Louise Fletcher is DEAD TO ME!

At least it's not Jessica Fletcher.

Very sad.

Loved her in Flowers in the Attic

I never got her. She always seemed like a community theater thespian in a church basement play.

She was good in everything

Damn! I didn’t know she was that old… she was great in everything she was in.

Like Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs," even if she wasn't in the film for much of its actual running time, she was undoubtedly the star.

She was brilliant.

Aww, RIP.

Maybe the most beautiful Oscar acceptance speech ever.

I sometimes confused her with Ellen Burstyn. Fletcher was in the notorious sequel to The Exorcist

I can't believe she has around 140 acting credits on IMDB, I had no idea. I thought "Exorcist II" destroyed her career and she retired.

I wonder if her final film will ever be released? The three main stars are now dead.

Awww! I just watched Flowers in the Attic not long ago.

Even as a middle aged woman, she was pure class, Grace, and absolutely gorgeous.

Makes one wonder why (especially American) society is STILL so obsessed with youth in the entertainment industry.

One of my favorite performances ever.

RIP.

Vedek Winn 😥

She worked with Altman in 1974s Thieves Like Us and he wrote the part of Linnea with Fletcher in mind

She was a mess (in a good way) as Ma Gallagher on [italic]Shameless.[/italic]

She played the mom in The Karen Carpenter Story (1989)

R11, at least Louise got an Oscar that Ellen Burstyn, DEFINITELY deserved, yet didn’t receive, in Requiem For a Dream.

I have zero gripes towards Julia Roberts, but we all know who REALLY won that night, and long beforehand

👆🏽 As did Harvey Weinstein, for the record.

The principal in "High School High (1996) was her second best role, imo.

The Cheap Detective

She had a house in southwest France where she spent had much of her time for decades, and that's where she died. Her husband was a close friend of Robert Altman's and produced a couple of his movies, including "Thieves Like Us," in which Louise had a good supporting role. After she and her husband split, she lived with Morgan Mason, who was 20+ years younger than her, for three years and they remained close friends long after he married Belinda Carlisle.

RIP

Lovely, graceful Oscar acceptance speech.

Sounds like she had a nice life.

Ann-Margaret was nominated for "Tommy"? She and it were awful. The other nominations were worthwhile.

There was never anything actressy about her but she was a superb actress. RIP.

She played that bitch Agnes Carpenter in some movie.

Fletcher's profile for the doc on Oscar's leading ladies

Ratched pays tribute to McMurphy in 2009

Like the poster upthread, I also confuse Louise Fletcher and Ellen Burstyn. They were close to the same age too. Ellen will be 90 years old in December.

She was even the stand out in Brainstorm.

Bitch knew how to have a heart attack on screen!

Loved her. It sounds like she was happy with the life she created, and that is success.

A young Louise plays a model in an episode of One Step Beyond

IMDB

I'll have to keep my eyes open for her 77 Sunset Strip and Perry Mason Episodes.

Got to meet her at CHILLER, have the 'Cuckoo’s Nest’ DVD signed.

She was so deliciously evil on DS9.

R22 Wow, I never knew that!

[quote]Ann-Margaret was nominated for "Tommy"? She and it were awful. The other nominations were worthwhile.

Nonsense, she was sensational and won the Golden Globe over Streisand for "Funny Lady", Julie Christie "Shampoo", Goldie Hawn in "Shampoo" and Liza Minelli in "Lucky Lady". She should have won the Oscar too as "Nurse Ratched " is really a supporting role.

Brainstorm

Fletcher is in another guilty pleasure of mine 1979s The Lady in Red. Though she was a terrific actress the Oscar really didn't do much for her career as she didn't really get another film or film role like Cuckoo's Nest.

Louise looked great presenting at the 1977 Oscars

Louise mostly did TV guest starring roles when she starred out and took a 10 year break to be a full time mom and also care for a sick husband before restarting her career in early/mid 70s. She was over 40 when she won the Oscar and was also 5’10 in an industry where many of the big named male stars were shorter.

She worked consistently for over 40 years after she won and was able to have a great life. That was the real reward for winning an Oscar.

Farewell to a legend!

shad.

