Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1942: Susan Peters in Random Harvest

Susan Peters received her only Oscar nomination for her performance as Kitty Chilcet in Random Harvest. 

Random Harvest is a decent but extremely melodramatic movie about an amnesiac soldier who, after being struck by a taxi, regains his memory but forgets the woman he fell in love with and married while he had lost his memory, and it follows her attempts to find him while he gets engaged with another woman. I think the movie works best when Ronald Colman and Greer Garson are on-screen together as I think that they have a lovely and tender chemistry, in fact I think that the first half of the movie is by far the best part of it. The second half, however, is extremely dull and melodramatic which kind of undercuts the impact of the ending. My feelings towards Greer Garson's performance are basically the same I have for the movie: I like her performance in the first half quite a lot as I think she brings the needed warmth and charm to the role, but in the second half, save for the final scene in which she is quite good, I found her to be oddly cold and uninteresting.

Susan Peters plays Kitty, the stepdaughter of one of Charlie's (Colman) siblings, with whom he gets engaged. Mostly two things get in the way of Peters' performance: first off, her screen-time. She only has about three scenes in the movie and only the last one amounts to anything truly substantial, and she doesn't get nearly enough time to realize her character's developement. Secondly, the script itself: Kitty is not meant to be anything more than an obstacle to Charlie's and Paula's reunion and therefore it misses depth, complexity or anything particularly interesting whatsoever. So it's quite remarkable what Peters manages to do with the role: the movie prevents her from leaving a truly lasting impression but she still brings to the role much more than she needed to and she is actually one of the best things of the second half of the movie. 

In her first scene, Kitty is shown as a 14-year-old with a crush on her "uncle" and Peters does a very good job in portraying the immaturity but sincerity of her feelings for Charlie and properly brings a youthful quality to her without ever overdoing the girlish mannerisms - something that was very common at the time and it could have made her performance feel cloying or overcooked but she thankfully avoided it. Between her first and her second scene, quite a few years passes and Kitty's growth feels extremely rushed: nonetheless Peters is very good in portraying a more mature, sophisticated Kitty and she brings a luminous and charming quality to her that makes utterly watchable. At the same time, she is consistent with the characterization of Kitty she had established before and shows that even if she has changed quite a lot she is still the same person, therefore making the time jump feel a little less forced. She doesn't have a particularly good chemistry with Ronald Colman but I don't think they were meant to have, and they both do a particularly effective job in showing that Kitty's love towards Charlie is sadly one-sided.

Then there is her final scene which is by far her strongest and is actually the one that makes the performance work: in this scene, Charlie is vaguely reminded of Paula by a hymn Kitty has been considering for their marriage and she, realizing that he still loves someone else, breaks off the engagement. It's a truly fantastic scene and Peters has a truly brilliant moment in which the camera focuses on her face for about thirty seconds as she realizes that Charlie does not love her: the way her expression turns from joy to confusion and, finally, heartbreak and disappointment is simply terrific and also quite moving. Her goodbye to Charlie is a surprisingly heartbreaking moment that Peters delivers with wounded dignity, and Peters not only does a great job in portraying the emotions of the scene but also shows how much Kitty has changed since her first scene. It's maybe the movie's most poignant moment and it's a testament to Peters' talent as I don't even think that Kitty was intended to evoke such sympathy in the audience. 

Susan Peters' career unfortunately didn't last long as she was left paralyzed after an accident when she and her husband were duck hunting and she died at 31 after having suffered from depression during the final days of her life. Through this performance she shows that if the accident hadn't occured she could have went on to become a great actress, as she takes what is basically a nothing role and takes it to another level. The lack of screen-time devoted to the role and its limited nature prevent the performance from becoming anything particularly memorable but she still delivers a good and occasionally touching performance that goes far beyond what was required.

3/5