TCM Tribute to Character Actress Beulah Bondi

[@kbunky69]

I love the character actors .. they add the spice to a movie .

[@MikeysGayToday]

Here is s gem, Ellen Corby and Beulah were both in It's a Wonderful Life! They both won Emmys for The Waltons 30 years later. NEAT!

[@leeb.strickland8993]

Lee B. Strickland Beulah Bondi was always a favorite of mine also. If i knew about the Emmys, I had forgotten. Such a gem. Beulah. I remember her in a movie way back. with Marjorie Main as a blind woman, and John Wayne was in it also. Beulah sets the cabin on fire with her and her son that has just passed away.

[@leeb.strickland8993]

Lee B. Strickland I will be giving my close age. Anyway, I have my Great Grandmothers Mourning bonnet, complete with cardboard for stays and a rusty straight pin. I also have my sun bonnet that my grandma made me. Same style but smaller, with stays that has cardboard in them. They have not been removed since I can remember. Maybe 60 years. It is a white print with tiny flowers in the fabric. A feed sack. I have it wrapped up in tissue paper in a dresser drawer and I take it out now and then to look at it. You can see the colorful edges of the cardboard past the stitching, They were really easy to make.

[@julienielsen3746]

Shepherd of the Hills.

[@questjonmark]

Never seen it Julie. Will have to go huntin' for it.

[@richardheikkila4146]

Ellen and Belah were two of the great all time ladies of both the large and small screen. As long as their movies and "The Waltons" are never taken off the air, they will never be forgotten.

[@janicebrowningaquino792]

She was truly special!!! Always loved to see her in ANY role.

[@danip3270]

I was watching a bit of her performance on The Walton’s, The Conflict. Even after all these years, she brought me to tears with every heartbreaking scene.

[@wyominghome4857]

Me too. I wish they had shown the clip "Remembering Henry" from that episode, but it's here on KZbin. It was a magnificent performance. Bondi should have won an Emmy for that one too.

[@billhosko7723]

Oh! Bravo. Excellent production. Thank you.

[@christylee_twistedlee]

A queen, A legend. I still enjoy watching her she was one in a million ♡

[@caspence56]

Loved her in "Remember the Night" as Fred MacMurray's Mom and in "The Southerner", where she played a cantankerous Granny. She had so many wonderful roles in so many wonderful films and I'm grateful that Hollywood recognized what a truly gifted actress they had in Beulah Bondi.

[@questjonmark]

And a chilling, truly reprehensible, self-righteous matriarch in Track of the Cat with Robert Mitchum.

[@jennyjones3978]

She was an amazing actress ❤❤

[@questjonmark]

