Presenting Oscar's Chosen Supporting Actresses of the Films of 1970. The Academy welcomed back one enduring icon (Helen Hayes), two of the eventual giants of this particular category (Maureen Stapleton and Lee Grant), and two new stars of the moment (Sally Kellerman and Karen Black).
THE NOMINEES
Their characters were a devastated soon-to-be widow, a sneaky old lady flying the friendly skies, a pregnant waitress confused by her man, a wealthy "liberal" snob who is more conservative than she thinks, and a disciplined but highly excitable military nurse. 1970's supporting shortlist was more "pure" than the category often is now (only Karen Black could be argued as a lead... but she's on the borderline so it's fine) but how strong were the roles and how good the work?
Here to talk about these five nominated turns are, in alpha order: Mark Blankenship (Critic), Dan Callahan (Author), Denise Grayson (Actress), Lena Houst (Critic), Bobby Rivers (TV/Radio Personality) and your host Nathaniel R (The Film Experience). And now it's time for the main event...
1970
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN
Karen Black as "Rayette Dipesto" in Five Easy Pieces
Synopsis: A pregnant waitress tries to keep hold of her wandering moody boyfriend.
Stats: Then 31 yrs old, 4th film, 2nd billed. 1st and only nomination. 31 minutes of screen time (or 32% of running time)
Mark Blankenship: Nope. Nope. Triple nope. Rayette Dipesto is an insipid character who's written to be the sneeze guard that Robert Dupea spews his self-loathing anger on. She's infuriating to watch, and Karen Black's simpering, "oh please keep loving me, daddy" performance only makes it worse. ♥
Dan Callahan: Black is so effective here as the needy, limited Rayette because she makes us sympathize with the helpless woman she is playing but she also makes us see how Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea has got to get away from her. Black never condescends to Rayette. She makes her just as sweet and as irritating as she should be. ♥♥♥♥
Denise Grayson: I keep thinking about that lip gloss and makeup! I know that’s not ‘the work’ but those things help you find your way into the character. And boy she’s inside Rayette... so afraid and needy and lonely. It's palpable. I think her neediness strongly helps pave the way for Jack Nicholson's feelings of suffocation. That's an actor's job well done. ♥♥♥♥
Lena Houst: Helena Kallianiotes and Susan Anspach may resonate deeper as more thoughtful, confrontational characters, but there's something to be said for the cutting sincerity Karen Black brings to Rayette, embittered former pianist Bobby Dupea's mid-western girlfriend. Black's meant to give emotional immediacy to a character who's purely reactive, her best moments turning the tables on Bobby's expectations of slow wit and submission from her, cutting through with frustration at the mixed & barbed signals she's receiving. ♥♥♥
Bobby Rivers: Karen Black was perfect for her role as Rayette the diner waitress. In the fine tale of alienation, Rayette is an odd girlfriend choice for Bobby, the educated oil rigger who plays classical piano. They're an intellectual mismatch. Rayette can be honest with her emotions and connect. He can't. Black gives upbeat Rayette a blunt neediness that keeps her from being like a sitcom character on Alice. The neediness will blind her to the fact that her relationship with a loner who can't be satisfied is headed nowhere. ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Her signature song "Stand By Your Man" lets you know where Rayette lives, as early as your first glimpse of her. As she pivots from looking at herself in the mirror to looking at Robert (Jack Nicholson), she calls to mind a dim sexbot only activated by a man's presence. The script may be a smidge condescending and her notes repetitive but Black makes Rayette's lack of identity and self-esteem relatable and moving (she really needs to keep looking in that mirror instead of at her man - gurl, he is not worth it!) Black is especially good when Rayette can't quite grasp the conversations around her, especially that beautiful moment with Robert's family when she'd rather be watching TV. ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "'I’m not a piece of crap.' A heartbreaking performance as a woman forced to swallow her pride so often she can barely keep it down." - Mike (Reader average: ♥♥♥♥⅓)
Actress earns 24⅓ ❤s
Lee Grant as "Mrs Enders" in The Landlord
Synopsis: A wealthy white woman is thrown by her son's sudden move to a black neighborhood and his new biracial girlfriend.
