak dinner or a promotion, but in fact she wants something real and isn't afraid to lose him to get it.  That's what makes the stakes of the ending so great-Lora Mae is the only one of the three women who hasn't admitted to herself how much she loves her husband (and how much she loves him), and as a result is the only one of the three women you could see being abandoned before the curtain ends in a melodrama.  That she doesn't isn't a fault of the film, and actually to its aid, and one has to assume that Darnell was close to an Oscar nomination for this part, perhaps only missing out because she was splitting the vote with her costars (surely she would have campaigned correctly as a lead, but in our era of category fraud, she now would've gone supporting).  Darnell proved here with her superb comic timing & strong dramatic work that she was more than just a pretty face, and should be remembered not just for her beauty, but for being a damn fine actress.

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!

OVP: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

Film: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Neville Brand, Betty Field, Telly Savalas
Director: John Frankenheimer
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actor-Burt Lancaster, Supporting Actor-Telly Savalas, Supporting Actress-Thelma Ritter, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but it never stops being true: biopics are rarely successfully executed onscreen, particularly from the aspect of a screenplay.  The films that make it to the screen are of famous people, frequently famous people who are living or who have people who know their life and have admiration for their lives.  As a result, to avoid libel, we get whitewashed instances of a person onscreen being far more puritanical and noble than they actually were in real-life.  Still, though, it's hard to remember a time this was more true than in Birdman of Alcatraz, the sort of film that literally takes a murderer and turns him into a martyr.  The film, from acclaimed-director John Frankenheimer, has to be one of the most bloated endeavors I've seen from such a usually polished director, and I left disappointed and actually hoping for a remake.

(Spoilers Ahead) The reason for this is that there's actually an interesting story here.  Robert Stroud (Lancaster) is a man who was convicted of murder, avoided the death penalty, and then spent decades of his life in solitary confinement.  He doesn't go mad during this time, though, but instead becomes an ornithologist of sorts, keeping dozens of birds in his jail cell, studying them, and eventually becoming quite noted in the scientific community.  He eventually gets to leave Alcatraz, which is the ending of the film, meeting his biographer.

In the middle, though, he ends up being the kindest, gentlest of convicts that you ever did meet.  Fellow inmates of Stroud's later complained that Frankenheimer and Lancaster owed them an apology for the sugarcoating of a convicted murderer.  Played by Lancaster he becomes a struggling Mr. Smith of the penal system.  It doesn't help matter that Lancaster, who is admittedly a fine actor, can't really damp down his stage-actor sensibilities.  He reads every line from Stroud like he's doing the final act of King Lear, earnest and tough grit and poise.  It's impossible to imagine an inmate with Stroud's roots becoming so instantly posh and sensitive, and yet that's what Lancaster does to him.  Even worse is the way that Karl Malden, the prison's warden, is made out to be the villain of the tale.  Malden, who also has that noble-actor thing down pat, can't help but feel extremely wooden in the role, seeming like someone who must always be at his absolutely most perturbed, never allowing for any sort of sympathy for Stroud, even though in the film he's basically a saint.

The film won four Oscar nominations, with the Cinematography actually being quite good in the film-the lighting is very strong in certain scenes, and it helps that Burnett Guffey (the man who won an Oscar for lensing Lancaster a decade earlier in From Here to Eternity) knows when his big moments to shine (like the prison break and the light-filled scene on Fisherman's Wharf) are, and he takes them.  The actors, though, are all playing rough facsimiles of their cliched selves.  Lancaster doesn't know how to temper his performance, so his Stroud is only strong when he's doing something virile and noble, and not when he's trying to show any sort of shading.  Telly Savalas is scene-stealing, and I get where this nomination came from (he's showy in a way that no one else is), but unnecessary to the plot and ultimately pretty two-dimensional, even for someone whom the script demands be a simpleton.  Weirdest of all is Thelma Ritter, a supporting actress par excellence, who is given a massively BAIT-y role (hence the nomination, her sixth), but does nothing with it.  She's supposed to be the mother-from-hell, but in reality she underplays all but her final scene, and there's little to nothing in this performance, and the script doesn't care about her enough to project onto her.  Is she jealous, a publicity hound, or part of an Oedipal situation we can't understand since it's 1962?  It's hard to say, and Ritter doesn't play it as any.

All-in-all, then, this is a disappointing film.  There's too many talented names attached for it not to succeed on occasion, but when you have Burt Lancaster, Thelma Ritter, and John Frankenheimer together you should do better than just succeed on occasion.  If you've seen it, weigh in-are you as underwhelmed as I am?  And if you haven't seen it, at least let me hear your favorite performances from the frequently Oscar-cited Lancaster and Ritter.