The Supporting Actress Smackdown series picks an Oscar vintage to explore. Now it's time for the season finale featuring the year 1987.
THE NOMINEES 1987's shortlist of supporting characters featured three very different moms (victim/monster/old-soul-wiseass), one selfless caretaker, and a gossipy neighbor. The actresses gathered were all mature talents, enjoying what would turn out to be their sole brush with Oscar.
THE PANEL Here to talk about the performances and films are, in alpha order, the actor Ato Essandoh (Away, Tales from the Loop, Chicago Med), critic/author Manuel Betancourt (Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall), critic Naveen Kumar, critic Kathia Woods, and your host Nathaniel R. Let's begin!
1987
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...
Norma Aleandro as "Florencia" in Gaby: A True Story
Synopsis: A maid with a special touch becomes a lifelong nanny to a girl with cerebral palsy who no one else has been able to connect with.
Stats: Then 51 yrs old, 15th film, 2nd billed. First (and only) nomination. 50 minutes of screen time (or 46% of the running time)
Manuel Betancourt: It took me a while to warm up to Gaby - A True Story (a film set entirely in Mexico that inexplicably has every character speaking English). But what got me through was Aleandro as Florencia. Hers is a “supporting” performance in the most literal of terms: she’s constantly on the side, looking askance, holding her tongue. It’s a testament to Aleandro’s performance that for a role that demands she be reactive and restrained, Florencia never feels marginal. One does wish the screenplay were more interested in her inner life but with what she’s given, the legendary Argentine actress is a wonder. ♥♥♥♥
Ato Essandoh: Absolutely lovely. She carries the whole movie in her eyes. She filled an otherwise underwritten part with a fragile intensity and grace. ♥♥♥♥
Naveen Kumar: Norma Aleandro’s performance is all in the eyes. She peers over those reading glasses and right into your soul! This is clearly a leading role moved into second position behind Liv Ullmann, which makes sense. I admit I had no idea there was another movie based on a true story so close to My Left Foot two years later; it makes me wonder if Gaby laid the groundwork for cerebral palsy memoirs becoming late-’80s Oscar bait. In a movie that otherwise feels like it could have been made for TV, Aleandro seems to me the most grounding presence. While I don’t love the voiceover narration, she brings a subtle nobility to this performance that I found very affecting throughout. ♥♥♥
Kathia Woods: She helped humanize Gaby via her performance, it wasn’t pity but respect which rarely happens in these films. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: I was cursing the unacceptable disposability of film culture while trying to watch Gaby: A True Story which is not available to rent anywhere. We deserve, yes even in 2020, to get totally lost in Aleandro's enormous benevolent eyes. [SIDE NOTE: ALL OSCAR NOMINATED FILMS SHOULD BE PRESERVED AND AVAILABLE AS A MATTER OF CULTURAL HISTORY!] Even through the smudgy haze of an apparent upload of a VHS bootleg, you can still make out her deeply empathic performance as an alarmingly recessive nanny, continually tense about letting down her guard lest any harm, especially the emotional kind, befall the young disabled woman in her care. Aleandro's flat narration is, unfortunately, not up to the expressiveness of her face. ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "At the time I thought this was simply a makeup nod for having missed out on a well deserved leading nomination in 85. Upon rewatching I saw the light: Aleandro was superb in this all but forgotten film." - Patrick (Reader average: ♥♥♥¼)
Actress earns 20¼ ❤s
Anne Archer as "Beth Gallagher" in Fatal Attraction
Synopsis: A woman discovers that her husband is having an affair... with a psychopath!
