Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show (1971) - Supporting Actress Sundays

'Tis definitely an oopsie doodle that StinkyLulu's avoided seeing Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show for so long. Always knew 'twas one of "the greatest movies" blahblah, but something just kept it at bay. Perhaps the Texas-ness of it; perhaps the fact that it was shot in black and white; probably because the three leads inspire StinkyLulu with an overwhelming sense of "meh" (though my appreciation of one of the three has definitely grown as years passed). Whatever the reason, 'twas wrong to have so avoided Bogdanovich's opus but, screening it now, seems somehow fortuitous to have waited until I could identify with the "older" char/actors (most of whom were in their later 30s and early 40s when this was filmed). The movie's truly good, quite surprising really, and -- best of best -- 'tis just plump and juicy with fascinating performances of enthralling characters. The "younger" cast is good (even Miss Cybill) and the background cast of non-actors is fascinating. But the "older" cast? Zowie kawowie. And among this "older" cast of char/actors is one that StinkyLulu's just doomed to fall in love with, performed by one of the most versatile troupers of the last fifty years...

...Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show (1971).

approximately 18 minutes and 2 seconds
14 scenes
roughly 14% of film's total running time

Cloris Leachman plays Ruth Popper, the emotionally and sexually abandoned wife of the town's football/basketball coach, a man who "prefers" the company of his young athletic charges.

Leachman's Ruth discovers comfort and distraction in the arms and eyes of a goodhearted seventeen year old, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms, in an almost surreally dimwitted performance that's nonetheless occasionally quite effective). In one another, Ruth and Sonny find a curious match. Each is a sweet, shy soul -- each more accustomed to being rushed past, even in a town as slow-moving and dusty as Anarene, than being really noticed.

The film stages the first real encounter between Ruth and Sonny in the context of Ruth's humiliation, which begins when Ruth's husband does not tell Ruth that he's sending one of his students to take her to a doctor's appointment for some unknown ailment (something "dreary" is all we're told). Her husband's disregard is clearly just another in a long line of casual cruelties suffered in her marriage, but it marks the beginning of a rough morning for Leachman's Ruth. Before the morning's over, Leachman's Ruth has a mini-nervous breakdown in front of Sonny. When he reacts not with scorn or cruelty, but with a misguided attempt at empathy, his tenderness is as a revelation to the emotionally impoverished Ruth.

So begins a tender love affair comprised of clumsy afternoon assignations.

Leachman utilizes her formidable comedic gifts to complicate Ruth's general patheticness. Hers is a performance punctuated with little moments that would be funny if they weren't so sad, including even a touch of slapstick in which Ruth just can't wriggle sexily out of her slip. It's a hilarious bit that, in Leachman's execution, becomes frighteningly poignant.

Leachman also handles Ruth's blossoming with sophisticated ease. Before our eyes, Ruth escapes the catatonic caul of depression, returning to life and beauty with a giddy thrill.

The love Leachman's Ruth showers on Sonny is a clumsy concoction: equal parts maternal devotion, schoolgirl crush, and ravenous sexual hunger...clearly a recipe for tragedy. But Leachman maneuvers the swirl with a surprisingly light stroke, never allowing the intensity to become overwrought. By maintaining Ruth's tentative tenderness throughout, Bogdanovich and Leachman remind us that, when -- inevitably -- Sonny does abandon Ruth, he does not do so because she has become too much for him, but because it's just way too easy to forget about Ruth when something or someone more exciting comes along.

And because Leachman's Ruth has never demanded anything of Sonny, because she expects so little for herself, Leachman subtly provides the emotional architecture for her showstopping freakout when Sonny arrives to her door after a three month absence. In this dizzying scene, Leachman's Ruth screams, throws things, spits cruel truths, and makes her first demand on Sonny (Look at me!), relishing the opportunity to kick this dog when he's down.

But when he does look at her, just as she had asked...

Leachman's Ruth finds herself first flummoxed, then compelled to reply to his need...just as he had hers that first day of her doctor's appointment: with the tender touch of empathy.

