Shirley MacLaine

MacLaine in her debut film The Trouble with Harry (1955)

MacLaine made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. MacLaine subsequently appeared in multiple roles throughout the 1950s, culminating in a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1959 as she rose towards stardom during the later years of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Trouble with Harry was quickly followed by her role in the Martin and Lewis film Artists and Models (also 1955). Soon afterwards, she had the female lead in Around the World in 80 Days (1956), a huge hit that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This was followed by Hot Spell (1958), The Sheepman (1958) and The Matchmaker (1958 film), all released in 1958.

She also played a prostitute with a heart of gold who falls in love with Frank Sinatra's character in Vincente Minelli's adaptation of James Jones novel Some Came Running, in the 1958 film of the same name. The picture also saw her co-starring with Dean Martin for the first time.

For her role as Ginny the prostitute, MacLaine won her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. She appeared with Dean Martin in Career (1959), the second of several films in which they appeared together.

MacLaine in the trailer for The Apartment (1960)

Shirley MacLaine appeared with Frank Sinatra in 1960's Can-Can, then made a cameo appearance with Dino in the Rat Pack movie Ocean's 11 (1960) that also starred Sinatra. MacLaine would become an honorary member of the Rat Pack.[13]

In 1960, MacLaine finally achieved stardom in Billy Wilder's romance film The Apartment (1960). The picture is set in the Upper West Side, and follows an insurance clerk (Jack Lemmon), who allows his co-workers to use his apartment for their extramarital affairs. He is attracted to the insurance company's elevator operator (MacLaine), who is already having an affair with Baxter's boss (Fred MacMurray). A blend of romantic drama and comedy, the film received ten Academy Award nominations, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Black and White) and Best Film Editing.

Despite being the odds-on favorite, MacLaine failed to win the Best Actress award. She later said, "I thought I would win for The Apartment, but then, Elizabeth Taylor [who won] had a tracheotomy." The film, which Roger Ebert included in his 2001 Great Movies list, has become MacLaine's signature role. Charlize Theron, speaking at the 89th Academy Awards, praised MacLaine's performance as "raw and real and funny", and as making "this black and white movie feel like it's in color".[14]

She starred in The Children's Hour (1961), also starring Audrey Hepburn and James Garner, based on the play by Lillian Hellman, and directed by William Wyler. Reunited her with Wilder and Lemmon for Irma la Douce (1963), she received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination. She would not be nominated again for another 14 years, when she started a career comeback with The Turning Point (1977).

MacLaine devoted all pages in her first memoir, Don't Fall Off the Mountain (1970), to a 1963 incident in which she had marched into the Los Angeles office of The Hollywood Reporter and punched columnist Mike Connolly in the mouth.[15] She was angered by what he had said in his column about her ongoing contractual dispute with producer Hal Wallis, who had introduced her to the movie industry in 1954 and whom she eventually sued successfully for violating the terms of their contract.[16] The incident with Connolly garnered a headline on the cover of the New York Post on June 11, 1963.[17] The full story appeared on page 5 under the headline “Shirley Delivers A Punchy Line” with the byline Bernard Lefkowitz.[17]

At the peak of her success, she replaced Marilyn Monroe in two projects in which Monroe had planned, at the end of her life, to star: Irma la Douce (1963) and What a Way to Go! (1964). She starred in the Cold War comedy John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965), with a screenplay by William Peter Blatty, and co-starred with Michael Caine in the crime thriller Gambit (1966).

In the mid-1960s, the era of the blockbuster movie musical, MacLaine had achieved superstar status. Twentieth Century-Fox offered her a salary of $750,000 on a "pay or play" basis to appear in a movie adaptation of the musical Bloomer Girl, a fee equivalent to the paydays enjoyed by top box office stars of the time. However, the project was cancelled, triggering a lawsuit.[18]

She starred in seven roles as seven different women in Vittorio DeSica's episodic film about adultery Woman Times Seven (1967), following that with another comedy, The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom in 1968. Both films were box office failures.

MacLaine and John McMartin in the trailer for Sweet Charity (1969)

In 1969, MacLaine starred in the film version of the musical Sweet Charity, directed by Bob Fosse, and based on the script for Fellini's Nights of Cabiria released a decade earlier. Gwen Verdon, who originated the role onstage, had hoped to play Charity in the film version, however MacLaine won the role due to her name being more well known to audiences at the time.

Verdon signed on as assistant choreographer, helping teach MacLaine the dances and leading the camera through some of the more intricate routines.[19] MacLaine received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical nomination.

The film was not a financial success, signaling that MacLaine's film career was going into eclipse as a new decade dawned.

MacLaine was top-billed in Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), in a role written for Elizabeth Taylor, who chose not to appear in the movie. The Western film was a hit, primarily due to her co-star Clint Eastwood, one of the top box office stars in the world. The film's director, Don Siegel, said of her: "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her. She's too unfeminine, and has too much balls. She's very, very hard."[20]

She then moved on to television, cast as a photojournalist in a short-lived [television sitcom|TV sitcom]], Shirley's World (1971–1972). Co-produced by Sheldon Leonard and ITC, the series was shot in the United Kingdom. As part of the deal, Lew Grade produced the low-budget drama Desperate Characters (1970).