Stats: Then 40 yrs old, 15th film, 3rd billed. First (and only) nomination. 25 minutes of screentime (or 21% of the running time)
Manuel Betancourt: They truly don’t make erotic thrillers quite like these anymore, do they? For better and for worse. As the supportive wife (are there any other kind in this category?), Archer more than holds her own against Douglas and Close, who are quite the magnetic power couple — with Close obviously stealing scenes left and right. Her big scenes are just histrionic enough for the material, though I’m still saddened by the fact that her best acting showcase happens in the original slash alternate ending which is a lot more subdued and layered than the Final Girl bathtub scene she got in the final cut instead. ♥♥♥
Ato Essandoh: Holy shit. When her face breaks upon learning of the affair… It’s like she aged 30 years in 30 milliseconds it took to hear the news. Masterful. ♥♥♥♥♥
Naveen Kumar: In a movie about men’s most extreme fears and fantasies about women (which are so often the same thing!), Anne Archer is the Pre-Raphaelite wife (soft, angelic, domestic) to Glenn Close’s Goya-esque mistress turned feral predator. On the page and in concept, both characters could have easily fallen into caricature or felt even more like transparent golems sprung from the deepest corners of men’s psychosexual imaginations. It’s why I think the screenplay was passed over while Adrian Lyne was nominated for direction. But Close and Archer are the reason this movie transcends even its own deranged misogyny. Archer’s progression from innocent trophy to broken soul to that bitch who will shoot you in the bathtub is as much a marvel as Close’s star performance. Anne was robbed! ♥♥♥♥
Kathia Woods: Her reaction to the confession scene is a good choice. She's putting the puzzle together rather than going straight to anger. But you see the man's perspective on the screen: She is beautiful, educated, social, an addition to him. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Archer is an appealingly warm screen presence. For the first half of the movie she utterly convinces within the naturalism of the ensemble scenes as a basically happy big city wife and mom. It's a very lived in marriage she creates with screen hubby Michael Douglas. Still, the role is extremely limited in its scope with all the dramatic lifting going to the two leads. Her later scenes as a victim of the affairs fallout are too generic for me. Are they missed opportunities to add more texture to Beth's personality -- and what is her personality? -- or is the film just not interested in her (except as the stock "wronged wife") once the pulp comes to a boil? ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "She's kind of perfect in the movie. The good wife. The safe choice. To be in a movie with Glenn Close as Alex Forrest and not be completely erased from the screen... well, that's remarkable." - Peggy Sue (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 19½ ❤s
Olympia Dukakis as "Rose Castorini" in Moonstruck
Synopsis: A wise sharp-tongued matriarch has words for her family members, especially her chaotic daughter and her cheating husband.
Stats: Then 56 yrs old, 11th film, 4th billed. First (and only) nomination. 20 minutes of screen time (or 20% of the running time).
Manuel Betancourt: The joy of watching Dukakis in Moonstruck is only perhaps rivaled by the joy of watching Cher in Moonstruck. The two are so magnetic, both together and apart, that it doesn’t surprise me both walked away with matching golden statues. From her very first moment (“Who died?”) you get why Dukakis is so great: she can be so warm yet so cutting, often in the same beat that she makes her beatific Rose Castorini feel like a real person rather than a tricky twist on the suffering wife (the film’s gender politics are best ignored, perhaps). Like only she can, she finds levels and colors to play, arguably offering the best dinner table acting of that year’s crop. ♥♥♥♥
Ato Essandoh: Holy shit. Again. She’s everything here. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Just a fantastic turn. She is a Jedi master. ♥♥♥♥♥
Naveen Kumar: I love this movie and I love Cher. I also really love Olympia Dukakis, and I will not deny that she’s perfect in this part. But it does seem like maybe she got swept up in the momentum for this movie overall? It could be that I’m taking this performance for granted in retrospect (quick, tell me to “snap outta it!!!”); looking back on it now, it’s just... so Olympia. In my mind, she could have done it in her sleep, and maybe that’s what makes it brilliant. We’ve become used to actors delivering “Oscar scenes,” where you really feel like — that’s why she’s going to win — and she doesn’t really have one here. But it was a turning point that launched her big screen career, and thank goodness for that! ♥♥♥
Kathia Woods: Feisty is how I best view this performance. She’s a woman discovering her own voice later in life, especially in her marriage. She had all the narrative for the win and rode the Cher wave! ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: The library is open and Rose Castorini will read you. Dukakis is utterly perfect in this precisely judged comic role with an immensely enjoyable dramatic undertow... or is that the other way around? This is the best kind of ensemble player performance, deeply enmeshed in the behavior around her, observing in funny ways, but ready to take the lead with an unforgettable expression or mic drop line reading. Dukakis knows this woman to the core and understands the way love informs and exasperates her. ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "I have to agree with the Academy. Dukakis vividly reminds us that this woman’s intuition is borne out of deep love for her family. She would often give us a glimpse of her hopelessness but she will do all her might to keep them together. " - Julius (Reader average: ♥♥♥♥½)
Actress earns 25½ ❤s
Anne Ramsey as "Momma" in Throw Momma From the Train
Synopsis: An abusive old woman is oblivious to her son's plot to kill her.
Stats: Then 58 yrs old, 18th film, 4th billed. First (and only) nomination. 11 minutes of screentime (or 12% of the running time.)
