Number 22: Marcia Gay Harden as Lee Krassner in "Pollock" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

To this day, Marcia Gay Harden is still the only person to have won an Oscar without having been nominated by the Screen Actors Guild – but it’s easy to see how the upset happened considering that she gave a true tour-de-force performance as Lee Krassner, a painter and the suffering wife of alcoholic artist Jackson Pollock.

Just like Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter in A Streetcar named Desire, Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden have a fantastic and powerful chemistry that combines lust and passion with hate and self-destruction. Marcia Gay Harden has a strong and uncompromising screen presence which she uses to give her character many shades and edges – Lee is tough and bitter, taking care of Jackson like a mother but always loving and sensual. Right at the beginning of their relationship she begins to take care of Jackson’s life (trying to calm him down at dinner, making him breakfast and most importantly, getting people to see his work). Despite the fact that her own life always has to stand back, she never becomes a little house-wife or anything – Lee always keeps her dignity, telling Jackson that she wants to get married or it is over and she always remains her own person. Jackson Pollock may control her life, but he doesn’t control her character. Marcia Gay Harden shows Lee as a strong woman who doesn’t give up and who keeps up with Jackson and his problems.

Essentially, Lee Krassner is the typical ‘suffering wife’ the Academy loves to honor but by emphasizing the strength and determination of Lee, Marcia Gay Harden gave the part a much more interesting and captivating angle than, say, Jennifer Connelly one year later in A Beautiful Mind.

Marcia Gay Harden also has one of the most fascinating ‘Oscar scenes’ ever and she hits that scene out of the park: ‘We are painters, Jackson! We don’t have any money, we don’t get by, we struggle. But you are a great artist. I believe in Jackson Pollock. There’s you and there’s your painting and you, you need, you need, you need, YOU NEED!’  

Marcia Gay Harden crafts Lee Krassner as a woman who loves Jackson the painter probably more than Jackson the man. She can forgive his drinking, maybe even his affairs but she can’t forgive it when he’s not working. She yells at him ‘Whatever trash you take home, I couldn’t care less!’ but she wants him to paint.

Both Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden show a relationship broken right from the beginning, but the affection and the need for each other keep them together. It’s a very intense and gripping portrayal which works wonderfully with the dark tone surrounding it.

Number 23: Eva Marie Saint as Edie Doyle in "On the Waterfront" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

If Celeste Holm is an example of a true supporting performance, Eva Marie Saint is an early example of a co-lead performance triumphing in the supporting category because a win in the leading category would have been impossible considering competition from Grace Kelly and Judy Garland. But I am only here to judge the performance and not the category placement and Eva Marie Saint certainly delivered a wonderful performance in a legendary classic.

Eva Marie Saint played Edie Doyle, the sister of a killed man who wants to know ‘who killed my brother!’ Edie is the central character to the story – she sets the motion in action, she is responsible for the change in Terry’s (Marlon Brando) character, she may appear weak compared to all the tough male characters that dominate the movie but her sweetness and her innocence bring more changes to the waterfront than anything else.

Eva Marie Saint’s own lovely appearance and her sad face work very well here. She shows Edie as a restless character, always moving her eyes, always unsure of herself but also determined to find the killer of her brother. She has a wonderful chemistry with Marlon Brando and the two make one of the greatest Oscar-winning pairs ever. She makes it believable that her softness and her love could change Terry and make him do the right thing even if it means turning against his own people.  

Eva Marie Saint has the not easy task of playing a character that’s pure and good in an environment that is anything but. Because of that she could easily have come actress as too saint-like but Eva Marie Saint shows that Edie is shy and quiet and slowly develops feelings for Terry without trying to manipulate him or appearing too naive. She never flirts with him or makes a move on him, instead she makes him love her with her simple way of seeing life: ‘Shouldn’t everybody care about everybody else?’ She is also very touching when she tells Terry ‘Help me if you can, for God’s Sake’ and later she is just lovely when they are dancing and she says ‘I feel like I’m just floating…just floating.’

In the part of Edie, Eva Marie Saint goes through a wide range of emotion – from scared and terrified to loving and sweet to angry and bitter – and everything is done perfectly. She perfectly adds to the later tension of the story when she runs through a dark alley, shouting Terry’s name.  

Like Jessica Lange in Tootsie, Eva Marie Saint gives a complex performance of a simple character and she does it beautifully.

