It’s here again, my favorite blogathon that honors those unsung actors we love to see inhabit films and most often enhance them immeasurably!
I want to thank Paula’s Cinema Club, Once Upon A Screen… and Outspoken & Freckled for hosting this important event that brings to light those essential personalities that populate memorable films and television programs with their own rare brilliance. This year I am honoring the great Thelma Ritter!
With her warm and weather-worn face, Thelma Ritter is the quintessential expression of a working-class dame, the working-class mother, the everywoman. And no one can deliver a snappy quip quite like Thelma Ritter. Between her mournful tones of better days or raising a stink about this or that, you can almost see the cleaning rag over her simple brown hairdo hanging out the window in Brooklyn just chatting it up with the neighbors. Thelma Ritter, with hands-on hip, spouts barbs, and verbal gems from an endless fountain of everyday wisdom.
And I want to make this clear from the start, Thelma is no plain, dowdy, or shabby spinster, she’s a beautiful woman. So there’ll be no agism or misogynistic observations in this tribute.
“Usually looking like a cross between Mother Courage and a cafeteria lunch lady, [Mankiewicz], who would repeatedly explore the theme of the effects of ambition on his characters, was blessed with Ritter‘s presence in allegedly subservient roles as truth-tellers disguised as maids in… All About Eve (1950).” —Moira Finnie Streamline, The Filmstruck Blog
Thelma Ritter’s legacy is that of the wise-cracking and world-weary characters who inform us in any role that she is just a regular gal like you or me. We feel empathy for her, and we laugh along with the sharp-witted come backs she so famously utters. Whenever she shows up on the screen she enlivens whatever plot she was sent out to explore with that cynical and bold approach to life offering that dialogue that had razor-sharp teeth.
Ritter was one hell of a character actor/comedian who worked on the radio and then quickly established herself in top-billed supporting roles in post-war Hollywood. She was nominated 6 times without winning a single Oscar between 1950-1962. She tied with Deborah Kerr for the most nominated without winning the award. It is a crime that she never won a statue or a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As writer Paddy Chayefsky wrote in his New York Times tribute for her death: “She was never properly publicly recognized as an actress. […] She was a character actress, which means only that they don’t write any starring parts for middle-aged women.”
Frank Capra called her “the best of all character actresses.”
Even in her performances of the most plain of women, she exuded sophistication, often classier than the upper-class people that satellite around her. She often played characters who had the answers and the gumption to say it like it is, the truth that circulates through each story, driving sanity, stability, clarity, and compassion into the narrative.
None of her roles could ever be considered ordinary. Her characters always exuded her own brand of humanity. The people she played were immediately relatable to all of us.
Thelma Ritter was born in Brooklyn New York in 1902 on St Valentine’s Day on Hart Street in South Brooklyn. Born of a Dutch immigrant father and a Scottish mother. Thelma would have to rely on her wits as the family was not of an advantaged background. Maybe that’s why she has a keen witty charm, a lovable persona, and a certain pluckiness and curt wisdom that doesn’t allow for quick comebacks by the other actors. Though cast as a supporting actress, her name always appears on the bill or right up in the title close to the stars often being the more memorable in the picture. She brought cracking wise to a whole other level of artistry.
She attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts, the class of 1922, but did not graduate with her class as she had to quit to earn money. She made her Broadway debut in a comedy called The Shelf, costarring with other notable character actors Jessie Ralph, Lee Patrick, and Donald Meek. She appeared in 32 performances before the show closed in 1926. Then she was in Times Square (1931) which didn’t have a very long run on Broadway. She took some time off to raise her children and then went back to work initially in radio. Her daughter Monica Moran is an actress, they appeared together in the 1966 road company of Bye Bye Birdie co-starring Tab Hunter.
Thelma Ritter was actually 41 at the time of her wonderful film debut as the uncredited harried Christmas shopping mother in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Ritter left such an impression on director George Seaton and 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck that they lengthened her small part in the film and decided to cast her in other pictures. This sparked a career where she wouldn’t make a multitude of films, but a film a year from 1947 until her retirement in 1969. The films she did appear in were extremely popular and received well by the critics.
Ritter’s uncredited role of Captain’s secretary in Call Northside 777 (1948) was left on the cutting room floor. The credits were left in, but she is nowhere to be seen in the film. Though again uncredited she appeared as the sharp-tongued maid Sadie Dugan in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1949 melodrama A Letter to Three Wives starring Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Southern.
