Thelma Ritter -- Meeting the Star of “The Mating Season”

The unstoppable Richard Orton, he of the keen eye and the passion for movie art direction, just sent me two screen-shots proving that in 1951 Paramount Studios used the same fancy set of decorative archways in two very different films. One was George Stevens’ powerful romantic tragedy, A Place in the Sun. This film starring Montgomery Clift as a young man on the make, also featured Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, and murder most foul. The other film, completely unknown to me, was a screwball romantic comedy, The Mating Season. Dick helpfully advised me that’s possible to see The Mating Season, completely free of charge, on YouTube. The film’s above-the-title stars are John Lund and the gorgeous Gene Tierney. But it was when Dick told me that The Mating Season is considered one of Thelma Ritter’s best performances that I decided to check it out.

 Thelma Ritter (1902-1969) was never anyone’s idea of a romantic lead. Diminutive, with a  gravelly voice and a strong New Yawk accent, she was born to play tart-tongued women of the working class. Making her uncredited screen debut as a frustrated shopper in 1947’s Miracle on 34^th Street, she collected her first Oscar nomination—for the supporting role of Margo Channing’s maid—in 1950’s All About Eve. The Mating Season won her a second nomination, and she went on to accumulate four more noms (for With a Song in My Heart, Pickup on South Street, Pillow Talk, and Birdman of Alcatraz): it’s a supporting-actress record that has neve been broken. Only problem: none of the nominations resulted in a gold statuette. It’s an omission I wish we could somehow rectify, because Thelma Ritter—whether appearing in wacky comedy or a tough-minded drama—was one of a kind.

 For sure, The Mating Season would be dead in the water without her. It’s the story of an eager young businessman (the blond and rather bland Lund) who falls for the sophisticated daughter of a former U.S. ambassador (Tierney). They marry, but rivals on all sides are rooting against the pairing. While Lund, trying to advance his business career, moves his bride into a swanky apartment, rivals in his firm are working against the marriage as well as his career prospects. I won’t go into all the complications that arise, but Ritter plays Lund’s salt-of-the-earth widowed mom, the good-hearted proprietor of a hamburger stand that’s in financial trouble. When she learns that her son and new daughter-in-law are trying to throw an elaborate dinner party for friends and business associates, she shows up to take over the kitchen, without ever revealing the family relationship.  Of course she triumphs, both at the stove and with the grateful new daughter-in-law who at first doesn’t realize who she is. Eventually, there evolves a showdown of sorts with a new arrival, the bitchy and self-serving snob who is Tierney’s mother. She’s played by Miriam Hopkins, once a bright Hollywood leading lady herself but by this time quite convincing as an obnoxious older woman. Remarkably, Hopkins is billed above Ritter as a supporting player, when by rights Ritter should have had star billing, in a story that clearly revolves, from beginning to end, around her funny, feisty character.   

 I’d love to convey how poignant Thelma Ritter can be, when she’s victimized in films like Sam Fuller’s noirish spy thriller, Pickup on South Street. But her acerbic wit shines through as the nurse looking after James Stewart in Rear Window, and in so many of her other roles. .Give this gal an Oscar! Too bad it’s too late for that.  

 

 

The Ghost of Romance Past

Hollywood, it seems, loves ghosts. Just think of the Ghostbusters franchise, and the schmaltzy romance beyond the grave known simply as Ghost. In that 1990 film, Patrick Swayze appears post-mortem to his love, played by Demi Moore, to the throbbing strains of “Unchained Melody,” in what has turned out to be the sexiest pottery-making scene of all time.

 Much earlier in the 20^th century, there was another popular ghostly romance, though one decidedly more prim.  In 1947 the ubiquitous Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, based on a popular British novel though shot entirely on the coastline of California. The starring roles were taken by Gene Tierney (yes, Laura herself) and Rex Harrison (fresh from the male lead in the non-musical Anna and the King of Siam).  She plays a young widow too independent in spirit to commit to life with her former mother-in-law. Decamping with her young daughter (an 8-year-old Natalie Wood, already a screen veteran), she falls in love with a seaside home that is rumored to be haunted. And so it is . . . by an irascible ship’s captain determined to scare off potential buyers. Though his original hope is to convert the house into a home for aged seamen, he soon develops a soft spot for the plucky widow who alone can see him.

 Mrs. Muir is determined to be what she considers a modern woman. (At several points, the characters remind one another that they’re now living in the 20^th century, though they still light gas lamps and her skirts trail the ground.) When Capt. Gregg persuades Mrs. Muir that she should be on the lookout for a living male who can love and sustain her, she falls for Uncle Neddy, a successful author of children’s books. Since he’s played by the often dicey George Sanders, the audience certainly wonders how this human romance is going to play out. Though Sanders was yet to take on his most indelible role, that of the cold-blooded Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, he ultimately shows himself here as an equally untrustworthy type. Poor Mrs. Muir—but when we skip ahead in time we get a conclusion that is both bittersweet and entirely satisfying.

 I won’t give away the ending of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir here.  Suffice it to say that its charms are of an old-fashioned sort, one that demands that the plight of its characters be taken seriously. I’m assuming that the same held true in the several radio and television versions of this popular material that surfaced between 1947 and 1974. But when it was transformed into a TV series that ran from 1968 to 1970, with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare in the leading roles, the emphasis was on sitcom hijinks. In April 1994, Variety reported that there would be a Twentieth Century Fox remake of the movie, with Sean Connery perfectly cast as the irascible but ultimately tender Captain. Alas, it was not to be.

,In its own day, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was perhaps best admired for its romantic Bernard Herrmann score, and for its Oscar-nominated cinematography. But romantically-inclined voters from the American Film Institute have chosen it as #73 among its 2002 listing of 100 Years . . . 100 Passions. Casablanca was named #1, Gone With the Wind #2. West Side Story #3. And The Way We Were, about which I’ve recently written, came in at an unlikely—to me, at least--#6, ahead of such unarguably romantic flicks as Doctor Zhivago, Love Story, and The African Queen. Oh well.