Stats: Then 45 yrs old, 12th film, 2nd billed. Her 2nd of 4 eventual nominations (all in the supporting category). 25 minutes of screentime (or 22% of the running time)
Mark Blankenship: In my very soul, I believe Lee Grant improvised the moment in The Landlord where she throws the ham hock in her purse as a treat for later. She has the electric energy of a performer who's reacting to the reality of the moment and not just speaking her lines. But even if that bit IS in the script, Grant makes it feel alive. She carries that zest throughout her performance, and she helps define this weird, brilliant movie ♥♥♥♥
Dan Callahan: Grant is playing a very tricky comic part here. The tone of her first scenes is nervy and dangerous, and she goes all out with that. But then in her big scene where she gets drunk with Pearl Bailey, Grant has to reveal the real human dilemma of her rich, zany, libidinal, frustrated character, and she does it best when her Mrs. Joyce Enders is drunkenly trying to remember which man she married. That’s a scary moment, really, when this woman can’t remember which one of her suitors she eventually wed, and Grant gives it full weight while also keeping her satirical viewpoint. ♥♥♥♥
Denise Grayson: One of the first things you learn in acting is to not judge the character you’re playing. Her unapologetic confidence playing this bigoted woman allows her to be completely connected to the material. She’s really paving the way for everyone in the ensemble (so many good performances). She might have gone over the top playing a hateful woman, but in her skilled hands, Mrs. Enders is so layered. I could feel her love for her son in conflict with the fact that she couldn’t help who she was. ♥♥♥♥♥
Lena Houst: Grant's work is a skillful case of lending sharp edges to a problematic character who could easily be a vacant cartoon. As the titular landlord's racist-in-denial mother, Grant keeps a steady hold of her character's wavering sense of control over her son's life, the values she ostensibly preaches bending to her goals at the moment. Grant's expression while realizing she hasn't taught her son his actual birthday is a sharp example of how she physically embodies her character's fluctuating contradictions. ♥♥♥♥
Bobby Rivers: Mrs Enders is the kind of woman you'd find in a Stephen Sondheim musical like Company. She's a study in White Privilege. Her son is the face of gentrification. He bought a brownstone in the black section of Brooklyn that he wants to renovate ... if he can get the poor black tenants out. She considers herself liberal until her son falls in love with, as she calls her, "a Negress." When she passive aggressively visits the building and meets Marge, played by Pearl Bailey, the two opposites bond over ghetto wine and hammocks. Lee Grant makes this wealthy mother funny, clueless, repressed and pathetic. She's fabulous. ♥♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: What nervy work! Grant enters the picture with a dizzying boldness, dancing, playing with her cat, bickering with her son, and clamoring for a drink (i.e. booze)... and all of that she's doing simultaneously! She risks going big in nearly every scene and might throw a less fascinating picture off balance. Instead she's an eager spark continually relighting the movie's dynamite blend of social satire, confrontational politics, and in her particular case, legacy angst - her chemistry with screen son Beau Bridges is something. ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Grant is a both a hoot and a terror as the boozy, racist Mrs. Enders. Her first scene with Bridges is full of lovely, nuanced little moments but it doesn't fully prepare you for the frightening woman who can turn on her son orr booze it up and let loose.." - DJDeeJay (Reader average: ♥♥♥¼)
Actress earns 29¼ ❤s
Helen Hayes as "Ada Quonsett" in Airport
Synopsis: A sneakly old lady's illegal travel habits are disrupted by airport officials... and then a bomb threat!
Stats: Then 70 yrs old, 15th film, 6th billed. 2nd nomination. 1 previous win. 17 minutes of screen time (or 12% of running time).