In A Letter to Three Wives, Thelma Ritter plays the maid Sadie Dugan who works for an upper middle-class couple George (Kirk Douglas) and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern). Kirk Douglas plays an English teacher and his wife Rita is a writer for a radio soap opera, played by Ann Sothern. Sadie ingratiates herself into the family feeling right at home telling Rita “The cap’s out. Makes me look like a lamb shop with pants on” when Rita asks her to wear a frilly hat while serving dinner to important guests. Ritter has wonderful lines that she expresses with ease. The writing was handpicked for her brand of comedy that cuts through the melodrama of the film. While describing her disdain for Rita’s radio program she comments, ”Do you know what I like about your program? Even when I’m running the vacuum, I can understand it.”
Ritter’s first major role as a lady’s companion was Birdie Coonan in All About Eve (1950). Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was so taken with Ritter’s style, that she was the first choice to play Birdie, the edgy ex-vaudevillian maid to theater Diva Margot Channing (Bette Davis in her Oscar-nominated role). He claimed he wrote the screenplay with Thelma Ritter in mind. Aside from Addison Dewitt (George Sanders), Birdie is the only one who isn’t fooled by Eve (Ann Baxter). Ritter’s character has a keen understanding of the realities of life and is honest and gruff with the waif-like manipulative and ambitious Eve. Her role was so impressive that she received her first of six nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
When Eve first recounts her sad background to Margot, Birdies reacts with the infamous line “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end.” The original line used was ‘ass’ instead of ‘rear end.’ But Joseph Breen’s office was clamping down on “morals” and found the original word too vulgar.
All through the film All About Eve, Birdie tries to inform Margot of Eve’s duplicitous nature, while everyone else is also taken in by the ‘kid’. Margot asks, “Birdie, you don’t like Eve, do you? Birdie answers, “You looking for an answer or an argument?” Margo, “An answer.” Birdie, “No.” Margo, ”Why not?” Birdie, “Now you want an argument.”
Thelma Ritter’s most significant trademark is her sassy streetwise meddling, to offer her wisdom and advice even when not being asked for it. After All About Eve, she would be cast in strong supporting roles for the rest of her career.
The next year she would once again be nominated for the wonderful picture directed by underrated directed Mitchell Leisen’s The Mating Season (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, followed by With a Song in My Heart (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953) as Moe Williams (A film she should have won the Oscar for her outstanding performance) then came Pillow Talk in 1959 and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).
While most older female character actresses go loveless in their films, Thelma Ritter is one who manages to not always fly solo in the storylines. She often gets to have a love interest. The Mating Season (1951) directed by M. Leisen, is a satirical look on class culture, and a hilarious story of mistaken identity. Thelma as Ellen McNulty runs a small hamburger joint in Jersey and when the bank forecloses she goes to Ohio to be with her son Val (John Lund), who has just married socialite Maggie (Gene Tierney). Maggie is not a snob, but Ritter’s son is embarrassed by his humble background. Miriam Hopkins plays Tierney’s mother and former ambassador’s wife and pretentious elitist, Fran Carleton.
Robert Osborne called The Mating Season a delightful romantic comedy that most people don’t know about. The film brought Thelma at age 48 “the closest to inheriting the mantle of the great Marie Dressler than anyone in Hollywood since Dressler’s death in 1934.”
Ellen secretly works to make enough money to buy an $18 hat to wear when she meets her daughter-in-law. The way Thelma Ritter uses the hat as a prop in the storyline adds an endearing touch to the film. Thelma drops in unexpectedly to meet her new daughter-in-law and is mistaken for a domestic that the new bride has hired to cook and serve at her dinner party. Her son’s boss, Mr Kalinger (Larry Keating) falls for Ellen after she rubs liniment on his chest while he is sick. She finds out he’s much like her dead husband— the kind of guy stray dogs take to.
Ellen –“If you’re a chicken, you can fool people about your feathers. But when you start laying eggs all over the place, they know you’re a chicken.”
Ellen: “You don’t know what it was like working with her yesterday. I felt like I was 21 again.”
