Most people will remember her only for her role as Milo in "An American in Paris," but she landed an Academy Award nomination a few years later for her understated performance in "Executive Suite". She had a fairly prolific career in film and theater, but despite that it seems like she is mostly forgotten, which is somewhat odd considering she appeared in a number of other classics, such as Kubrick's "Spartacus" and DeMille's "The Ten Commandments." Why did the history books forsake her?
Was she Spartacus?
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | March 4, 2020 3:44 AM |
I only know her because I'm a big Madeline Kahn fan and she played Madeline's mother in an unsold (but very funny) sitcom pilot in the '80s.
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | March 4, 2020 3:47 AM |
James Lipton, dead to us now, was one of her husbands.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | March 4, 2020 3:49 AM |
She's great in this episode of Naked City. Shirl Conway's even better.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | March 4, 2020 3:53 AM |
She was good but not dazzling,
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | March 4, 2020 3:53 AM |
R3 I assume that's what prompted this thread? I believe she was taught 'acting' -- maybe that's how she and Icky Lipton connected?
RIP Nina. Beautiful name.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | March 4, 2020 3:54 AM |
Her role in Spartacus as one of the two bored Roman wives who set the stage for Crassus to kill the friend of Spartacus was just a cameo and the Ten Commandments part just a little higher up the ladder.
And in Executive Suite she really didn't bring much to the movie as the company executive secretary. Many contemporary actresses could have played the part as well. To me Barbara Stanwyck had a more legitimate claim to the supporting actress award from that film.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | March 4, 2020 3:58 AM |
She was a great Frannie Halcyon in Tales of the City, also memorable as the mother of Jessica Lange as the mother of all mothers in Hush and as Mrs. Danvers to James Mason's Maxim de Winter in a 1962 TV version of Rebecca.
I love her Columbia film noir stuff.
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | March 4, 2020 4:53 AM |
She does the DVD commentary for a film noir called Illegal and sounds full of herself.
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | March 4, 2020 8:26 AM |