R41 Yet Ellen Burstyn who won the year before Fletcher was 2 years older, still got lead roles in films for a number of years, wasn't relegated to supporting parts in B pictures and received 3 Best Actress nominations after winning for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

I like Burstyn, but I think we have a budding Burstyn troll whose as deranged as the Lange troll.

What about the Meryl Loon, r45?

I miss the Meryl loon. Sad. RIP.

Well, now that’s sad. What an impression she made. I saw her in one movie, one time, and I still remember how scary and opaque her character was.

From the article in Variety on Fletcher's death

In the American Film Institute TV special “AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes & Villains,” Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched was named the fifth-greatest villain in film history — and second-greatest villainess, behind only the Wicked Witch of the West.

I never got why Ratched was so "evil." She just seemed like a woman who did her job by-the-book and expected compliance from the patients.

It's not like she was murdering them off or anything...

I find her bland. She lucked out in getting that one part.

Kai Winn has gone to the Celestial Temple.

Walk with the Prophets.

[quote] Walk with the Prophets.

Wormhole aliens!

People have become increasingly ill-behaved since 1975.

I think that's affected our perception of evil in authority figures.

Ratched now just seems like an uncuddly and moderately firm babysitter.

Nurse Ratched thinks she's doing good for people but feels abused when her authority is questioned. She's the company woman incarnate who always puts you in the wrong. She's too smart for you and she has all the protocol in the world on her side. The only way to reach her is to go for her throat.

Didn't Bancroft turn down the role of Ratched?

Yes also Burstyn, Colleen Dewhurst, Angela Lansbury, and Geraldine Page. There was a rumor that Jane Fonda also declined but she said she was never offered.

Anne Bancroft, Angela Lansbury and Geraldine Page, all turned it down before Foreman offered it to Fletcher.

Crawford was an early incarnation of a Nurse Retched in The Caretakers (1963)

Lansbury would have been great.

She should have done the Manchurian Candidate chilly cunt thing more often.

She was 88!

In the novel Nurse Ratched was big breasted and, in the end, McMurphy goes for her breasts not her throat as in the film.

[quote] [R11], at least Louise got an Oscar that Ellen Burstyn, DEFINITELY deserved, yet didn’t receive, in Requiem For a Dream.

You're making it sound like Burstyn never won an Oscar. And yet she won a much-deserved one in 1975 for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

Lucille Ball was of course first offered the role of Mildred Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but you of course know what happened to prevent that.

But just imagine Lucy delivering Nurse Ratched's most famous lines:

"You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.”

"Aren’t you ashamed?”

“If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way.”

I enjoyed her in a sweet pro gay movie called "Big Eden".

[quote]r37 Nonsense, Ann-Margret was sensational and won the Golden Globe

I agree, Golden Globes are serious business!

R34 here she is at CHILLER in 2012

Her restored farmhouse near Toulouse.

I liked her and thought she would have been great in The Exorcist if Ellen Burstyn passed on the lead.

She’s the same age as Shirley MacLaine.

I posted this before. I was a theater manager and played "Brainstorm" and the audience had a verbal reaction to her heart attack scene. They were so moved, or scared but it was show after show.

Great actress in many memorable roles, a true screen presence over the years. Most mentioned upthread, but I liked her twisted campy school marm character in the remake of Invaders From Mars with Karen Black, very entertaining movie, and she's wonderful in it. :-)

The way her character drove me up the wall in DS9 when I was but a kid... Masterfully done.

Sad to hear, she was an amazing actress and seemed like a lovely person (her Oscar acceptance speech was perhaps the only one that made me genuinely emotional). I remember her best from Star Trek DS9 in the 90’s, she was featured across the show’s entire 7 year run as one of the best screen villains of the time. RIP.

"I'll get you, David Gardner!"

R10 Really great speech - funny and touching.

R51: Your level of moral development would have made you popular in Nazi Germany or the current GOP.

The Globes were still a joke in the 70s and had a rep as being bought for people.

[quote]I never got why Ratched was so "evil." She just seemed like a woman who did her job by-the-book and expected compliance from the patients.

I think there’s a lot of sexism directed at Ratched.

R16- She worked with B Altman & Co - what was her job there?

Having a house in SW France and living there until your death is a pretty good life.

She was not good in everything she was in

Has anyone seen Exorcist II: The Heretic?

