Celeste Holm in Come to the Stable (1949) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Among the treats I look forward to in Supporting Actress Sundays is hitting the lesser-known or lesser-loved performances by those actresses I have come to call the category's WIDOs, or the actresses who seem to function as the category's standbys for a discrete period of years. WIDOs, of course, is my evocative abbreviation for the "when-in-doubt-options" for Supporting Actress Nominations. WIDOs are those actresses -- think Glenn Close in the early 1980s, Dianne Wiest in the later 1980s, Cate Blanchett in the mid2000s, and Thelma Ritter through most of the 1950s -- who, for a handful of years, seem to ever be on Oscar's Supporting Actress shortlist, whether or not the performance/film warrants it. Sometimes, the performer's run of good nomination fortune begins with a win, but, other times (Close, Ritter), the actress really does turn out to be a WIDO only. So, 'twas with some interest that I approached this week's nominated performance, the least acclaimed of this particular actress's three nominated performances in four years...

...Celeste Holm in Come to the Stable (1949)
approximately 53 minutes and 51 seconds
31 scenes
roughly 57% of film's total running time

Celeste Holm plays Sister Scholastica, the incessantly naïve French nun who serves as sidekick to Sister Margaret (Loretta Young in a ghastly performance of mellifluous sincerity) on their shared, quixotic quest to establish a Children's Hospital in the wilds of Western Connecticut.
In the role of Sister Scholastica, Holm is charged with three main tasks:
A) To be plausibly naïve/culturally clueless/idiotic enough to justify Sister Margaret's many expository sermonettes;
B) To be adorably enthusiastic, permitting her bright face to beam with beatific joy from the confines of her wimple; and
C) To play a mean game of tennis.
To her credit, Holm acquits herself gamely on all three counts. Which is somewhat impressive as the role has no use whatsoever for what is, perhaps, Holm's greatest gift: the slyly nuanced line-reading. Instead, Holm is saddled with chirpy, mostly monosyllabic dialogue which she delivers in a nearly shrill "Fifi" accent. This incongruity of Holm -- who nearly radiates sophistication and integrity -- in the role of a wimpled French ditzball? It can be tough to swallow (especially with the smarmy Young jabbering right next to the usually silent Holm).
Holm is at her best when "beaming beatifically." Holm's Sister Scholastica is especially vivid -- her facing registering empathy and gravitas with undistracting warmth at precisely the right moments -- in the film's single, genuinely moving sequence in which the Sisters visit a shady underworld figure named Luigi Rossi (Thomas Gomez in a startling, emotionally textured performance).
Holm is also adept at conveying genuine, infectious enthusiasm, all of which makes her Sister Scholastica pretty adorable.
This wimpled adorableness is on full display when Holm's Sister Scholastica takes to the tennis court in a quid pro quo gesture that feels dangerously close to a wager. The scene is played for comedy -- I kept thinking that Sister Scholastica has all the makings of a 1960s Disney feature, The Nun Who Wore Tennis Shoes -- before it is revealed -- spoiler alert! like you care! -- that Sister Scholastica was a French tennis champion before she entered the religious life. (Imagine that!)
Celeste Holm is entirely adequate in the role of Sister Scholastica, surviving both her miscasting and her costar with a witty, empathetic grace.
The part of Sister Scholastica -- a co-lead by most measures -- is nonetheless a supporting role that would have likely escaped Oscar's notice, were it not for the inexplicable nomination surge for this picture (7 nominations! WTF!?) and for Celeste Holm being one of Oscar's most reliable WIDOs of the period. (I tend to count the other Supporting Actress nomination from this film "a coaster" but we'll get into that in the coming weeks.)
An entirely decent performance by an actress on whom Oscar was sorta stuck in the later 1940s.

Celeste Holm in All About Eve (1950) - Supporting Actress Sundays

In all the times that StinkyLulu's adored All About Eve over the last two decades, this set of screenings for Supporting Actress Sundays provided some hints as to why Joseph L. Mackiewicz's complex confection is so enduringly captivating: it's a political film for the actressexual set. All About Eve treats "backstage shenanigans" -- who knows who, who's sleeping with who, how whoever got whatever part -- neither as giddy glamor nor as salacious gossip. Rather, Mankiewicz invests the backstage drama with an intricate complexity and shattering seriousness, as if Broadway wheelings and dealings were as important as affairs of state. (Which, of course, for some of us, they are...) And while Bette Davis's reigning monarch and Anne Baxter's sneaky insurgent battle for dominance, it's the shady double-dealing and influence peddling of secondary characters that ratchets the actual tension in this "political" thriller -- especially the stealthy maneuvers of the All About Eve's resident "political wife" played by...