Mark Blankenship: Helen Hayes had nothing to prove by the time Airport rolled around, and if she'd wanted to, she could've mugged her way through her scenes and been like, "What? I'm a legend. Be grateful I'm here." But you can disconnect your landline, y'all, because she is not phoning it in. She gives Ada Quonsett layer after layer, letting you see mischief, joy, craftiness, and even righteous indignation as she perpetrates and then defends her stowaway schemes. Watching this movie, I kept wanting her to come back, and by the final scene, I wanted Ada to have a TV show that tracked her illegal journeys around the globe. . ♥♥♥♥♥
Dan Callahan: This is the ultimate in “I’m a little old lady and I’m naughty!” audience pandering. The very technical Hayes was never noted for subtlety, and she knows exactly what she is doing here. Her character is a criminal, and Hayes herself is the acting equivalent of that. She robbed at least three of the other actresses in this category, and she smiled ever so cutely while doing so. ♥
Denise Grayson: When Miss Hayes is on the screen I can't look at anything else but her. She's having so much fun on the screen that her joy is infectious. She savored every second of this role, keeping you engaged for the entire movie. Her walk is unforgettable...kind of an erect waddle. I guess some say the Oscar may sometimes be for the stable of work or maybe simply for being the great Helen Hayes. I'll go with the Academy voters. ♥♥♥♥♥
Lena Houst: George Seaton's ensemble melodrama has a fairly vast cast that he's only able to define in simplistic sketches, none more necessarily so than Helen Hayes' serial stowaway Ada Quonsett. She's the quirky old lady who can't help but continuously cause mischief, a role designed to endear. It doesn't allow Hayes much to play with besides committing to the obvious comic stereotype she's been assigned. ♥
Bobby Rivers: Helen Hayes was called "The First Lady of the American Theater" and as the old lady who's a known stowaway, she's supposed to come off as plucky and amusing. Hayes makes this widow calculatedly cute... but come on. She's an admitted stowaway and a thief. This old lady should have been taken away in handcuffs by the FBI during her first scene. And she's seated next to the guy with the bomb on the plane. Helen Hayes got the Oscar because she was Helen Hayes. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: In her first scene I was smiling broadly as this little old lady's amusing pride in her crimes. But as the scenes piled up I kept waiting for a surprise, an undercurrent, a smidgeon of depth. Was Hayes's own confidence a problem? She’s an old school pro of stage, screen, and television, but it’s basically a one-joke role. I found her more than a little broad where she might have been sly had she been properly challenged. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "I know it is an unpopular win, but she's clearly having fun with her character, which puts her miles ahead of most of the cast who are barely trying." -James (Reader average: ♥¾)
Actress earns 17¾ ❤s
Sally Kellerman as "Major Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan" in MASH
Synopsis: An uptight "damn good nurse" struggles with the unruly discipline-free doctors around her during the Korean war.
Stats: Then 33 yrs old, 7th film, 4th billed. 1st and only nomination. 25 minutes of screentime (or 21% of running time.)
Mark Blankenship: There's lot to debate about MASH and whether its admirable intention to satirize the insanity of a pointless war is invalidated by its cruelty toward so-called villains like Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan. But one reason I even want to have that argument is because Sally Kellerman makes Houlihan seem like a real person. Watch the way she flushes with pride when she talks about the Army being her home, or the way she blanches with misery when she realizes protecting her dignity may require resigning her beloved commission. The other characters treat Houlihan like a joke, but Kellerman lets us see she's not. ♥♥♥♥
Dan Callahan: Kellerman’s character, Major Margaret O’Houlihan, is first presented as a broad comedy type, an uptight stickler for rules who is attempting to suppress her own ravenous sexuality, and Kellerman finds the right comic attitude in her first scenes. But then the movie keeps harassing and humiliating her character long past the point where it could feel like justified payback. The scene where Margaret is exposed naked in a shower while most of the base looks on as audience members is brutally cruel. And then suddenly Margaret is a cheerleader at the climactic football game after this happened to her? Considering that her character makes no sense, Kellerman does the best she can to try to make this woman coherent, but she is defeated. ♥♥
Denise Grayson: She brings an extraordinary physicality to this role. The image of her clutching her clothing or scurrying across the camp after sex remains in my mind. The scenes are uncomfortable -- you couldn’t make so many of these movies today -- but she throws herself in with abandon. She makes Major Houlihan a fun and intricate part of the movie. I’m sure her strong work laid the foundation for the character that could be more fully explored and developed over the years on the TV series. ♥♥♥♥
Lena Houst: At the heart of what's most repulsive about Robert Altman's war comedy M*A*S*H is the treatment Major Hot Lips Houlihan, though that's in no way Kellerman's fault. If she does struggle, especially towards the end, to resist the misogynistic conceptions of her character, she does an effective job undercutting those perceptions until then. Houlihan's the butt of M*A*S*H's cruelest pranks, but Kellerman lends her a transfixing, endearingly cocky authority that makes her humiliation all the more infuriating. ♥♥♥
Bobby Rivers: Sally Kellerman visually gives us the essence of Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan when first we see her. She's in full military attire as she departs a helicopter that just landed at the MASH base in South Korea. Her skirt hikes above her knees. We catch a glimpse of stocking and panties. Kellerman shines as the officer who's at war with herself. On the outside. she's all military. But under that conservative exterior she has the same sex urges as the liberal MASH unit surgeons she annoys with her stiffness. Sally Kellerman manages to be both irritating in a funny neurotic way and likeable. ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: You can tie yourself in joyless knots judging this movie from a modern perspective. Or you can admire how deftly she inhabits the comedy of this impossible character that swings lustily on a misogynist pendulum from nagging shrew to horny sexpot fantasy. She's top-notch in that big scene with Robert Duvall landing the difficult joke of virtue-signalling as repressive's turn-on. Later though, the character becomes less interesting. There’s a fine moment during an operation in this irreverent comedy when a doctor remarks “You’re a pain in my ass but you’re a damn good nurse.” That’s the same way I felt about the role versus the actress! ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "She shows Margaret’s frustration as a spit and polish career military person against the juggernaut of rebellion and high jinx foisted upon her without losing the humor of the situation" - Joel (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 22½ ❤s
Maureen Stapleton as "Inez Guerrero" in Airport
Synopsis: A waitress realizes her unemployed husband may be about to commit an atrocity when he suddenly boards a plane to Rome.