She was great in that.^

Loved her as the villain in the very silly David Zucker comedy High School High

I liked her In my mind I always figured her and Ronnie Claire Edwards often crossed paths going for the same roles.

It’s too bad she never had another role that rose to the OFOTCN level. She made such a strong impression as Ratched. She did receive two Emmy nominations so there’s that. But she kept busy parlaying her Oscar into supporting roles mainly which provided work and money. Her acceptance speech is perfect and so heart felt.

I often enjoyed Louise Fletcher's work, but some of the claims being made about her in this thread seem extravagant to me. We're not talking about a talent of kaleidoscopic variety here.

It's interesting that Robert Altman fucked her over with NASHVILLE. The Lily Tomlin part was so obviously conceived with Fletcher in mind, but in the end he chose Tomlin -- rightly, I'd say, as nothing in Fletcher's filmography suggests that she could have delivered what Tomlin did in the famous "I'm Easy" sequence.

R.I.P. to a memorable actress, for sure, but let's not overstate the case.

Marlee Matlin is really obsessed with deafness.

R88

I think Fletcher would have been fine in the role of Linnea in Nashville. She was an attractive woman who had a relationship with a younger man in real life. Horse-faced Tomlin hardly seems the type that would attract Keith Carradine or any man for that matter. Ironically Fletcher won the Oscar in the same year that Tomlin was nominated for Nashville.

Ratched was such a cunt she even had one carved into her hairdo

Yes r88, I agree she wasn’t as good as Tomlin in that role she never got to play.

R90 seems to have missed the point of Carradine's relationship with Tomlin in NASHVILLE. R92 has rewritten what I wrote into nonsense.

Get back to me when you actually have a counterargument.

She was great as the chilly mom whose son killed Valerie "I'll Be Alone Forever" Bertinelli in In A Child's Name.

Maria Callas, Olivia De Havliand, Princess Diana, Marlene Dietrich, Jim Morrisson., Bette Davis and now Louise Fletcher. What is with celebs that go and die in France?

Surprised no one posted this scene yet. It alone should make her DL icon.

R93 Oh yes, I see for Tom she's not just another one-night stand but an exotic morsel being the mother of two deaf children and implausibly the white lead singer of a black gospel chorus. It is I guess the one relationship that he has had that will really have meaning. Sorry to have offended you, Lily.

BTW just keep repeating to yourself it's only a movie! it's only a movie! It's only a movie!

^ She MADE that movie!

[quote] [R92] has rewritten what I wrote into nonsense

Just rephrased it to show how foolish it was.

I thought Altman made that movie R98 and in an ensemble piece many performances were outstanding but perhaps most impressive was Ronee Blakely

Come now, R97 -- are you being deliberately perverse? I didn't even imply, much less say, anything that you just wrote..

The brilliance of the "I'm Easy" sequence is how it shows Carradine's multiple partners -- all very different types, each unaware of the others' involvement with him -- each interpreting his performance as being aimed only at her. Tomlin's character isn't meant to be particularly glamorous -- she's one of Carradine's several conquests, another notch on the belt to him, but the impact on her has been something else entirely. It's the quiet devastation in her face that I can't imagine Fletcher's ever capturing.

Perhaps R97 and R99 should find a nice playground together and leave the grown-up stuff to the grown-ups.

[Quote] I never got why Ratched was so "evil." She just seemed like a woman who did her job by-the-book and expected compliance from the patients.

She struck a nerve. We've all had to deal with people like her and it can be frustrating. People who won't budge or even listen to reason. But yes, I don't think of her as evil

But, she’s dealing with psychotics^.

Not all of the men on the ward were psychotics R103 and this request was not crazy or likely to cause harm⬇️⬇️⬇️

The movie was a little different than the book, especially with Cheswick, who was a perv. I think many of these men should have been in prison, not Billy of course, or Hardon—Harding.

I think Ratched was a military nurse, yes?

She didn't play Linnea because her husband, Jerry Bick, and Altman had a falling out after years of working together and friendship. She had a cameo in "The Player," 17 years after "Nashville," so fences were mended.

Louise and Altman, 1992.

Her husband had a falling out with Altman around the time of "Nashville" which may be why she wasn't cast. She later divorced the husband. Still, "Nashville" strikes me as one of Altman's less successful films--it has a flat quality and the set pieces don't fit together as well as they do in other films of his. So, not a great loss for Fletcher.

