Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1936

The Year is 1936...

And the Supporting Actress Smackdowners for August are NICK of Nick's Pick Flicks; TIM of mainly movies, and welcoming KEN of Canadian Ken On.... But first, a word about what the Smackdown's missing this time 'round: Alas, alack, aloo -- there'll be no NatReel for 1936. (As happens, life intervenes for even the most devoted cinephile; family obligations have absconded with dear Nathaniel this month.) (In the meantime, to help you hook into the vibe of 1936, StinkyLulu recommends that you do yourself the favor of perusing Ken's generous recaps of Dodsworth, My Man Godfrey and These Three (parts 1 & 2) in his "Overlooked: 1936" series and/or take a gander at goatdog's genius survey of Anthony Adverse.)

So, lovely readers, turn those imaginations on full-power & let cinema's wayback machine take you back to the first year Oscar nodded toward its new category: Best Supporting Actress.

And 1936's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are listed in ascending levels of love. A summary comment from each Smackdowner arrives at the end. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)

Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy
Ken Sez...
I've never warmed to Beulah Bondi - a dry twig of a woman, with rusty bed-springs in her voice. The key element in a Bondi performance is generally smugness. Here, brandishing a corn-cob pipe, she also serves up another unappetizing Bondi staple - coy folksiness.
Nick Sez...
An obvious ancestress of this category's long line of spunky, steadfast, and ailing wives, Bondi's Rachel Jackson is a minor but eloquent creation, whittled from strong, aromatic wood. Terrific chemistry with Barrymore.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Bondi plays most of her scenes opposite Joan Crawford and John Barrymore, and that she more than holds her own against these notorious scene-chewing hogs is a formidable accomplishment in itself. A precise, unglamorous performance.
Tim Sez...
The movie milks her deathbed scene so heavily it threatens to turn to cheese, but she underplays it back down to earth, touchingly devoted and quietly memorable in an otherwise over-declamatory ensemble. Shrewd work, worth its nod.

Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey
Ken Sez...
A shrill, irritating performance - oppressively daffy - and absolutely relentless in its hunt for laughs. None of which materialize. Totally committed to it? You bet she is! But that just means no rest for her - and no relief for us.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Most major scenes happen around or adjacent to Brady's dotty society matron and Brady does little more than punctuate things by warbling breezily absurd non-sequiturs. It's an ambient, ensemble performance -- a perhaps worthy, but certainly unremarkable, nomination.
Nick Sez...
The priceless Lombard aside, Brady's is the most creative performance in this film's gallery of eccentrics. Sometimes she pushes too hard, but her comic timing really works, and she projects more than just foolishness.
Tim Sez...
Flutters sublimely between two registers – airhead anxiety and giggling obliviousness. There’s little time for depth, but the breathless skill of her line readings is all this part needs, and her heroically attentive background playing is a constant joy, too.

Bonita Granville in These Three
Stinkylulu Sez...
The character of Mary Tilford is part indulged beast, part self-centered bully, part dispassionate sociopath, and Granville's simple and direct approach acquits the task masterfully. Granville avoids easy hysteric theatrics to craft an exceptionally measured -- indeed, mature -- performance.
Nick Sez...
Not the full-on coup I remembered, but Granville's wickedness emerges in disciplined, interesting steps, and she's capable of real calculation. Her best moments limn subtle, disquieting gradations of whining, loneliness, and hysteria.
Ken Sez...
Mostly it's the sort of performance one might expect from a precocious little show-off. But in some non-dialogue moments, usually when she's fixing that threatening stare at Rosalie, Granville achieves a quivering intensity.
Tim Sez...
Plays the school bully – inspiredly – like a headmistress, so self-possessed and cruelly demanding it’s a wonder she isn’t teaching all the classes. A prize bitch and perfect little devil at 13: if I decided Oscars she’d be my youngest ever winner.

Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth
Nick Sez...
Adds tension to her single scene with her long pauses and scary impassivity. Her stolidity cracks nicely, though faintly, amid her last few lines. Still, it's only an adequate performance, surely the least interesting in the film.
Tim Sez...
Tricky to grade, this, as it’s too brief a perf to be strictly nod-worthy. But she handles her single scene formidably, with insinuating pauses in all the right places, and casts a large and lingering pall over the picture’s final act.
Stinkylulu Sez...
A wee tiny gorgon swathed in widow's black and possessing the kind of bark that makes you real scared of her bite, Ouspenskaya manages her single slapdown of a scene with clarity, precision and zest. A brief but memorable turn.
Ken Sez...
Whether gussied up as a dowager or travelling around in a gypsy wagon with the Wolf Man, Ouspenskaya was always the same tough, muttering old Pekinese. But she had presence - and for her one scene in "Dodsworth", she summons up every bit of it.

Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse
Stinkylulu Sez...
As the hustling, mercenary maid-cum-Marquise, Sondergaard gives good face, punches the dialogue well and generally looks great in the clothes...but beyond that? Nothing much.
Nick Sez...
Occasionally, when the camera isn't squared right on her, Sondergaard projects interesting thoughts and unsettling energies from the edges of a frame. Mostly, though, especially in dialogue scenes, her villainy is pretty rote.
Ken Sez...
Prowling around the outskirts of this ponderous epic, Sondergaard looks devious and gives her nasty Cheshire cat grin a thorough workout. That's about it. The script doesn't even provide her with a proper come-uppance.
Tim Sez...
Bares her teeth to embody a ravenous gold-digger, which she does with striking efficiency in a single key. But the movie’s otherwise so gormlessly lacking in conflict – hell, adversity – that it’s easy to overrate her. Strong playing, just inadequate surroundings.

Oscar awarded Gale Sondergaard...

But the SMACKDOWN gives it to:

Bonita Granville!

By nearly full consensus.

And now some "Final Thoughts" from our intrepid SMACKDOWNERS:

Ken Sez: A writer once characterized Ethel Barrymore's screen persona as "dispensing wisdom with a trowel." On that score, Hussy's Beulah Bondi could take her right to the mat. Plus there's that gleam of superiority in her eye that's meant to pass for a twinkle. Sondergaard's onscreen trademark was the everpresent suggestion of bats in her belfry, Those bats had barely set up housekeeping in 1936. With Anthony Adverse she merely left her visiting card. Granville, playing at an exaggerated pitch in These Three is often phony, but not entirely unsuccessful. Of course, she's utterly eclipsed by the amazing Marcia Mae Jones. Dodsworth's Ouspenskaya is grim, impalacable and heavily accented. In other words, it's business as usual. But that business was new to viewers in '36. Hence, possibly, the nomination. And then there's Brady - downright alarming in Godfrey. Considering the level of frenzy in her performance, she might as well have been waving a tomahawk and attacking a covered wagon. In short, not a red letter year for nominees, with Granville's hit and miss turn emerging (more or less by default) as the best of an undistinguished lot.

Nick Sez: In general, I'm more excited about these actresses than about these specific performances. Bondi's always a treat. Brady's zaniness and Granville's pint-sized maleficence are even more interesting in the context of their ample ranges. (Bonita, for example, was a famous Nancy Drew.) Ouspenskaya is such a weird and exotic legend, and speaking of weird and exotic, who doesn't feel kindly toward Sondergaard for supplying Wyler's The Letter with such an indelibly campy avenger? My other favorite thing about this vintage is how well it reflects the original intent of the category. Most of these women have little screentime, compressed into discrete compartments of their films, but they all add important and flavorful accents—of greater and lesser quality, sure, and with no outright triumph among them, but they are crucial to their movies, and nobody showboats. Had Oscar held to these principles, we'd be seeing a lot fewer Zellweger-in-Cold Mountain nods these days and a lot more Rosemary Harris-in-Tom & Viv types. We'd be learning a lot more new names and enjoying many more pleasant surprises.

Tim Sez: This first year for the gong saw a perfectly decent set of nominations, but what’s slightly disappointing is that 1936 was an even better year for the supporting actress art-form than you’d know from this list. As I’ve already hinted on my blog, I’d swap Ouspenskaya for the luminous Mary Astor in the same film, and I’d have Jean Dixon alongside Brady for her tired and wise scene-stealing as Godfrey’s seen-it-all maid, Molly. Others might make a case for Marcia Mae Jones, who crumples splendidly under scrutiny as These Three’s terrorised little Rosalie, or for Alma Kruger in the part Fay Bainter was nominated for in ’61. Still, voters didn’t go far wrong in singling out Granville, Bondi and Sondergaard as the best things in their various movies. The category may not have got off to the running start it might have, but it found its feet alright – and Granville’s a stunner and a keeper.