Val: “Oh Malarky”
Ellen: “Look wiseguy, I didn’t feel like I was 21 when I was 21.”“Despite the fact that she usually played variations of a Shakespearean “wise fool”, she often played a person whose keen awareness of her place in our supposedly classless society made her secure enough in it to voice her opinions without fear.” -Moira Finnie
Ritter finally receives above-the-title star billing in George Cukor’s delightful romantic comedy starring Jeanne Crain and Scott Brady, The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) Another highly underrated picture. Director Cukor adds a sensitive touch to this endearing film creating a world with plenty of witty dialogue and quirky characters. The cast is filled with lonely-hearted misfits including Nancy Kulp, Zero Mostel, and Dennie Moore. Ritter plays good-hearted, wryly-witted yet sympathetic matchmaker Mae Swasey who just doesn’t want anyone to be alone after her own husband had left her for another woman years before. Mae goes on a mission of mischief to fix up Matt Hornbeck (Brady) with model Kitty Bennett (Jeanne Crain) though Hornbeck initially puts up a good fight saying he has no intention of getting married… that is until he meets Kitty.
Mae to Mr. Wixted (Zero Mostel) about planning a date with Nancy Kulp, “A real live wire, low voltage but steady.”
“Anybody with four pints of blood that can stand on their two feet long enough to say I do is in a position to get married.”-Mae
Dan Chancellor (Jay C. Flippen) “Beautiful up here, isn’t it? Those trees. I’ve always liked that poem that said, “Only God can make a tree.”
Mae Swasey, “Yeah, but on the other hand, you gotta figure, who else would take the time?”
As Young as You Feel (1952) Monty Wooley, Allyn Joslyn, and Thelma Ritter
Following the romantic comedies Ritter appears in one of the most extraordinary and evocative noir masterpieces by director Samuel Fuller, Pickup on South Street (1953).
In Pickup on South Street 1953 directed by Samuel Fuller, Ritter plays Moe Williams the best pickpocket stoolie in the business. A police informant who sells neckties on the street corners and wants a fancy funeral and a nice plot out on Long Island. Robert Osborne couldn’t have stated it better, “Moe Williams lives in the underworld and ekes out a living by selling secrets and information for a price. It’s a far cry from the kind of roles Thelma usually plays. More sinister than lovable.”
Moe is streetwise and world-weary. She’s broken down by her years getting by on the rough streets of New York City selling ties and secrets to the police. She also cares about what happens to Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) one of the local petty thieves who picks pockets and chills his beer in the river.
Jean Peters is fantastic in the role of Candy, and Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street.
As Moe Williams In Pickup on South Street (1953), Ritter inhabits a darker world than we’re used to seeing her in. Worn down by life on the street as a tie hustler and informant to the law, her weakness for telling the truth puts her in harm’s way. It’s one of the most gloomy and heart-rending roles in any of her films as it takes a hardened dismal look at crime, postwar greed, and the fear of Communist infiltration. Throughout the picture Moe is fatalistic about her future. She is a character we feel empathy for, and I think it’s one of Ritter’s finest performances.
In a heartbreaking tour de force Ritter gives a performance that should have garnered her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Director Sam Fuller created a role just typed for Ritter’s blood, as she poured every ounce of her soul into the character that’ll make you hold your breath, then weep.
She appeared in the 1953 version of Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck. She plays affluent Maude Young who once again, is mistaken for a domestic, with some of the best lines in the picture added for comic relief.
Maude Young: [after Richard (Clifton Webb) has rejected his son Norman and refused to play in the shuffleboard match with him] “It certainly clouded up. Well, word’ll do it faster than a hickory stick any time.”
Maude Young: “Where I come from this is either a revival meeting or a crap game.”
Maude Young: “I’ve seen that look before. He’s a runaway. Earl Meeker: From what, some woman?Maude: No, he’s running too fast for that.”
Ritter made several significant appearances on the small screen between 1953 and 1962. In 1955 she played Mrs. Fisher in The Show-off, and Agnes Hurley in Paddy Chayefsky’s The Catered Affair (Bette Davis played Agnes Hurley in the film version a year later). Playwright Paddy Chayefsky was so taken with Thelma Ritter that he wrote about the 1955 television play, “The Catered Affair was an unfocused piece in which the first act was farce and the second was character comedy, and the third was abruptly drama. There aren’t a dozen actresses who could make one piece out of all that; Miss Ritter, of course, did.”
The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar plays Betty Grable’s friend on the Eerie Canal Lucy Cashdollar- “Don’t forget, I’m a five-time widow, and when they died they all left me everything they owned. Rest their souls.” Fortune Friendly “What do you want with me I’m broke?” Lucy Cashdollar-“Well, I figure after five rich husbands, the next one would be on the house.”