(^.^)

Ironically Fletcher won the Oscar in the same year that Tomlin was nominated for Nashville and Cuckoo's Nest won Best Picture

R91 I never understood the concept of her ugly nurse hairstyle in Coocoo

And it was Ellen Burstyn who went on one of the talk shows that year and told Academy voters not to vote for Best Actress due to the low quality of women's roles. Louise was pissed and immediately phoned Burstyn to bitch her out. Ellen had to publicly apologize.

I notice DL often does this when some B List talent passes or when there’s a WEHT thread….they overinflate the actual talent of the performer for no reason. She was a good actress and it’s sad she passed, but nothing in her filmography indicated she was more (or just as) talented than Ellen Burstyn, Ann-Margret, or even Lily Tomlin.

Nashville isn’t just Altman’s best movie, it’s one of the best American films of all time. I always thought Cuckoo’s Nest was overrated, Dog Day Afternoon also was a big loser the year despite being a much better film…..

Honest to God I thought she had died in the early 80's. In fact I just remembered her character in BRAINSTORM

"Nashville" was overrated and Pauline Kael's shilling for it probably began the beginning of the end of her career (although she still had a couple decades of bad writing to go). Altman made much better films before and after "Nashville".

Remake the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's' Nest with an all male cast.

R114 I like Nashville, but Kael's over-the-top review of the tedious, pointless and downright unerotic Last Tango in Paris (1973) begs the question: Did she see the same film as I did?

Has Kristy Swanson commented yet?

I get her mixed up with Ellen Burstyn and Gena Rowlands.

She was fantastic as nurse Ratched and scared the hell out of me.

RIP.

[Quote]The brilliance of the "I'm Easy" sequence is how it shows Carradine's multiple partners -- all very different types, each unaware of the others' involvement with him -- each interpreting his performance as being aimed only at her. Tomlin's character isn't meant to be particularly glamorous -- she's one of Carradine's several conquests, another notch on the belt to him, but the impact on her has been something else entirely. It's the quiet devastation in her face that I can't imagine Fletcher's ever capturing.

A true master class in acting R101 Just devastating. It should be mandatory for acting students to watch this scene.

I just loved her in Murder, She Wrote.

Louise Fletcher gives a masterly performance as Nurse Ratched-Pauline Kael

[Quote]I think we have a budding Burstyn troll whose as deranged as the Lange troll.

R45 How did you miss the budding Lily Tomlin and Ann-Margret trolls?

[quote]r 110 I never understood the concept of her ugly nurse hairstyle in Coocoo

I believe it was to make her look more mature, and stuck in her old ways. (That hairdo is from the 1940s.)

[quote]R115 Remake the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's' Nest with an all male cast.

You mean take out the 1 female role? There’s already about 20 men in it.

Yes, remake with all men r124

Why, r125?

I thought she was already dead.

R125 can do that. It was originally a stage play; he can do it in a local hall. Or his basement.

Her driving was as awful as her acting.

I guess you had to be there. Buster Keaton was able to pull off the heart tugging great stone face better than Lily Tomlin being killed softly in that scene, and I adore Lily. They should have staged a bit at the Oscars pitting Ernestine, with her victory rolls vs Nurse Ratched with her victory rolled hairdo.

R130 I never got the idea that she was being killed softly or that she was devastated. Was she expecting it to be a long-term relationship? I doubt it since she was married with children and besides, she knew what she was getting into with Tom and who he was and what he was.

Lily Tomlin was pissed about the lighting for that scene when she saw the rushes. She felt she’d done a lot of acting with her eyes, and they were in shadow.

Why don't you stage it in your basement since you are such an expert on the source r128

"Burstyn wrote to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences to protest Liv Ullmann's elimination from Oscar contention in 1974 for her performance in Scenes from a Marriage. AMPAS used a rule under which TV presentations must have appeared in movie theaters in the same year, to prevent Ullmann from being nominated. Burstyn went on to win the Oscar for her performance in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

Not that Liv would have won had she been nominated, but it was nice of Burstyn to protest her exclusion.