Stinkylulu Sez: In the aggregate, 1936's field of nominations is perhaps more fascinating than the performances themselves. What stands out most, though, is that most of the category's "stock" nominations are here. Indeed, it's almost as though the Class of 1936 paved the way for generations of Supporting Actress nominations (and wins) to follow. Ouspenskaya's the one-scene wonder with the gourmet theatrical pedigree (say thankyou, Dame Judi and Ms. Beatrice). Sondergaard's the standout performance in a bloated costume epic (all hail Dame Peggy and La Maureen). Brady's the beloved trouper turning in a just surprising enough performance to get the academy's ballot all excited (talkin' 'bout you Helen, Lee and Ingrid). Bondi's the über-quirk of a character -- at first comic, in time serious -- who somehow turns out to chart the heart the film (take a bow Whoopi, Geena, Mira and Dianne). And then there's Granville: the kid actor whose age makes the clarity, maturity and competence of performance seem all the more accomplished (Lu's looking at you Tatum, Patty & Anna!). All we're really missing is the "dark ingenue" and we'd have a full menu of Oscar's favorite dishes of Supporting Actressness.

So, lovely reader, tell the Smackdowners what YOU think! Even if you haven't seen a single performance, what do these first nominees suggest about the category of Best Supporting Actress? Join the dialogue in comments.

Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse (1936) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Normally, in charting a month of Supporting Actress Sundays, StinkyLulu tries to devote the first slot of attention to the performance that took the trophy home that year. This month, as with so many apects of attending to 1936 during September, things didn't really go thataway. So, in these last minutes of September, StinkyLulu's just now getting 'round to opining on...

...Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse (1936).

19 minutes and 19 seconds on-screen
13 scenes (only 1 of which is longer than 2 minutes)
14% of film's total screen time

Anthony Adverse is one of those big pics that seem to straddle two vastly different stylistic eras in film-making. Ostensibly set throughout Europe during the French Revolutionary era (as well as amidst the colonial circum-Atlantic slave trade), the film itself is part 1930s glittery escapism and part -- or, rather, mostly -- 1920s silent über-epic (albeit with full sound). All the elements of the most opulent silents are in play -- the enormous high-ceilinged sets; the extended facial close-shots; the brash make-up; each actor an expert in vamping, pining and mugging. Indeed, Anthony Adverse's assemblage of facially expressive performances buoy the complex narrative (which relies heavily on intertitles rather than dialogue for essential exposition) to such an extent that one could likely screen the film without the dialogue track and follow along fairly easily. (Especially if Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Oscar-winning music remained to score every single emotional color in meticulous symphonic detail.)

Among the actors, Gale Sondergaard -- as a hustling, mercenary maid ironically named Faith -- emerges as the obvious standout perhaps precisely because her clear vocal presence announces her character's essential significance long before the grand, complicated narrative does. To be sure, most viewers will remember Sondergaard's Faith for her visual traits (her beautiful, shifty/googly eyes; her not-to-be-trusted grin) but it's her voice that makes her pop from this prettypretty picture. The powerful sound of Sondergaard's Faith is alternately frightening and soothing and this serves the character well: as the film's intricate intrigues manifest, Sondegaard's Faith emerges as perhaps the most instrumental character in the story and Sondegaard's memorable voice helps to make that make sense. Sondergaard's vocal effectiveness also serves up the one or two genuinely amusing lines in the piece. When her husband expresses mild sadness ("He was the best servant I ever had.") after their carriage driver failed to force Anthony Adverse off a cliff and instead fell to his own death, Sondergaard's Faith quips: "The carriage was rather handy too." Likewise, when Olivia de Haviland's Angela takes to the stage as the prima donna, Sondergaard's Faith giddily snarks to no one in particular: "When she was a child, she washed my laundry."

All told, it's an odd win amongst this admittedly befuddling field. Yes, Sondergaard's performance is among the best things about this occasionally inscrutable picture (see goatdog's excellent commentary for details). And, yup, Sondergaard gives good face, punches dialogue and generally looks great in the clothes (though the first Swiss Miss number was absurdly twee). But beyond that? Um. (pause) Um. (longer pause) Um, yeah; it's a curious kick-off to this category...and it'll be especially interesting to see what the Smackdowner's will have to say about Oscar's first Best Supporting Actress, Gale Sondergaard. (Who -- believe it or not -- was initially cast as the Wicked Witch in 1939's Oz. Imagine.)