Number 24: Celeste Holm as Anne Dettrey in "Gentleman’s Agreement" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Celeste Holm is one of those wonderful, natural actresses who shines in everything she does – a natural talent for comedy and drama, a fresh and entertaining acting style that brings energy and life to every part she plays and a strong screen presence that keeps her from getting lost even behind actors like Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Olivia de Havilland or Gregory Peck. And all these talents are especially well suited for the part of Anne Dettrey, a witty New York fashion editor in the Best Picture winner Gentleman’s Agreement.

Gentleman’s Agreement is not a perfect film but it’s still a gripping story about different forms of prejudice and how it affects the lives of various people. Unfortunately, the movie is always more interesting for its ideas than its execution – this is mostly the fault of the wooden leading players Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire who are very lifeless and limited in their parts. Because of this, a natural whirlwind like Celeste Holm has it very easy to steal the show – so it’s no wonder that she is the biggest advantage Gentleman’s Agreement has and saves the whole movie from collapsing under its own seriousness.  

Celeste Holm’s performance is also a great example of how the supporting category really used to be about supporting performances unlike today where it’s completely normal that co-leads dominate the supporting category. Celeste Holm has only a few scenes in Gentleman’s Agreement but her character easily becomes the most interesting aspect of it and her few on-screen moments are more than enough for her to leave an unforgettable impression. She also benefits from the fact that almost every scene she appears in asks her to be both funny and serious, something that comes very easily to her.

When she goes to dinner with Phil, she is charming and entertaining, but when a guy arrives and shows prejudice against Phil, she easily shows a more serious side – Anne is a person without a single trace of prejudice in her and won’t tolerate it from others. In a movie that lets every character deal with their own prejudices, a character like Anne could easily have come across as fake but Celeste Holm’s naturalness and seriousness make it believable that she is truly as open-minded as she appears to be. For Anne, the screenplay has another task – that of unrequited love. Celeste Holm is wonderful when she invites Phil to a party and he asks ‘Can I bring my girl?` - for one second Anne’s face drops and shows her shock (she was hoping to get Phil herself) but then she composes herself and says with a big smile ‘Of course’.

At the party, she again has to pretend a lot when Phil asks what Anne thinks about Cathy (his fiancé) and Anne, hiding her disappointment says ‘She’s lovely’. Celeste Holm delivers this line again with a lot of honesty – she does think that Cathy is lovely and she can’t hate her for having met Phil first. Other small moments, like a dinner in a restaurant, again give Celste Holm the chance to combine comedy with drama but her strongest scene comes at the end when she gives a great monologue against prejudice and tells Phil that Cathy, too, is one of those hypocrites who complains about prejudice but does nothing against it: ‘They haven’t got the guts to take the step from talking to acting.’ And then she finally tells Phil ‘There’s time. Usually when two people are right for each other they discover it with time. If I had a kid I loved I wanted him to be brought up by people who felt the same way I did about the basic things.’ It’s very moving scene and Celeste Holm plays it to perfection.

A wonderful performance that elevates a whole movie and steals the show without overshadowing anyone else.  

Number 25: Renée Zellweger as Ruby Thewes in "Cold Mountain" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

I know I already lost almost all my credibility when I admitted that I liked Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. Well, if liking Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls is like admitting that you eat babies, liking Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain is like admitting that you don’t only eat babies but make medical experiments with them before you fry them, too. And yes, I can understand all the hate thrown at this performance – she is extreme to the maximum, constantly being larger-than-life and over-the-top and a performance like this can very easily put a lot of viewers off. I think it’s impossible to find an honest way to judge work like this because it all comes down to how one reacts to a performance like this personally – it’s like a piece of music: you can’t explain why you like a certain song and hate another one. So, I also can’t really explain why Renée Zellweger manages to convince me with her performance while she distracts so many others. But I’ll try anyway.

Personally; I always think it’s a difference if you play an over-the-top character or if you play a normal character and then act over-the-top in some scenes (like Susan Hayward). The second option can be entertaining but also incredibly wrong and the first option is extremely difficult to pull off – an actress needs a lot of confidence and careful attention to her own work to be larger-than-life all the time without becoming a caricature or simply becoming unbearable. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard or Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie are wonderful examples of successes in that second option. And while I would certainly not put Renée Zellweger on the same level as these two, I still think that she, too, succeeded in this second option – her Ruby is loud, over-the-top, big and, yes, almost a caricature. But only almost. Just one tiny inch before it would have become ridiculous, Renée Zellweger stopped and that way was able to craft a believable and scene-stealing character who brings a huge amount of needed new energy into Cold Mountain. The first 50 minutes of Cold Mountain basically only exist as a waiting time until Ruby finally appears and Renée Zellweger easily steals the whole show and makes the movie suddenly interesting.

