MovieChat Forums > Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Discussion > Rate Elizabeth's performance. Did she de...

Rate Elizabeth's performance. Did she deserve Oscar that year?


Rate Elizabeth's performance. Did she deserve Oscar that year?

Everyone knows her first Oscar win was a dud and a sympathy vote. And that she was better in the two Tennessee Williams' films "Cat" and "suddenly, ... summer"?

How would people rate her performance here in contrast to BUtterfield 8 and "Suddenly, Last Summer"?

I've gotten the impression that Liz's win was like Julia Roberts in Erin B. A starlett that just had to win one.

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Meet Maggie the cat.10/10...she deserved oscar , bafta , golden globe (if all were there)

CHEESE!

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I've only seen one of the competitors (Auntie Mame) so I can't judge whether she deserved the Oscar. But people get too wrapped up in awards like that anyway. It was a great performance in a great movie.

Butterfield 8 is something else I haven't seen. But it's pretty widely held that it was a lesser film and performance, and that ET won both out of sympathy for a recent health scare and to "make up" for not awarding other performances. I don't think that applies to Julia Roberts, though. Her performance in Erin Brockovich was both a classic "great actress" moment and it made the film. She deserved the award as much as anyone ever has. Those who say otherwise seem to have some kind of complex about Julia Roberts.

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That's so funny that you say Julia Roberts deserved the AA "as much as anyone ever has". In my view, she is a mediocre actress who was the least deserving person in history to have received an acting award. I respect your right to your beliefs, however, your remark about people having a 'complex' about Julia R. You think those who say she's not a 'great actress' are neurotic? That's nuts.

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All kinds of people have all kinds of opinions about Julia Roberts; what I meant by the earlier comment, though, was that some people are obsessed with singling her out as their example of an overrated performer. That kind of disproportionate reaction to an actress is usually a red flag about the critic, rather than a serious evaluation of the actress in question.

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Yes Yes Yes a 1000 times YES!!! Maggie the cat was a performance of a lifetime for Liz

Life's too short live it to the fullest!!!

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A wonderful performance. Yes she deserved it all right.




"Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage"- Madeleine Kahn(CLUE, 1985)

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she wasn't the only one from the film nominated that should have won the night of April 6th 1959. Richard Brooks Should have won best Director and Paul Newman Should've won best actor. though with Paul's loss the pain was dulled a day and a half later by the birth of His & Joanne's oldest daughter Nell. which family is always more important than awards and particularly true for them as Nell wasn't her first pregnancy. as she'd had a miscarriage on their honeymoon a month or so before she beat Liz for the Oscar. and yeah I agree Liz winning for Butterfield 8 in 1961 was a sympathy vote.

"why are you married to him then if you can't work with him how do you live with him?"

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She definitely deserved the Oscar, she was great in this movie!

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yeah Liz was deffinately fabulous in Cat but so wasn't Susan Hayward in I Want To Live which beat her that evening

"why are you married to him then if you can't work with him how do you live with him?"

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she wasn't the only one from the film nominated that should have won the night of April 6th 1959 Richard Brooks Should have won best Director and Paul Newman Should've won best actor though with Paul's loss the pain was dulled a day and a half later by the birth of His & Joanne's oldest daughter Nell which family is always more important than awards and particularly true for them as Nell wasn't her first pregnancy as she'd had a miscarriage on their honeymoon a month or so before she beat Liz for the Oscar and yeah I agree Liz winning for Butterfield 8 in 1961 was a sympathy vote
Mariahfan-1, that was extremely painful and difficult to read. Punctuation is our friend.

Please...





Gonna revise your Levi's with physical harm, put divots in the rivets with my physical arm.

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yeah I'll admit I forget at times like everybody does.

"why are you married to him then if you can't work with him how do you live with him?"

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I havent finished it but she's good.

This will sound dumb but I'd like her performance better if it was less high like I imagined it before I heard her speal.

"Rawr, I'm a dinosaur!" No. Rawr, you're an idiot.

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I feel like this was far and away her best performance. She was both refined and high-strung, well-intentioned but hardened. The fact that she and Paul Newman had fantastic chemistry certainly didn't help matters. I think this is the film that let the public know that Liz was certainly not a child anymore.

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Taylor is great as Maggie. It is certainly a performance that *could* have won an Oscar. I can't say whether it *should* have won because I haven't seen I Want to Live (for which Hayward beat Taylor). Hayward was also a very good actor in the right role and the woman-on-death-row thing is the kind of role that the Academy has always liked to go for.

I agree that Butterfield 8 is a much weaker movie. However, Taylor is quite good in it. In fact, from a modern perspective, her performance is probably the main reason to bother checking out the movie at all (unless you happen to be a particular fan of one other principals). In some ways the B8 performance is more impressive than the Cat performance, just because she is getting less from the rest of the cast to play off of.

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I stand by what I said before and by the way Cat was Liz's second nomination second loss in as many years. correct she'd been nominated for the movie Raintree County the year before and lost to none other Than Joanne for the Three Faces Of Eve

"why are you married to him then if you can't work with him how do you live with him?"

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I'm currently watching 'CoaHTR' and can't help but wonder how she didn't win. If we're talking sympathy votes, her husband died right around the time she was to begin filming 'Cat', and instead of backing out, she immersed herself in the role. No one will deny--including Dame Elizabeth herself--that she didn't deserve the Oscar for 'Butterfield 8', though she more than earned it for 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. Oscars, like many decisions in life, are based on more than one element (i.e., the likeability of the actor/actress/director). That's why millions of dollars are still spent on Oscar campaigns. Just my two-cents, of course.

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actually Mike died about 2 weeks into the filming of cat not before production started. Paul's personal tragedy had taken place before production started in the form of Joanne's Miscarriage

"why are you married to him then if you can't work with him how do you live with him?"

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As a performance seeing it for the first time, then many times after that, I would definately say that was a worthy Oscar performance. Wouldnt have looked out of place.
Compared with the others that year, it wasnt the easiest but she was in the top 2 or 3. Even Paul Newman wouldnt have looked out of place with an Oscar for his performance, maybe not as much as Elizabeth Taylor but the male category for that year was a fair bit tougher for the men.

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I've always thought she was in waaaayy over her head in this role. She's trying too hard to convey "Suthen, Honey." Her accent is laughable (notice Newman's accent is so much more low key). She needs to take it down a notch or three.

Susan Hayward was a worthy winner. Rosalind Russell gave an iconic performance as Auntie Mame. ET in "Cat?" Scenery chewing at its best. She's the weakest performer in the cast.

That just goes to show you. You go someplace and there you are.

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I'm with Dunewalker. I felt Taylor was outclassed by Ives and Newman. By no means a bad performance though, the rest of the cast was just so strong.

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she gave one of the top performances of all time in COAHTR, truly remarkable. I guess it doesn't matter in the long run who won and who lost. we're still talking about it 50+ years later, that's the important thing

"It's hard for me to watch American Idol because I have perfect pitch."
-Jenna, 30 Rock

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