Oscar Tribute-Best Supporting Actress

Dianne Wiest won Best Supporting Actress twice.

With Oscar night just around the corner (sort of), we here at Three Movie Buffs feel it is the perfect time to look back and honor past winners from the six major categories; the four acting awards as well as director and picture.

First awarded at the 9th annual Ceremony in 1936, the best supporting actress category has traditionally been given for less glamorous roles than the best actress award. Many of the women who have won this award are not household names today. Katina Paxinou who won for For Whom The Bell Tolls in 1943, Anne Revere for National Velvet in 1945 and Miyoshi Umeki for Sayonara in 1957 to name a few. So though this award does not guarantee immortality it can help advance or even revive a career.

Two women have won this award twice; Shelly Winters for The Diary Of Anne Frank in 1959 and for A Patch Of Blue in 1965, and Dianne Wiest for a pair of Woody Allen movies, Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986 and Bullets Over Broadway in 94. It is also worth noting that the only African-American women to win acting Oscars, as of this writing, have won in this category; Hattie McDaniel for her unforgettable role as Mammy in Gone With The Wind and Whoopi Goldberg, half a century later, for Ghost.

Five women have done the impressive feat of winning this award as well as the coveted Best Actress Award. In the order they achieved this accomplishment, they are Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange. All legendary stars of the silver screen as well as immensely talented actresses.

In recent years there has been some talk about bad luck or even a career-killing curse associated with this honor. It is true that many of the supporting actress winners of the past ten years have experienced career fall-out after winning. Mercedes Ruehl, Marisa Tomei, Anna Paquin, Mira Sorvino, Juliette Binoche and Kim Basinger have all suffered, to varying degrees, this fate, i.e. post Oscar career slump. There also seems to be a pattern of winners in this category having strange and hard to pronounce names. I mean what were the odds that two women named Mercedes would win it? The other one was Mercedes McCambridge for All The Kings Men way back in 1949.

Mira Sorvino is one of many women to be directed by Woody Allen and to walk away with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Traditionally this award is presented early on in the Oscar show. For a nominee in this category it must be reassuring to know that they won’t have to sit on pins and needles all evening, as many of the other nominees will. On the other hand if your name is not the one called it must be quite depressing to have to sit through three hours of watching other people win.

Your chances of winning in this category are much better in a comedic role than for Best Actress, which almost always goes for a dramatic performance. All the better if it is a Woody Allen movie, in the last fifteen years he has directed no less than three Best Supporting Actress winners, including back to back awards in the mid-nineties.

So though this award does not carry the glamour or prestige of Best Actress, it does provide a wonderful tribute to the talented people who don’t always get to play the star. Those women who play the sensible/wisecracking best friend, or the aging, alcoholic mentor, or the ditzy gangster’s girl. They may not carry the show but their scenes are anticipated and fully appreciated.

On that note, my final thought is this; how outrageous that the great Madeline Kahn was never given this award!