But speaking of the 1936 Smackdown...
It'll be up shortly.
Check back soon.

Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy - Supporting Actress Sundays

A brief programming note: The especially attentive among you, lovely readers, will surely note that today is the last Sunday in September, the day on which the Supporting Actress Smackdown is regularly scheduled. But -- due to a confluence of circumstances (international travel, recurrent bouts of academentia, the vicissitudes of the New York Public Library, U.S. postal delays) -- the Smackdowners have elected to push off the 1936 Smackdown until next Sunday, October 1. So: mark your calendars: same time, same place, next week -- join Nathaniel, Nick, Tim, StinkyLulu and our newest Smackdowner, Canadian Ken for the 1936 Supporting Actress Smackdown!!!

Each nominee for 1936's Best Supporting Actress boasts an expansive career, with each woman taking to the stage very young and trouping along until (it seems) mere moments before their deaths. But even amidst this impressive cohort, there is one who might well take the trophy for utter endurance...

...Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy (1936).

17 minutes and 25 seconds on-screen
7 scenes
17% of film's total screen time

Bondi -- who would become one of the most recognizable character actresses in Hollywood's golden age -- started in 1890s theatre and finished out in 1970s television. Though twice nominated for Oscar, Bondi finally snagged the only acting trophy of her extensive career (an Emmy for her guest performance on The Waltons in the 1976-77 season) when she was nearly ninety years old, a full forty years after her Golden Hussy nomination. Never a leading lady, Bondi is said to have offered this nugget of wisdom about actressing at the edges:

"Give me a good supporting role, and that's all I ask. The life of a star with few exceptions is brief. It's like a merry-go-round- only suddenly the music stops playing. Supporting players...go on forever."

In The Gorgeous Hussy -- a sweeping historical romance adorned with large dollops of comedy -- Bondi plays Rachel Jackson, the corn-cob smoking, hillbilly divorcee married to Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Bondi's Rachel is the beloved "aunt" to Joan Crawford's Peg Eaton, the "gorgeous hussy" at the center of one of the several sex scandals attending the Jackson administration. Mostly set in the last years of the early Republic -- a period in United States history almost inappropriately well-suited for romantic comedy -- novelist Samuel Hopkins Adams and MGM exploit the era's regency fashions, duels, emerging virtue of republican wifery and crazy power of gossip to craft a curiously comic historical romance. (Even the character of Andrew Jackson, by most counts a deservedly notorious and brutal blunderer, is played for laughs by that master of subtlety, Lionel Barrymore, in a style that StinkyLulu can only describe as a cross between Yosemite Sam and Dana Carvey's Grouchy Old Man.)

In the midst of this curious commentary on gossip, politics and the pursuit of true love, Bondi's Rachel stands as a pure heart. Part wise woman, part fairy godmother, part crusty crone -- Bondi's Rachel emerges as precisely the sort of "backwoods belle" the actress would periodically portray throughout her career. Whether she's yelping homespun aphorisms ("Marriage ain't a party dress; you gotta wear it morning, noon and night!") or longing for her pipe while on her death, um, chair, Bondi's Rachel emerges as the narrative's moral litmus test: those who do right by her = good; those who don't = badbadbad. Indeed, it's little surprise that Bondi's role occasioned Oscar's nomination. Rachel's story provides the loose framework of the story, both emotionally and morally, and both principal characters (Crawford's Peg and Barrymore's Jackson) reference Bondi's Rachel as their inspiration for nearly every important action. Yet, Bondi's work -- while perfectly fine -- does little to convey anything in particular about either the person of Rachel Jackson, one of the most enigmatic and controversial presidential wives in the history of the United States, or the emotional ravages of gossip. And while it is impressive that Bondi held her own against the scenery-chewing hogs Crawford and Barrymore, it remains the role that resonates here, not Bondi's perfunctorily efficient performance.