Manuel Betancourt: It feels very 80s for a comedy to hinge on two men’s tawdry fantasies about offing the women in their lives. Stu Silver’s script doesn’t really give Ramsey’s Momma (she doesn’t even have a name!) much to play. She’s a monstrous mother who’s constantly screaming or dying, sometimes simultaneously. I’m at a loss as to why Ramsey earned so many plaudits for what struck me as a very broad and one-note performance that felt more like a sketch comedy plot device than a fully fleshed out character. (Can you tell I didn’t much care for this film/performance?) ♥
Ato Essandoh: Hilarious. Intense and a touch sad. It’s a one dimensional role in which she has to play the gag but she pulls it off with aplomb. ♥♥♥♥
Naveen Kumar: When I close my eyes at night now, all I see is Anne Ramsay snoring with hers wide open. Ramsey is the ideal, indomitable terror in a title role that’s somehow both showy and thankless. This is one of those movies about male pursuit and rivalry that flat-out hates women and milks it for comedy. But I have to say, Momma is the only one I was rooting for here, and I am so thankful she made it safely off that train! I also love to see the Oscars recognize a monstrous comedic performance like this, which is so rare nowadays. ♥♥♥♥
Kathia Woods: The hair, the facial expressions, even the walk. It's everything she does. If you're going to go dark, commit. She embraced not being likeable and that's what makes the movie work. ♥♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Quite memorable if basically one-note. I'd give the casting five hearts considering the marriage of highly specific material with a one-of-a-kind face (and voice) to sell it. I could never quite make up my mind about the actual acting (though she's easily best in show) but I did frequently giggle at her relentlessly hateful barked lines. "Owen doesn't have any friends. He's fat and he's stupid!" And I loved the hyperspeed facial contortions when a horn is blowing out her eardrums. Almost threw in an extra heart just for that. ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "The mother she plays is a monster, but she may be the only character I actually care about." - Lenard (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 19½ ❤s
Ann Sothern as "Tisha Doughty" in The Whales of August
Synopsis: An old busybody visits her friends, two sisters who live by the ocean. But change is coming and she pushes them towards it too indelicately.
Stats: Then 78 yrs old, 63rd (and final) film, 4th billed. First (and only) nomination. 20 minutes of screentime (or 22% of the running time.)
Manuel Betancourt: I didn’t even have to look up whether The Whales of August was based on a play. Stagey and stuffy in equal measure it is, nevertheless, quite the actorly (or, actressy, really) showcase. You can almost see why Sothern’s bubbly Tisha sticks out amidst the maudlin trappings around her. Her comic timing is admirable but this is little more than a meddlesome neighbor role with a vivacious personality and a hard-to-pin-down accent (“fifty years of crossing breedges together will do that!”) that, like her co-stars, is not served well by Lindsay Anderson’s stilted direction. ♥♥
Ato Essandoh: A delight in an underwritten part. She gives an especially lovely turn in the end when she apologies to the Lillian Gish character and you can see that perhaps the friendship is over. Sothern is a fine actor, it’s just that she wasn’t given enough to work with in my opinion. ♥♥♥
Naveen Kumar: This may be sacrilege to say, given the trio of Old Hollywood legends so delicately on parade here, but this film could have been camp if it weren’t also so staid. Play adaptations are always tricky, especially one as intimate and technically uneventful as this source material by David Berry. I swear I put this movie on and sat down in front of it, but aside from a scene when I especially noticed Ann Sothern’s brightly moistened eyes, I couldn’t tell you what she really had to do. This nomination was clearly for her estimable resume — and for a sole Oscar nod over a 60-year career, that’s definitely fair! ♥♥
Kathia Woods: The Academy's notorious for "you've lived long enough" nominations! ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: We've seen it many times: A lively performer comes traipsing into a rather dull picture, and completely energizes it and thus wins fine reviews. The thing is, that's not a difficult task if the movie is otherwise absent of energy! Sothern even gets a cutesy musical theme to announce her arrival though it's not needed given that Sothern brings her own peppy charisma. She's having fun as this busybody neighbor who loves to flirt and gossip. Best of all is the shading she gives her hypocritical reticence to talk about what's really bothering her -- even though she frequently cajoles others to do exactly that. Sothern's career deserved Oscar's stamp but it's a pity that they waited until this final solid-but-not-special performance to say so! ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Sothern was delightful, completely convincing, and her much needed energy contrasted nicely with the low-key sisters." - Richard (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 15½ ❤s
Result: Olympia Dukakis won the Oscar in what we'd guess was a landslide at the time. At the Smackdown she follows suit and takes the win again.
THE FULL PODCAST CONVERSATION
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