Zellweger’s Ruby is unique and a real original. Everything about her is just…extreme and Renée Zellweger could have lost the battle against herself at every moment. Ruby could have been extremely annoying but Renée Zellweger stopped one step before that and made her likeable, she could have been very distracting but Renée Zellweger stopped one step before that and made her an integral part of the story, she could have been very confusing but Renée Zellweger stopped one step before that and made her very funny.  

Ruby is the kind of character that seemed to have been written with Oscar in mind since everything about her is destined to turn her into the center of attention. Renée Zellweger adds to this with her unusual characterization and her domineering performance – but again, it always works. Who can forget her ‘Number one…number two…number three’ or the scene with the rooster?

But I also want to appreciate the other moments in Renée Zellweger’s performance – the quiet, touching ones in which she shows that there is more to Ruby than first meets the eye like watching Ada play the piano (followed by another funny scene in which she sells it for sheep) or listening to her reading Wuthering Heights. Renée Zellweger beautifully shows that Ruby’s tough behavior is very often just a masque to hide her true feelings, especially when it comes to her father. Here, Renée Zellweger shows a warm and loving side in Ruby and at the end of Cold Mountain, she has done a complete characterization of a very difficult character.

Yes, I can understand why many people don’t like the performance – but that doesn’t mean that I can’t love it! 

Number 26: Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly in "Chicago" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Oscars for performances in musical seemed to be a thing of past – until Catherine Zeta-Jones demonstrated impressively how amazing a performance in a musical can be and received a well-deserved Oscar for it. She creates a believable night-club diva, arrogant and bossy and performs her musical numbers with as much energy and fascination as one can possibly achieve. Velma Kelly is maybe not the most challenging role in the acting department – but Catherine Zeta-Jones showed how much her singing and dancing is part of this character and that these scenes should not be brushed aside too easily. Besides being technically perfect, Catherina Zeta-Jones invests these scenes with just as much characterizations as she does in the non-singing scenes – that ‘F*** you’-look she gives the cops at the end of ‘All that Jazz’ or her wonderful desperation during ‘I can’t do it alone’ are just two examples.

Overall, her rendition of ‘All that Jazz’ is one the greatest opening numbers ever and from that moment on she dominates everyone around her whenever she is onscreen. Even just looking at her legs while she walks into her club provides some sort of thrill. And even though you have six great women in the ‘Cell Block Tango’, Catherine Zeta-Jones is still the highpoint. Her strong ‘He had it coming’ is one of those moments when you realize how powerful she really is in this role. And ‘I can’t do it alone’ is nothing more than a showcase for everything Catherine has to offer: great looks, great voice, great dancing skills! 

The character of Velma is certainly of secondary importance to Roxie in Chicago and Catherine Zeta-Jones does not have any true scenes to display a deeper side in Velma, but she crafts Velma intelligently as a true diva, a ‘queen bee’ who suddenly finds herself pushed back to the second row. Working within the atmosphere of Chicago, Catherine Zeta-Jones wisely refused to gain any sympathy by trying to place a tear at a good moment but instead focused on the bitchy and entertaining side of Velma, that way making her much more interesting and lasting. And Catherine Zeta-Jones’s talent for comedy should also not be undervalued – her ‘shit’ when Roxie pretends to be pregnant or her scene in the witness stand, when she has to read the diary and says ‘I’m a little out of practice’ and dramatically begins ‘What a laugh…’ are just great.

Catharine Zeta-Jones brought a lot of energy and rhythm to Chicago and made a very worthy winner of that coveted award.

Number 27: Mercedes Ruehl as Anne Napolitano in "The Fisher King" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Mercedes Ruehl took home a well-deserved Oscar for playing Jeff Bridges’s long-suffering but cheerful and edgy girlfriend and video-store owner Anne.

