The Oscars 'Not Always 'Special Relationship' With The British, Part 3: British Actresses in the 1960s

 

 

British actresses had a more up and down relationship with the Oscars then their male counterparts as I’ve mentioned. They were more than fine with Vivien Leigh win Best Actress for twice playing two very different Southern belles – Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois – but in other cases they were less friendly. The most obvious one was that of Deborah Kerr who, until Glenn Close came along, held the dubious distinction of the most Oscar nominations for Best Actress without a win: going 0 for 6.

In fairness all six of her nominations essentially came during a seven year period (she was nominated for Best Actress for Edward, My Son a Spencer Tracy potboiler in 1949) and the competition during this period was cutthroat to say the least. She lost for her most iconic role From Here to Eternity to Audrey Hepburn’s remarkable debut in Roman Holiday. She lost for her work in The King & I to Ingrid Bergman’s comeback role in Anatasia. She lost for Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to Joanne Woodward’s iconic performance in 3 Faces of Eve. When she was nominated for her work in Separate Tables she competed against such legendary performances as Elizabeth Taylor’s work in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame and Susan Hayward for her work in I Want to Live! (Hayward won.) And in what would be her final nomination for The Sundowners she lost to Taylor for Butterfield 8 in a role that Taylor herself thought was terrible but probably came to her because she had come close to death and many thought that she was not recover. No one could have known that Kerr’s best years were behind nor that by the end of the 1960s she would essentially retire from movie making and go back to England, only occasionally acting during the 1980s mostly in British TV before retiring for good in 1987.

Most of the roles Kerr performed in during this period were works of refinement and being a lady. This was not the case of many of the British actresses who followed in her wake – with of course, one critical exception.

There had been quite a few British Actresses nominated in 1963: Rachel Roberts for This Sporting Life with her future husband Richard Harris and I went into the ladies of Tom Jones. As anyone who knows anything about 1964, the showdown came between two classic musicals: My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins. I will not relitigate how much fighting their was about how Andrews had created the original Broadway role, only to have Jack Warner insist on Audrey Hepburn being cast as Eliza Doolittle on the silver screen, how the fact that Marni Nixon dubbing Hepburn quickly became public knowledge and may have been a factor in demeaning her work, nor the fact that Hepburn was ignored for Best Actress and Andrews was nominated instead.

What is worthy noting is that Andrews was not the sole British nominee for Best Actress in 1964. Indeed when the New York Film Critics gave My Fair Lady Best Picture, Director and Actor, they didn’t honor Hepburn or Andrews. Instead they chose Kim Stanley for her performance in Séance on A Wet Afternoon  Bryan Forbes’s adaptation of Mark McShane’s Australian Novel involving a medium and her husband (Richard Attenborough) staging a  kidnapping in order for Stanley’s character to achieve fame. A dark and riveting drama it was a sharp contrast to the work given in either musical. Stanley was nominated for Best Actress but chose to stay in London doing the theater, no doubt aware of how the Oscars was going to honor the younger talent.

Everyone knew what was coming and why. When Andrews’ accepting the Golden Globe she went out of her way to thank ‘the man who made this all possible, Jack Warner.”  She had won the Oscar on what many thought was her film debut; many of them had not seen the dark comedy The Americanization of Emily that she had made that year but wasn’t released until after Mary Poppins. Later asked what would have happened if that film had come out first, Andrews’s was frank: “I would have had a completely different career.”

That career was in full swing when her next iconic musical came out: The Sound of Music. Many were certain Andrews had a possibility to become the first Actress to win back-to-back Academy Awards since Luise Rainier in 1936/1937. But another, very different British Actress named Julie was about to arrive on the scene.

Julie Christie was basically unknown in America prior to 1965. She was known in some circles for her work on British television but in 1965 she hit America with the ultimate one-two punch. The movie that grabbed the attention of critics fist was her work in Darling. In it she played amoral model Diana Scott, who was sleeping her way to the top of the fashion scene in the London that the Beatles didn’t show anybody. The film also introduced Americans to John Schlesinger in what was only his second movie. The film would win almost every prize from the New York Film Critics: Best Picture, Director and Actress. And if that was not to drive the point home by the end of the year she had starred in the work of another iconic director David Lean, in his classic adaption of Dr. Zhivago. Both movies would be nominated for Best Picture and Director and Christie was nominated for Darling.

