Barbara Bel Geddes makes sensible, supportive women worth watching in their own right. We value her warmth and intelligence, though the repeated casting as the person who looks after everyone else can make her seem less interesting than she is.
Fi1m perspective
In Vertigo (1958), Barbara Bel Geddes plays Midge Wood, the detective’s practical ex-fiancée, with a warmth that makes her concern matter. She gives us somebody to care about outside the film’s consuming romance. We were unexpectedly moved by that warmth, because it makes the detective’s fascination seem careless of a person who is already there. The part could easily become a pause between more glamorous encounters. Bel Geddes makes us want to spend time with Midge.
Hitchcock gets particular value from her down-to-earth manner: beside it, obsession looks less inviting. We rate Vertigo highly, despite its far-fetched mystery and some overlong journeys, and her presence helps its discomfort take hold. There is a danger in describing this sort of acting only as supportive. It suggests that the achievement belongs to whoever has the more conspicuous part. Bel Geddes supplies a reason to question the romance even while James Stewart and Kim Novak give it painful conviction.
The earlier film work includes Katrin Hanson in I Remember Mama (1948) and Nancy Reed opposite Richard Widmark in Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets (1950). Kazan also directed her as the original Maggie in the Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Those parts should discourage any assumption that Midge was all she could do. Hitchcock brought her into four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the lead in Lamb to the Slaughter.
Television eventually made that steadiness central, with Miss Ellie Ewing in Dallas (1978), a role she played until 1990. The matriarch suited the warmth that had served her in smaller parts, though such casting risks leaving an actor responsible for everybody else’s feelings. We would not mistake the familiarity of those women for a lack of skill. On a return to Vertigo, give Midge more of your attention.
Biography
Barbara Bel Geddes (31 October 1922 – 8 August 2005) was an American stage and screen actress. Born in New York City, she began her career in the theatre, making her Broadway debut in the early 1940s. She appeared in films such as The Long Night (1947) and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for I Remember Mama (1948). In 1958 she played Marjorie 'Midge' Wood in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Bel Geddes originated the role of Maggie the Cat in the 1955 Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Her film career was interrupted in the 1950s by the Hollywood blacklist, after which she worked in theatre and on television, including episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She is best known for playing Miss Ellie Ewing in the television series Dallas (1978–1990), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
