News

The Best Supporting Actress Oscar winners of the 1980s include both well-known leading ladies and beloved veteran actresses. The decade saw stars like Jessica Lange, Geena Davis and Anjelica Huston earn their Oscars, joining Mary Steenburgen, Dianne Wiest, Linda Hunt, Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, who have all had solid careers since their wins. The decade also has two winning actresses that have since died, Maureen Stapleton and Peggy Ashcroft, though their performances will not be forgotten.

Who is your favorite Best Supporting Actress winner of the 1980s? Look back on each and vote in our poll below.

Mary Steenburgen, “Melvin and Howard” (1980) — The decade started off with Steenburgen winning her Oscar for “Melvin and Howard,” about Melvin Dummar (Paul Le Mat), who claimed to be the heir of Howard Hughes‘ fortune. Steenburgen plays Lynda, Melvin’s wife who takes up stripping and is frustrated by Melvin’s behavior. This...

One of the best pictures to come out of Hollywood in the late 1960s, Sydney Pollack’s screen version of Horace McCoy’s hardboiled novel is a harrowing experience guaranteed to elicit extreme responses. Jane Fonda performs (!) at the top of an ensemble of stars suffering in a Depression-Era circle of Hell – it’s an Annihilating Drama with a high polish. And this CineSavant review ends with a fact-bomb that ought to start Barbara Steele fans off on a new vault search.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 120 min. / Street Date September 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Gig Young, Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern, Allyn Ann McLerie.

Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop

Production Designer: Harry Horner

Film Editor: Fredric Steinkamp

Written by James Poe, Robert E. Thompson from the novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?...

On this day in showbiz history...

1886 Spring Byington is born in Colorado Springs. Goes on to supporting actress glory in Hollywood including Marmee in Little Women (1933, her feature debut) and an Oscar nomination as the eccentric hobbyist mom in You Can't Take It With You (1938). Curiously her screen daughter in that best picture winner Jean Arthur, an even bigger star, shares her same birthday (for the year of 1900)

1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (an early step in creating the cinema)

1903 Author and screenwriter Nathanael West is born in NYC. Movies adapted from his work include Lonelyhearts (1958) and The Day of the Locust (1975)

1915 One of the world's most celebrated playwrights, Arthur Miller, is born. His classics include Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View From the Bridge. After marrying movie star Marilyn Monroe, he wrote The Misfits (1961) for her which would eerily (considering its elegiac...

Oscar 2015 winners (photo: Chris Pratt during Oscar 2015 rehearsals) The complete list of Oscar 2015 winners and nominees can be found below. See also: Oscar 2015 presenters and performers. Now, a little Oscar 2015 trivia. If you know a bit about the history of the Academy Awards, you'll have noticed several little curiosities about this year's nominations. For instance, there are quite a few first-time nominees in the acting and directing categories. In fact, nine of the nominated actors and three of the nominated directors are Oscar newcomers. Here's the list in the acting categories: Eddie Redmayne. Michael Keaton. Steve Carell. Benedict Cumberbatch. Felicity Jones. Rosamund Pike. J.K. Simmons. Emma Stone. Patricia Arquette. The three directors are: Morten Tyldum. Richard Linklater. Wes Anderson. Oscar 2015 comebacks Oscar 2015 also marks the Academy Awards' "comeback" of several performers and directors last nominated years ago. Marion Cotillard and Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress Oscars for, respectively, Olivier Dahan...

The Cold War Kids are back with a new album, premiering exclusively on HuffPost Entertainment. "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts," the band's first studio album since 2011's "Mine Is Yours," leaps from the start line with the previously released "Miracle Mile" and doesn't really let up.

The record takes its inspiration from a smart work on self-examination, Nathanael West's novel "Miss Lonelyhearts." "'Dear Miss Lonelyhearts' is taken from a book about an advice columnist who has a crisis about his readers suffering and his inability to truly help them unless he examines himself," vocalist Nathan Willett told HuffPost. "The struggle of his character worked their way into many of the songs."

