Category Archives: character actors

What a Character: Mary Wickes

Posted on by under blogathon, character actors, who's that girl

By all accounts, Mary Wickes did not start out her life with the intention to become an actress. She was a St. Louis debutante who attended college early, graduating from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science with plans to attend law school–that is, until she gave in to the allure of the stage and headed to New York instead. Appearances on Broadway eventually led her to Hollywood, and she found her niche as a character actress, generally typecast as a wisecracking sidekick–nurses, secretaries, housekeepers–in a number of sprightly comedies.

Wickes certainly did not look–or sound like–the typical Hollywood starlet. Her tall, thin, somewhat gangly frame had her towering over many of her fellow actors. She had wide-set eyes and a long nose that gave her a rather patrician profile. Her voice was remarkable: loud and insistent, demanding to be heard, marked by high-pitched cracks and growls that grew more distinct in her later years. She demonstrated an impeccable sense of comic timing, and she seemed to have an almost instinctive sense for well-staged reaction shots (few could say more with a pair of widened eyes than Mary Wickes could). Everything about her was unique. Even if she never intended to be an actress, there’s no denying she was custom-made to be one anyway.

Wickes appeared in a few cinematic shorts in the 1930s, including a notable one in 1938 called Too Much Johnson, directed by Orson Welles, which she made while a member of Welles’ Mercury Theater. She finally made her feature film debut at the age of thirty-two, when she appeared in the 1942 classic The Man Who Came to Dinner. In the film, Wickes reprises her role from the original Broadway production alongside co-star Monty Woolley (who plays the main character, popular radio host Sheridan Whiteside). As the much-maligned nurse, Miss Preen, Wickes bears the brunt of the acerbic Whiteside’s sharp-tongued barbs (in addition to some manhandling courtesy of Jimmy Durante). Her reactions to Whiteside’s constant insults range from wild confusion to wide-eyed horror to, finally, a sharp-tongued rant of her own–a brilliant moment that highlights Wickes’ comedic abilities:

“I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on, anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed you, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!”

Wickes parlayed that memorable supporting role into a number of others throughout the next fifty-something years. In the process, she starred with some of the biggest names of the classic Hollywood era, among them Bette Davis (the aforementioned Dinner; Now, Voyager; June Bride; The Actress), Abbott and Costello (Who Done It?); Doris Day (On Moonlight Bay, I’ll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, It Happened to Jane); Jack Lemmon (How to Murder Your Wife); Rosalind Russell (The Trouble with Angels; Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows); Frank Sinatra (Higher and Higher); Bing Crosby (White Christmas); and many, many more.

Wickes was even immortalized in animation due to her involvement in two high-profile Disney features. For the 1961 classic 101 Dalmatians, Wickes served as the live-action model for the villainous Cruella De Vil. Disney’s Marc Davis animated the character, and according to his widow, Alice Estes Davis, Wickes was hand-picked by him to serve as the physical inspiration for Cruella: ”She was very tall, slim, had good bone structure and was a wonderful comedienne. All he had to do was tell her once how he wanted her to walk and move and that and she did it.” Wickes also supplied one of the additional voices in the film.

But Disney wasn’t quite done with her after that; thirty-four years later, Wickes’ final role before her death in 1995 was recording the voice of Laverne, one of the gargoyles in Disney’s adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Sadly, Wickes passed away before completing her part, and the rest of her lines were filled in by actress Jane Withers (who also voiced Laverne in the highly unnecessary sequel to the film in 2002).

Wickes also made her mark on the small screen, with a number of appearances on popular television shows. Most notably, she became great friends with a fellow comedienne, the legendary Lucille Ball, and over the years, she appeared in several different incarnations on Lucy’s various television series. Her most well-known guest role, however, was her first (and the only one she would make on Ball’s first series, I Love Lucy). In 1952, she appeared as Madame Lemond, a grand dame of a dancing teacher, in the episode “The Ballet.” That episode remains one of the most beloved of the entire series, namely for the scene in which Wickes puts Lucy through her paces:

Lemond: “I think we should go to the barre.”
Lucy: “Oh, good, ’cause I’m awful thirsty.”

When Wickes passed away in 1995, Lucie Arnaz spoke at the memorial service and recalled the many times Wickes would come over to their home while she was growing up: ”Mary was just like one of the family. If any of us were sick or even in bed with a cold, Mary would show up at the back door with a kettle of chicken soup. She could be loud and boisterous and as demanding as any of the characters she played, but she was also very loving and giving. What a lady!”

