The Wright Snuff

Teresa Wright, one of ten actors to have been nominated for both a Supporting and Lead Acting Academy Award in the same year for their achievements in two different movies, has died at the age of 86. Wright made an immediate impact in Holllywood, racking up three Academy Award nominations for her first three film performances: going toe-to-toe with Bette Davis in The Little Foxes, balancing Gary Cooper’s wooden acting and negligible baseball skills with a tedious subplot involving Lou Gehrig’s mother in Pride of the Yankees, and playing Greer Garson's daughter-in-law in Mrs. Miniver, netting the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. She also appeared in Oscar-winner The Best Years of Our Lives, was Marlon Brando’s first leading lady in The Men, and ferreted out her murderous uncle Joseph Cotton in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. Wright decided to torpedo her career by refusing to take part in promotions she deemed beneath her or any publicity that played on her girlish charms. As a result, her film career after 1950 is about as noteworthy as Pia Zadora’s, highlighted by such admirable fair as Flood!, The Happy Ending, the first remake of The Miracle on 34th Street, and a very special Christmas episode of The Love Boat.