Mercedes Ruehl plays Anne as a down-to-earth person. She knows where she stands in life, she knows that her life is far from perfect but she accepts it and makes the best out of it. The cheerful character of Anne combined with the fact that she is living with an alcoholic who also suffers from an incident in his past allows Mercedes Ruehl to cover a wide range or comedic and dramatic acting and she perfectly succeeds in both. What’s so admirable about her work is the fact that she basically came up with the comedy herself – written written on paper her role could be seen as very straight character and a love interest (like Jessica Lange in Tootsie), but instead of playing the character that way she goes the comedy route and gets laughs out of every possible situation by her line-delivery, her acting and her looks. She uses an acting style that is similar to that of Helen Hunt – both actresses like to move their head in a certain way or give a certain look at the right moment. It may sometimes be seen as slightly exaggerated but if the actresses does it right, then it can be golden – and Mercedes Ruehl gets it right. 

On the drama side, Mercedes Ruehl beautifully shows that living with a man like Jack is no easy feat since he does not always treat Anne the way she deserves it. Here, Mercedes Ruehl finds the perfect balance to show how much Anne is suffering from his behavior but how much she loves him, too, and this way makes the whole relationship very believable. When one night Jack doesn’t show up and Anne sits alone at her table, Mercedes Ruehl delivers a great little monologue, telling an imaginary Jack ‘I do not need this!’, giving a perfect example of a situation surely everybody has encountered already: always having so much to say when the person you want to say it to is not there.

But her most impressive scene is easily her break-up with Jack, shot almost in one take. She goes from happy to angry when she suddenly realizes that now, after having brought his personal problems behind him, Jack wants to leave her. Full of frustrations, she tells him ‘If you’re gonna hurt me, hurt me now!’ and when Jack tells her that they both got something out of their relationship, she shouts at him ‘What did I get? What did I get? What did I get that I couldn’t have gotten from any guy with no name any night of the week? Do you think your company is such a treat? Your mood, your pain, your problems? You think this has been entertaining for me?’ It’s an outstanding scene and Mercedes Ruehl perfectly shows a woman who has done everything for a guy who doesn’t seem to be worth it.

So, it’s a perfect mix of comedy and drama and Mercedes Ruehl certainly deserved that Oscar! 

Number 28: Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman in "Reds" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Maureen Stapleton was certainly over-due for an Oscar in 1981 but thankfully she still won the statuette for a part that actually worth it. In Warren Beatty’s masterful Reds, Maureen Stapleton played Emma Goldman, a radical anarchist who went to Russia to join the revolution.

As a supporting performer with little screen time in a big epic, there is always the danger that the viewer forgets the character or that it is overshadowed by other parts or actors of the movie. But Maureen Stapleton is not even close to being in a danger like this. Her screen time may be short, but she is such a strong presence on the screen, a woman you wouldn’t want to get in an argument with!

In the first half of the movie, she is onscreen for only a couple of minutes, but she plays Emma with total determination, arguing and not caring about other people’s opinions and always with such fierce that poor Diane Keaton seems like a child when she tries to show a different side. The character is described best by Emma herself when she goes home at night and Warren Beatty tells her ‘I’ll go with you’ and she answers ‘Why? I won’t hurt anybody!’

Emma is also a woman who is not fond of Warren’s new dame Louise, something she shows when Louise sends Emma a scarf in prison (Emma is jailed for being an anarchist) and Emma couldn’t care less. Maureen Stapleton is one of those wonderful actresses who is able to say a lot with only one look or a gesture.

Maureen Stapleton’s most impressive scene comes later when Emma realizes ‘The dream that we had is dying in Russia’. In an outstanding monologue, she tells John that the new government in Russia is not what they had hoped for: ‘If Bolshevism means the peasants taking over the land and the workers taking over the factories, Russia is one place where there’s no Bolshevism…The central state has all the power! All the power is in the hands of few man and they are destroying any hope of real communism in Russia…Nothing works! Four million people died last year...They died from a system that cannot work!’

Maureen Stapleton is, in some way, the movie’s conscience but she is also a fighter, a friend, a comrade. She made it beautifully clear that there are no small parts – and she is no small actress!

Number 29: Anne Baxter as Sophie Nelson Macdonald in "The Razor’s Edge" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Another performance that dropped out of the my Top 20. Anne Baxter is an actress that can annoy me very easily with a very exaggerated acting style. In The Razor’s Edge, the had the advantage of playing a very desperate and moving character which made her over-the-top acting often less noticeable and she also turned her performance into a true masterpiece in some scenes but at the same time she has some extremely unsatisfying moments which are also the reason why she went down a few spots.  

