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2003 AWARDS Feb. 29, 2004 |
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TEN MOST UNDERRATED WINNERS |
 Helen Hayes in 'The Sin of Madelon Claudet' (1931) |
Their obscurity isn't fair,
so let's celebrate them!
of TheColumnists.com
When most of us think of Oscar-winning stars, we're likely to think of Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson or, if you're old enough, maybe Katharine Hepburn, who won four of them--more than any other actor in the 76-year history of the Academy Awards.
I'm guessing almost nobody thinks of Jane Darwell. Or Edmund Gwenn. Or even Walter Brennan, who collected three Oscars in just five years.
In my opinion, all three are seriously underrated by today's movie fans. Of course, most of today's movie fans weren't even born when they won their Oscars, the last of which was awarded for a performance in 1947. I mean, that was 57 years ago!
But what about F. Murray Abraham, whose Oscar was for the year 1984? Or Louise Fletcher, who won the Best Actress Oscar for 1975? Does anybody even remember who she is? If you're still in your 30s, you're at least old enough to remember them.
The fact is some of the greatest performances in Oscar history have been forgotten by those old enough to remember--and are totally unknown to younger moviegoers because hardly anybody talks about them anymore. Here's the irony: They're all available on home video, even if you may have to ask your video store to order them for you.
Just for fun, I thought
I'd give you a sample list of what I believe are the Oscars'
10 most underrated winners. Before you read on, you also should
know that I've seen all but one of the 289 Oscar-winning performances
since the first awards were handed out for the 1927-28 year.*
Here are my picks of the obscure performances you should see:
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"Min and Bill" (1930) |
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Marie Dressler had been
in slapstick silent movie comedies ever since the early days
of the movies, most notably "Tillie's Punctured Romance"
(1914) with Charles Chaplin. She adapted easily to talking pictures
and gave a series of really great performances in the early 1930s,
none any better than this serio-comic turn as Min, the fat, unkempt
proprietess of a waterfront saloon, linked in a strange romance
with burly, rarely sober sailor Bill (Wallace Beery), and trying
to protect the orphan girl she has raised as a "wharf rat."
Dressler is considered an artifact of the early talkies by most
moviegoers who even knew who she was. But this performance is
irresistible--and hasn't aged anywhere near as much as you'd
think.
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"The Sin of Madelon Claudet" (1931) |
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Because she left her movie
career behind in the 1930s and returned to the Broadway theater,
Helen Hayes is mostly remembered by movie fans as the elderly
lady who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1970 playing
an airline passenger in "Airport." Already established
as the "First Lady" of the American theater by the
1930s, she had no real reason to hang around Hollywood once it
was clear she wasn't going to grow into a big box office star.
But she won the Best Actress Oscar for this movie in her debut
role in talking pictures--and deserved it. Young and oddly-attractive,
Hayes played a woman who sacrifices everything so her son can
become a doctor, eventually winding up as a streetwalker. I'd
say she did a magnificent job. Her movie son was played by Robert
Young, who grew up to be TV's "Marcus Welby, M.D."
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"The Informer" (1935) |
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McLaglen won the Best Actor
Oscar playing Gypo Nolan, a modern Judas during the Irish Rebellion
of 1922. He sells out his IRA friend to the British for a few
English pounds, then goes on a drunken spree. His performance
as a man haunted by his own guilt stands on its own as a fine
piece of film acting. But what makes it extra impressive is the
fact that nobody expected such sensitivity from this big, hulking
guy. Before he turned to acting, McLaglen was a prizefighter
who once fought the immortal heavyweight champ Jack Johnson.
Fans knew him for rollicking, two-fisted characters like Capt.
Flagg in "What Price Glory" (1926). Even in his old
age, he was still playing brawling Irishmen, as in his famous
cross-country fistfight with John Wayne in "The Quiet Man"
(1952). He seldom got the chance to show his acting skills. But
in "The Informer," he proved he was a heavyweight contender
as an actor, too.
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"The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) |
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Dowdy, heavy-set Jane Darwell
played mostly small parts in more than 100 films from the early
silent era through "Mary Poppins" (1964) and rarely
had a truly great role. However, her time came in 1940 when John
Ford filmed John Steinbeck’s best-seller "The Grapes
of Wrath" and cast Darwell as Ma Joad, the strong, loving
center of a migrant Oklahoma family coming west to California
at the time of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Darwell won her only Oscar
in the Best Supporting Actress category, stealing the picture
from star Henry Fonda. To see film acting at its best, watch
Darwell’s Ma Joad sort through her most beloved possessions
before leaving for California. Though she has no dialogue in
this sequence, it’s heartbreaking to see her fondly touch
a ceramic doggie souvenir from a 1904 Exposition, then put on
a long-forgotten pair of earrings--symbols of her vanished youth
and the life she’s leaving behind.
