Presenting the Supporting Actresses of '63. Well well, what have we here? This year's statistical uniqueness (the only time one film ever produced three supporting actress nominees) and the character lineup reads juicier than it actually is - your Fab Five are, get this: a saucy wench, a pious auntie, a disgraced lady, a pillpopping royal, and a stubborn nun.
THE NOMINEES
from left to right: Cilento, Evans, Redman, Rutherford, Skalia
In 1963 Oscar voters went for an all-first-timers nominee list in Supporting Actress. The eldest contenders would soon become Dames (Margaret Rutherford and Edith Evans were both OBEs at the time). Rutherford, the eventual winner, was the only nominee with an extensive film history and she was in the middle of a hot streak with her signature role as Jane Marple which ran across multiple films from through 1961-1965. In fact, Agatha Christie had just dedicated her new book "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" to the future Dame. Despite Rutherford's cultural popularity, the only women who would return to the Oscar fold (and quickly) would be Joyce Redman and Edith Evans. The latter was beloved -- voters couldn't get enough of Evans in the Sixties during her seventies.
Notable supporting actresses of the year who Oscar didn't nominate were most of the Globe nominees: Wendy Hiller (Toys in the Attic), Diane Baker (The Prize), Linda Marsh (America America), and Lisolette Pulver (A Global Affair). Other key players passed over for this shortlist were: Maggie Smith (The VIPs), Jessica Tandy (The Birds), Claire Bloom (The Haunting), Gena Rowlands (A Child is Waiting), Constance Towers (Shock Corridor), Claire Trevor (The Stripper), Julie Christie (Billy Liar) and any of the women from Fellini's 8½.
from left to right: McGovern, Scarlett, Bugbee, Mullins, Nathaniel
Here to talk about these five nominated turns are your host Nathaniel R (The Film Experience) and the panelists: Teo Bugbee (freelance culture critic), Kieran Scarlett (screenwriter), and Brian Mullin and Sean McGovern (of the Broad Appeal podcast). And now it's time for the main event...
1963
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN
Diane Cilento as "Molly Seagrim" in Tom Jones
Synopsis: A promiscuous villager is with child. But is it Tom Jones' or someone elses? Who knows! Who cares? Molly doesn't.
Stats: Then 30 yrs old (and newly married to Sean Connery!), 12th film, 1st and only nomination. 8 minutes of screen time (or 6% of running time).
Brian & Seán: Definitely the best eye make-up in the film (sorry, Joyce!). From the instant Cilento’s Molly appears her costume design and breathy moan (“Ahhhhh, Tom…”) typify her as the stereotypical Lusty Wench and the characterization never goes any further. While nearly everyone in Tom Jones is straight out of a Hogarth engraving, the others do it with more aplomb and technical facility. Molly’s accent should be West Country but Cilento’s native Australian slides toward Cockney and Irish in every other scene. She plays Molly as a purely sexual, nearly feral being, constantly writhing and giggling. Was it the brazen display of sexuality alone that made this seem a worthy nomination in 1963? While it's clear that Cilento is enjoying herself, and that energy sustains the role, we're baffled that Cliento was picked ahead of Joan Greenwood whose cool, coiffed Lady Bellaston could be London's answer to the Marquise de Merteuil. ♥
Kieran Scarlett: Of the three actresses nominated for the clearly beloved Tom Jones, Cilento truly embodies the jovial spirit and tone more than the others. She nails her comedic beats with aplomb. She never quite goes
beyond the expectations of the plucky, charismatic sex worker archetype (and the film doesn’t exactly ask her to), but what she does within the confines of the archetype is funny and generally winning. ♥♥♥
Teo Bugbee: The Penelope Cruz in Nine of the year's nominees, Cilento plays her lusty wench lustily, wenchily. I was surprised by this nomination, but the maybe thought Cilento had the benefit of being the Supporting Actress of the clearly beloved Tom Jones to appear onscreen first?. ♥
Nathaniel R: Molly is meant to be a force of nature but the hair and makeup team do that work, making her elemental, as if she's always just been rolling around in the hay, dirt, and foliage. There's a certain randy defiance and sex-positive joy in Cilento's aggressive close-ups which feel more actressy than written. I also loved her dimwitted joy at the "potent" wine she gulps down which feels spontaneous. But this is, quite frankly, a bizarre nomination for a broadly defined type. Plus, she's barely in the movie! ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: Brings a wild-eyed carnality to the character" - Edward (Reader average: ♥♥⅓)
Actress earns 9⅓ ❤s
Edith Evans as "Miss Western" in Tom Jones
Synopsis: A matchmaking aunt tries to wed her niece to respectable men and yank her away from that rascal bastard Tom Jones!
Stats: Then 75 yrs old, 9th film, 1st of three nominations. 12½ minutes of screen time (or 10% of running time).
