This issue is part of a month-long Alfred Hitchcock marathon I’m doing as a fundraiser for The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham! I will be watching the Master of Suspense’s final 30 films (and writing a poem about each one over on Facebook), so I will be writing about four of those films here. If we’re not Facebook friends, you can donate to The Women’s Fund here.
If you’ve seen Rear Window, and I’m betting many of you have, you’ll know that it’s a rich, weighty, remarkable film. But it also has a fairly simple plot.
Jimmy Stewart plays an injured photographer who took his job a bit too seriously and wound up temporarily immobile. Grace Kelly plays his fashionable but kind sweetheart, a woman that he deems “too perfect.” (He’s right.) And then Raymond Burr (shouts out to Perry Mason) plays a man who may or may not have murdered his wife.
Those three characters are the most important pieces to the story. There are some other neighbors in Jimmy Stewart’s range of visibility who play small roles in allowing the plot to unfurl, and there’s Jimmy Stewart’s cop friend (seems like everybody has a cop friend) who eggs him on by not believing him, and that’s the gist of it.
Except that’s not the gist of it. Because we haven’t mentioned Stella yet.
Thelma Ritter plays Stella, Jimmy Stewart’s nurse who checks in on him at various points throughout the film and imparts wisdom along with her healthcare duties. I love characters like Stella. Sometimes a character can be wholly unimportant to the plot and yet they can be essential to the film on the whole, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here.
Rear Window is incredibly well written, particularly in its dialogue, but no one has more memorable lines than Stella. She says incredible things like “Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence” and “Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killing yet” and when Jimmy Stewart asks her for a sandwich she says “I’ll spread a little common sense on the bread.” She’s just the best. (Go look at the “Quotes” section of the Rear Window IMDb page. Half of it belongs to Stella. Probably every single line of hers.)
But please also consider that Thelma Ritter is simply a terrific actress who is both well recognized and supremely underrated, I think. None of the cast received Oscar recognition for Rear Window, and yet, she was nominated for six Academy Awards. Six! That’s far more than Grace Kelly, who only received two. Hell, it’s more than Jimmy Stewart, who received a total of five.
Let’s stay on this topic for a moment, even though Oscars have become increasingly meaningless. Only 11 women have ever received more Academy Award nominations than Thelma Ritter.* And there are eight additional women who are tied with Ritter for six nominations apiece.** But here’s the thing: All of Thelma Ritter’s nominations are for Actress in a Supporting Role. Every actor with at least six Oscar nominations for acting, male or female, has at least one nomination for a leading role, and everybody but Amy Adams has at least two for a leading role.*** Oh, and Ritter never actually won either.
That kinda sums up her legacy, doesn’t it? A legend in her field, but she was always off to the side, playing support to the leads in remarkably memorable ways. And truly, Rear Window would still be great if we never met Jimmy’s nurse, but it just wouldn’t be the same without Stella.
* Meryl Streep (duh), Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Geraldine Page, Glenn Close, Ingrid Bergman, Cate Blanchett, Jane Fonda, Dame Judi Dench, Greer Garson, and Kate Winslet
** Frances McDormand, Jessica Lange, Maggie Smith, Ellen Burstyn, Vanessa Redgrave, Sissy Spacek, Deborah Kerr, and Amy Adams
*** I would say “Poor Amy Adams,” but really, it’s “Poor Thelma Ritter.”
Rear Window is now streaming on Showtime and DirecTV, and it’s available to rent elsewhere. It was also streaming on Amazon Prime earlier this month when I decided to write about this film. I swear.
Have you seen Pickup on South Street? Her greatest role imho and a damn good noir.