Almost There: Sally Field in "Steel Magnolias"
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 2:42PM 
As Pride Month 2022 draws to a close, the appetite for frothy camp classic entertainment remains unchanged and unlikely ever to die. Some, if not most, of the films to achieve such status aren't even tangentially queer-themed, gaining their iconic status through other means. Such is the case of Herbert Ross' film adaptation of Steel Magnolias. Written for the stage by Robert Harling, this southern dramedy is a blush and bashful delight, originally sold as the funniest movie to make you cry. Despite a famous locker room scene with plenty of hunks on display, the flick's queer fandom can be attributed to its cavalcade of divas, from fresh-faced Julia Roberts to the cantankerous marvel of Shirley MacLaine's Ouiser.
Though Roberts was the only performer to get any Academy love, she's far from the picture's acting MVP. That honor falls on Sally Field, who might have come close to a third Oscar nod for her work as M'Lynn…
Steel Magnolias opens on the day of Shelby Eatenton's wedding. She's M'Lynn's daughter, a bright young woman with type 1 diabetes and a character arc bound to provoke tears and awards nominations. That being said, the bride enters the film in brattish fashion, complaining about her nail polish's indelicate shade of pink while the matriarch runs around trying to prepare everything for her baby girl's special day. Checking on the crystals – the champagne glasses are all broken! - and listening to Shelby while her unruly boys pour ice down her back, Field's M'Lynn is a vision of motherly perseverance, a heroic figure trying to keep her cool in the eye of the storm.
Field may not sound authentic when negotiating the molasses flavor of her put-upon Southern accent, but she's less of a spectacle than Roberts' curiously unconvincing transformation. In any case, the audience is too busy watching the actress play with the manic uncertainty beneath the stalwart façade to care about the accent work. The mother of the bride archetype has rarely been better embodied than by Field here, fielding her brood's antics while she phones someone about the shattered glass. As impatience bubbles over, her voice cracks and reveals the stress while the insistent smiles and bright eyes gain a manic quality.
Introducing us to her character, Field foregrounds comedy, setting a light-hearted prelude to the movie's first tear-jerking moment. The inklings of that tone shift happen as Shelby's talking about growing old with her husband, the picture cutting to her mama's apprehensive face. Then, in silence and rest, sitting on the beautician's chair and not having to tighten the reigns of her blustering household, a quiet panic settles over Mrs. M'Lynn. Throughout Steel Magnolias, this shall be Field's primary strategy, punctuating the comedy with an undercurrent of sorrow. It's subtext, at first, but it'll steadily come to the top.
Amid the jolly salon environment, Shelby turns tense, the camera approaching and the soundtrack muffling itself with tinnitus strings. The bride's having a hypoglycemic attack, and it's up to the older women to save her from demise. One could play this scene with demonstrative emotion, surrendering to the acute drama. Sally Field, however, prioritizes motherly support, a sense of stability, and assurance. The ruckus isn't about M'Lynn, so the actress works on illuminating how these things are a part of the woman's quotidian, something she's accustomed to and knows how to handle. She's worried, maybe even panicking, but she's in control. She has to be.
Later, when everybody's dancing at the reception, Field has another opportunity to assert her protagonist status in the ensemble work. Confronting her daughter's husband, M'Lynn pleads and melts in a paroxysm of maternal worry. Field is utterly earnest here. Crowned with brunette curls shaped like a football helmet, she chooses a path of sincerity over thornier possibilities. It's a moving dialogue, for sure, but I find myself admiring her background reactions even more. Notice the shadow of uncertainty, the sting of loss, as M'Lynn watches Shelby drive away as a newly married woman – a whisper of heartbreak complicating the picture.
Easter pastels give way to Christmas-time crimson and gold, lives go on, and Shelby has news for her mother. Against doctor's advice and to M'Lynn's horror, she's pregnant. And so, the cold panic of the salon episode returns, but, this time, there's no stalwart support to temper the dark sentiment. Instead, Field lets the worry curdle into seething fury at her child's reckless disregard for her own well-being, her limits. Shelby accuses her mamma of being fed up because she's no longer in control, blinded by youthful insolence. And yet, as much as Field acts up M'Lynn's anger, the source of it is always clear – sadness and fear. Not being able to boss her sprog around is never a baseline for the woman's displeasure, not in this performance.
Mayhap a more daring actress would entertain that notion, painting a soft glimmer of selfishness over the character portrait. However, that would also require a different movie with different priorities than Ross' Steel Magnolias. Sally Field is perfect for the project she's in, calibrating her work for maximum clarity over murkier readings. This approach pays off soon enough, as the narrative's time skips demand that the emotional arcs be perceptible quickly, at first glance. One year later, M'Lynn is a loving grandmother, doing everything with an open smile on her face except when she's alone. Then, the melancholy blossoms again, but only then, away from Shelby's eyes.