MacLaine's career was put on hold as she campaigned for George McGovern during the 1972 Presidential election, including the Democratic primaries. Her friend William Peter Blatty wanted her for the Chris MacNeil role in The Exorcist (1973) that was eventually played by Ellen Burstyn, which is was based on her.[21][22] Director William Friedkin did not want her for the part, as she had appeared in a recent film about the supernatural, The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972).

Her documentary film The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), co-directed with Claudia Weill, concentrates on the experiences of women in China. It was nominated for the year's Documentary Feature Oscar.

She returned to the live performance during the 1970s. In 1976, MacLaine appeared in a series of concerts at the London Palladium and New York's Palace Theatre. The latter of these was released as the live album Shirley MacLaine Live at the Palace.[23][24]

MacLaine started a career come-back with The Turning Point (1977), in which she co-starred with Anne Bancroft. Portraying a retired ballerina, she was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Actress in a Leading Role for the fourth time.

She was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award in 1978 for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.[25]

In 1979 she starred alongside Peter Sellers in Hal Ashby's satirical film Being There. The film revolves around Chance (Sellers), a simpleminded, sheltered gardener, who becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful businessman and an insider in Washington politics, after his wealthy old boss dies. The film received widespread acclaim with Roger Ebert writing that he admired the film "for having the guts to take this totally weird concept and push it to its ultimate comic conclusion". MacLaine received a British Academy Film Award, and Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance.

In 1980, MacLaine starred in two other films about adultery, A Change of Seasons alongside Anthony Hopkins and Bo Derek, and Loving Couples with James Coburn and Susan Sarandon. Neither film was a success, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling Loving Couples "a dumb remake of a very old idea that has been done so much better so many times before, that this version is wretchedly unnecessary . . . the whole project smells like high-gloss sitcom."[26]

MacLaine and Hopkins did not get along on A Change of Seasons and the film was not a success due to what critics faulted as the screenplay. MacLaine however did receive positive notices from critics. Vincent Canby wrote in his The New York Times review that the film "exhibits no sense of humor and no appreciation for the ridiculous … the screenplay [is] often dreadful … the only appealing performance is Miss MacLaine's, and she's too good to be true. A Change of Seasons does prove one thing, though. A farce about characters who've been freed of their conventional obligations quickly becomes aimless."[27]

In 1983, she starred in James L. Brooks's comedy-drama film Terms of Endearment (1983) playing Debra Winger's mother. The film focuses on the strained relationship between mother and daughter over 30 years. The film also starred Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, and John Lithgow. The film was a major critical and commercial success, grossing $108.4 million at the domestic box office and becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 1983. The film received a leading eleven nominations at the 56th Academy Awards, and won five including Best Picture.

For her performance in Terms of Endearment, MacLaine earned her the Best Actress Oscar for her performance at the 56th Academy Awards 25 years after the first of her five nominations in the category.

MacLaine at the set of Guarding Tess

MacLaine has continued to star in major films, such as the family southern drama Steel Magnolias (1989) directed by Herbert Ross and also starring with Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and Dolly Parton. The film focuses around a bond that a group of women share in a small-town Southern community, and how they cope with the death of a loved one. The film was a box office success earning $96.8 million off a budget of $15 million. MacLaine received a British Academy Film Award for her performance. She starred in Mike Nichols' film Postcards from the Edge (1990), with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds from a screenplay by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher. Fisher wrote the screenplay based on her book. MacLaine received another Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance.

MacLaine with Christopher Plummer at the premiere of the film Elsa & Fred in 2014

MacLaine continued to act in films such as Used People (1992), with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; Guarding Tess (1994), with Nicolas Cage; Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; The Evening Star (1996); Rumor Has It…(2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston; In Her Shoes (also 2005), with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and Closing the Ring (2007), directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer. She would later reunite with Plummer in the 2014 comedy film Elsa & Fred directed by Michael Radford. In 2000, she made her first (and only) feature-film directorial debut, and starred in Bruno (with Alex D. Linz), which was released to video as The Dress Code. In 2011, MacLaine starred in Richard Linklater's dark comedy film Bernie alongside Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey.

MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects, including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book Out on a Limb; The Salem Witch Trials; These Old Broads written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins. In 2009, she starred in Coco Before Chanel, a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel which earned her Primetime Emmy Award, and Golden Globe Award nominations. She appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern), and Harold Levinson (played by Paul Giamatti) in 2012–2013.[28][29]

In 2016, MacLaine starred in Wild Oats with Jessica Lange. She starred in the live-action family film The Little Mermaid, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, in 2018.[30] In 2022, she returned to television in the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building.[31]

In 1959, MacLaine sued Hal Wallis over a contractual dispute; that lawsuit has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.[16]

In 1966, MacLaine sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract when the studio reneged on its agreement to star MacLaine in a film version of the Broadway musical Bloomer Girl based on the life of Amelia Bloomer, a mid-nineteenth century feminist, suffragist, and abolitionist, that was to be filmed in Hollywood. Instead, Fox gave MacLaine one week to accept their offer of the female dramatic lead in the Western Big Country, Big Man to be filmed in Australia. The case was decided in MacLaine's favor, and affirmed on appeal by the California Supreme Court in 1970; the case is discussed in many law-school textbooks as an example of employment-contract law.[56][57][58]