What a lady, indeed. In her eighty-five years on this earth, Mary Wickes appeared in over a hundred films and television series. She never lacked for new roles, and indeed remained a popular entertainer; in her final years, her popularity saw a resurgence with memorable roles in Postcards from the Edge, the Sister Act films (in which she played crusty, feisty Sister Mary Lazarus), and the 1994 version of Little Women, in which she played Aunt March. In the end, it’s little wonder Wickes was able to maintain a seven-decade career, because it is simply a joy to watch her onscreen. Even in the smallest of roles, she brings warmth, humor, and pure zing to each film she graces. In every sense of the word, Mary Wickes was quite the character.

 

This post is our submission to the “What a Character!” blogathon hosted by Outspoken and Freckled, Once Upon a Screen, and Paula’s Cinema Club. The blogathon concludes tomorrow, so make sure to check out all of the great characters being discussed by the participating blogs!

Blogathons, baby, blogathons!

Posted on by under announcements, blogathon, character actors, summer under the stars

Blogathons, blogathons, blogathons! It seems like every classic movie blog on the web is hosting one in the next couple of months. And that is not a complaint–it’s fantastic to see the interest in classic films that such blogathons tend to generate and promote among movie fans. We told you about several upcoming events in our beginning-of-the-month announcements post, but two new blogathons have been added to the roster, and considering that one of them kicks off on August 1st, we want to help get the word out as soon as possible …

First up, two of our favorite bloggers (and prolific tweeters), “BiscuitKitten” Jill and “ScribeHard” Michael, are co-hosting a month-long blogathon to coincide with TCM”s annual Summer Under the Stars celebration. I’ll allow them to explain the premise behind this event:

“[Check out the] TCM Summer Under the Stars schedule for its entire 2012 run. Pick a movie … pick a star … pick a whole day … pick five … ten … whatever! This is a month-long blogathon and we want to showcase as many bloggers as many times as we can. And because your picks will coincide with their respective SUTS days, you can plan as far in advance as you need to.

Whether your medium is the written word, stories in pictures, video tributes, or even a simple haiku (see what Michael did there?), we want you to make the great Summer Under the Stars event even greater.”

As SUTS is one of our favorite times of the year here at True Classics, you know we are all over this one. All four of us will be posting something for this event (and some of us *coughBrandiecough* will be posting multiple somethings throughout the month).

There are a number of banners to choose from so you can publicize this event on your own site (including the one posted above with the front-and-center shot of Gene Kelly’s delectable ass–thanks, Jill and Michael!). You can find out more information on the blogathon’s Facebook page, and you can also follow the tcmSUTSblogathon feed on Twitter.

 

In September, three great bloggers/Twitter pals, Kellee (@IrishJayhawk66), Aurora (@CitizenScreen), and Paula (@Paula_Guthat), are co-hosting a celebration of character actors–those indelible supporting players who populate some of our favorite films. As they explain:

“[We] are dedicating an event to the great character actors that so enhanced our classic movies. To the faces, the laughs, the drama presented by these wonderful actors whose names all too often go unrecognized we dedicate WHAT A CHARACTER!

  • Would Casablanca be as great without the laughs provided by S. K. Sakall?
  • Would we want to look out Rear Window if not for the warnings of Thelma Ritter?
  • Can you measure how much Edward Everett Horton added to the fabulous Astaire/Rogers pictures?

We think these and so many others deserve their due. So, here we are with a blogathon in their honor.”

You can sign up any time between now and the time of the blogathon–just contact Kellee, Aurora, and/or Paula and let them know which character actor you would like to focus on! (But you can’t have Mary Wickes–she’s ours!)

These blogathons promise to present some great reading–are you signed up to participate in either one yet?

Who’s that girl?: Joyce Compton

Posted on by under character actors, who's that girl

If you’re a classic movie fan, you’ve probably seen Joyce Compton in dozens of minor film roles–she played a wide variety of nurses, waitresses, and random girlfriends in almost two hundred movies throughout her three-decades-long career. But she wasn’t merely relegated to these type of blink-and-you’ll-miss-her roles. In the heyday of her career in the 1930s and 40s, Compton starred opposite some of the greatest actors and actresses in Hollywood history, sometimes as the romantic rival to the film’s leading lady. These more notable supporting parts, however, typically involved some play on the “dumb blonde” stereotype, which ultimately served to pigeonhole Compton, never really allowing her to break out as a performer despite a charming on-screen persona and a gift for comic timing.

Compton started out as a bit player in the silent picture era, making memorable appearances in two films with eventual close friend Clara Bow, The Wild Party and Dangerous Curves (both in 1929). In the 1930s, she would go on to make nearly 100 films–many of them “B” pictures–but her career never reached the heights of some of her contemporaries (in fact, the actress sometimes appeared uncredited in her smaller roles). Still, in these films, Compton was able to share the screen with such big names as Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Humphrey Bogart, Carole Lombard, and Gary Cooper, among others.