Christie was not the only nominee from across the pond who broke on to the scene. That year Samantha Eggar debuted to American audiences in William Wyler’s The Collector, where a man (Terrence Stamp) abducts Eggar’s character just for the sheer pleasure of it. Stamp and Eggar would win Best Actor and Actress at Cannes and the film received three nominations Best Actress for Eggar, Best Director for Wyler, and Best Screenplay. That said everyone knew Best Actress was going to come down to ‘the two Julies’.

On Oscar night The Sound of Music and Dr. Zhivago each won five Oscars. But Best Actress would go to Christie. When she received the prize, she was in tears. “What do I do with?” it is said she asked Gregory Peck. “Well you put it on your mantle and everyone can look at it,” the 1962 winner replied. “But I haven’t got a mantle!” she said bursting into fresh tears.

Christie would become one of the most respected actresses of all time (I’ll hit on some of her other movies in what will be my entry on the 1970s and 1980s). But for Eggar, the path to fame didn’t go as smoothly. She was cast as the female lead in Dr. Doolittle, which 20^TH Century Fox would be the next Sound of Music. Instead it was a critical disaster that nearly bankrupted the company and Eggar’s career was never the same. She would work constantly in the next half century but almost entirely in TV and essentially retired in 2012.

1966 introduced America to two brilliant British actresses – sisters, in fact. Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave were the daughters of the great theater actor  and filmmaker Michael Redgrave. He himself had been nominated for Best Actor for his work in the film adaptation of Mourning Becomes Electra. As one might expect he spent much of his time in theater scene and worked with Oliver, Gielgud, and Edith Evans. He had married Rachel Kempson in 1935 and they had three children, Vanessa, Corin, and Lynn. All of them lived in their father’s shadow and had to deal with his frequent absences.

Vanessa got to American audiences in three separate occasions. She would play Anne Boleyn in A Man for All Season, which would be the eventual Best Picture winner. She then shocked the establishment with her work in the groundbreaking Michelangelo Antonioni film Blow-Up which earned Antonioni nominations for Directing and Screenplay. Yet in keeping in tradition with the Oscars she was nominated for her role in the British comedy Morgan! , in which a failed London artist descends into madness when his wife (Redgrave) leaves him for his best friend.

Lynn had made a few appearances to American audiences, most notably in a small roll in Tom Jones. But Georgy Girl became a phenomena. Both the movie and the title track charmed Americans and Lynn became the bigger phenomena. Georgy Girl received six Golden Globe nominations and Redgrave won Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical. However, she refused to publish a trade ad thanking the HFPA. “How dare they ask me to spent $300 to thank them for an award that only cost them a few guineas?” she said.

When the Oscars were announced the Redgrave’s became the first sisters to compete against each other for Oscars since Olivia De Haviland and Joan Fontaine had in 1941, (Fontaine won for Suspicion, De Haviland won two others during the decade.) The Redgrave’s had a closer relationship than De Haviland and Fontaine ever did (Fontaine and De Haviland’s relationship was always awkward and it may never have recovered after Fontaine won in 1942) but both Redgrave’s knew going in that the Oscar was almost certainly going to Elizabeth Taylor for her iconic role as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Nevertheless, on a night when the majority of the nominees were absent, the entire Redgrave family descended on Hollywood en masse on Oscar night 1967. As expected Taylor did prevail but she wasn’t there to take her second Oscar.

It should be mentioned many of the key absentees that night were Brits: Burton and Paul Scofield weren’t there, neither was Robert Shaw for Man for All Seasons and James Mason, nominated for Georgy Girl hadn’t shown up on principal. He was infuriated to be nominated as a Supporting Actor.