'Tis no real surprise that Leachman snagged the trophy with this turn. There's a lot of Oscar-bait here: Leachman uglifies; she transforms; she has a big explosive aria; she even gets to have an extended sex scene focused on her face as it registers almost anti-erotic feelings (a bit that, legendarily, helped Jane Fonda to Best Actress the same year). But in Leachman (as opposed to say, Burstyn or Brennan) her comedienne's gifts of levity and precision elevated what could easily have lapsed into maudlin sloppiness or manic shrillness. It's subtly brilliant work, an accident of casting that really delivered...

Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist (1988) - Supporting Actress Sundays

The roster for July is in -- 1988 -- one of the few rosters of Supporting Actresses from which all the nominees, especially the newbies, survived to thrive in dynamic, interesting careers. Another something all of 1988's Supporting Actresses share? Each of their movies are, to greater and lesser degrees, about "class." Even more, the socioeconomic station of each Supporting Actress character instrumentally informs each plot. Of all four movies, though, Lawrence Kasdan's romantic drama The Accidental Tourist most reflects American culture's stubborn denial about the realities of social class in the United States. Kasdan's film relies on class differences to amplify the will-they-or-won't-they conflict that impels the film's narrative, even as the film depicts such differences obliquely, as mere decoration. This denial finds tidy embodiment in the performance of...

...Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist (1988).

approximately 29 minutes and 30 seconds
31 scenes
roughly 25% of film's total running time

Geena Davis plays Muriel Pritchett, the woman whose zesty directness and startling fashion sense shake the emotional foundations of the film's protagonist Macon Leary (William Hurt), a grief-stunned man staggering through his life as it falls apart around him.

Davis's Muriel alights into Macon's life by happenstance (she works at a kennel; Macon needs a dogsitter) and it's "MINE!" on first sight, at least for Muriel. As scenes proceed, Muriel's glib tenacity in placing herself squarely in Macon's path creates the circumstances of -- in the best romcom tradition -- an entirely implausible (and thus life-altering) romance. Davis's Muriel chatters and cheers, Hurt's Macon winces and whines, and true love is found.

Most of Muriel's entrances are signaled by broad, non-sequitur pronouncements ("I bought this car for $200!) and Davis plays these proclamations to their hilt. Unfortunately, Davis's Muriel -- more often than not -- zings this way and that with such a wafty winsomeness that the whole project starts to stink of carefully contrived quirk. Indeed, by the time the two land "separately" in Paris, Davis's Muriel seems more like a ditzy glamazon of the Romy and Michelle variety than the uncultivated, somewhat dumpy force of nature that the narrative seems to require.

Davis's best scene is her quietest, where she says little and instead listens to Hurt's Macon describe the depths of his despair. Only in this scene, with little makeup and no "outfit," does Davis provide a hint of Muriel without the bells and whistles, a fleeting glance into Muriel's "bashful" side. Granted, this scene is the only one to script Muriel's quietness, but part of the challenge of actressing at the edges is crafting the bridges between the scripted moments. Muriel's complexity exists beneath and between her lines, and Davis's proclamatory approach to the character tends to race toward the next line reading and right past whatever's in the in-between.

Likewise, Davis's characterization does not address the not-so-subtle mercenary aspects of Muriel's attraction to Macon. Yes, she wants a man in her son's life. Yes, Macon needs what she has to give. But...does Muriel do this often? Does she stalk every man with a credit card who comes into her shop? Davis glibly skips over whatever shadows might be found in the character in order to make Muriel a radiant beacon of hope for Macon. The problem? This is almost more frightening. Muriel, at times, seems like the energizer bunny, a perpetually happy clown who only wants to turn Macon's frown upside down...or else.

This much is clear: Geena Davis memorably nailed certain aspects of this character -- the verve, the kookiness, the sweetness, the bravado -- but she crafts only a partially brilliant performance. By focusing so exclusively on Muriel's light (to the exclusion of her shadows), Davis's Muriel diminishes the character's dimension, her scale, her humanity...her true sparkle.