[quote]I never understood the concept of her ugly nurse hairstyle in Coocoo

She said that she and Milos Forman wanted a style that was dated and severe, because Ratched would never have kept up with current styles.

NYT obit is here.

She was largely unknown to the public when she was cast as what the American Film Institute called one of cinema’s most memorable villains...Ms. Fletcher is often cited as an example of the Oscar curse — the phenomenon that winning an Academy Award for acting does not always lead to sustained movie stardom — but she did maintain a busy career in films and on television into her late 70s.

Everything I've read makes her sound like a lovely person people enjoyed working with or being around.

On a side note, I miss the days when "serious" movies like Cuckoo, Nashville, and Network were popular hits and spurred discussion. Now it's just Spiderman and Marvel.

[quote] Now it's just Spiderman and Marvel.

I assume because they're as big internationally, r137. You don't have to speak English to know what's going on.

What a great work ethic she had. You never heard her complain about the lack of parts. She took what was offered and made the best of it. I had no idea she had racked up so many credits.... and that she has so many fans, God bless you all.

[quote] It's not like she was murdering them off or anything..

Did you even see the movie? She was directly responsible for the suicide of Billy Bibbet, who killed himself after she told him she would tell his mother about his being with a woman in the hospital. And after his dead body is found in a pool of blood she tells the other patients "the best thing we can do now is go through our daily routine." Treating his death like like was nothing. Aside from that she was always goading the patients into hysteria and submission. She was indeed quite evil.

[quote]R133 Why don't you stage it in your basement since you are such an expert on the source?

Because I don’t even like the novel, play, or movie that much.

It’s kind of from that Angry Young Man Baby school of writing.

R140 Nurse Ratched NOT Louise!

[Quote][R92] has rewritten what I wrote into nonsense.

[Quote]Come now, [R97] -- are you being deliberately perverse? I didn't even imply, much less say, anything that you just wrote..

Time to call Jacoby and Meyers

[Quote] Ms. Fletcher is often cited as an example of the Oscar curse — the phenomenon that winning an Academy Award for acting does not always lead to sustained movie stardom —

Sad but true

Cursed

R135- Buck NEVER would have worn a hairstyle like that.

I thought the idea was that she had come to the ward in her youth in wartime and still thought she was an ingenue.

Kai Winn being super cunty to Kira Nerys.

You're with the prophets now.

[quote]Kai Winn has gone to the Celestial Temple.

Her pagh was always strong.

All the times that Kai Winn says "my child" in "Deep Space Nine."

[quote] Come now, [R97] -- are you being deliberately perverse? I didn't even imply, much less say, anything that you just wrote..

Since you’re running away from what you so clearly said, which is there for all to read after all, we’ll just accept that as a de facto withdrawal of the previously-stated truly weird opinion, from someone too vain to admit having said it.

[quote] Perhaps [R97] and [R99] should find a nice playground together and leave the grown-up stuff to the grown-ups.

Projecting that can be seen from orbit.

Louise Fletcher was supposed to play the Lily Thomlin role in Nashville but her husband had some kind of falling out with Robert Altman (who was very prickly at the best of times) and Altman gave the role to Thomlin, who earned her only Oscar nomination and has never topped that performance.

Anyway, Louise Fletcher got OFOTCN because nobody else wanted a role and had the last laugh at the Oscars and delivered probably the best acceptance speech ever. Signing to her deaf parents was very moving to watch.

R150 makes me wonder — is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

R153 No. It's between us.

[Quote] is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

I don't know R153 but her Oscar was well-deserved for a memorable performance which is more than I can say for . . .Jodie Foster (The Accused)- Jane Fonda (Coming Home)-Glenda Jackson (A Touch of Class)-Sally Field (Places in the Heart)-Katherine Hepburn (On Golden Pond)-Hillary Swank (Million -Dollar Baby), Faye Dunaway, Jessica Lange, Sandra Bullock, Holly Hunter, Reese Witherspoon, Emma Stone, Helen Hunt and quite a few others

Louise won against Isabelle Adjani for The Story of Adele H., Ann-Margret for Tommy, Glenda Jackson for Hedda, and Carol Kane for Hester Street.

Other actresses who might have been nominated: Katharine Ross for The Stepford Wives, Anne Bancroft for The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Barbra Streisand for Funny Lady, Karen Black for The Day of the Locust, Julie Harris or Jeannette Clift for The Hiding Place.