On the fortieth anniversary of the Oscars the following year the Academy got pissed at how so many of their nominees weren’t showing up and insisted that the acting leads do so far more rigorously then before. It worked for awhile (three years) and then during the 1970s the absenteeism resumed. That year the major contender from the British was 80 year old Dame Edith Evans, already nominated twice as a Supporting Actress, but now contending as a lead for her work as a frail old lady in The Whisperers, another film by Bryan Forbes  Evans dominated much of the early awards, winning the New York Film Critics and Golden Globes for Best Actress. At the time the oldest nominee for Best Actress, she faced a tough field two of the most iconic performances of all time: Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde and Anne Bancroft for The Graduate. She also had to face both Hepburn’s: Audrey for Wait Until Dark, Katherine for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Katherine ended up winning that year, shocking everybody who believed she was given the prize because Spencer Tracy, her co-star in nine movies and longtime lover, had died not long after the movie was released. Hepburn herself believed that.

In an Oscars that in hindsight was the end of an era, the Brits were back in force in 1968. The majority of them were nominated for either Oliver! And in my previous article I discussed the British acting nominees. However the lone British actress’ nomination infuriated the masses.

Karel Reisz’ biopic of the controversial dancer Isadora Duncan infuriated an America who had no use for the moral changes that were coming everywhere including movies. America hadn’t much cared for the real Duncan in the 1920s; a film celebrating her infuriated them even more. Vanessa Redgrave’s work in the title role knocked out everybody, even those who disliked the film. And even though she was the winner of Best Actress in Cannes, no one thought she had a chance. Then on the day of the nominations there she was and everybody in Hollywood was infuriated.

To be fair, they had a good reason. When the iconic Rosemary’s Baby had come out earlier that year everyone was absolutely certain Mia Farrow was going to earn Best Actress for her incredible performance. But when the Oscar nominations came out: the film was nominated for two awards  - including Ruth Gordon as Supporting Actress – but Farrow was nowhere to be found. And there was Redgrave, alongside Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand, Patricia Neal for The Subject was Roses and Joanne Woodward for Rachel, Rachel. (I’ll get to that film in a different series.) In hindsight the exclusion of Farrow in favor of Redgrave is one of the biggest blunders the Oscars made for acting during the decade and may have more to do with the Oscars long-term loathing for horror than anything else. Redgrave showed up on Oscar night to witness a different kind of history.

A different kind of shock closed the 1960s. Maggie Smith was hardly a stranger to the Oscar voters by 1969. She had a supporting role in The Pumpkin Eater which had earned Anne Bancroft here second Oscar nomination. She had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Desdemona in Laurence Oliver’s Othello in 1965. After that, however, she went back across the pond.

However in 1969 she had managed to become popular on both side’s of the Atlantic for playing the title role in the spirited adaption of Muriel Spark’s comedy The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The film was known as much for Rod McKuen’s score as Smith’s work and both were nominated for Oscars. But no one seriously considered her a possibility. The Oscar, everyone knew, was going to go to an iconic new star who was an heir to Hollywood royalty: Jane Fonda, nominated for her first Oscar in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They and Liza Minelli for her stunning debut in The Sterile Cuckoo.

By this point the studio system was all but dead considering that among the nominees for Best Picture was the first ever          X-Rated film John Schlesinger’s landmark Midnight Cowboy. It would be the big winner that night, taking Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. (That wasn’t the biggest shock among the nominees; I’ll get to that in a different series.) Then they announced Best Actress and Hollywood was stunned when Smith was announced. Smith had not shown up, though whether it was because she was engaged in London or was engaging the passive aggressive attitude about attendance I don’t recall. What I do remember is that Shirley MacLaine, as much a rebel of that decade as anyone else, staged an Oscar watching party that night.

When Smith’s name was announced, there was a similar silence. Then someone said: “Gee, they finally voted for someone with talent.”

Smith, as you might expect, did not go Hollywood being one of the greatest actresses of the rest of the 20^th century. Naturally she didn’t become a household name until the start of the next century, which is as we all know par for the course.

In the next article I will deal with the radical sea change that pervaded Hollywood during the 1970s and how the Academy Awards started to acknowledge the Brits more often and why the Brits track record with attendance began to seem acceptable by Hollywood in a way it wasn’t before.