... you can learn from:
All About Eve(1950)
Bill: What should I tell Tyrone Power for you?Birdie: Just give him my phone number;I'll tell him myself.
Legendary character actress Thelma Ritter was born 115 years ago today in (where else) Brooklyn, New York. She acted a little on stage and the radio when she was younger (she even took professional training) but she got married and raised her two kids before having any sort of career - her first movie role was in 1947 at the age of 45 where she played a harried shopper in Miracle on 34th Street.
A little somebody named Darryl F. Zanuck noticed her and loved her and had her part beefed up a bit - same happened with her next role in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives' in 1949.
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Mankiewicz loved her so much that he went and gave her the shiny role of Birdie in All About Eve, his next film, and wham, Thelma Ritter was Thelma Fuckin' Ritter. She received her first of six Oscar nominations for the movie -- of course she never won a statue, because the Oscars are hella dumb. But Thelma Ritter is forever.
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