Who is Thelma Ritter ?
Thelma Ritter (1902-1969) was an American character actress. Like a lot of character actresses many of you might know her face and voice without knowing her name. After a career in radio her first (un-credited) movie role came at the relatively late age of 45 when she played a harried mother Christmas shopping at Macy’s in Miracle on 34th Street (1947, directed by George Seaton) who gets into an argument with Kris Kringle for promising her son a fire truck that she cannot find anywhere. After Santa tells her to go to a rival department store where she is sure to find it she goes to the store manager to commend him for thinking of the spirit of Christmas above the commercial. She promises to become a regular Macy’s customer from that point. Ever since then I wondered who that woman was. Then I saw her with Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz) and I learned her name from the credits. With that information I researched her a little more and realized that I had seen her in other films: as James Stewart’s nurse in Rear Window (1954, directed by Alfred Hitchcock), and Doris Day’s housekeeper in Pillow Talk (1959, directed by Michael Gordon), for example.
As a character actress she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar five times without winning - a record shared with Debra Kerr. (Peter O’Toole holds the all-time record among actors of eight Oscar nominations without an award.)
It’s not that I especially like her. Her voice gets a lot of getting used to - a rough-talking New Yorker, or a woman with a lot of grit. She could strip paint from a wall just by shouting in its direction. But I was attracted to the fact that she regularly stole any scene she appeared in, even with the big stars. She stood up to the lead characters by delivering all the zinger lines with indominable moxy.
Other little known character actresses that I like include Ellen Corby (Esther “Grandma” Walton from the 1970s TV show, The Waltons, 1972-1981, based on Earl Hamner, Jr.’s 1963 novel, The Homecoming). I first saw Corby as a customer of Bailey’s Housing and Loan in It’s a Wonderful Life (1947, directed by Frank Capra), asking Jimmy Stewart for $17.50; Ruth Gordon, who I first saw only as an old lady playing with Bud Cort in Harold and Maude (1971, directed by Hal Ashby), and a great lady, Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939, directed by Victor Flemming). I like the fact that the more films I see the more faces I recognize popping up again and again. As I get older I watch and re-watch more and more classic films while still watching as many of the new releases as interest me. Watching a lot of movies, in addition to reading a lot constitutes a kind of lifeline for me while I am submerged in Japanese culture. It’s easier to do these days than it used to be, what with the Internet, English bookstores and radio, and now a big Costco store nearby.