The Mating Season (1951)

Thelma Ritter:
Ritter did stock theater and radio shows early in her career, without much impact. Ritter's first movie role was in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). The 45-year-old made a memorable impression in a brief uncredited part, as a frustrated mother unable to find the toy that Kris Kringle has promised to her son. Her second role, in writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949), also left a mark, although Ritter was again not listed in the credits.

Mankiewicz kept Ritter in mind, and cast her in his All About Eve the following year. An Oscar nomination led to popularity, and a second Oscar nomination followed for Mitchell Leisen's' classic screwball comedy The Mating Season (1951) starring Gene Tierney, John Lund and Miriam Hopkins. Ritter enjoyed steady film work for the next dozen years. She also appeared in many of the episodic drama TV series of the 1950s, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, General Electric Theater, and The United States Steel Hour.

Throughout her career, Ritter was nominated for an Academy Award six times giving her the dubious honor of being nominated for the award the most times without a win (tied with Deborah Kerr). She co-hosted the Oscar ceremony in 1954, trading wisecracks with Bob Hope.

The diminutive, gravel-voiced Ritter gained great acclaim as a premier character actress, known for her comic timing and sassy one-liners. She was most typically cast as the sardonic, seen-it-all housekeeper who saw through her boss's vanity and frequently told him or her so. But she was also fiercely protective, and neither trusted nor tolerated fools or con men. Ritter would trade on this irascible screen persona for the rest of her life.

Her unsentimental, hard-boiled fatalism could be used in other ways. In occasional non-comedic turns, she projected an unglamorous world-weariness, notably in Pickup on South Street (1953). In this film, she gave a touching and believable performance in her climactic scene opposite a communist spy (played by Richard Kiley) who has come to kill her: she knows she cannot stop him, but she is determined to let him know her contempt for him and all his kind.


Some of her best-known roles include Bette Davis's devoted maid in All About Eve (1950), as Gene Tierney's maid/mother-in-law in The Mating Season (1951), James Stewart's nurse in Rear Window (1954), and as Doris Day's housekeeper in Pillow Talk (1959). Her turn in John Huston's The Misfits (1961), where she played opposite Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, also garnered favorable reviews.