Maggie Smith in California Suite (1978) - Supporting Actress Sundays

California Suite is Neil Simon's schticky retread of the La Ronde-ish device he deployed to great commercial success nearly a decade earlier in 1968's Plaza Suite (film version, 1971). On stage, Simon's Suites staged a series of disparate one-act playlets on a unit set depicting a suite at a particular hotel; in each act, a different set of "visitors" (played by the same actors) arrived to the suite, their private dramas providing the comedic focus for each act. The theatrical pleasures of Simon's Suites change fundamentally on screen, with the elimination of the role-doubling (always an audience pleaser) and, in the case of California, of misguided attempts to intercut the free-standing pieces and "open" the action to streets, beaches, and red carpets (thus leaving the "suite" altogether). But Simon's intricate character-driven patter, riven with escalating intimacies, does insist on the privacy of the suite -- and California Suite (which is often just gruesomely unfunny) comes closest to working when the char/actors are permitted to just play the scene. Clear proof of this can be seen in California Suites's most vivid, complex and emotionally effective scenes, scenes which circle, fascinated, around...

...Maggie Smith in California Suite (1978).

approximately 26 minutes and 32 seconds
12 scenes
roughly 26% of film's total running time

Maggie Smith plays Diana Barrie, a revered British stage actress, who arrives to Hollywood in order to attend the Academy Awards, for which she is nominated. Smith's Diana is joined on this trip by her benignly bisexual husband, Sidney (Michael Caine), with whom Smith's Diana remains hopelessly smitten. (It's worth noting that, here, Sidney's bisexuality is treated with a casual aplomb -- a cosmopolitan open secret, just the way those sophisticates do things these days -- an approach that would, just a few years later, be utterly implausible.)

Diana has a fairly straightforward arc: arrive to Los Angeles; get ready for the Academy Awards; lose the Oscar; spiral into an alcohol-fueled, logorrheic frenzy of self-doubt and self-loathing; leave Los Angeles with the worst hangover ever. And, no surprise, Maggie Smith executes this arc with clarity, precision, confidence and -- what's best -- humanity.

See, 'twould have been really really really easy to make Diana Barrie a dissolute, despairing actress a la Alexandra del Lago. But Maggie Smith creates Diana as a complex, mildly-to-seriously neurotic woman, who happens to be good at her job -- not some diva on a depressive tear. To do this, Maggie Smith makes a very simple choice: Diana does not doubt her abilities as an actress, but seems absolutely terrorized by the task of being a celebrity.

Smith's Diana emerges as an absolutely respectable, ultimately endearing portrait of the emotional and existential dilemmas instigated by stardom's glare. Smith's patented ability to register comic surprise comes in especially handy here. Her alarmed utterances upon catching her reflection in the mirror -- "This dress makes me look like I've a hump!" or "Was I hit by a bus?" -- instigate genuine laughs while also somehow gathering empathy for the character.

An impressive aspect of Maggie Smith's performance, too, is just how adept she is at avoiding cruelty in delivering Diana's lines. StinkyLulu won't opine whether Simon's dialogue for Sidney & Diana sounds like bad Noel Coward as a result of skillful execution or fortuitous accident, but Caine and Smith handle the mildly malicious banter brilliantly. Caine and Smith invest even the bitchiest lines with a barely stifled tenderness that both finds the comedy and amplifies the genuinely mutual devotion that defines Sidney's and Diana's marriage. (Compare this to the sour awfulness of the Bill Cosby/Richard Pryor suite; playing the lines and the situation at full tilt, Cosby and Pryor skip the relationship -- and, thus, miss the source of whatever comedy is to be found in Neil Simon.)

Smith's performance does more than just keep Diana from becoming too too annoying. Somehow, from this parodic piffle of a part, Maggie Smith retrieves a performance that uses both a comedic and melancholic register to convey the quiet anxiety of a successful woman's mid-life crisis. Smith somehow strings it all together -- the job, the award, the dress, the relationship, the booze, the infidelity -- to render Diana as a portrait of a woman discovering herself, her wants, her needs... a woman who, for perhaps the first time, is beginning to ask: is that all there is?

