Award agreement

The first performance to win both an Oscar and an Independent Spirit Award was Geraldine Page's turn in the 1985 film The Trip To Bountiful. The film was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Horton Foote).

Page plays Mother Watts, an elderly woman living with her married son in Houston in the late 1940s. Her daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn), is a lazy shrew, with no ambitions beyond gossiping, stealing Mother Watts' pension check, and browbeating her husband into taking her for a night out that they can't afford. Her son, Ludie (John Heard), is too spineless to stop Jessie Mae from removing any joy from Mother's life. (The only thing Jessie Mae hates more than hearing Mother sing hymns when she is happy is seeing her pout when she is told to stop.) One day, Mother sees a rare moment of opportunity to break away from her demeaning, oppressive existence. She "steals" her pension check, and sets out to return to her hometown of Bountiful, hoping to stay ahead of her family and, eventually, the police.

Page was exceptional in her role. Mother Watts could easily have been a stereotype, the typical cranky old woman, had she not found just the right notes in her performance. Mother Watts is a sympathetic character - she feels she has outlived her usefulness and become a burden on her son, she longs to go home again, even though it is not the place that it once was, and she is constantly oppressed and disrespected by her daughter-in-law. But she is no angel, either - she is stubborn and hard-headed, she has a tendency to make herself a martyr, and, honestly, at least part of the reason that she sings those hymns is because she knows that it annoys Jessie Mae. She gets the viewer on her side, but without being too good to be believable. It is not surprising that she won the Oscar here. What is surprising is that John Heard, as Ludie, did not get a nomination for supporting actor. His scene where he confronts his mother near the end of the film is the emotional heart of the movie, and that scene alone should have gotten him in. Actually, it was a weak category that year (I mean, Don Ameche was funny in Cocoon, but was he really Oscar-worthy?), so that scene may have been enough for him to win.

Movie trivia question: What actor currently holds the record for the longest gap between Best Actor nominations? His first winning film will be reviewed here soon.