Her most notable role during the decade came in 1937, when she appeared opposite Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth. In the film, Compton plays Dixie Bell Lee, Grant’s nightclub-singer girlfriend, who performs a racy rendition of “My Dreams Are Gone With the Wind” in which her gauzy skirt blows up with every lyrical mention of a breeze (the song is also performed later in the film by a masquerading Dunne). Compton is charmingly ditzy and unabashed in this small but memorable part, more than holding her own opposite comedy veterans Grant and Dunne.

As the 1940s dawned, Compton appeared in two films directed by Raoul Walsh and co-starring George Raft: 1940′s They Drive By Night, also featuring Bogart, and the following year’s Manpower. Again, Compton’s roles were small in these pictures, though Night featured an entertaining courtroom scene in which a confused Compton testifies at the murder trial of Raft’s character. As she swivels her head between the judge and the district attorney, unsure of whom she was to refer to as “your honor,” Compton encapsulates the essence of the pretty “dumb blonde,” a persona she had, largely against her will, perfected over the years.

In 1945, Compton appeared as the drawling Southern belle Nurse Mary Lee in Christmas in Connecticut. In this movie, the actress stars opposite Dennis Morgan and the inimitable Barbara Stanwyck as Morgan’s purported fiance. Though her role is still quite minor, Compton’s appearances nevertheless bookend the film, and her character both precipitates the plot and helps her two co-stars reach their inevitable happy conclusion.

In the late 40s, Compton appeared in minor parts in other notable films, including a stint with Joan Crawford as a waitress in Mildred Pierce (1945); as a chorus girl in 1946′s Night and Day, once again opposite Grant; and as blond arm candy, again opposite Stanwyck, in 1948′s Sorry, Wrong Number. Compton was uncredited for all three of these roles. She also played a bit role in the post-war classic The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), but her part was ultimately cut from the film.

When Compton’s career began to slow down in the 1950s, she moved into the nursing profession for a short while–a somewhat ironic move given her penchant for playing such roles on the big screen. She appeared in a handful of final roles throughout the decade, in both film and television, before retiring from acting completely. Still, she kept her hand in Hollywood pursuits, serving at times as a writer and clothing designer. In 1997, Joyce Compton passed away at the age of 90, leaving behind an extensive filmography that indicates, to viewers new and old, the depth of her talent and skill as a character actress.

Who’s that girl?: Thelma Ritter

Posted on by under brandie's faves, character actors, who's that girl

One of the most visible and beloved supporting players of the 1950s was a middle-aged, theater-trained actress from Brooklyn, Thelma Ritter.

You may not know her name, but if you’re a classic movie fan, you know her face. Ritter appeared in supporting roles in a series of big-name films opposite some big-name stars—Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, and Doris Day among them—in a two-decade-long Hollywood career. And along the way, Ritter racked up an impressive six Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress (four of them consecutively between 1950 and 1953).

It’s always wonderful to pop in an old movie and see Thelma Ritter’s name appear in the opening credits. Whether she’s tackling comedy or drama, her performance is always one that draws the eye. Even in her first movie, 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street (for which she was uncredited), Ritter’s short scene as a mother seeking the “perfect” fire engine for her son is a memorable one within the film.

Her “big break” came in 1950’s All About Eve, in which Ritter plays Birdie, the long-suffering personal maid to stage diva Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Down-to-earth Birdie is the first person in Eve to grow wise to the title character’s machinations, and Ritter does a wonderful job in helping the audience see the first glimmers of deception in Eve’s story. And it’s no wonder Ritter is so phenomenal in the role: the film’s writer/director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, wrote the part with Ritter specifically in mind after having worked with her in the previous year’s A Letter to Three Wives. Ultimately, Ritter’s performance was noteworthy enough to garner her first Academy Award nomination (one of fourteen nominations for that film, incidentally).

I was first exposed to Thelma Ritter in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), in which she plays James Stewart’s no-nonsense nurse, Stella. It’s a relatively small role, but Ritter is phenomenal in it—in fact, I’d argue that it’s the best role of her career. Initially skeptical of her employer’s claims that the man across the way murdered his wife, Stella eventually becomes an enthusiastic accomplice in their quest to uncover the crime. Ritter shares a great on-screen camaraderie not only with Stewart, but with costar Grace Kelly, as the two women actively investigate the mystery while Stewart remains frustratingly confined in his wheelchair. I’m just surprised that Ritter didn’t score another Oscar nomination for the role.

