You'll have to pry it from her cold, dead hands.....literally.
Beatrice Straight
(1914–2001)
Wow. She was 61 or 62 when she made this movie? She looked great. Most women in their sixties did not look as young as she did in the mid 1970's. What was Max thinking? Well, at least he came to his senses in the end ... hopefully it wasn't too late.
shareI thought her acting was fantastic and in a vacuum, the scene is a majestic piece of domestic drama. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit with the rest of the film tonally.
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My top 250: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250
While I wouldn't necessarily have voted for her ahead of Piper Laurie or Jodie Foster, i do feel that Straight and (especially) William Holden bring a much-needed 'grounding' to Network, a respite from The relentless scenery-chewing of some of the other actors. It's been a long time but I recall Straight's brief performance as genuinely touching - and in this day and age, with supporting Oscars so often given to big stars or co-leads, it's nice to remember a time when a genuine character actress in a truly supporting role could win the award.
shareHer acting was phenomenal. Her main scene was so compelling. A worthy and deserving Oscar winner.
shareThey should rather take it away from Rocky. Now that win was a travesty!
Elaine Benes, Queen of Debauchery
Don't be ridiculous, she was brilliant!
shareI'm watching her now and I think she is amazing.
Fury, anger and sudden acceptance ... even gentle tears and laughter. Wow.
I agree that Beatrice Straight's Oscar win is a bit of a mystery, especially considering that she has just one big scene. But the performance (as brief as it is) holds up.
Interestingly, Talia Shire had won nearly all of the critics awards in the Best Supporting Actress category, but then she was nominated for Best Actress for "Rocky" (losing to Faye Dunaway) instead of Best Supporting Actress (which she almost certainly would have won). This incident is a foreshadowing of many Oscar races today, especially in these categories.
https://www.quora.com/What-actor-or-actress-didnt-win-their-Oscar-on-merit/answer/Jon-Mixon-1
Straight was a talented actor and she was good in the role. However it lasted for a grand total of six minutes in the film and it certainly wasn’t her best role. For reasons that are still not clear nearly 50 years later, the Academy decided to overlook her costar Marlene Warfield and gave the Oscar to Straight.share
strange that the person who wrote this thought that the Oscar should have gone to Marlene Warfield. She didn't have much more screen time than Straight and all she did was scream. Straight, in those 5 minutes, ran the gamut of emotions with perfection.
shareHer acting was phenomenal. Her main scene was so compelling. A worthy and deserving Oscar winner.
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I agree. The REAL pain at that Oscar ceremony was how while Finch(Actor), Dunaway(Actress) and Straight(Supporting Actress) all won...Ned Beatty WAS robbed for his "one scene wonder" of spectacular, roaring speechifying at Peter Finch. Here was Ned Beatty -- the famous victim of Deliverance, a constant supporting actor through the 70s -- showing up for one scene -- replacing another actor yet -- and blowing it out of the water. I daresay that this scene was Beatty's proudest moment.
If Beatty HAD won, Network would have hit all four acting slots for one movie. Such a loss.
The winner was Jason Robards, playing real-life Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men. That movie seemed like it HAD to win SOMETHING, so the Oscar voters gave one award to Bradlee and one to William Goldman's screenplay.
Robards is fine in the part(he really LOOKED like Bradlee; Tom Hanks played Bradlee in The Post and looked nothing like him.) But irony: Robards went on ahead and won Best Supporting Actor AGAIN, the very next year, for playing Dashiell Hammet in Julia.
The Oscar voters could have given Beatty a historic win for Network(all four performances win all four categories) and STILL awarded Robards the next year for Julia.
AND: Beatrice Straight was basically given the same scene as Beatty -- a "one scene wonder" filled with Paddy's overwrought but eloquent prose. The Straight and Beatty scenes were a matched pair.
It's known as democracy.
shareHer name is kind of homophobic.
share