MAKE WAY FOR BEULAH BONDI! When you are speaking of the most moving movie scenes of all times, certainly you’re going to choose several from director Leo McCarey's 1937 production of Make Way For Tomorrow. There’s the heartbreaking final moment when the old man is going away and the old lady is at the train station to see him off. He doesn’t know-but she does, and you do-that they will never see each other again. There’s their warm, wonderful second honeymoon when they go for a ride in a car that’s being hopefully demonstrated-but they think the salesman is just a friendly, obliging man. There is the tentative attempt at a little waltz-but the music turns to swing. There is the absolutely devastating scene when the old lady gets a telephone call from her husband so many miles away-and pours out her love and loneliness to him, oblivious of the annoyed, the ashamed, then strangely touched guests at a card party in the room where she is on the phone. Try to see that without choking up. I yield to no one in admiration for Victor Moore, but the person who tore you apart at all of those moments was the beloved Beulah Bondi, surely the most versatile character actress on all levels the movies have ever known. She wasn’t one of those darling lavender-and-old-lace ladies. Her Lucy Cooper could be a cranky, cantankerous old girl. But she was so real, she was frightening. Academy Oscars ceased to have their full value the year she did not get a nomination for Make Way for Tomorrow. With the passage of time this revered film has lost none of its power to rend the heart and captivate. It may well be even more affecting with the passing of those long years. Without hyperbole, it can be said that Bondi's performance is as close to flawless as any can be. It is all the more impressive for having been sustained by for woman in her late forties. "I felt it was quite a challenge, "Bondi stated, "I think that Lucy Cooper is perhaps the oldest character I had ever played. I supposed her to be in her late seventies or early eighties. I thought it was a challenge, but I loved the story." "To be a convincing old woman," Bondi emphasized, "you must be a lover of life and a student of human nature. You must have a passionate desire to know what's going on in the heart and head of the character you are portraying. When you really care more about the character you are portraying than you care about yourself or how you look, you are no longer just a person who earns a living by acting." Nevertheless, regarding this rare lead Bondi declared, "Give me a good supporting role and that's all I ask. I never want to be the star again. The life of a star, with few exceptions, is brief. It's like a merry-go-round, only suddenly the music stops playing." She had been nominated in 1936 for her Rachel Jackson, the pitiful, pipe-smoking Wife of President Andy in The Gorgeous Hussy, a Joan Crawford-Lionel Barrymore film that had little else to recommend it. And she was perfection in so many other roles-as Mrs. Jones, the archetype of all tenement slatterns in Street Scene, her film debut (she had created the role on the stage)... Melissa Tolliver, gentle mountain mother, crying out against the blood lust of her clan in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine ...as the half-crazed crone trying to regain her youth in Maid of Salem...the sacrificing wife of stern preacher Walter Huston, and mother of thoughtless soldier James Stewart in the Civil War drama Of Human Hearts, (which earned her a second Oscar nomination) ...and in so many other roles of infinite variety that continued through the 1940’s, the 1950’s, and into the 1960’s. In the twenties, she had created roles in the theatre. In the 1940’s and 1950’s she would be sweet again, and evil again and elegant or drab. But, in the 1930’s, she was all of those women-the loving mothers, the harridans, the aristocrats, the frontier women, the religious psalm singers. And she was the pince-nezed, righteous wife of ev. Davidson in Rain...the greed-driven Mrs. Haggerty in The Late Christopher Bean...the prototype of mother to come home to at Christmas in Remember the Night...the beautiful old lady who goes so willingly with Death in On Borrowed Time and the once-inhibited, once-repressed wife of a college dean in Vivacious Lady. But, above all, she was Lucy Cooper of Make Way for Tomorrow. That alone- if she had done none of her others-would make her a screen immortal.

[@anastasiabeaverhausen8220]

Thank you so much for this beautiful tribute to a great actress. Wish I'd written that. It's exactly what I would've wanted to say.

[@carolnasif1412]

WOW that says it all about Miss Bondi. Her role as Aunt Martha on the series the Walton’s is the finest performance I have ever seen on a tv series.

[@jeffreguett1511]

Incredible synopsis of a wonderful actress.... although you failed to mention her part as the mother of James Stewart's character in what I think is the greatest movie of all time..."It's a Wonderful Life".

[@elizabethalmond5826]

Always love seeing this great lady!

[@Themanwhocameback2]

Jut saw her as another mother, Fred McMurray's in "Remember The Night" (1940). She was superb, as always.

[@questjonmark]

The perfect mother-to-come-home-to in that. She was delightfully loving as Dr. Shultz, head of the girl's orphanage in the opening sequence of William Wyler's The Good Fairy with Margaret Sullavan.

[@BRIERFOX]

I had no earthly idea that Aunt Martha Corinne of The Waltons was this giant....no idea. Wow!!

[@michaelmiller1215]

BRIERFOX Now I know why her performance was so great!

[@sjcohen4444]

BRIERFOX Wasn't that the Pony Cart episode? I remember watching it first run!

[@questjonmark]

She appeared in 2 episodes SJ. The Pony Cart in 1976 & The Conflict, which was the premiere episode of Season 3, running on Sept. 12, 1974. That stirring performance was the one that introduced me to Miss Bondi; instilling a penchant to keep an eye out for her name and work. Shortly thereafter I caught Make Way For Tomorrow one Sunday Morning after church, and a lifelong love affair with this deeply gifted actress began.

[@cathyfisher7894]

Same here I bet you just watched the Waltons with Judy, the one about the Pony Cart.

