1948-1957 Best Supporting Actress Winners

[Reza]

Walter Brennan won 3 Oscars in the supporting category but if anyone back then deserved 3 Oscars it was Thelma Ritter. For All About Eve (1950), The Mating Season (1951) and Pickup on South Street (1953).

1948
Claire Trevor hands down and my vote for the best of this bunch.

1949
Of the nominated ladies I prefer Ethel Waters. And I agree with Magilla that Elizabeth Patterson should have won if nominated.

1950
Ritter

1951
Ritter

1952
Grahame's win was absurd. She hardly did anything in The Bad and the Beautiful. Maybe it was her over exposure that year which won it for her. She was also in Macao, The Greatest Show on Earth and Sudden Fear.

1953
I love Donna Reed's heart breaking performance in From Here to Eternity. But Ritter was also memorable.

1954
Eva Marie Saint deserved to win.

1955
Jo Van Fleet easily the best of the nominees and deserved to win. I find Rosalind Russell too strident and over-the-top in Picnic. Even if she had been nominated I doubt she could have defeated Van Fleet as the tough prostitute.

1956
Malone was flamboyant and fun and easily the best of the nominees. Yes Helen Hayes would have easily won if nominated for Anastasia.

1957
Umeki's win is a headscratcher. Elsa Lanchester should have won.

In order of preference: Trevor, Van Fleet, Reed, Saint & Malone.

[Big Magilla]

I agree Claire Trevor is the standout here. Her heartbreaking performance as the humiliated gangster's moll in Key Largo still reverberates.

I never cared much for Mercedes McCambridge aside from her voicework as the devil in The Exorcist. The two Ethels (Barrymore and Waters) and Celeste Holm were all better, but my favorite in this category was the non-nominated Elizabeth Patterson as the little old lady who holds off the lynch mob in Intruder in the Dust.

Josephine Hull was OK in Harvey but I've always thought she was more impressive in Arsenic and Old Lace six years earlier. Celeste Holm was my pick for playing Bette Davis' best friend in All About Eve even though the two actresses reportedly hated one another's guts off-screen.

Kim Hunter was fine in A Streetcar Named Desire but the standout among the nominees was Thelma Ritter as the self-sacrificing mother in the dramady The Mating Season in which she was fourth-billed for what was almost exclusively her film.

Gloria Grahame did absolutely nothing in The Bad and the Beautiful to earn an Oscar. The year's best supporting actress was easily Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain.

Donna Reed was good as the thinly disguised prostitute in From Here to Eternity but Thelma Ritter deserved this one more for her devastating turn in Pickup on South Street.

I could make a case for Ritter's non-nominated performance in Rear Window, but Eva Marie Saint did deserve to win for more than holding her own against Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.

Jo Van Fleet was the best of the 1955 nominees as James Dean's whorehouse madam mother in East of Eden but non-nominated Rosalind Russell should have allowed herself to be nominated in support for Picnic for which she would have been an easy winner.

Helen Hayes' over-the-title billing in Anastasia kept her out of the running for supporting actress in 1956 but her few minutes on screen opposite Ingrid Bergman were pure magic and a more deserving performance for her to have won a second Oscar for than for the role for which she would win fourteen years later.

Miyoshi Umeki was charming in Sayonara but it wasn't much of a performance. Silent screen idol Sessue Hayakawa as the commandant in The Bridge on the River Kwai should have been the Asian actor taking home an Oscar that year. Elsa Lanchester, in a role written especially for her in Witness for the Prosecution should have won on the distaff side.

[CalWilliam]

Claire Trevor is the clear standout among this group for me, with Dorothy Malone and Eva Marie Saint also worthy of consideration. I think all of them are good, but maybe Hull’s and Umeki’s wins have aged the poorest.

[gunnar]

None of the performances seemed to really stand head and shoulders above the rest, but I went with Josephine Hull in Harvey. I liked her performance there. I also considered Claire Trevor in Key Largo.

[Big Magilla]

Not at all my favorite decade for this category.

I only agree with two of these choices, although none are really bad, just also-rans in my book. More later.

What does everyone else think?