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The great "A Patch of Blue" is one of your all-time favorites and you don't get why SW got the Oscar for it? Does not compute!
shareYes she deserved her Oscar. Shelley Winters could do more with one look than most actresses can do with an entire script..and that happens several times in this film. The problem is not that she won, but that everyone else in the movie also deserved to win and did not.
shareYes she deserved her Oscar. Shelley Winters could do more with one look than most actresses can do with an entire script..and that happens several times in this film.
Animal crackers in my soup
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop
This is another of the many mysteries of the Academy Awards.
IMO Joseph Schildkraut and Gusti Huber (Anne's parents in the film) were much better but somehow they weren't nominated.
When judging the Oscars from historical perspective - it is always important to consider context and competition. For example, many people may have difficulty understanding how Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for "Butterfield 8". However, when they learn it was her fourth consecutive Best Actress nomination; and she had a tracheotomoy and nearly died while the voting was going on... well, it starts to make more sense.
Likewise for Ms. Winters. First of all, we forget she wasn't always this brilliant character actress. "Diary of Anne Frank" was her first major character role, in which George Stevens even told her, "If you do this, you will win an Oscar and extend your career another 20 years!" So she played against type and was recognized in part for that.
Secondly, look at her competition: the duo from "Imitation of Life" likely cancelled each other out. Thelma Ritter was such a perennial contestant in this category she even once notoriously threw a "Come and Watch Me Lose Again!" party during the Oscars! And finally Hermoine Baddeley, who was effective but barely a blip on the screen in quite a small role in "Room at the Top".
In short, she was the best of the bunch and therefore, she won.
And the poster who claims "A Patch of Blue" is one of their all-time favorite movies but can't understand why Ms. Winters won for that performance?!? That is one of the most bizarrely unsupportable statements ever made on this board. The movie may have its flaws, but few will dispute the Academy's decision that year. She clearly deserved the Oscar for "A Patch of Blue".... and if I were judging, I would have given her a third for "The Poseidon Adventure".
But that's just me.
Her first major character role was in A PLACE IN THE SUN, 8 years earlier.
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