Bonita Granville in These Three (1936) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Oopsie doodle. StinkyLulu didn't expect to be so late with this entry but -- hey -- that's what happens when one ventures to the upper reaches of the Land of Enchantment: some conference hotels don't have internet access. (Imagine. So retro.) Speaking of retro...

'Twasn't that long ago that StinkyLulu and the Smackdowners contemplated another version of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour... Remember, lovely reader, way back in the golden days of July? When Fay Bainter proved quite a contender in 1961's Smackdown? Well, it's Hellman time again. Only this time, it's director William Wyler's 1936 go at the story (albeit sans sapphistry) and from which Oscar selected the first of many (how many is it? 8?) little girls to be nominated in this category...

...Bonita Granville in These Three (1936).

approximately 27 minutes "on" screen
13 scenes (including 5 scenes under 1 minute)
31% of film's total screen time

Granville -- who plays Mary Tilford, the awful little girl whose lies and innuendo nearly ruin the lives of These Three -- was a kid star of the old school. The daughter of actor parents, little Bonita had been acting for more than a decade by the time she (at age 12 or so) took on the part of Mary. Bonita Granville went on to act for most of her life, but it's for her performance here -- as well as her stint as the title character in a cinematic serialization of Nancy Drew -- that Granville is most remembered (though, surely, more people have seen her brief but memorable turn as Betty Davis' shallow niece in 1942's Now, Voyager).

The character of Mary Tilford is part indulged beast, part self-centered bully, part dispassionate sociopath -- Mary's a calculating menace both to those that love and those that loathe her. And Bonita Granville acquits the task efficiently. Indeed, Granville's Mary is most effective because she's so efficient, so cool, and so direct in her manipulations. Whether she's ensnaring her devoted grandmother in a skein of lies, or feigning friendship to a girl she plans to cruelly abuse in a moment's time, Granville's approach to the part is simple and direct, exceptionally understated in a dramatic scenario inclined to all kinds of hysterics. Indeed, Granville's Mary -- strangely subtle amidst the scenery chewing -- almost gets lost among the 1930s dramatics popping all 'round her.

A BRIEF ASIDE: It certainly doesn't help that, in many of her scenes, Granville's up against Marcia Mae Jones as everyone's favorite dim-witted kiddie klepto Rosalie. Quite simply, Jones' performance as Rosalie is one of the more electrifying kid performances Lulu's ever screened. With a wide-eyed pie-face just made for '30s cinematography, little Marcia Mae just wipes the floor with anyone, young or old, unfortunate enough to share the screen with her. The girl goes from shy to dumb to adamant to terrorized to hysterical -- all in the space of about 3 minutes, with intelligent clarity and thrilling precision. By far the best work in the film, Marcia Mae Jones' performance is reason enough to arrange a screening. And kid actresses should take note, what with Veronica Cartwright's excellent work in the 1961 version, Jones' scene-stealing should be a reminder that Rosalie is perhaps the coolest part in this enduring piece.

But there is one great moment in Bonita Granville's Mary that deserves especial note, a moment that subtly recalibrates the whole architecture of her entire performance: the penultimate beat of Mary's final scene. All her dissembling has been revealed and her grandmother, Mrs. Tilford, seems ready to keel over. Tilford's housekeeper, Agatha -- played by that snugglebunny Margaret Hamilton -- is charged with locking little Mary in her room. Mary tries to escape, but Agatha proves too swift, wrenches the child back to her and whallops her with a mighty slap. It's a shocking moment, made all the creepier by the glow that fills Granville's eyes as she regards Hamilton. Is it shock that someone would punish her? Relief that someone's finally taken her in hand? Or some creepier, other thing? (StinkyLulu votes for option 3.) This fleeting moment is the only glimpse that Granville provides of Mary without her mask and it's utterly enthralling. And it's proof positive that Bonita Granville was quite the little actress, entirely deserving of Oscar's nomination.

Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth - Supporting Actress Sundays (Wednesday Edition)

When the 1936 roster for September's Supporting Actress Sundays came up for review, Lulu had no frickin' idea who the hell Maria Ouspenskaya was. Moreover, because things have been a littlecrazybusy in LuluLand of late, StinkyLulu didn't do any prep research before tossing in the dvd late last night. So. Imagine Lu's surprise when, about ten minutes from the end of the flick, Maria Ouspenskaya popped up for a single, slapdown of a scene. And StinkyLulu was all: "Oh. My. God. Is Maria Ouspenskaya Madame Ouspenskaya?! The legendary proponent of Stanislavski's System among American actors in the '20s and '30s?! The little old crone/bitch-on-wheels acting teacher -- 8th-generation impressions of whom acting geeks trade like the über-queers trade Tallulahs?! That Madame Ouspenskaya?! Who knew?!" (Truth be told, StinkyLulu really should have known.) But 'twas exciting nonethe to have an unexpected late-night encounter with THE...

...Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth (1936).
5 minutes and 27 seconds on-screen
1 scene
5% of film's total screen time

The Russian-born Ouspenskaya was a member of the legendary Moscow Art Theatre, where she studied with and was directed by Stanislavski. Ouspenskaya came to U.S. with the Moscow Art Theatre in 1922, and became one of the few who remained in New York after the theatre's storied U.S. tour. After achieving sustained success on the New York stage during the 1920s, Ouspenskaya founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York in 1929. When the school's finance's foundered during the Depression, Ouspenskaya headed to Hollywood on a dollar-gathering venture for the school. Her first Hollywood film (she had done a few Russian films) just happens to have been Dodsworth, for which she received her first of two Supporting Actress nominations, and which began a thirteen-year run as one of Hollywood's most memorable character actresses. (Ouspenskaya died in 1949 of a stroke resulting from injuries sustained in a house fire.)

In Dodsworth, Ouspenskaya plays Baroness Von Obersdorf, the imperious mother of Baron Kurt von Obersdorf -- the third European cad to "make love" to the story's female protagonist, Fran Dodsworth (Ruth Chatterton), a wealthy not-quite-divorced American simp. Baron Kurt & Fran are planning to marry and Ouspenskaya's Baroness arrives -- a wee tiny gorgon swathed in widow's black and possessing the kind of bark that makes you real scared of her bite-- to survey her son's betrothed. Simply put, Ouspenskaya's Baroness does not approve and conveys her withering disdain with near scientific precision. In perhaps the movie's most exultant moment, Ouspenskaya's Baroness slaps some sense into the sillysilly Fran: "Have you thought how little happiness there can be for the old wife of a young husband!" Of course, the impact on Fran -- whose dithering selfishness contributes the narrative through-line of the film -- doesn't last long. But the Baroness' verbal smackdown of insufferable Fran contributes one of those moments to inspire a movie-house's cheering... and Ouspenskaya manages it with clarity, precision and integrity.

Can't say that StinkyLulu loved the performance, but -- for what it was -- Maria Ouspenskaya's Baroness contributed some exhilarating zest to this fascinating, if tortured, contemplation on the perils of middle age. And while Mary Astor might have made for a much more satisfying Supporting Actress candidate, Ouspenskaya's just fine. Her extraordinary presence creates an indelible impression & one can't help but think that this encounter with the Baroness might well be the turning point in Fran Dodsworth's idiocy. All told, an interesting romp that reminds Lulu that -- where Supporting Actresses are concerned -- surprises lurk around every corner...

PS: And, once again, who knew of John Payne's hotness? The scene were he kisses the palm of his wife's hand as she cradles their newborn baby? Swoon/woof/swoon.

Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey (1936) - Supporting Actress Sundays

"Madcap hilarity ensues" has to be one of Lulu's most favorite phrases. Just toss out the set-up of a comedy and then conclude with "madcap hilarity ensues," thereby distill all the internecine twisty turns of comic plotting into a simple summary that tells everyone what they most need to know. An example? A swinging single guy wants to share an apartment with two sexy ladies, so he tells the nosy landlord he's a homo; madcap hilarity ensues. Another? A somewhat frumpy young woman takes a job at the center of the fashion universe and? Madcap hilarity ensues (with some life lessons learned along the way: Exhibits A & B). A third? The dimwitted, ne'er-do-well son of a former president somehow gets elected to the presidency at a crucial juncture in the nation's history and madcap hilar -- no wait, that's not funny at all. (See, it's a thin thin line separating comedy from tragedy.) Anyway...

"Madcap hilarity ensues" is a phrase that actually emerged in descriptions of the "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, a classic example of which just happens to finally bring StinkyLulu's first Supporting Actress profile for the month of September...

...Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey (1936)

approximately 41 minutes "on" screen (including 1.5 minute "buzzing" scene)
10 scenes
46% of film's total screen time

The basic set-up of the beloved My Man Godfrey is this: At the height of the Great Depression, a pair of intensely competitve, obscenely wealthy sisters encounter an enigmatic homeless man while playing a faddish game. The sillier sister hires the man to be her new butler/protege and...madcap hilarity ensues. (Supporting Actress nominee Alice Brady makes her first appearance as the girls' mother -- fluttery society matron Angelica Bullock -- about 7 minutes along in the film, precisely at the point in the narrative where said "madcap hilarity" begins ensuing.) The man Godfrey (William Powell, who glides through the role with enthralling ease; neither glib nor plummy, Powell's performance is the height of intelligent 1930s elegance) ends up doing much more than "buttling" for the Bullocks; he changes their lives forever. (Cue music swell.) 70 years later, movie audiences have seen this story a thousand times, told better and (mostly) worse. But it's worth remembering that not only did My Man Godfrey establish this formula for the Hollywood factory but there's a sparkle to it which goes well beyond that formula and which makes My Man Godfrey a deservedly beloved Hollywood classic. (A word of caution: do try to find the Criterion version for your screening, lovely reader; there are a whole bunch of awful low-rent transfers out there on dvd -- like the one Lulu screened -- and the sound clarity really suffers. Be on particular alert for the evil colorized version...)

Now, to the actressing at the edges. There are three Supporting Actresses in Godfrey: the nominated Alice Brady as the dotty society mama, the zingy Jean Dixon as the Molly the maid and the magnetic Gail Patrick as the "other" sister. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Oscar picked the least interesting of the three to nominate; Lulu, of course, woulda picked Dixon.) But Brady's Mrs. Angelica Bullock definitely emerges as the wackiest of the three parts. Part concerned mother, part indulged wife, mostly self-obsessed rich lady, Brady's Angelica has all the accessories of absurd wealth. Crazy gowns. Idiotic dogs. And an entourage of one, Carlo -- ostensibly a serious musician, certainly a parasite, possibly a "walker" -- who eats a lot and sometimes seems as much her pet as her protege.

But Oscar demonstrated what would become some familiar tics in acknowledging Alice Brady with this nomination (& in the handful of remaining years before Brady's death from cancer in 1939). Most essentially, Alice Brady was an accomplished stage actress (consider her accolades for her performance as Lavinia in the orginal 1931 NY production of Mourning Becomes Electra, a doozy of a non-comedic role) who was also one of the few reliable silent players to make the transition to sound relatively easily. Indeed, it's interesting that Oscar noted Brady's performance as Angelica Bullock, which finally gave voice to the dotty society matron role for which Brady was most known during the silent era. Indeed, it's as Angelica Bullock that Alice Brady created a sound version of her silent signature role...

See, in Godfrey, Brady's Angelica Bullock is portrayed as the apex of irrelevance and the camera knows it. Most of Brady's scenes end as she's still talking, even as the camera has followed someone else to another room/scene. Often, major scenes happen around or adjacent to Brady's Angelica, who does little more than punctuate things with breezily absurd non-sequiturs. Notably, Brady mostly crafts Angelica through this vocality: her Mrs. Bullock is warbly, chattery and (not infrequently) nearly unintelligible. But, even if no one's really listening, every time Brady's Angelica chirps, the sound resounds. Alice Brady's there; ya just can't miss her.

And even though StinkyLulu's not too too fond of the performance (a malaise certainly cultivated by years upon years of Brady's warbly shrillness being the stock vocal choice for actresses portraying matrons of a certain tax bracket), StinkyLulu must confess: Brady's Angelica has one of the best last lines in all of cinema. The Bullock household's in an uproar. Her husband's literally thrown Carlo out. Godfrey's not Godfrey but another Godfrey entirely. Her family rushes off to resolve matters far beyond her comprehension. Even the camera leaves her. And what do we hear?

"And Carlo's gone out of the window. Everybody's gone."

There's no rational reason why this little line should give Lulu's little heart such an afterglow, but, hey, that's the nature of madcap hilarity: it ensues.

Tune in soon for more Supporting Actress madness, lovely reader.
Being away last weekend threw things off a touch, but things'll be back on track this week... Possibly even this Wednesday...