I've loved this film for years, ever since I first saw it as a kid on TV. However, when I got the DVD, I was surprised to see that Thelma Ritter, who plays a pivotal role, and is her usual brilliant self, isn't in the credits!! Have I just got a dud copy, or was there some reason for her not to be credited? I can't imagine she was at outs with Mank., cos she went on to be in "All About Eve". Can anyone throw some light on this?
shareYou don't have a dud copy. Ritter was never in the credits of this film. It was only her second film (her first was a one scene bit in Miracle on 34th Street!) and I guess The Powers That Be thought she was too unknown to merit credit.
Which is a shame since I agree wholeheartedly that she should've been credited. Frankly I think her role in this film is more interesting, more noticeable, and more memorable than her better known role in All About Eve. After I first saw "Eve" and learned that Ritter had gotten an Oscar nomination for it, I was like, "Who?" This was largely because her character there pretty much vanishes after the opening sequences. But here, turning up quite frequently, often when you least expect her to, she's unforgettable. How could anyone forget the woman who's both one Wife's maid and another Wife's mother's best friend?
Thanks for the reply and the interesting info. Have you seen Thelma in Pillow Talk? Another stand out performance, especially when she gets Rock Hudson drunk and lifts his head up by the hair to talk to him.
shareThelma Ritter was an outstanding character actress who could play both comedic and dramatic roles with equal flair.
Another great role for her was in "The Misfits" with Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. Not a bad cast one would say and written by Arthur Miller.
Ritter's best performance of them all--and there were a lot of great ones--was one for which she was inexplicably not nominated. I'm talking about "Rear Window," which she helped turn into Hitchcock's finest film ever.
shareI loved her in that movie too. She was amazing in another movie... Pickup on South Street. One of my favorite movies with Richard Widmark. She plays a down on her luck woman and is heartbreaking in her last scene in the film.
One of my favorite character actors. She was good in every thing she did.
well she didn't get credit because it was her second film?
Oh Well, she went on to be a name most of us won't forget,
I myself get a slight excitent when ever I turn up an old classic and her name DOES show up in the opening credits!
Acussed here of being a 12YO or an 8YO, as if either of those were bad things!
She steals the scene no matter what she is in I'm surprised she wasn't credited.
When there are two, one betrays-Jean-Pierre Melville
Thelma Ritter was one of the greatest character actresses of all time. She was nominated 6 times for Best Supporting Actress. The fact that she never won is criminal. She should have won in a landslide in 1953 for her heartbreaking performance in Pickup on South Street. I wonder how she felt when she lost to the lightweight Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity. The other performance that should have taken home the Oscar was in 1951 for The Mating Season, but the Academy seldom honored comic performances. And 1951 was the year of A Streetcar Named Desire with the legendary work of Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. If the Academy could overlook Brando for that, they surely could have skipped over Kim Hunter and honored the great Thelma Ritter.
shareAlfalfa Switzer also had an uncredited role as the second messenger.
shareThelma Ritter had more screen time in A Letter to Three Wives than either Jeffrey Lynn, Connie Gilchrest, Florence Bates, Hobart Cavanaugh or Barbara Lawrence, but they all got screen credit and she didn't. Even for an era in which supporting performers frequently got no screen credit, this was downright bizarre, as well as illogical and indefensible.
Actually, this was Thelma's third, not second, screen appearance. She has a tiny bit in the 1948 James Stewart thriller Call Northside 777. It took me years to find her: she's a secretary at the police headquarters photo lab, who tells Stewart to go on in (this near the end of the picture). The shot is from a long distance and you never see her in close-up or even at medium distance, so you really have to look and listen for her very brief scene.
Yes, Thelma should have won the Oscar from The Mating Season at least. She was a superb actress, best known for comedy but actually an excellent dramatic actress as well (as in Pickup on South Street and Birdman of Alcatraz).
She almost steals the show, and it's a crime she wasn't out front with the rest of the substantial speaking parts - no matter how unknown she might've been, at the time!
"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"