But since this is the Cold War Kids we're talking about, the "struggles" come to listeners in the form of well-tailored, drum-heavy tracks that offset Willett's sometimes-mournful, sometimes-elated but always haunting voice. That blend of highs and lows has...

Daniel Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes in David Yates' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Oscar 2012 Predictions: Best Picture, Director, Acting Categories The Best Foreign Film Language winner is always a puzzle, as only a small percentage of Academy voters cast ballots in that category. That leaves room for some surprising — sometimes downright bizarre — choices. Asghar Farhadi's A Separation has been winning awards just about everywhere (though it lost the BAFTA to Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In). We're tempted to have it as our pick as well, but we're going out on a limb by selecting Philippe Falardeau's more sentimental Monsieur Lazhar from Canada. We'll see. Best Adapted Screenplay will definitely go to Alexander Payne, Jim Rash, and Nat Faxon for The Descendants. We believe the Best Original Screenplay will go to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris, though a Michel Hazanavicius win for...

Journalists have been glamorous social climbers and bumbling fools in fiction – sometimes they've even been feminists and righters of wrongs

Journalism is a glamorous trade in Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami, as Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod's film adaptation (released in the Us next week and in the UK a week later) underlines by casting Robert Pattinson as Georges Duroy and Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci and Holly Grainger as women drawn to the rising Parisian reporter. As well as introducing him to them and assisting his progress as a social climber, working for La Vie Française gives him the power to manipulate or bring down ministers.

What he epitomises too, though, is a press that's sordid and shallow, advancing the personal ends of journalists and owners with no underlying ethical code. Writing talent and a lengthy building up of specialist knowledge aren't essential: Duroy owes...

Montgomery Clift, I Confess Montgomery Clift on TCM: A Place In The Sun, The Heiress, Raintree County Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Raintree County (1957) In this sumptuous Civil War story, a willful southern belle goes mad out of fear that she may be part black. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint. C-173 mins, Letterbox Format. 9:00 Am Lonelyhearts (1958) A sensitive young reporter assigned to write an advice column gets caught up in his readers' lives. Dir: Vincent J. Donehue. Cast: Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy. Bw-103 mins. 11:00 Am The Big Lift (1950) Two Air Force sergeants find love while flying the Berlin Airlift. Dir: George Seaton. Cast: Montgomery Clift, Paul Douglas, Cornell Borchers. Bw-118 mins. 1:00 Pm Red River (1948) A young cowhand rebels against his rancher stepfather during a perilous cattle drive. Dir: Howard Hawks. Cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift,...

Montgomery Clift could have become a much bigger star had he turned down fewer roles in major classics (Sunset Blvd., reportedly Shane, East of Eden) and accepted fewer roles in major duds (The Big Lift, Lonelyhearts, The Defector). Clift has been a relatively frequent presence on Turner Classic Movies, but those unfamiliar with his work will be able to check him out — and compare him to fellow "'50s rebels" Marlon Brando and James Dean — on Saturday, August 20, as TCM will be presenting 11 Montgomery Clift movies as part of its "Summer Under the Stars" series. The one TCM premiere is the spy thriller The Defector (1966), which also happens to be Clift's last movie. [Montgomery Clift Movie Schedule.] My favorite Montgomery Clift performance is his quietly ambitious George Eastman in George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951). Though Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire (also 1951) is much better remembered today,...

Clift's Big LiftIt's been too long since I preached the good news: Montgomery Clift made movies. That's it. Easy holy words to remember. Pass them on. Amen.

Saturday August 20th (tomorrow!) on TCM

6:00 am Raintree County (1957)

His troubled southern epic with bestie (and best co-star) La Liz.

9:00 am Lonelyhearts (1958)

A minor curiousity for a number of reasons (Myrna Loy!) but mostly important for being Maureen Stapleton's debut. She was Oscar nominated as a lonely wife chasing some Monty tail on the side.

11:00 am The Big Lift (1950)

Love this one (pictured left). There's something so relaxed about him here not a quality one tends to associate with his work.