At the beginning, Anne Baxter succeeds in showing Sophie as a lovely, care-free girl whose joy and happiness contrast very sharply and very effectively with her later scenes. But she also displayed that annoying, constantly gasping for air-acting style that I already disliked in her more famous work in All about Eve. When she tells her best friend Isabelle how much she loves her boyfriend Bob, Anne Baxter delivers her line like this: ‘He’s no more crazy about me than I am about him. (Deep breath) I don’t think anyone has ever loved anyone as I love him. (Deep breath).’ But even with those little flaws, Anne Baxter still manages to be very natural and stand out among the cast right from the beginning.

Later Anne Baxter uses another short scene to display the happiness in her life and her love for her husband and her new-born babie. All this happiness may seem a bit exaggerated but Anne Baxter was wise to play these scenes like this because they build the foundation for her later much more dramatic work.

Later, Anne Baxter showed her talent for high-class drama when Sophie, injured in a car accident, learns that her husband and her baby did not survive. Anne Baxter knows how to milk that scene for every possible dramatic effect and she is fantastic at it. She’s absolutely heartbreaking when she asks with a trembling voice ‘Is Bob dead? Is he dead?’ and then with fear and disbelief ‘And the baby, too?’ It’s an unforgettable scene and Anne Baxter is able to keep her usual love for over-acting under control.

But Anne Baxter was even able to top that scene later when Sophie’s friends meet her again in a cheap Parisian bar where she spends her time drinking and giving her love to everyone who wants it. This single scene is easily among the greatest scenes this category provides. Anne Baxter plays it with so much subtlety that it’s just heartbreaking. That look on her face when she recognizes her old friends who suddenly came back into her life is worth an Oscar alone. In this scene, Sophie doesn’t even pretend to be anything else than a broken human being with no more spirit left inside her.   

Later, when Larry wants to marry Sophie to put her out of her misery, Anne Baxter has less showy moments but she is excellent in a scene when she meets all her old friends again. This scene contrasts sharply with her first appearance – back then, she was very relaxed around her friends but now it’s obvious how uneasy Sophie feels, how embarrassed and how out-of-place. Anne Baxter again proves that she is an actress with great instincts for her parts.

Unfortunately, Anne Baxter now loses some of her excellence. In another scene when she thinks about her baby and starts to cry, Anne Baxter wrinkles up her face in so many ways that you wonder if it will ever get back again in its old position. And when she talks with Isabel about how hard it is for her to stop drinking, she dramatically declares “Sometimes when I’ve been alone…I wanted to shake the house down’, to which she bang’s her fist against the wall – this is a scene that is so over-the-top in its attempt to be melodramatic that you can’t help but laugh about it. But Anne Baxter can still find room for some good moments, when she talks about Larry and says ‘He’s really good, Isabel. I was gone. Lost. Gone. This is my one chance, I know that!’

Her final scene is, unfortunately, also her worst when she is drunk and turns her character into a caricature by talking in a strange Clint-Eastwood-voice and again wrinkling up her face as if she tries to scare some children. 

But despite some flaws this is still an extremely powerful and heartbreaking performance.

Number 30: Dianne Wiest as Helen Sinclair in "Bullets over Broadway" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

I know, everyone is supposed to bow to Dianne Wiest’s celebrated turn as alcoholic Broadway diva Helen Sinclair in Woody Allen’s Bullets over Broadway. She’s usually considered one of the most deserving winners this category has ever seen and so it may come as a surprise that she is ‘only’ my number 30 – but while I also love and respect this performance, my love and respect has never gone so far as that of most other people. Personally, I prefer Jennifer Tilly and Tracy Ullman to Dianne Wiest but it’s easy to see why her performance was such a sensation in 1994 and still is today.

In a movie that tries to be such as theatrical as the world it presents, Dianne Wiest gives a very theatrical and calculated performance in which every gesture and every line delivery seem to be prepared to the smallest detail. All this works very well and from a technical point of view, Dianne Wiest is truly flawless. Unlike Mary Astor in The Great Lie, she achieved to become a true diva in every sense of the word, self-assured, eccentric, neurotic, strong but also insecure. The way she walks and holds her cigarette, the ways she always talks with such an intense voice as if she is constantly onstage – everything works very well and results in a well-crafted, intelligent performance. Dianne Wiest uses her voice in the most effective way, shouting orders in the deepest tone or charming David with a bird-like whisper. Sometimes I feel that her performance is too calculated and controlled – the character of Helen Sinclair often fails to fascinate me as much as she should because there is something too unnatural in Dianne Wiest’s work. Dianne Wiest also suffers from the fact that Helen Sinclair is a very one-dimensional character – almost every scene with her is the same, she is either talking about the script or talking about David’s future.