Maggie Smith's performance in California Suite demonstrates one of the greatest pleasures of tracking actresses at the edge: watching a generous actress transform a sketch of a character into a fully human, fully interesting performance. Smith's performance as Diana might be the only reason to revisit this garishly unfunny film, but Smith's Diana remains a dang good reason to fast forward through the rest of the film.

Josephine Hull in Harvey (1950) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Oops. Just realized that my standard "this is what's on the month's Supporting Actress menu" post got forgotten this week. So, I s'pose now's as good a time as any...

See, 1950 brings a nice assortment of actressexual delights, with a little actressing at the edges for everyone. There's dramatic work from a villainous monster, a formidable ingenue, a wry observer and a salt-of-the-earth wiseacre, as well as delirious comedy turn in the form of a twitterpated flibbertigibbit played by...

...Josephine Hull in Harvey(1950).
approximately 37 minutes and 13 seconds
15 scenes
roughly 36% of film's total running time

Harvey - based on Mary Chase's pulitzer prize winning hit play - tells the story of Elwood Dowd (played here by a glib James Stewart) and his best friend, a six-foot+ white rabbit named "Harvey." Elwood does little but hang out with Harvey, chatting with him idly as they both pursue their favorite vocation - drinking in bars around town, where Elwood orders two martinis at a time, one for him and one for Harvey.

20:07 - ELWOOD (to Harvey): "Hmmm... Random House... No.... Deluxe edition..."

The script wrings much in the way of situational comedy from the farcical misapprehensions of Elwood's conversations with Harvey, especially when Elwood's taken to a local sanatorium for treatment by his anxious sister Veta Louise (Hull).

@1950 seconds - ELWOOD (to Harvey): You could've had a bath, too.

Putting aside the details of the play's obliquely queer allegory (Elwood's an unmarried bachelor, witty and charming and fascinated by everyone he meets, a devoted mama's boy and a good dancer, whose male companion inspires shock and horror among most to whom he is introduced, except of course for those who also hang out in those shady bars downtown, and whose relationship with this male companion leads his family to institutionalize him for drastic psychiatric intervention), the narrative follows a fairly simple arc: will Elwood's family "accept" and "tolerate" Elwood as he is? Or will they -- through water-cures, psychoanalysis & psychotropic drugs -- force him to become "normal"? And, at the center of it all, stands Josephine Hull's Veta Louise -- Elwood's devoted but socially conventional & easily over-stimulated sister.

Josephine Hull was a veteran stage actress before she was "discovered" by film audiences in the screen adaptations of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, opposite Cary Grant) and Harvey (1950, opposite James Stewart). In these roles (both of which Hull originated on stage), Hull played a sweet but somewhat dithering old biddy, single-mindedly committed to doing what she thinks is right. Both roles, too, provided a showcase for Hull's a wild repertoire of funny faces, silly takes, tippling vocals, and goofily proper postures, as well as her verbal dexterity with the loquacious stage-comedy writing of the period. To be sure, the character of Veta Louise is

generally well served by Hull's arsenal of character actress tricks/tics. (Click any pic above to enlarge.) Hull takes Veta Louise's thoughtless conventionality and layers it with farcical idiosyncracy to create a seriously dingbatty character. (It's Alice Ghostley and Gladys Cooper all at once, no mean feat.) Further, for the most part, Hull maintains Veta Louise's utter seriousness even amidst the narrative's alternately absurd and giddy shenanigans. Hull has a ball with Veta Louise's anxious investment in social niceties, especially Hull's terror not only that her awkward daughter might remained unbetrothed due to Elwood's odd behavior but also that she and her daughter are both financially dependent on her possibly insane baby brother.

