Tuesdays with Oscar: Beatrice Straight in ‘Network’ (1976)

by Jerry Dean Roberts

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THE FILM:
Network, directed by Sidney Lumet; written by Paddy Chayefsky
THE CATEGORY:
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
HER FELLOW NOMINEES:
Jane Alexander in All the President’s Men; Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver; Lee Grant in Voyage of the Damned; Piper Laurie in Carrie 

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In an era of so much media overload, it’s a tragic fact that many great actors are being lost to history, their great work slipping out of common knowledge.  The late Beatrice Straight, a grand lady of the stage and a regular face in television’s early years, may become a casualty of this sad phenomenon.  Nearly two decades after her death in 2001, her best known claim to fame is that she currently holds the record for giving the shortest performance ever to win an academy award.  In just 5 minutes and 2 seconds, she manages to give a fierce performance Sydney Lumet’s Network playing Louise Schumacher, the beleaguered wife of William Holden’s news division president Max (William Holden) who discovers that he’s been carrying on an affair with his younger co-worker.

What is remarkable about her performance (you see the whole thing in the video below) is that it stands as an example of what a great actor can do with a limited space of time if the role is written well enough – and, of course, it helps when the writer is Paddy Chayefsky.  Through his words, she delivers a performance that might seem typical of the situation but she makes us feel for her.  Through her tears, her outrage, her questioning of her 25 years with Max and the reckoning of their future, she moves through a surprising number of emotional states and by the end of the scene doesn’t entirely land where we expect her to: there is a laugh, and we completely understand why.

The fact that Straight even won an Oscar is something of a minor miracle.  Throughout her long career (which was urged on by her mother who had given up her own dream of becoming an actress and thereby encouraged her daughter) she spent much of her career on the stage in Broadway productions playing Lady McDuff in MacBeth and Viola in Twelfth Night, Lisa in Albert Camus’ “The Possessed” and as Elizabeth Proctor the 1953 production of “The Crucible” which won her a Tony award – another role in which she plays a betrayed wife.

Yet, Straight only made a few stops in motion pictures and the bulk of that work was usually playing a matriarch of some sort.  Against this type her best-remembered role today is Dr. Lesh in Poltergeist, as the kindly parapsychologist who becomes surrogate mother to JoBeth Williams whose daughter is trapped in the netherworld.  In that film, she gets the most Spielbergian of moments, explaining to a confused little boy the realities of how some people perceive the afterlife.  Outside of Poltergeist and Network, her filmography is not exactly a distinguished body of work.  Her last appearance was playing Goldie Hawn’s mother in the 1991 thriller Deceived.  . . . for all of five seconds!

Beatrice Straight will be remembered on three fronts.  The theater community will know her for her stage work.  The film community will be remember her for Network.  The average filmgoer will remember her for Poltergeist.  Is that a distinguished legacy?  Possibly, because as a moment when so many late actors are being lost to history, at least she’s still remembered for something.

Her entire performance in Network.

Her acceptance speech:

Her very Spielbergian moment in Poltergeist

 

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