Brian & Seán: Evans basically nails it. Her years on the stage in Wilde, Shaw and Coward no doubt prepared her well for delivering Miss Western’s barbed epigrams with wonderfully flared nostrils – and need we even bring attention to her quality old-lady cleavage? Of the three nominated actresses, she’s the one who most successfully inhabits the anti-naturalistic style of the film while also making her character seem a fully realized creation. Along with her thorny delivery, her stony face and bulging eyes make Miss Western an imperious, prudish gargoyle – a perfect match for Hugh Griffiths’ equally grotesque portrayal of her country bumpkin brother. The role has very few layers and not much relevance to the plot, but we enjoy each of Evans’ appearances. She takes a perfunctory part and invests it with the skills of a seasoned old pro. ♥♥♥
Kieran Scarlett: There may be none better at this kind of role than Evans. Performing ironic odes to societal propriety in withering voice is her capital “W” Wheelhouse. However, it’s not particularly revealing work and she
doesn’t bring notes not already on the page. Unlike Skala, Evans seems utterly nonreactive to what her scene partners are giving her, which may be symptomatic of everyone in the film operating at the same register. She’s just fine, but she isn’t more than that. ♥♥
Teo Bugbee: As the hectoring chaperone to besotted Susannah York, Evans has many of the movie's best lines, which are a pleasure to hear in the plummy tones of Evans's best Royal Theater voice. It's a thin role, but Evans plays the scold amiably. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: In one of the film's zaniest editorial jokes, the farm animals perk their ears up with alarm when Miss Western makes a proclamation. Evans enunciates with such bullhorn force that we're with the beasts or her brother who recoils every time she enters. In a film that demands cartoonish emphasis from its actors and wants you laughing constantly, Evans both delivers the good and gift wraps them, too. It's true that Evans is pulling focus with abandon but Miss Western is an attention hog! That choice is even there in her physical comedy: watch her shove chickens out of her way that weren't even in her way! ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Evans is a dithering, haughty delight that only gets better with every scene she's in." - Nick (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 14 ❤s
Joyce Redman as "Jenny Jones/Miss Waters" in Tom Jones
Synopsis: A maid fired from her employment due to an illegitimate child becomes entangled with the child's fate when he grows up.
Stats: Then 48 yrs old, 3rd film, 1st of two nominations. 11½ minutes of screen time (or 9% of running time).
Brian & Seán: There’s a moment at the end of Tom Jones when Joyce Redman turns to the camera and winkingly explains all of the plot’s twists, turns and mistaken identities. It exemplifies the movie’s tricksy, metatheatrical style and Redman delivers it with total glee, as if she’s in cahoots with the filmmakers. Her character is more of a plot device than a real person, withholding information for no other reason than to keep the audience in the dark. She’s a rouged-up red herring, and Redman is essentially asked to play a different person from scene to scene. It’s a near-impossible task and yet she brings a keen intelligence that seems to belong more to the actress than to the woman she’s playing. She throws herself into each moment, most memorably for us her sexualized slurping of oysters at the inn. For all her gusto, though, she can’t quite make all the parts cohere – and she has only the second best eye-makeup in the film ♥♥
Kieran Scarlett: Only less confounding than Rutherford in that this charming, but unimpressive turn is housed in a film that works and feels coherent. Her nomination provides context for how much AMPAS fell for Tom Jones. She feels swept along for the ride. Despite the narrative importance of her character, the performance itself hardly stands out from the ensemble, who (at the very least) all operate at a baseline of servicing the film. Forgettable is the word that comes to mind. ♥
Teo Bugbee: Certainly the first time in Oscar history that an actress was nominated for her creative uses of wishbones. The eating scene in Tom Jones is still...memorable. But it's hard to credit its originality to Redman, and even harder to remember her contributions to the movie beyond that scene. ♥
Nathaniel R: More than any of the other cast members - yes, even Albert Finney as the titular bastard -- Redman has to encompass all of this Best Picture's eccentric impulses in her performance: silent film spoofing, fourth wall breaking, horny naughtiness, should we? Naaah encounters with pathos, slapstick comedy. She's wondrous in the film's most famous scene (a dialogue free feast/seduction) but no coherent character emerges from the disconnected multi-tasking. Who even is this woman? I couldn't tell you and I've seen the film twice ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Manages to make an impression early with very little dialogue, and is quite funny in the film’s famous scene, with even less." - Mike (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 10 ❤s
Margaret Rutherford as "The Duchess of Brighton" in The V.I.P.s
Synopsis: A discombobulated VIP worries about saving her estate while her flight is grounded.
Stats: Then 71 yrs old, 34th film, 1st and only nomination. 14.5 minutes of screen time (or 12% of running time).