Stats: Then 45 yrs old, 6th film, 8th billed. 2nd of 4 eventual nominations (all in the supporting category). 11 minutes of screentime (or 8% of running time).
Mark Blankenship: It's startling that a movie as schlocky as Airport has not one but two brilliant performances in it. It's even more startling that one of them is as funny as Helen Hayes' while the other is as devastating as Maureen Stapleton's. But here we are, with the latter seeming like she's stepped out of an Arthur Miller play to portray a woman whose love for her mentally unstable husband eventually tears her apart. The scene in the coffeeshop, where she gently accepts him for the wastrel he is, and the moment in the airport, when she apologizes to the room for his terrorist act, are both gonna stick with me for a while. If I'd been a voter this year, I'd have had to flip a coin to choose between these co-stars. ♥♥♥♥♥
Dan Callahan: Stapleton’s role here is in many ways a thankless one. She has to play all kinds of unattractive things: worry, shame, fear. And she does this in such a grounded, soulful, personal way that she breaks my heart when her character goes around at the end trying to apologize to the people her husband has put through hell on that airplane. This is Method acting at its best. ♥♥♥♥
Denise Grayson: A naive and simple character finely played. She brings a different color to the movie since the rest is more comic or soap opera like. As a theater actress, she clearly did beautiful work on this character -- she’s really inside Inez, giving you the feeling of this woman’s whole life. I found her quite moving, but unfortunately there is very little of her in the movie. ♥♥♥♥
Lena Houst: Of the put-upon wives in Seaton's ensemble, Inez Guerrero seems like an obvious choice. She's the most actively traumatized throughout, stunned by the terror & guilt of her husband's suicide bomb mission. However, while Dana Wynter gets into a tense dialogue with her character's husband, all Stapleton gets to do is crumple in grief and regret. Her expression is effectively vacant of all hope, leaving a tremulous shell behind. As with Hayes, though, she's serving a machine without much serve her in return. ♥
Bobby Rivers: Maureen Stapleton was a gifted actress. Airport was a big hit movie based on a best-selling novel. The box office success does not eclipse the fact that this movie is one big hunk of cheese with wings. It's obvious how much of this movie inspired the hit comedy, Airplane! Stapleton's talents aren't really challenged as the middle-aged, loving diner waitress whose poor unemployed husband is depressed and suicidal. Stapleton mostly displays a frozen stare of disbelief when airport officials tell her her husband's bomb exploded in flight -- and one stewardess was injured. But everyone else is ok. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Stapleton’s autobiography is called “A Hell of a Life.” The title is perfect because, if you imagine it in her voice, it sounds like working-class weary fact rather than self-mythologizing boastfulness. Her work always had vanity-free depth and that’s true even with this vague character. She's got the only truly internal role in all of Airport (most characters address their “issue” in dialogue) but she fills the empty space with feeling. She’s maybe too good for this movie? Her near catatonic silence and fearful wandering in the airport are almost as unnerving as the bomb scare. But I needed a lot more of her. ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "The heart and soul of the fun and campy and very very 70's Airport. Everyone else is playing for the paycheck. " - Rob (Reader average: ♥♥♥½)
Actress earns 23½ ❤s
Helen Hayes took the Oscar
but in the Smackdown she got, well, smacked down to last place!
...and Lee Grant emerges as the surprise winner!
We hope you enjoyed the Smackdown!
Want more? Here's a companion podcast in two parts in which we discuss the films and performances in more detail.
Previous Smackdowns: 1941, 1944, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1963, 1964, 1968, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1995, 2003, 2016, and 2017 (prior to those 30+ Smackdowns were hosted @ StinkyLulu's old site)
NEXT UP? 1994 in June. 1943 in July.