Also in 1955, Thelma Ritter played Abby in 20th Century-Fox Hour’s television adaptation of Sidney Howard’s play, Christopher Bean. Thelma is often compared to the great Marie Dressler, who played the same role in the 1933 film Christopher Bean. Thelma Ritter takes on the ironic and poignant role of a woman whose worth is seen through the eyes of an alcoholic artist who paints a portrait of her.
Ritter finished her 6-year contract with Twentieth Century Fox in 1955, playing Alicia Pritchard in director Jean Negulesco’s Daddy Long Legs. Ritter did return in The Second Time Around in 1961.
When explaining why her contract had not been renewed, Ritter joked that “I don’t look so good in a toga.” Referring to Fox’s preference at the time for epics filmed in CinemaScope centered around all things ancient.
Rear Window 1954 Thelma plays the feisty wisecracking nurse, Stella. The scenes with Thelma and Jimmy Stewart were marvelous. Her character’s voice delivered both reason and common sense and in their scenes, we learn about Jimmy Stewart’s character. Thelma brought her comic flair to the role of Stella. As Pat Hitchcock explained “The humor that Thelma Ritter brought to Rear Window was absolutely wonderful. And my father, he loved that because he knew that you couldn’t keep going and keep going. You had to give the audience a break. You had to have them laugh at something. His whole life was about the importance of having a sense of humor with whatever you do.”
After twenty-six years away, Thelma returned to Broadway in 1957 to play Marthy in the hit musical New Girl in Town, based on Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie. For her part, she won a Tony Award (in a tie with Gwen Verdon who won for Anna). This was the first time in history that two actresses won from the same show.
Cameron Pru’Homme, Thelma Ritter, and Gwen Verdon –On the set of New Girl In Town.
At the Tony Awards with Robert Preston Thelma Ritter Helen Hayes Ralph Bellamy.
She went on to appear in the hit romantic comedy Pillow Talk (1959). She played the supportive lead with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, exchanging her usual barbs this time with Doris Day about her love life. “If there’s anything worse than a woman living alone it’s a woman saying she likes it.”
She continued to act in successful roles in the 1960s in films like John Huston’s The Misfits in 1961 (playing Isabelle Steers, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach). Then, in How the West Was Won in 1962, and then she was once again paired with Doris Day and James Garner in Move Over, Darling in 1963.
Ritter also appeared on television shows like General Electric Theater in 1960 and the popular Westerner Wagon Train in 1962. She appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a very chilling, nail-biting episode called The Baby Sitter.
In director John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz (1963) Thelma Ritter delivers quite a drastic departure from any of her other roles. She portrays the numb and obsessive mother, loyal to her son Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in one of his most lucid performances. The movie creates a claustrophobic relationship between mother and son, as she is stricken with a myopic vision of championing for him while he is locked away in prison. Axel Nissen calls it “one of the most emotionally ugly characters in her filmography she is cold and uses stillness brilliantly.”
Ritter received her last Oscar nomination for her performance as Burt Lancaster’s controlling mother. She lost to Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker.
In 1963 she was in A New Kind of Love (1963) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Ritter plays Leena, who wears a perfume called “My Sin” and is a buyer at Bergner’s Department Store. Leena is attracted to her boss, George Tobias.
She also appeared in the disastrous Broadway production of UTBU 1966 with Margaret Hamilton and Tony Randall.
Coming full circle, Ritter made her last big screen appearance in a small role in George Seaton’s What’s So Bad About Feeling Good? 1968 In Feb 1968 she co-starred with Tab Hunter and her own actress daughter Monica in a stock production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, before retiring. She did not live long enough to enjoy her retirement.
Thelma died of a heart attack in New York City just nine days before her 67th birthday. Thelma Ritter was very beloved amongst her colleagues and co-stars, and also critics adored her.
