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Each month before the Smackdown, Nick Taylor chooses three performances to highlight that weren't Oscar-nominated...
“And Eleanor Parker as The Baroness” reads the final casting credit of the opening credits of The Sound of Music. Hers is also the only name that appears by itself, positioning the character and the actress as events the film wants you to eagerly anticipate. Hard enough when you're the other woman in a love triangle, especially as a non-singing role in a three-hour musical. Yet Parker, boasting one of the most exciting, chameleonic personas in American cinema, lives up to the hype over fifty years later, emerging with the film's most multifaceted performance.
Baroness Elsa von Schraeder won’t appear until roughly an hour into The Sound of Music, by which time we’ve already watched the indomitably energetic Maria (Julie Andrews) enter the Von Trapp family at the direction of her Abbess, instructing her to work as a governess to see if it’ll suit her better than being a nun...
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