One of my favorite Ritter roles is in the 1959 romantic comedy Pillow Talk. She plays Doris Day’s housekeeper, Alma, who shows up for work every morning with a killer hangover and spends her days mooning over Day’s dreamy party-line partner, Rock Hudson. The scene in which Hudson’s character, Brad, tries to get Alma drunk in order to finagle a relationship with Day—only to have Alma out-drink him into a stupor—is one of the best parts of the movie:

Brad: “I know a nice little bar, right down the street.”
Alma: [grabs his arm and pulls him along] “I know a better one.”

Her hilarious role in Pillow Talk presented Ritter with her fifth Oscar nomination.

Though she found a great deal of success in Hollywood, Ritter was also an accomplished stage actress, winning a 1958 Tony Award for Best Leading Performance in a Musical for her role in New Girl in Town, a musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie (which was so memorably brought to the screen as Greta Garbo’s first “talkie” in 1930). Ritter shared the award with her costar, Gwen Verdon.

The 1960s brought Ritter several more acclaimed roles, including a supporting part in the final completed film for actors Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits (1961); a sixth Oscar-nominated performance as the mother of the titular character in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962); an appearance next to Debbie Reynolds in the star-studded Western epic How the West Was Won (also in 1962); and a reunion with Day in 1963’s Move Over, Darling.

Ritter passed away in 1969, just shy of her 67th birthday. She left behind a body of work comprising more than thirty films and a wide variety of stage and television performances. She never won an Oscar, but not for nothing was she one of the most-nominated actors of all time. Despite having only spent two decades in Hollywood, Thelma Ritter certainly left one hell of a mark on the classic cinematic landscape.

Hunky-dunky!

Posted on by under brandie's faves, carrie's faves, character actors

Nothing makes me smile more than when I’m watching a movie on TCM that I have never seen before and the smiling, round face of Cuddles Sakall appears on the screen. And this past Friday’s lineup had double the Cuddles; the network’s night of Gordon MacRae films featured two movies co-starring Sakall, Tea for Two and The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (both from 1950). After realizing this, I promptly jumped on the phone to Carrie, where all I had to say was the word, “Cuddles!!!!” and she knew exactly what I was talking about.

What can I say? Some actors are just that delightful.

S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall may not have liked the nickname, but it fit his on-screen personality perfectly. In more than 40 films between 1940 and 1954, Sakall played memorable characters long on jolly good humor and short on English language skills.

Born in Hungary in 1883, Sakall got his start in vaudeville and became a film star in his home country. At the age of 57, as World War II broke out and it became increasingly dangerous for the Jewish Sakall to remain in Europe, the actor immigrated to America, making his Hollywood film debut opposite Deanna Durbin in It’s a Date (1940).

Sakall is perhaps best known for the role of Carl, the headwaiter of Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942). And loving that movie the way I do, I naturally mark this performance as a personal favorite. But the majority of his film roles are much less dramatic in nature; indeed, Sakall is a bright spot in many a classic romance, usually offering some much-needed comic relief.

Among his more notable parts are Professor Magenbruch, one of Gary Cooper’s hapless colleagues in 1941′s Ball of Fire; Charles Coburn’s butler in the same year’s The Devil and Miss Jones; Schwab, one of James Cagney’s backers in the fabulous 1942 musical Yankee Doodle Dandy; and Mr. Oberkugen, Judy Garland’s excitable boss in 1949′s In the Good Old Summertime (a pale, yet still somewhat enjoyable musical remake of 1939′s The Shop Around the Corner).

And in one of our guilty pleasure trifles, Cinderella Jones (1946), Sakall takes on yet another professorial role. Look for more commentary about this film next month–Carrie and I have been waiting for a chance to review it, and TCM’s finally replaying it on December 12th!

But more than any other, I particularly adore his role as Felix, Barbara Stanwyck’s chef and best friend, in 1945′s Christmas in Connecticut. Trying to learn the meaning of the word “catastrophe,” Felix mercilessly mangles the word into the barely intelligible “catastroph” and answers every increasingly absurd crisis with a shrugging assurance that all is “hunky-dunky.” And the scenes in which he attempts to teach Stanwyck how to flip flapjacks are utterly hilarious (“Watch now. I show you how to flip-flop the flop-flips”).

Cuddles passed away shortly after his 72nd birthday in 1955. His final film, The Student Prince, had been released seven months prior. It’s sad to think that his career in Hollywood was so relatively short, a mere fifteen years. But in those fifteen years, he definitely made his mark–for it’s hard to think of any character actor from the classic days of Hollywood who was more endearing, more adorably amusing, and more heartfelt than Cuddles Sakall.

Tell us: what’s your favorite Cuddles film?