I would have voted for Isabelle A or Ann-Margret

Also Valerie Perrine for Lenny since she won the Cannes Best Actress.

Oh, "Hester Street"--Carol Kane is wonderful. Under-discussed on DL. Valerie Perrine's turn in "Lenny" was another dark-horse standout.

Unbelievable the number of Best Actress-worthy performances that year alone. Particularly given the pickings in this era.

Valerie Perrine's BA nomination for "Lenny" was in the previous year.

R155 Sorry, but arguing Faye Dunaway and Holly Hunter didn't deserve their Oscars immediately invalidates your entire post.

[quote]is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

That sobriquet would go to uber-cunt Helen Hunt.

R159 Perrine was nominated in 1974 the year Burstyn won.

R162 Dunaway's character was one-dimensional and Liv Ullmann in Face to Face or Sissy Spacek in Carrie were more deserving. And Hunt's performance isn't memorable or outstanding. Nurse Ratched became a cultural reference and a well-remembered character thanks to Fletcher.

NY Times obit She was largely unknown to the public when she was cast as what the American Film Institute called one of cinema’s most memorable villains..

[quote]Unbelievable the number of Best Actress-worthy performances that year alone. Particularly given the pickings in this era.

Which is funny, because at the time it was regarded as the weakest year for actresses in oscar history. As was mentioned above, it was so bad that Ellen Burstyn wanted people to not vote in the category. The NY Times even ran a story about how rough it was going to be to find five contenders.

This was also the year that the Best Song category nominees had to be scrapped and new nominations drawn up due to outrage over the theme from Mahogany not initially getting a nomination.

Louise played Frank's mom on Shameless quite a few years back when Joan Cusack was still on it. The two had some fun scenes. Fletcher had a varied and interesting career, then died in France. Not too shabby. Definitely a nice life.

Best Song

Winner: "I'm Easy" from Nashville – Music and Lyrics by Keith Carradine.

Nominated: "How Lucky Can You Get?" from Funny Lady – Music and Lyrics by Kander and Ebb "Now That We’re In Love" from Whiffs – Music by George Barrie; Lyrics by Sammy Cahn "Richard’s Window" from The Other Side of the Mountain – Music by Charles Fox; Lyrics by Norman Gimbel "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)" from Mahogany – Music by Michael Masser; Lyrics by Gerry Goffin

R31, the movie is Wood’s last but Fletcher is a marvel. The only performance that seems deeply felt and true.

[quote] is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

NO.

[Quote]is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

What about Cher?

Perhaps not my favorite performance of hers, but my favorite film of hers was Cruel Intentions. She played Ryan Philippe’s Aunt Helen.

[Quote]is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

from the distant past Grace Kelly, Greer Garson and 2-time winner Louise Rainer

R171 = Sally Kirkland

Greer Garson was a good actor, you might not like her style but she knew what she was doing and could be very effective. I won't stick up for Kelly or Rainer, though.

What does Sally have to be angry about R174?

[Quote] is Louise Fletcher the worst actress to win the Best Actress Oscar?

Loretta Young

[quote]R155 Her Oscar was well-deserved for a memorable performance, which is more than I can say for . . . Faye Dunaway

How very dare you, [italic]little homosexual boy!

Louise lived with much younger Morgan Mason, son of James, for years.

[quote]r165 Dunaway's character was one-dimensional

Despite how well Fletcher may have played her, you think Nurse Rached is a MULTI dimensional role??

R180 Fletcher didn't lapse into caricature and created a recognizable human being or type.

R181, NETWORK was a satire, not pitched realistically the way CUCKOO'S NEST was.

NY Times Review Vincent Canby

As played by Louise Fletcher and defined in the screenplay by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, the film's Nurse Ratched is a much more interesting, more ambiguous character than in Mr. Kesey's novel, though what we take to be her fleeting impulses of genuine concern only make the film's ending that much more unbelievable.

[Quote] NETWORK was a satire, not pitched realistically the way CUCKOO'S NEST

True but what's your point? It was one-dimensional, nonetheless. R182

See R183

R184, except that it wasn't. Dunaway got to play assertive, frigid, charming, cold, terrified, etc. My point is that the broad aspects of the performance fit perfectly with the style of the surrounding film, but within that style the character has plenty of modes/variety.