1:00 pm Red River (1948)

Must- see entertaining Howard Hawks western with awesome gay coding and Monty at his all time prettiest. John Wayne don't like pretty!

3:30 pm From Here to Eternity (1953)

1953's Best Picture. A star-powered soap opera in war film's clothing.

"Born to play beautifully tortured, angry souls, the actor Robert Ryan was a familiar movie face for more than two decades in Hollywood's classical years, his studio ups and downs, independent detours and outlier adventures paralleling the arc of American cinema as it went from a national pastime to near collapse." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: "A little prettier and he might have been one of the golden boys of the golden age. But there could be something a touch menacing about his face (something open and sweet too), which bunched as tight as a fist, and his towering height (he stood 6 foot 4) at times loomed like a threat. The rage boiled up in him so quickly. It made him seem dangerous…. The two dozen features in a Film Forum series dedicated to Ryan and opening [today] includes dazzlers, solid genre fare, some curiosities and a few duds. Most...

"It's all in the eyes," Robert Ryan once said of film acting. "That's where you do most of your work."

But was it true of Ryan himself? His own narrow and heavily lidded brown eyes often registered as black disks in the lighting schemes of the late 40s and early 50s—that is, when they weren't overwhelmed by his massive forehead and his thick tangle of dark hair, or a pair of tragic eyebrows that threatened to merge with the numerous crags in his face as he entered middle age. Not to mention his lanky, extremely powerful physique. Take a close look at Ryan in The Set-Up or On Dangerous Ground and you'll get a sense of the relative frailty and delicacy of most male movie stars. In the post-war era, only Burt Lancaster was as physically imposing (Kirk Douglas was always fit but he was self-contained and self-motivated, even...

It now appears to be more likely than not that Hailee Steinfeld, the 14-year-old actress who makes her big screen debut in the Coen brothers’ critically and commercially successful Western “True Grit,” will score an Oscar nomination — and perhaps even a win — in one category or another for her film-stealing performance. Consequently, some of you may be wondering if any other newcomer has ever earned that kind of recongition over the 82 year history of the Academy Awards. The answer is yes — in fact, it has happened precisely 47 times, 16 in lead and 31 in supporting.

Some of those women were famous before they received their nods (i.e. Jennifer Hudson and Barbra Streisand); most were not (i.e. Mary Badham and Gabby Sidibe). Some never made another movie after they received their nods (i.e. Jocelyne Lagarde); some made a few and then dropped off the face of the earth (i.e.

Maureen Stapleton, the Oscar-winning actress who was revered for her roles on the stage and screen, passed away today in Lenox, Massachusetts, from chronic pulmonary disease. She was 80. Stapleton's matronly appearance belied a fiery emotional core, one she used to devastating effect in her most recognized dramatic roles. She began her career in the theater, attending the Herbert Berghof Acting School, then the Actor's Studio which she parlayed into her Broadway debut in nothing less than Burgess Meredith's 1946 production of "The Playboy of the Western World." She appeared in numerous stage productions including Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic," and several Tennessee Williams efforts, including "The Rose Tattoo," for which she won her first Tony in 1951 for her role as Serafina Delle Rose. Her first film role was no less auspicious and presaged a storied career on film. She received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in 1958 for her part in Lonelyhearts, opposite another Broadway lion, Montgomery Clift. She was nominated again for Best Supporting Actress in 1971 for her role as the unsuspecting wife of the despondent bomber in Airport and again in 1978 for her role as Pearl in Woody Allen's first "serious" film, the dour Interiors. She finally won the Oscar for her role as the brusque, radical anarchist Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty's Reds. Her second Tony was awarded to her for her part in Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady" in 1971. She also won notice for her television roles, including winning the Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Lead for Among the Paths to Eden and nominations for All the King's Men, Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, The Gathering, B.L. Styker, Miss Rose White and Road to Avonlea. Stapleton was also notable in Bye, Bye, Birdie, Plaza Suite (with another long-time collaborator, Neil Simon), and Cocoon. She is survived by her son, Daniel Allentuck, a daughter, Katharine Bambery, and a brother, Jack Stapleton.