As Veta Louise, Hull is just dear. And she's occasionally genuinely funny. (StinkyLulu did love Hull's righteous misunderstanding of the motives behind the asylum's attempts to institutionalize her - "White slavers!" - as well as her phyisical attacks on her future son-in-law.) But, while deft, Hull's Veta Louise emerges as a fairly simple and fairly foolish performance. Indeed, despite the fact that the role of Veta Louise does provide a winning showcase for Hull's especial gifts, Stinkylulu yet wonders if the role might have been better served by a slightly younger actress in the part... Justa thought.

So, at the end of the day, StinkyLulu loves Josephine Hull. But not this performance...

Anjelica Huston in Prizzi's Honor (1985) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Supporting Actress Sundays return this week with one of those movies that StinkyLulu’s just never gotten around to watching. See, when it came out, StinkyLulu sorta totally hated Kathleen Turner. Then, by the mid90s when StinkyLu started to really like LaTurner, a visceral loathing for Jack Nicholson had started to kick in. Thankfully, there’s a third scenery chewer in the mix to finally bring StinkyLulu’s attention to this strange little movie...

...Anjelica Huston in Prizzi's Honor (1985)

approximately 20 minutes and 25 seconds
13 scenes
roughly 16% of film's total running time

Prizzi's Honor is a big colorful pile of 80s craziness. On the one hand, it's ostensibly a caper comedy about two mob "hitters" (Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner) falling in impossible love. On the other, it's an aging auteur's (John Huston's) distinctive take on the genre of gangster pics. The result emerges as a kaleidoscope of high comedy, high drama and high camp -- an occasionally adept, often entertaining but ultimately erratic exercise. It's as though the movie is tone deaf, the components never quite matching pitch. This hodgepodge aesthetic is perhaps most conspicuous in the movies casting: persona performers (Nicholson, Turner) mix with theatre actors (the cadaverous William Hickey in an unsettling turn as the mob boss) and stock mob players (Robert Loggia). (Could someone please just explain CCH Pounder's cameo as Peaches, the pothead maid?)

And smack at the center of this madcap melange stands the seemingly indomitable Anjelica Huston, as the devastatingly wronged Maerose. Arriving to her baby sister's massive wedding in a sleek black gown accented with a trapezoidal pink blazer and flying saucer hat, Huston's Maerose seems a misplaced figurine, a statue too tall for the room. An elderly female relative observes, "Maerose! Always making a show of yourself," Huston's Maerose replies: "I'm the family scandal. I don' wan' disappoint." In this opening scene, Huston's at her best and most honest, as she encounters the depths of her humiliating estrangement from her family.

Beginning in these early scenes, Anjelica Huston just radiates an uncommon screen presence. Her features -- at once aquiline and crooked -- are distinctly suited to the demands of an attentive camera. And as Maerose, Huston channels this uncommon presence and beauty to redeem the character. Prizzi's Honor, like most capers, is packed with characters who think they're in charge of the game being played. Huston's apparent miscasting (how could someone so formidable be so defeated?) ends up working in her -- and the audience's favor -- as only the audience sees Maerose "spoil" everyone’s game. Huston's Maerose stealthily flies below the radar until she sees and seizes her window and becomes a formidable player. Huston's curious screen charisma makes Maerose -- a reworking of the mistreated/rebellious crime daughter --a treat to watch. (Imagine Connie with actual independence, galvanizing fury and a dash of actual integrity...)

But it's truly the actress's facility with language that StinkyLulu loves most about Huston's Maerose. (Click either/both images above for examples.) Huston is that rare sort of screen actor who lets the language direct her performance. The accent is spotty. The characterization is erratic. But Huston's respect for and facility with the language is brilliant. In her mouth, lines like "Yeah, right here, on the Oriental, w'all the lights on" and "How can I feel worse than I usedta feel before last night" resound as poetry. Where Nicholson and Turner filter the language through their patented idiosyncrasies, the best supporting players (Huston and the freakish Hickey) elevate the whole enterprise with an exhilarating theatricality.

Huston's Maerose may not be a great performance, but she sure is a hoot.