Such a gift to have actors who can play villains well. It's often underappreciated, but so essential to telling good stories.

The New Yorker Pauline Kael on Netwrok

"He (Chayefsky) hardly bothers with the characters; the movie is a ventriloquial harrangue. He thrashes around in messianic God-love booziness, driving each scene to an emotional peak"

The Guardian

"The film is immaculately cast...The principal figures in its ideological debate – the chilly, number-crunching executive Robert Duvall, godlike network supremo Ned Beatty and the ambitious, exploitative programmer Faye Dunaway – are vivid caricatures. But the movie runs out of steam as satiric invention turns into fervent, deeply sincere statement, and solid William Holden’s middle-aged producer becomes the representative of old-fashioned integrity."

R185 Dunaway's role was one-dimensional, and she did well in a role that had no subtlety or complexity. In contrast both William Holden and Beatrice Straight played it straight without caricature as written. Their scenes seem to be from a different film altogether.

[Quote] In the novel Nurse Ratched was big breasted and, in the end, McMurphy goes for her breasts not her throat as in the film.

They should have cast Honor Blackman.

[Quote] Dunaway got to play assertive, frigid, charming, cold, terrified, etc.

Must have missed the charming and terrified and the etc

PS frigid=cold

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann An overwrought, hollowly symbolic glob of glutinous nonsense... I haven't seen a sillier film about a woman and a piano since John Huston's "The Unforgiven" (1960), a Western in which Lillian Gish had her piano carried out into the front yard so she could play Mozart to pacify attacking Indians. [13 Dec 1993]

Hunter was one-note like the piano R162

I hated the heavy-handed symbolism in "The Piano." The topper was saved for the end, when the piano is literally dragging Holly Hunter's character to a drowning death.

I wonder what Nicholson thought of her through the years.... It would have interesting to see them perform again together.

I would love to have seen Nicholson and Fletcher do the movie version of 'They're Playing Our Song' They would've hit it out of the park!

R192 here's a repost of Fletcher speaking of Jack at the AFI tribute.

Her performance in Cuckoo's Nest is pitch perfect

R191, Harvey Keitel's penis was disappointing.

R196 I'd suck it dry. Harvey Keitel has always been super hot. He was of course at peak hottness in the 1970s.

[quote]I sometimes confused her with Ellen Burstyn. Fletcher was in the notorious sequel to The Exorcist

Me too, r11. Incidentally, both also played the evil grandmother in two different versions of "Flowers in the Attic".

I never confused her with Burstyn. Fletcher had slightly creepy eyes (like Meg Foster) and a very wife face, a bit bulldog like. That doesn't describe Burstyn.

*wide face

R198 Louise Fletcher looks uncannily like Ellen Burstyn here-John Simon on The Exorcist II

Were Louise Fletcher and Ellen Burstyn the G and M of the 70s?

Ellen never raised a Mamie.

Jane Fonda was more M or G in the 70s than Fletcher. She won the Oscar twice in that decade and was nominated 5 times

The China Syndrome (1979)

Coming Home (1978)

Julia (1977)

Klute (1971)

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

Louise Fletcher was not traditionally beautiful enough to be a mainstream leading lady in that era. She’s too blunt. Fonda and Dunaway could play driven, powerful women but were also “pretty,” which softened the blow.

Colleen Dewhurst was sort of in the same category; a big, strong woman who was attractive but lacked delicacy. She was thus mainly relegated to supporting roles in movies, and concentrated on stage work.

Louise Fletcher looked like a lesbian gym teacher.

r206 so, underrated.

Fletcher in THIEVES LIKE US (1974), the movie that put her back in the game after early retirement to marry.

[quote]Were Louise Fletcher and Ellen Burstyn the G and M of the 70s?

No, that would be Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway.

Louise Fletcher also looked like Erika Slezak. Ever so slightly bovine features.

Fletcher and Nicholson really deserved their Oscars for Cuckoo's Ness. They were both perfect in their roles.

R212 Agreed. Though playing yourself is easy.

[quote]Colleen Dewhurst was sort of in the same category; a big, strong woman

Meh, r206.