As it happens, the young woman's kidneys are caput, so M'Lynn's donating one of hers in hopes of saving her daughter. She talks about it at the salon, always trying to keep things light, painting over the growing cracks in her façade. Soon enough, there'll be no reason to keep on hiding the suffering. There'll be no more strength to do so either. Four months after the transplant, Shelby falls into a coma and, informed her condition is irreversible, the family decides to remove her from life support. Tragedy breaks M'Lynn, eradicates the need to put on a fake smile, and culminates in one amazing funeral breakdown, whereupon she's persuaded to accept Shelby's decisions despite their deadly consequences.
If Field performed the mother's dying hope in the hospital as a desperate, ragged sort of optimistic resilience, afterward she's a raw nerve with nothing left to give, no more smiling illusions to fuel her resilience. The silence of death is staggering, but the loudness of unresolved grief is a shock to the system. Riding the wave of intensity, Field explodes the characterization and delivers the dialogue with a kind of theatricality so sincere it transcends the baseline artifice of this Southern melodrama. It's a towering moment, maybe the single best scene in Sally Field's filmography as far as her work's concerned.
From despondence to pure wrath, from denial to inquisition, from drowning in darkness to laughing in the face of unimaginable pain, the two-time Oscar winner delivers an act of blinding beauty in its sentimental earnestness. So exemplary is the moment, it should be included as reference next to the definition of "catharsis" in the dictionary. If "maternal devotion" is in the book, then add a reference there too. Bless Herbert Ross for allowing Field to take control of the scene, allowing her to present this acting showcase for the ages. Even after life moves on, the grief remains as a shadow that makes the light feel brighter than it would otherwise be.
While she had her Oscar clip ready to go, Sally Field was left out of the Academy's Best Actress lineup. She still got a Golden Globe nomination, though, and it's hard to feel bad for an actress who had just recently won her second Oscar. Instead of bestowing Field with a third nod, AMPAS nominated Isabelle Adjani in Camille Claudel, Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine, Jessica Lange in Music Box, Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy. The latter won for her Best Picture-winning project, and it's fair to say that, even without Sally Field, this is a solid lineup. The erstwhile flying nun turned Academy favorite would have to wait until 2012 for her third nomination, this time in Best Supporting Actress for work in Lincoln.
Steel Magnolias has been recently added to Netflix's catalog. You can also find the movie available to rent on most services.
Reader Comments (8)
Sally Field is fine in Steel magnolias, but nothing special for me, I prefer Shirley MacLaine.
It was a good lineup, maybe Winona Ryder (Heathers) or Kathleen Turner (The war of the Roses) or Meg Ryan (When Harry met Sally) deserved more attention from the Academy.
Sally Field is magnificent in the scene at the graveyard. In interviews, Olympia Dukakis openly praised Field relaying that the emotionally wrought scene took three full days to shoot in the summer Louisiana heat. According to Dukakis, Field played the scene each time full throttle, both for the camera and for her fellow actresses when the camera was shooting their reaction shots.
The snub is almost certain to be blamed on the 2nd win acceptance speech, right?
Lovely piece thanks again Claidio,you really love htis performance it comes through in the writing.
I do find the snub puzzling and for Lange doing solid but fairly unexciting work in a drab film,Collins being a total caricature,Tandy doing fine with a thin role and Adjani in an overlong mess where she's good in it and of course Pfeiffer as best of the bunch though it wouldn't make my top 5 Pfeiffer roles.
I know the grave monologue if the most well known but I still prefer "Open Your eyes Shelby"
I'd rank the SM actresses like this MacLaine,Field,Parton,Roberts,Dukakis and Hannah
My Ballot
Field
Pfeiffer
Ryan
Tandy
Adjani
Sally should've been nominated instead of Jessica Tandy as that performance is just... BLECH! Hasn't aged well.
Loved reading this, love this film and Sally's work in it.
The graveside breakdown is the showpiece moment but I'm so glad you mentioned that scene where so many emotions played across her face as Shelby and Jackson were driving away from the wedding. No heightened emotions but a realness in the moment. Her performance is studded with them throughout the picture.
I think she probably was close to a nom finishing somewhere just below the top 5. She'd be my winner.
My lineup would run this way:
Sally Field-Steel Magnolias-Winner
Jessica Lange-Music Box
Emily Lloyd-In Country
Meg Ryan-When Harry Met Sally
Winona Ryder-Heathers
I really love her performance and the fact that Sally Field (a California native) has essentially made a career playing iconic Southern women: NORMA RAE (North Carolina), PLACES IN THE HEART (Texas), STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Louisiana), FORREST GUMP (Alabama), and LINCOLN (Kentucky).
She completely deserved a nomination for her work here. And the Academy really created an uneven/largely forgettable mess out of what could've otherwise been a solid line-up...
Sally Field, STEEL MAGNOLIAS
Andie MacDowell, SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
Michelle Pfeiffer, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS
Meg Ryan, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...
Jessica Tandy, DRIVING MISS DAISY
Not sure Field makes the cut for me - perhaps a Best Actress top 10 for '89 - though she's of course leaps and bounds stronger than the insufferable Roberts.