Those complaints are also the reason why Dianne Wiest never reaches a higher position in my ranking (the last time I did it, she had a similar position). But the fact that she did manage to make it up to number 30 shows more than enough that, even though there might be some problems, her performance is still extremely memorable, most of all because of Dianne Wiest’s technical skills and her ability to let Woody Allen’s often too contrived dialogue come alive in her mouth.

And even though I don’t think that this performance is truly funny, she does have some amusing moments, like when she is seducing David by showing him her favorite spot in the park and she dramatically declares ‘It’s magical. It’s magical.’ Or when she is in the theater the first time and tells that she is late because ‘my pedicurist had a stroke.’ And of course, then there is her unforgettable ‘Don’t speak’ – again, those scenes are extremely calculated but Dianne Wiest somehow makes them work and turns them into some of the most unforgettable movie moments ever.  

Her overall best moment has to be this: ‘You stand on the brink of greatness. The world will open to you like an oyster. No,  no not like an oyster. The world will open to you like a magnificent vagina…Oh the train is moving so fast! Oh, David it’s so fast! Oh hold me, hold me! No, no, don’t speak! No, don’t speak!’

So, I might not love it as much as most others do but I, too, appreciate and admire the work by Dianne Wiest.

Number 31: Donna Reed as Alma Burke in "From Here to Eternity" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Just like Claire Trevor, Donna Reed went down a little in my ranking since the last time I watched all the winners – but I still adore this wonderful and beautiful performance.

I don’t know what it is that makes me love Donna Reed’s performance so much. It’s no big role, it’s maybe not the most challenging role and she is also not the best thing about the movie – but her portrayal is still very powerful and memorable and becomes an impressive part of the overall quality of From Here to Eternity.

Donna Reed played Alma/Laureen, a young woman who works in a club on Hawaii. The movie presents her as some kind of ‘entertainer’ but Donna Reed uses her usually so wholesome screen-image and combines it with a very passionate characterization that turns Alma into a very mysterious and intriguing character. Even though From Here to Eternity is a very powerful movie with a great script, Donna Reed often suffers from the fact that Alma is presented as the typical prostitute with the heart of gold – she falls in love with Prew in the first five minutes, later gives him a key to her house and immediately cooks dinner for him while he sits down in the living room. Oh, and when she is alone at home, she is doing needle work. But the aforementioned combination of wholesome screen image and passionate inner life makes it very easy for Donna Reed to create Alma as a woman who is longing for a ‘traditional’ life while also trying to raise enough money to achieve a higher level in society. Alma has her own agenda – her big ambition in life is to become rich and ‘be proper’. She tells Prew that she used to date a rich guy in her home town, but that didn’t work out. Alma has learned that she can’t marry into a better class so she has to work her way up. And while she obviously has honest feelings for Prew, she makes it clear that a long-term relationship or even marriage isn’t an option for her. She doesn’t want to be the wife of a soldier, she wants to be respected and proper. In a very impressive scene she tells Prew about her plans with a determined look on her face. But then she also tells Prew that she needs him – because she is lonely. Donna Reed does some wonderful facial work in this role, determined and strong in one second, scared and heartbreaking in the next.

Donna Reed also has wonderful chemistry with Montgomery Clift. A more conventional actress like her could have gotten lost so easily next to Clift’s astonishing realism but their relationship is done excellently by both actors.

Donna Reed is very natural in this role and she brings a lot of grace and style to her character. She makes you believe that this is a woman that Prew has to go back to. She is also just great when they meet for the second time and she has no time for him. You can see how much she wants to be with him, how she is torn between her duties and her love and she is just wonderful when she tells him ‘Oh stop calling me Laureen, my name’s Alma!’ She seems genuinely shocked because this is probably the first time she ever told anyone her real name.

Her big money scene is her break-down when Prew leaves her for return to the Army and she shouts at him ‘What did the Army ever do for you besides treat you like dirt? What do you wanna go back to the Army for?’ It’s maybe the movie’s most unforgettable moment.

And then there is her final scene when Alma has created her own story of what has happened and she tells it to Deborah Kerr. She has made a fantasy for herself which may help to make her proper and achieve her goal after all…it’s a very intense scene because Donna Reed leaves it open what Alma’s true intentions are at this moment.

So, a beautiful and very deserving performance by Donna Reed.