Ellen Burstyn


god i love Ellen Burstyn .. this is such a remarkable film!

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I finally saw this film all the way through and it was a well deserved Oscar for Ellen! She's beautiful and talented and I just love her speaking voice.

... I admire a person that's willing to do whatever is necessary.

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She deserved more Oscars than that! The Oscar for this movie was very well deserved considering she missed out on it the year before. Who won that one anyway? Whoever she was, she certainly wasn't memorable!

Have a cold one on me!!

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Glenda Jackson won the 1973 Oscar for Best Actress for A Touch of Class. Everyone was shocked. The pundits had predicted that the award would go to either Barbra Streisand for The Way We Were or Joanne Woodward for Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. (Woodward had won several prestigious critics' awards.) Ellen wasn't the frontrunner, and the dark horse was considered to be Marsha Mason for Cinderella Liberty. In any case, everyone was caught off-guard when Jackson (who had deservedly [arguably] won in 1970 for Women in Love) was named. I remember watching the telecast and noticing several people in the audience with quizzical expressions. (I think Ellen herself mouthed, "What?") It seems like a case of splitting up most of the votes among the other four nominees, all of whom were infinitely better than Jackson. A similar case happened in 1993 when Marisa Tomei won the 1992 Best Supporting Actress award for My Cousin Vinny against heavy-weights such as Miranda Richardson in Damage, Vanessa Redgrave in Howards End, Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives, and to a lesser extent Joan Plowright in Enchanted April. Interestingly, both Jackson's and Tomei's performances are for comedies.

"That was a good movie. You should have been in that movie."

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Thanks for the info!

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[deleted]

Actually, I wouldn't say that everyone was shocked when Glenda Jackson won. She had narrowly lost the New York Film Critics award to Joanne Woodward (28-26 points). She also had won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. Also, "A Touch of Class" was very popular with the Academy, getting a Best Picture nomination, and that popularity helped Jackson win.

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