On days like this, when the wind blows across from Canada and the thermometer never creeps much above 12 degrees, I look for my favorite winter hat. It’s a shapeless black felt one, but cozy, durable, and it never seems to mind if I wind up stuffing it into my coat pocket. I call it my “Thelma Ritter” hat because, like the actress, (who was born and died in the month of February), it is unpretentious and always welcome, even if it will never be chic. And I’d miss it if it were gone.

Like Miss Ritter, who was nominated for a remarkable six Academy Awards® in twelve years*, that hat is familiar, yet remarkably versatile in its useful life. Despite the fact that she usually played variations of a Shakespearean “wise fool”, she often played a person whose keen awareness of her place in our supposedly classless society made her secure enough in it to voice her opinions without fear. As a matter of fact, her essential characters are often too exhausted not to be wholly honest. In one of her darkest and most poignant roles, that of the necktie street vendor in filmmaker Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953), Ritter’s bone tiredness took on a tragic resignation as she hung on, she hoped, just long enough to “go on making a living so I can die” and not wind up in Potter’s Field as she feared.
The film, which cast an unrelenting, cold eye on the law, the lawless and the chill in the air caused by postwar greed as much as by fear of Communism, offered up one person the audience could feel compassion for: Thelma Ritter‘s character, Moe Williams.

Something tells me, however, that the show may have been stolen right at the beginning when the camera panned in on the gray figure of the Statue of Liberty, who heaved a sigh and explained that she got pretty tired of holding up the lamp of liberty, especially when she got snowed and rained on. She even wondered aloud do “people really appreciate Liberty?”
Naturally, for a show that was such a hodge-podge, the Statue of Liberty was played by that American Everywoman, Thelma Ritter. Unfortunately, kinescopes of this strange event only exist of the last thirty minutes of the show, if at all, and we can only read about this “typecasting” of Miss Ritter. Usually looking like a cross between Mother Courage and a cafeteria lunch lady, Thelma, like the lady in the harbor, never seems to have been fully appreciated either. Sure, they awarded her six Oscar nominations in her time, but received no wins. What were they thinking?

An actress from the time she was about 8, who described herself as “an obnoxious child actress—a poor man’s Cornelia Otis Skinner…”, she was 45 by the time she first stepped in front of the camera in director George Seaton’s Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Even that part was uncredited, though audiences noted her amusingly blunt attitude when she told off Macy’s Santa (Edmund Gwenn) for making a promise to a boy of a toy that couldn’t be found, (only to discover that St. Nick was sending her to Gimbel’s for the desired item).

Thelma Ritter‘s indelibly real presence was noted by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck who soon put her under contract at Twentieth Century Fox. Thelma had been given her part in “Miracle…” largely because she’d grown up in Brooklyn with George Seaton‘s wife. Audiences however, knew the real thing when they saw her and her career on screen took off the following year when Joseph L. Mankiewicz gave her a plum role in A Letter to Three Wives (1949), (for which she was also uncredited).
Mankiewicz, who would repeatedly explore the theme of the effects of ambition on his characters, was blessed with Ritter‘s presence in allegedly subservient roles as truth-tellers disguised as maids in this picture and All About Eve(1950).

In the funniest of the segments in A Letter to Three Wives, Ritter is given lines by Mankiewicz that you instantly forget she didn’t write. Playing a maid named “Sadie Dugan” in the home of the upwardly mobile couple, English teacher Kirk Douglas and radio soap opera writer Ann Sothern, she is more at home in their house than they are. Sadie has known everyone she works for since they were children. Their airs cut no ice with her. Eyeing a maid’s frilly hat that the earnest yet ambitious Sothern asked her to wear while serving dinner to their important guests, Sadie announces, “The cap’s out. Makes me look like a lamb chop with pants on.” Commenting on Sothern‘s ghastly radio show, she smiles and asks appreciatively, “”Do you know what I like about your program? Even when I’m running the vacuum, I can understand it.” Best of all are the silent moments of Ritter‘s performance, as when she struggles laboriously with the screen separating the living room from the dining area during a dinner party. Almost overwhelmed by the unwieldy and heavy screen, it finally collapses, disrupting any pretense of polite chit chat among the guests as Sadie (Thelma Ritter) announces wanly “Soup’s on.”

Later in the film, in a segment when Ritter and another masterful character actress, Connie Gilchrist pause while a train goes by outside the kitchen of the shanty Irish home where they are playing cards, you are able to see, (please click here ), two old friends used to fending off reality with a lifetime of wisecracks.

In All About Eve (1950), Joseph Mankiewicz, (finally giving Ritter name recognition in the credits), fashioned her role as the ex-vaudevillian turned ladie’s maid for Ritter‘s gift for wariness tempered by her ability to express gruff affection with a look and a few words. When, at the beginning of the film, Thelma responds to the waif-like Eve (Ann Baxter) and her tale of woe with the classic comment “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end,” her employer Margo, (Bette Davis) accuses her of lacking finer feelings. Throughout the film, Birdie, like a wise-cracking sybil, drops several hints that the “kid” as Davis begins calling Eve, may not be quite what she appears to be, while the alleged sophisticates surrounding Ritter fall, one by one, at least for awhile, for Eve’s stratagems. Finally catching on, Margo finally asks Thelma: “Birdie, you don’t like Eve, do you? Birdie: “You looking for an answer or an argument?” Margo:”An answer.” Birdie: “No.” Margo:”Why not?” Birdie: “Now you want an argument.” Clearly, with the exception of the venomous Addison DeWitt, (George Sanders in one of his best roles), Birdie is the only person who sees things as they are.