Brian & Seán: This is the performance that sparked the most debate between us. In a film that probably has too many plot threads, Rutherford is essentially a solo player. She spends most of the time bumbling along by herself, and yet she turns all the bits of business with handbags and hat-boxes, passports and pills, into endearing comedy. The Duchess is at once a woman of superior social station and an old lady in a disorienting situation. Not only is she flying for the first time, but her family finances are forcing her to take up paid work – the horror - so that she can save her crumbling estate. Rutherford’s gentle humour and helplessness help us care about this hopelessly upper-crust dilemma. We longed for a necessary emotional payoff, playing opposite the film's stronger players Richard Burton or Maggie Smith. Instead, she is left mostly stranded, cloying panflutes underscoring her already sentimental soliloquies. But the sympathy her character must have garnered is as dated as the glamour of air travel. ♥♥♥♥
Kieran Scarlett: A baffling nomination and an even more baffling win, though it’s not entirely Rutherford’s fault. She’s saddled with an albatross of a film, utterly uninterested in her character beyond some cute, but
hardly praiseworthy dowager-ing. I’m surprised it was her and not Maggie Smith who garnered awards consideration (though, to be clear, I wouldn’t have nominated either of them or anyone else from this film).
Her best scene is the bit with the hatbox. I don’t say this charitably. ♥
Teo Bugbee: Rutherford was a pleasant surprise as the Duchess of The V.I.P.'s. Where I expected haughtiness, Rutherford offers only a gentle and endearing dottiness. It's not a complicated part, but Rutherford is charming and fresh in what might have easily been a moth ball of a role. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: In a case of 'less would have been more' Rutherford is instantly endearing but then redundant. One perfect line reading in which she casually foresees her own impending "advanced state of drug addiction" had me cackling but Rutherford fusses so much with this fussbudget I grew nearly as desperate to be on my way as this grounded VIP as to be back home while killing time in an airport lounge. Every scene is more of the same ---character arc? what's that? -- and the score is like aural flop sweat, triggered by every second of Rutherford's shtick and desperately begging you to be amused. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "entertaining, truly *supporting* role in a star-studded movie" - Marco (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 13 ❤s
Lilia Skala as "Mother Maria" in Lilies of the Field
Synopsis: A mother superior believes her prayers are answered when a stranger arrives. Can she convince him to build a chapel?
Stats: Then 67 yrs old, 6th film, 1st and only nomination. 52 minutes of screen time (or 55% of running time).
Brian & Seán: Could this be one of the earliest examples of egregious Category Fraud? Skala is definitely not a supporting player but the opposing force pushing against lead actor Sidney Poitier. Her performance has technical qualities that are certainly admirable, delivering lines dually in German and fractured English (and knowingly underplaying her abilities as a tactic for dealing with Sidney Poitier's “Schmidt”). She makes the mother superior's determination enjoyably bossy and yet the conflict - like the film overall - lacks heat. We get little indication of how Mother Maria’s faith has been shaped by her experiences under totalitarianism. In the rare moment when Poitier’s genial, inoffensive character loses his cool and compares her to Hitler, the response is too muted and brief to really land emotionally – which is largely the responsibility of the filmmakers and not Skala herself. Only in the luminous final close-ups do we see Skala playing in a different register, softening as she feels herself in the presence of something divine. Rougher edges throughout the performance, which hinted at Maria’s struggles with true darkness, however, would have made this final epiphany even more meaningful. ♥♥♥
Kieran Scarlett: Look…is it difficult or insightful work? Hardly. But Skala serves the tone of her film. There’s palpable chemistry with Poitier (key to selling the conceit of the narrative). She exhibits some shrewd actorly reaction skills (suspicion melting away into warmth during the call-and-response song sequences), even in a role that on the page is rote, bordering on cartoonish. I did find myself longing for more of this woman’s internal life, but she does sell the dynamic with Poitier’s character well ♥♥♥♥
Teo Bugbee: I grew up in the land of the Pennsylvania Dutch, where every adult I knew had memories of being put upon by the good sisters of some church or another. This is to say: I believed in Skala's staunch German character. But is she a lead? ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: I kept wondering if Skala had been a stage actress. There's more than a bit of playing to the back row in less than subtle facial expressions and hand gestures, though that's maybe a necessary evil with a character so restricted in expressiveness by the confines of clothing which swallows her whole and limited language skills. Still, she totally gets the movie's uncomplicated desire to uplift the audience and its comic spirit. That odd couple chemistry with Poitier counts for quite a lot, too. Fine work but I have to dock one heart for this being basically a lead role. ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "A nice performance, and she and Poitier are great together." -Aditya (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 16 ❤s
The Oscar Went To... Margaret Rutherford
(and you really should watch this clip)
THE SMACKDOWN disagrees...
Though none of the contenders won anyone's unqualified support (from panelists or readers - everyone seemed to have a different but mild favorite) the win goes to Lilia Skala's endearingly stubborn nun. Dame Edith Evans edged out the Oscar-winner for the runner-up position.
For the record Mother Maria would like to thank God for this honor and NOT any of you Smackdowners who voted for her.
Would you have chosen similarly?
Want more? There's a two-part companion podcast discussing these films and this year in greater detail. For context check out other 1963 lookbacks: Shock Corridor, Cleopatra, Melvyn Douglas and Hud, two art direction nominees in How the West Was Won and Come Blow Your Horn, Oscar night flashback, as well as an overview of the year in general
Thank you for attending!
Previous Smackdowns ICYMI: 1941, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1964, 1968, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1989, 1995, 2003 and 2016 (prior to those 30+ Smackdowns were hosted @ StinkyLulu's old site)
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