Born April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, Shirley MacLean Beaty changed her name to MacLaine while auditing for a role in Broadway’s Me and Juliet. Her younger brother Warren, born 1937, later changed the spelling of his last name to Beatty.

Trained as a dancer, her show business rise came quickly. In 1954 she understudied second lead Carol Haney in Broadway’s The Pajama Game, going on for Haney the night Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience to observe Haney for a possible Paramount contract. Instead, he signed MacLaine to a five year contract which she began fulfilling three months later as the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film, The Trouble With Harry, quickly followed by the female lead on loan-out to Mike Todd for the 1956 Oscar winner, Around the World in 80 Days. Second leads in 1958’s Hot Spell and The Matchmaker and the female lead in the same year’s The Sheepman opposite Glenn Ford on loan-out to MGM were followed by the female lead, again on loan-out to MGM in Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running opposite Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, a year-end release that same year.

Her role in Some Came Running earned her a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Now in demand, she continued to alternate between starring roles in throwaway comedies at her home studio, Paramount, and more challenging roles elsewhere including 1959’s Ask Any Girl at MGM; 1960’s Can-Can at Fox and the same year’s The Apartment for Billy Wilder for release through United Artists.

Nominated for ten Academy Awards and winner of five including Best Picture, The Apartment brought MacLaine her second nomination for Best Actress for a role which is still considered her greatest screen triumph.

The actress received excellent notices for 1961’s The Children’s Hour and 1962’s Two for the Seesaw and a third Oscar nomination for 1963’s Irma La Douce, but spent the next several years in mostly forgettable films. An expected hit, 1969’s Sweet Charity proved unsuccessful at the box-office as did 1971’s Desperate Characters for which MacLaine herself received exceptionally strong notices.

Off the screen for five years after the flop of 1972’s The Possession of Joel Delaney, the actress returned in triumph in 1977’s The Turning Point which scored an impressive eleven Oscar nominations including MacLaine’s fourth for Best Actress. In the interim she had co-directed The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir with Claudia Weill for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

She was a hit in 1979’s Being There and finally won an Oscar for 1983’s Terms of Endearment on her sixth nomination, her fifth for Best Actress. Subsequent works of note include 1988’s Madame Sousatzska; 1989’s Steel Magnolias; 1990’s Postcards From the Edge; 1994’s Guarding Tess; 1996’s The Evening Star; 2005’s In Her Shoes and 2011’s Bernie. She has more recently been seen in several episodes of TV’s Downton Abbey and was a recipient of one of 2013’s Kennedy Center Honors.

Shirley MacLaine turns 80 in April.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE APARTMENT (1944), directed by Billy Wilder

Released in June, 1960, this instant classic has come to be thought of a Christmas film by some, a New Year’s film by most. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of a film that more fittingly portrays hope for a better New Year than the turbulent one that has just ended. Nominated for ten Academy Awards and winner of five, MacLaine has never been better than as the loveable, if not too bright elevator starter, a job that became extinct not soon after.

Jack Lemmon is the schnook who loans out his apartment key to the higher-ups in his office for their weekly assignations, only to discover MacLaine, the girl he’s sweet on, unconscious from a suicide attempt in his apartment on Christmas Eve. After nursing her back to health, he’s promoted and she gets back with honcho Fred MacMurray but true love will out in one of the most thrilling endings in movie history.

SWEET CHARITY (1969), directed by Bob Fosse

MacLaine started out in musical comedy but has not had many chances to display that particular craft on the big screen. The film version of the Dorothy Fields-Cy Coleman Broadway smash gave her that opportunity in spades.

Based on Federico Fellini’s 1957 film, Nights of Cabiria, MacLaine plays the good-time gal with eternal optimism who gets to sing and dance to such showstoppers as “My Personal Property”; “I’m a Brass Band” and “Where Am I Going?” Alas, despite MacLaine’s bravura performance, the film was not a success although it did receive three Oscar nominations.

THE TURNING POINT (1977), directed by Herbert Ross

Nominated for eleven Academy Awards but winner of none, this box-office hit was one of the rare films with two female leads to achieve the kind of success it did in this era.

MacLaine co-stars with Anne Bancroft as a former ballerina who gave up the ballet for marriage and family while her friend and rival (Bancroft) became a prima ballerina. Now Bancroft has taken MacLaine’s aspiring ballerina daughter (Leslie Browne) under her wing causing MacLaine a twinge of joy and angst mixed with regret. The two stars, both of whom were nominated for Best Actress, have a field day culminating in one of the screen’s most memorable female fight scenes.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983), directed by James L. Brooks

MacLaine delivers a tour-de-force performance as an overbearing, but loving mother who bullies her daughter (Debra Winger) through years of unhappiness in this unlikely comedy-tearjerker that was both a box office sensation and a multi-award winner. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and winner of five including Best Picture, with MacLaine herself receiving her first and to date only Oscar on her fifth nomination for Best Actress.

MacLaine’s first words in accepting the Oscar: “it’s about time”. Many agreed with her.

IN HER SHOES (2005), directed by Curtis Hanson

Many of MacLaine’s characters in her films of the last thirty years or so have been testy or worse. One of the best of such characters was the grandmother Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette didn’t know they had in this comedy-drama for which MacLaine received the eighteenth of her nineteen Golden Globe nominations.

The actress has won seven Golden Globe awards throughout her career including the organization’s Cecil B. DeMille award in 1998.

SHIRLEY MacLAINE AND OSCAR

• Some Came Running (1958) – Nominated Best Actress
• The Apartment (1960) – Nominated Best Actress
• Irma La Douce (1963) – Nominated Best Actress
• The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975) – Nominated Best Documentary Feature
• The Turning Point (1977) – Nominated Best Actress
• Terms of Endearment (1983) – Oscar – Best Actress