As Ritter‘s dramatic and comic qualities came to be appreciated, (and popular with the public), the actress, who had trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts , found herself in demand by several talented directors. She lent her sound instincts and flair for revealing characters beyond what was on the pages of a script to Mitchell Leisen’s The Mating Season, George Cukor’s The Model and the Marriage Broker, Jean Negulesco’s Titanic, Hitchcock’s Rear Window, old friend George Seaton’s The Proud and the Profane, and Frank Capra’s A Hole in the Head.

Most interestingly of all, to me, was one of her least likable roles. Ritter‘s portrait of the deeply loyal yet coldly disciplined mother of Robert Stroud is among her very best. She plays a seemingly ordinary woman emboldened by her single- minded drive to protect and control her son, played by Burt Lancaster, in an eloquent performance that was said to be miles away from the real, quite violent Mr. Stroud, in John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz. She also found energy and time to play a part that had been played earlier by Marie Dressler in the late actress’ last role on screen in 1933. In a 1955 “20th Century Fox Hour” television production of Sidney Howard‘s play, The Late Christopher Bean Miss Ritter played a woman whose beauty had only been perceived by a drunken artist whose vision only became valuable after his artwork, in particular a portrait of Ritter‘s humble character became valuable to the art world. Part comedy and wry drama, a recording of this one hour program does pop up on cable occasionally and Ritter makes it memorable.

Thelma had a mid-life renaissance, after years of struggle, despite the fact that she’d almost left show business in the thirties to concentrate on raising her two children with fellow actor Joe Moran, whom she’d married in 1927. While Mr. Moran reportedly pursued more remunerative work as an actor’s agent, his wife, between auditions, was also said to add to the family’s funds during the Depression with various “civilian” jobs, (including entering numerous contests such as those that awarded consumers who wrote jingles for advertisers). Though both would remain somewhat active in radio and the theater throughout their careers, Ritter‘s prominence in the film world eventually gave her an opportunity to co-host the Oscar ceremony in the mid-fifties. In between her film appearances, Miss Ritter also found roles in the burgeoning television market, (other than that one night only gig playing Lady Liberty). In 1955, Paddy Chayevsky wrote the part of the mother expressly for Thelma in The Catered Affair, about an Irish American working class mother’s attempt to give her daughter the wedding she’d never had and the effect of this effort on her whole family. I can’t help wondering how the two co-stars, Bette Davis & Miss Ritter felt when Davis was given the film role of this play.

Playwright and friend Paddy Chayevsky would write in the New York Times after Thelma Ritter‘s death that “…she was enormous, not the sort of epithet usually pinned on Miss Ritter, who was known particularly for the astringency of her performance. Her acting emotion had first to filter through that urban crust of hers before it exhibited itself externally. Her power as an actress was consequently one of depth. Even her sketchiest roles had this substance of human embattlement. Given a role…she revealed to her audience the tragedy of the human condition, which is the definition of great acting. She was a supreme comedian and a kind and gentle woman who was esteemed by everyone who ever worked with her.”

The following are upcoming films on TCM featuring Thelma Ritter.
All times are Eastern Standard Time:

All About Eve (1950)
Mar 1, 5:30PM
Mar 16, 8:00PM
Apr 5, 8:00PM
Sublime fun, but where did Birdie (Thelma) go just after she described all the minks piled on the bed as looking like a “dead animal act” during the “bumpy night” party?

Boeing Boeing (1965)
Mar 12, 10:00PM
The swinging sixties at its nadir with Jerry Lewis & Tony Curtis as
international playboys jetsetting between girls. Even Thelma couldn’t
save this one, though even in poor movies, she’s a welcome relief from
the faux hipness.

How the West Was Won (1963)
Mar 13, 1:15PM
Apr 2, 4:00AM
Ritter‘s ability to bring the best out in her co-stars is evident in each scene
with Debbie Reynolds throughout their segment of the sprawling frontier tale.
When Reynolds sat down with Robert Osborne to talk about her
career a few years ago on TCM she spoke fondly about the lessons learned
from two great character actresses:
Thelma Ritter and Agnes Moorehead. My opinion of Ms. Reynolds
has been higher since viewing that interview, which still airs on TCM from time to time.

Rear Window (1954)
Mar 16, 6:00PM
As the pragmatic physical therapist tending to wheelchair bound
Jimmy Stewart, Ritter’s character sees things as they are and as they should be,
and spells it out for a blind Stewart, who only seems to see the world and life
through his camera lens, as in the following emblematically Ritteresque exchange:
Stella(Thelma): When two people love each other, they come together—WHAM!—like two taxis on Broadway.
Jeff(Jimmy): She wants me to marry her.
Stella: That’s normal.
Jeff: I don’t want to.
Stella: That’s abnormal.

It occurs to me that Thelma seems to be the only true grown-up in this movie. Everyone else is “playing” an imagined version of an adult.

The Misfits (1961)
Apr 19, 8:00PM
In his memoir and in the PBS Great Performances analysis, Making The Misfits,
Eli Wallach recalled that there were two people
on the troubled set of this often touching, flawed John Huston film
whose even keeled professional and personal demeanor helped to keep
things bearable: Clark Gable and Thelma Ritter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* The Oscar nominations received by Thelma Ritter were for the following:
1950 Actress in a Supporting Role–All About Eve {“Birdie”}
1951 Actress in a Supporting Role–The Mating Season {“Ellen McNulty”}
1952 Actress in a Supporting Role–With a Song in My Heart {“Clancy”}
1953 Actress in a Supporting Role–Pickup On South Street {“Moe”}
1959 Actress in a Supporting Role–Pillow Talk {“Alma”}
1962 Actress in a Supporting Role–Birdman of Alcatraz {“Elizabeth Stroud”}