...Celeste Holm in All About Eve (1950).

approximately 40 minutes and 13 seconds
20 scenes
roughly 29% of film's total running time

Celeste Holm plays Karen Richards, the wife of successful Broadway playwright Lloyd Richards (a bland but cute Hugh Marlowe) and best friend of Broadway actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis, in a deliciously human diva turn). A daughter of privilege, Holm's Karen is a genteel lady of the arts in post-war Manhattan -- a lady who lunches, as 'twere. She's nearly certainly involved in any number of charities, surely soon to be on any number of boards, a regular doer of indubitably good deeds. And it's one such good deed -- retrieving a dampened young girl from the rainy stage door alley -- that instigates the machinations of all of All About Eve's political intrigues.

As Holm's Karen brings Baxter's Eve to meet Davis's Margo, it's clear that she does so with the patronizing cluelessness of so many such patrons. Holm captures Karen's naivete effectively, her velvet tang of a voice crackling with warmth. Who wouldn't want Holm's Karen as a mentor -- she's like every pledge's dream big sister, but for the sorority of Manhattan society. Of course, Holm's Karen just has no idea what she's let in the door.

But. As well as she nails Karen's being the perfect wife and perfect friend, Holm somehow misses just how strategic Karen is. As we see her in the film, Karen Richards never acts without a somewhat secret agenda; she may be a wonderful person but she's also a canny climber, a savvy player within New York's stage society. (She has effectively managed her husband's career from his lectureship at Radcliffe to being a preeminent writer for the New York stage, after all). And every major turn of All About Eve's plot -- making Eve's introduction, recommending Eve as understudy, delaying Margo's return to Manhattan -- results directly from Karen's stealthy influence peddling and power brokering.

Somehow, though, Holm's performance skips over this essential piece of Karen's character. In Holm's portrayal, Karen's yet another unwitting dupe to Eve's evil maneuvers. Especially in the extended Ladies Room scene, in which Baxter's Eve makes great show of apology only to twist the knife of shared secrets. In this scene, Holm arrives a disapproving matriarch, softens to become a nurturing big sister, before finally nearly dissolving into a little girl terrified at being caught. It's an appealing arc, and Holm executes it well. But it's glib. Karen's not merely tricked. To her chagrin, she's been outplayed by a fellow schemer -- one she so woefully, pathetically, and stupidly underestimated. But all that's buried in Holm's performance, way down beneath the doughy wounded tears.

And, this, lovely reader, is why Holm's "crazy giggles" scene rings so false. As it plays in the film, when Margo reveals that she has decided not to take the part of Cora, it's a huge weight off Karen's shoulders. Because Holm has played Karen as the noble victim of her own charity case, the only way Holm can make the scripted laughing jag work is to play it as a reaction to her own relief -- when, StinkyLulu suspects, Karen's laughter has something more to do with a cynical appreciation of "the best laid plans" and/or how Eve'll mistakenly believe her plan worked and/or something even a little darker.

Think, too, to the confrontation that Karen has with Lloyd, in which he accuses her of becoming cynical since leaving Radcliffe, to which Karen delivers the great retort: "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!" This line seems -- to StinkyLulu at least -- to be Karen's most illuminating self-revelation, showing that she understands that she must play the game a little differently because she's female. Unfortunately, Holm plays this scene for its shrewish, ranting comedy and -- like the laughing jag -- it becomes a discrepant moment in Karen's generalized gentility.

It's too bad, really, that Holm skirts around the edges of the Karen character. The script really places Karen in a parallel position to Addison -- with Karen ostensibly influence-peddling for good, and Addison doing so for evil. But because Holm plays Karen as just some big marshmallow lump of matronly good-intentions, that dynamic tension gets lost. (And of course Lulu really wishes that Holm had allowed Karen some sexuality, even if she skipped over Karen's clearly sapphic potential. But StinkyLulu's finally beginning to realize that Celeste Holm was really the go-to gal for diminishing the sexual threat in complex female characters. Makes StinkyLulu sad... having always been so fond of Ms. Holm.)

It's nearly a commonplace to account for Nancy Olson's nomination as the "momentum nomination" of 1950 (wherein the general Oscarly enthusiasm for a film sweeps up even less than worthy performances in its broad nomination net). And, truth be told, the ingenue is often this category's lucky pick on such occasions. But, here, I'd have to call Celeste Holm out for 1950's lucky snag. Her charismatic but glib performance provides an accumulation of winning glimpses into Karen's good heart but skirts the edges of her power-brokering, influence-peddling complexity. And it's too bad. A great character, a great movie, a great actress ...but a barely adequate performance...