[@GlenHallstrom]

Wow. Noi mention of "Make Way for Tomorrow?" Probably one of her greatest roles.

[@AugustHawk]

Beulah Bondi's last performance was on The Waltons in Season 5 Episode 10 The Pony Cart to which her character Martha Corrine repeatedly corrects Ben and calls it a shay (regional dialect for a chaise). Midway in the episode in a moving scene on the mountain top at Henry's grave, Martha gives John Boy stern directions to bury her next to Henry and to keep up with the grave markers. The scene is very moving and as she turns around to walk down the mountain, actor Richard Thomas (John Boy) breaks the 4th Wall and gives a smile and winks at the camera. It's really cute.

[@michaelmiller1215]

A wonderful tribute!

[@shirleymaro]

Such a wonderful actress.

[@richardheikkila4146]

I didn't realize she was in "On Borrowed Time". I've always loved this movie. It's definitely a "must see" film.

[@stephenrbh]

I liked this actress very much in the movie Penny Serenade with Carey Grant and Irene Dunne. B. Bondi was so gentle and likeable.

[@sjcohen4444]

I can't believe there's no mention of Make Way for Tomorrow or Our Town.

[@carrieheffernan1685]

I loved her as the kindly social worker in Penny Serenade.

[@tomc8115]

She's excellent in the two Joan Crawford films in which I've seen her - The Gorgeous Hussy and Rain

[@caspence56]

Another of her great roles was that of Granny in the movie "The Southerner". If you never saw this film, I think it's available on KZbin and it is wonderful!

[@anastasiabeaverhausen8220]

One of my all-time favorite actresses.

[@wabashcannonball]

Yes, outinsider, that's Joan Cusack.

[@ladybearbaiter]

One of my favorite actresses of all time

[@csmytube21c67]

I discovered her on the Waltons the "conflict " and one other edisode of the Waltons awesome actresses

[@rogerrichards8101]

1 of the greatest actress evah.

[@questjonmark]

Just saw Trail of the Lonesome Pine for the first time. Miss Bondi has a sizable role as the matriarch of one of the feudin' families, giving her some truly tender moments in this very early technicolor picture. It's even more of a one of a kind technicolor production as most of it was filmed outdoors.

[@teresaalbrecht2283]

❤

[@a.rosesrbleu9580]

Loved her in Remember the Night as well as in Penny Serenade with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne....

[@beacee]

Great in anything she did!

[@outinsider]

Is that Joan Cusack narrating?

[@voughtcrusader957]

I think so, but at times she sounds an awful lot like Kathryn Erbe.

[@bozzanovva1596]

Love her..

[@novaboy49]

She was great in "Back to Batan," gave the Duke all he could handle.

[@johanneslundie]

Beulah Bondi was the perfect counterpoint to Inger Stevens in Route 66 "Burning for Burning" 1961

[@roderickfemm8799]

In only her 3rd movie role she played the wife of Walter Huston's character in Rain in 1932. The role was the archetype for all the dried-up, bitter "Christian" ladies -- making sure no-one is having any fun and everyone is paying for their "sins" -- who ever appeared on the screen afterwards. For all her loving mother roles, this is the one I remember.

[@Mia7189]

Who was the narrator for this one? Thanks. BTW, thank you for posting these TCM tributes. I love them.

[@questjonmark]

Joan Cusack.

[@jessestewart169]

Classy.

[@MareShoop]

She passed from injuries by tripping on her cat.

[@kuznickic1]

Ugh she was born in Valparaiso, IN...not Chicago

[@notnek202]

The family moved to Valparaiso, Indiana when she was three

[@drgaryb13]

If they don't mention "Make Way for Tomorrow," this tribute is silly.

[@kurtwiening8741]

she was born in Valparaiso Indiana not Chicago

[@jessestewart169]

Ha ha 👍

[@notnek202]

The family moved to Valparaiso, Indiana when she was three

[@edwardscherry3004]

I don’t think Ellen Corby was in “it’s a wonderful life “ Mikey Trahant.

[@barrystovel4403]

Ellen Corby played a character named Mrs. Davis in "It's a Wonderful Life".