“On screen, Ritter projected a wonderfully sanguine and calm acceptance of human frailty and need. It is this quality, combined with her rueful humor and notorious wisecracks, that give depth to her finest performances…{…} Though she played a few middle-or upper-class women towards the end of her career, Ritter was obviously best suited to playing women on the lower echelons of the social ladder…{…} She represents the legion of women who keep the wheels of the world turning”– Alex Nissen
CLIPS
Miracle on 34th Street (1949) Peter’s mother
A Letter to Three Wives (1949) Sadie Dugan the maid uncredited
City Across the River (1950) Mrs. Katie Cusack
Perfect Strangers (1950) Lena Fassier
All About Eve 1951
I’ll Get By 1951 Miss Murphy
The Mating Season 1951
The Model and the Marriage Broker 1951 as Mae Swayse
As Young as You feel 1952 as Della Hodges
Titanic 1953
Pickup on South Street 1954
The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar
Rear Window 1955 as Stella
Daddy Long Legs 1955
Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1956 The Baby Sitter Lottie Slocum
The Proud and Profane 1956 as Kate Connors
A Hole in the Head 1959 as Sophie Manetta
Pillow Talk 1959 as Alma
The Misfits 1961
Birdman of Alcatraz 1962 as Elizabeth Stroud
Move Over, Darling 1963
The Incident 1967 as Bertha Beckerman
FILMOGRAPHY & AWARDS
Thelma Ritter won a Tony Award on Broadway in 1957 for the hit musical New Girl in Town, for which she won a Tony in a tie with Gwen Verdon in 1958. She won an Emmy (in 1956), Nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the Goodyear Television Playhouse production of The Catered Affair. A Golden Globe Awards Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for All About Eve (1950) The Mating Season (1951)) With A Song in My Heart (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953), Pillow Talk (1959), and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and nominated for a Golden Globe for All About Eve, The Mating Season and Boeing Boeing (1965)
- Miracle on 34th Street (1949) Peter’s mother
- A Letter to Three Wives (1949) Sadie Dugan the maid uncredited
- Call Northside 777 (1949) captains secretary uncredited her scene was left on the cutting room floor
- City Across the River (1950) Mrs. Katie Cusack
- Perfect Strangers (1950) Lena Fassier
- Too Dangerous to Love 1951
- All About Eve 1951 as Birdie Coonan —companion to theater Diva Margot Channing the only character aside from George Sanders’ Addison Dewitt who isn’t fooled by conniving Eve.
- I’ll Get By 1951 as Miss Murphy
- The Mating Season 1951 as Ellen McNulty
- The Model and the Marriage Broker 1951 as Mae Swayze
- As Young as You feel 1952 as Della Hodges
- Radio Broadcasts 1953 Theater Guild on the Air “A Square Peg”
- With a Song in my Heart 1953 as Clancy
- radio shows such as Radio Broadcasts Theater Guild on the Air “A Square Peg” (1953).
- Titanic 1953 as Maude Young playing a version of the Unsinkable Molly Brown done up to the nines again mistaken for a housekeeper or maid.
- Pickup on South Street 1954 directed by Samuel Fuller as Moe Williams the best pick pocket stoolie in the business
- The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar plays Betty Grable’s friend on the Eerie Canal
- Rear Window 1955 as nurse Stella
- Lux Video Theatre 1954 Christmas in July theatre guest
- The Best of Broadway The Show Off 1955 Mrs. Fisher
- Daddy Long Legs 1955 as Alicia Pritchard
- Goodyear Playhouse 1955 The Catered Affair as Mother created the role that Bette Davis adapted to the screen.
- Repertory Theatre 1955 The Ghost Writer as Muriel
- Lucy Gallant 1955 as Molly Basserman
- The 20th Century Fox Hour 1955 “Christopher Bean” as Abby
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1956 The Baby Sitter Lottie Slocum
- The Proud and Profane 1956 as Kate Connors
- New Girl in Town (1957) on Broadway
- The United States Steel Hour 1957 The Human Pattern as Ma Garfield
- Telephone Time 1957 plot to save a boy as Mary Devlin
- A Hole in the Head 1959 as Sophie Manetta
- Pillow Talk 1959 as Alma plays her housekeeper who likes to drink she’s hilarious
- General Electric Theater 1960 Sarah’s Laughter as Doris Green
- Startime 1960 The Man as Mrs. Gillis
- The Misfits 1961 as Isabelle Steers
- The Second Time Around 1961 as Aggie Gate
- Birdman of Alcatraz 1962 as Elizabeth Stroud plays Burt Lancaster’s mother
- Wagon Train 1962 The Madame Sagittarius Story as Madame Delphine Sagittarius
- How the West Was Won 1962 Agatha Clegg a middle-aged woman looking for a husband on the wagon train heading west across America
- For Love or Money 1963 as Chloe Brasher
- A New Kind of Love 1963 as Lena O’Connor
- Move Over, Darling 1963 as Grace Arden plays James Garner’s mother, a wealthy upper-class woman who is an atypical character for her
- Boeing, Boeing 1965 as Bertha
- The Incident 1967 as Bertha Beckerman
- What’s so Bad about Feeling Good? 1968 Mrs. Schwartz
