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"Mrs. Maloney" Has Passed: RIP, Katherine Helmond

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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This week, 2019.

Katherine Helmond passed. The obits mainly spoke to her long tours of duty with the sitcoms "She's the Boss" and "Soap." But way back in 1976, she was in the Last Hitchcock movie: Family Plot.

She played the worn-down, long-suffering wife of Ed Lauter's menacing Joe Maloney. It was an odd match: she seemed 10-plus years older than her husband, more his mother than his wife. Maloney has the first seat for much of the movie, but after he gets killed, Helmond gets a classic Hitchcock set-piece with Bruce Dern: watched from high above as she and Dern criss-cross the paths of a weedy cemetary until they collide. And talk. And much is revealed.

After Family Plot, Helmond got to play a lot younger..and more vivacious...women than Mrs. Maloney. I vaguely recall(from watching Soap a little back then) and have read(with regard to She's the Boss), that Helmond played vivacious , sexually active women well into their sixties, maybe their seventies.

Good for her. The sitcom work seems to have kept Katherine Helmond paid and working for decades. Also good for her.

And she was in one of the final Hitchcock set-pieces. Very good for her.

RIP. And alas, the list of surviving Hitchcock players shrinks yet again...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Another problematic, though less obvious case of age miscasting is Cathleen Nesbit as Miss Rainbird. She was 88, almost 50 years older than Devane. It would've been more plausible for her to be his grandmother instead of the aunt.

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Age of the actors is tricky in "old movies"; trickier still in Hitchcock.

Famously, Jessie Royce Landis was only a few years older than Cary Grant when she played his mother in North by Northwest; but I always figured that the 55-year old Grant was playing a 40-year old man and the 50-something Jessie was playing a 63 year old woman. "Real age" can't quite matter.

Interesting theory about the "secondary actresses" outshining the female leads. I think Tippi Hedren WAS outshined by both Pleshette and Baker because those two had experience in movies and TV that Hedren did not, and more "accessibility."
BBG is a dowdy version of a pretty woman in Vertigo; its why Scottie can't quite commit and Novak easily bests her(the proof: that painting of BBG as Carlotta.)

As for Nesbitt well..her sister must have been a LOT younger...but I'm sure Hitchcock didn't really care. (Devane is specified, indeed, as being 40 in the movie.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Interesting theory about the "secondary actresses" outshining the female leads. I think Tippi Hedren WAS outshined by both Pleshette and Baker because those two had experience in movies and TV that Hedren did not, and more "accessibility."
BBG is a dowdy version of a pretty woman in Vertigo; its why Scottie can't quite commit and Novak easily bests her(the proof: that painting of BBG as Carlotta.)"

To me, The Birds has less replay value than other Hitchcock films for precisely this reason. Right after Pleshette pulls the rug from under Hedren's feet, her characterization is kaput. She's moved to the background for her remaining scenes, gets killed off, and we're left with an underwhelming actress to carry the movie.

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Pleshette joked about how Hedren "gets the mink coat; me I get a wool coat and heavy shoes." And one day, Pleshette showed up on set wearing a funny blonde wig. All attempts to move Pleshette to "the background" rather fail in The Birds; its perhaps why she HAS to get killed off.(Hitchcock told Truffaut that in an early draft of the script, Pleshette survived to get attacked in the attic room and live; he instead killed off Annie and gave Melanie the ordeal.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But Hedren is brilliant in Marnie. Not sure whether to attribute this to her improved acting skills or the fact that she has better material to work with.

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Probably a bit of both.

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Baker is pretty much window dressing and that's the extent of the threat she poses. I think she COULD'VE upstaged Hedren if Hitch hadn't cut their last scene together (maybe that's why he cut it?). It's a scene that gives Lil closure; she offers Marnie her $25K inheritance to just get out of Mark's life and disappear.

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I didn't know about that last scene being cut. I'm trying to remember what her last scene IS.

Unlike Pleshette's Annie, Baker's...what was the character name ...is an open antagonist to Hedren, a villainess of sorts, but pathetic in the end(she fails at her schemes and Connery, rather like Scottie in Vertigo, prefers the mystery woman to the familiar face.)

With both films, the odd part is I think the brunettes are prettier and sexier than star Hedren(who is, of course, frigid in Marnie.)

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I found myself rooting for BBG for *most* of Vertigo. It's only in the last third (?) of the film after she vanishes and Judy emerges as her non-masquerading self that the intended effect comes into place. I couldn't sympathize with Novak until then. In the earlier scenes when she's just posing and sleepwalking, she's supposed to be coasting on gravitas that simply aren't there (in my opinion anyway).

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That's a good point. Novak really only comes into focus -- and emotionally shines -- when she takes the stage as Judy. The movie shifts to FAVORING her over Scottie, even as she is accomplice to murder. A nifty Hitchcock trick.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"As for Nesbitt well..her sister must have been a LOT younger...but I'm sure Hitchcock didn't really care. (Devane is specified, indeed, as being 40 in the movie.)"

It's such a minor plot point that I think they should've just made her the grandmother for the sake of believability.

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Probably should have. I like Family Plot, but there is a laziness to some of the plotting that I think reflected both Hitchcock's age and that of his screenwriter Ernest Lehman, long past writing NXNW.

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And at 88 she's playing 78, which is *still* 38 years older than the 40 Devane was supposed to be (he was only 37 in real life).

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37 huh? Its funny how "old" men in their 30s then seem to look today.

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