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'The Westerner' (1940) |
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Wyler's "The Westerner."
Brennan was younger and more robust in 1940, but already was
type cast as cantankerous old men. His "hanging judge"
character is deliciously comic--especially when star Gary Cooper
needles him about his passion for actress Lily Langtry--but Brennan
never lets us forget this is a dangerous man. Brennan's later
fame as a comic sidekick to John Wayne in films like "Rio
Bravo" and his Grandpa character in his "Real McCoys"
TV series have caused people to dismiss his earlier movie work
as just more of the same. But take a second look at his Judge
Roy Bean in "The Westerner." It's a classic Oscar performance.
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"The More the Merrier" (1943) |
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Coburn's Best Supporting
Actor Oscar recognized one of the truly great comic performances
of the 1940s. His Mr. Dingle is an important man who arrives
several days ahead of his scheduled meeting and can't find a
hotel room anywhere in wartime New York City. Outsmarting a crowd
of prospective tenants, he cons a single working girl (Jean Arthur)
into renting him half of her apartment. His delightful behavior
as he copes with her "house rules" is hilarious--and
his efforts to foster a romance between her and serviceman Joel
McCrea are contagiously endearing. This is one of the best comic
performances in Oscar history.
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"Miracle on 34th Street" (1947) |
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Before this loveable role,
which won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Gwenn was as likely
to play the bad guy as the good guy. In Alfred Hitchcock's 1940
"Foreign Correspondent," for instance, Gwenn was an
assassin who specializes in pushing people off tall buildings.
But as Kris Kringle, he played a slightly dotty old fellow who
believes he's really Santa Claus--and actually may be, after
all. In one delightful scene, Gwenn is the department store Santa
at Macy's in Manhattan. When a little Dutch girl, newly arrived
in America as a war orphan, speaks to him in her native tongue,
Gwenn's Mr. Kringle immediately responds in perfect Dutch, then
joins her in a traditional Dutch Christmas song. He warms not
only the little girl's heart, but also all the millions who made
this movie a classic. From then on, Gwenn personified charm and
affection on screen in a long string of genial roles.
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"Zorba the Greek" (1964) |
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When you remember "Zorba
the Greek," perhaps you only remember Anthony Quinn dancing
with Alan Bates...or whoever else happened to be near him at
the time. But I remember the marvelous Russian-French actress
Lila Kedrova as the dying old prostitute, pathetically clinging
to her dignity while being surrounded by several old crones in
black, waiting like vultures to snap up her goods as soon as
she passed away. Kedrova got about a decade's worth of additional
supporting roles out of her Oscar--and a role in the touring
company of "Zorba," the musical, with Quinn. I saw
her re-create her role from the movie on the stage in Los Angeles--and
it was the only good thing about the production I can remember.
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"Amadeus" (1984) |
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Known mainly from his stage
work on Broadway, Abraham was cast in the movie version of the
Broadway show "Amadeus" by director Milos Forman. He
played Saulieri, the Italian composer who was obscured by the
greatest musical genius of the age--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom
Hulce). Though Hulce's performance was the showy one, Abraham
was remarkably good as the troubled Saulieri, who realized he
was in the presence of genius, even though it meant his own modest
gifts as a composer would forever be obscured by Mozart's. Abraham
never became a real movie star, slipping back into obscurity
after this one Saulieri-like moment in the sun. But his dazzling
performance lives on and should be appreciated more.
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"The Trip to Bountiful" (1985) |
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Geraldine Page was a specialist in playing eccentrics on Broadway, where she was much more respected than she was in Hollywood. Her low regard from movie fans came despite seven prior Oscar nominations, including one for her first picture, "Hondo" (1953), as the frontier mother John Wayne protects. But Page got the honor she deserved with her eighth Oscar nomination, winning as Best Actress for playing an eccentric old Texas woman who wants to go home before she dies. Page was among the very select great leading ladies of the stage, but she left behind this magnificent screen performance, derived from a former television play starring Lillian Gish. Page lived only two more years after earning her only Oscar. This film is rarely revived now, but contains a truly magic screen performance.
# The Oscar-winning performance I haven't seen is Emil Jannings' in "The Way of All Flesh" (1927), which isn't available on video. He won the first Best Actor Oscar for two performances: "The Last Command" (1928) is the other one--and it's available on video.
©2004 by Ron Miller.
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