Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1959: Thelma Ritter in Pillow Talk

Thelma Ritter received her fifth Oscar nomination for her performance as Alma in Pillow Talk.

Pillow Talk is a wonderful comedy about a woman who despises the man with whom she shares a telephone line but unknowingly falls in love with him when he introduces himself with a false identity and disguising his voice. It's a very entertaining movie that I absolutely loved from start to finish and its Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay couldn't be more deserved since the writing is incredibly funny and smart at the same time. The performances are uniformly good with Rock Hudson giving one of his best performances: he is incredibly charming in the role and his comedic timing couldn't be more excellent - plus, his chemistry with the lovely Doris Day is excellent. Tony Randall's performance is also very enjoyable and I think that a nomination for him would have been quite deserved. The cinematography is also beautiful - the movie looks absolutely stunning.

Thelma Ritter is an actress I love in general but at the same time there are only a few of her performances that I would consider truly great - this is not because she is not talented enough, but rather because, as I mentioned in my reviews of her performances in All About Eve and Birdman of Alcatraz, she rarely got parts worthy of her acting chops. That's not to say that she never made a misstep - her role in Birdman of Alcatraz was already limited to begin with but her cold, stiff approach did nothing against those limitations and the result was a shockingly empty performance that stands as Ritter's weakest work throughout her career. On the other hand, she didn't have that much of a role in All About Eve but she did the best anyone could have with the role and managed to add life and wit to a potentially stock role, even if she's nothing too special in the end. Her performance in Pillow Talk is an interesting case, because the role of Alma is just absurdly limited, even more than Birdie Coonan: she appears in the movie for little more than five minutes and the writing of the character is extremely one-note since Alma spends the entirety of her screen-time being drunk or in the middle of a bad hangover. It's a testament to Ritter's talent with those kind of roles that she managed to make Alma somewhat memorable, even if she couldn't overcome completely the limited nature of the character. 

Alma is Jan's (Doris Day) housekeeper and she and her boss couldn't be more different: Jan is a single woman who claims to be happy with her life and despises Brad (Rock Hudson) for being a playboy, while Alma has a very different view on things - she doesn't believe that Jan is happy with her loveless life and she often listens to the phone just to hear Brad romancing his many lovers as she finds him extremely entertaining. Even if their screen-time together is very limited, Day and Ritter share a playful, enjoyable chemistry and the two pays off each other extremely well: there's only so much Ritter can do but she still plays her character with the needed wit and liveliness and is entertaining whenever she appears. and she sets up well the eventual romance between Jan and Brad. 

As I mentioned before, throughout the whole movie Alma is either drunk or in the middle of a hangover: I can't quite say that Ritter prevents Alma from becoming a one-note joke (she doesn't have the time to add anything much to her performance) but at the least it's a rather funny joke. Her interactions with Allen Jenkins as the elevator operator are absolutely hilarious as the two actors share a perfect chemistry and their comedic timing couldn't be more brilliant - and, of course, Ritter nails every line-delivery ("If I ever get up on my feet again, look out"), making Harry's and Alma's exchanges some of the funniest part of the whole movie (their final scene together in the movie is actually rather lovely and that's because the two actors are just wonderful). Ritter's drunk acting is actually very good - it's purposefully over-the-top but it's not the kind of excessively broad approach that was so common back then. She knows exactly when the stop and never overdoes it, adding the right humorous touch whenever she is on screen ("Good morning Alma, isn't it a beautiful day?" "Can't go by me, I haven't seen it yet... Okay, I'll take your word for it"). But the highpoint of her whole performances is the scene in which Brad comes to Alma asking her to help him to win Jan back: the writing fot her role is at its very best ("Get lost!", "You are my inspiration, Alma" "I'm one of your most devoted listeners", "I don't usually drink... I might have one just to be sociable" "Good, I know a nice little bar" "I know a better one") and Ritter is fantastic and hilarious.

This is an incredibly limited role for Thelma Ritter to play but she makes the most out of it. The screen-time and the one-note nature of the character work against her, but she's a hoot nonetheless and it's always wonderful to have her on-screen. What makes this performance better than her turn in All About Eve for me is the fact that she truly made me care about Alma and that she really made me wish she was in the movie for more - whereas for Birdie I just didn't care. It's a nice, colorful performance that adds something to an already wonderful movie.

3.5/5