Is Oscar Nomination a Career Boost : Full Impact on Best Supporting Actress Nominees Still Not Clear

To judge from the nominees for the best supporting actress Oscar this year, maturity and experience can pay off.

The youngest, Anne Archer, is 40. The oldest, Ann Sothern, is 76. In between are Norma Aleandro, at 47, Olympia Dukakis, 56, and Anne Ramsey, 59.

But ask the agents who represent these women about the impact of the nomination on their careers, and it becomes clear that even the luster of an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar nomination doesn’t alter a movie business truism:

“As we all know,” agent Susan Streitfeld lamented the other day, “to be in this business you should be 21 and beautiful.”

Only Archer, who plays younger than her 40 years and is drop-dead gorgeous in her nominated role as the good wife and mother of “Fatal Attraction,” claims to be rolling in scripts.

“We’re getting an enormous amount of terrific scripts,” said Archer’s agent, Joan Hyler, a vice president at the William Morris Agency. “The whole point of this (an academy nomination) is for an actor and actress to have these options. The material starts to flow. The studios have come to us, a significant number of studios, and they’re interested in developing projects for her.”

But Archer’s problem is in sharp contrast to that of the other nominees, especially Aleandro. So far, no one has sent a “suitable” script to the Argentine actress who plays the spirited peasant nanny in “Gaby: A True Story,” according to her agent, Streitfeld, of Triad Artists. “She’s not in the easiest position in all aspects because of the age she is and because she’s foreign.”

And because the role she was nominated for occurs in a film hardly anyone has seen. To boost awareness of the movie, its distributor, Tri-Star, mailed 1,500 cassettes of the film to members of the academy’s acting branch, a strategy that may have helped Aleandro get her nomination.

It hasn’t helped “Gaby” at the box office, though. In contrast to “Fatal Attraction,” a smash hit which has grossed more than $150 million so far, “Gaby” has shown in only eight cities and pulled in less than $1 million.

That’s no reflection on Aleandro’s talent. As the star of “The Official Story,” her last film and the movie that introduced her to American audiences, Aleandro tied with Cher for best actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985. “Official Story” also won an Oscar as the best foreign film of 1986.

But, said Streitfeld, because Aleandro “doesn’t play to the audience that brings in the most money, we’re not in a position where we could get something packaged (have projects developed around Aleandro).”

According to Streitfeld, “Gaby’s” makers originally wanted a 21-year-old for Aleandro’s character, who ages from 18 to 40 in the film. But the agent persisted in getting the film makers to at least meet with Aleandro: “Part of our job (the agent’s job) when we read these scripts is to use our imagination to widen other people’s imagination.”

Ann Sothern’s nomination is also for a role in a smaller film--”The Whales of August.” Its co-producer, Mike Kaplan, worries that many academy members “haven’t actually seen it.”

Sothern’s part in “Whales” was not even among the film clips shown at a tribute to the actress by the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this month, though the role gives the actress her first shot at an Oscar in a 53-year career.

Sothern herself wasn’t shy in discussing the offers that have come her way since the nomination: “Not a thing,” she said, adding, however, that “I’m from the old school and I prefer not to mention something unless it’s definite.”

Her nomination is part of a general Sothern revival, however. Like the character she plays in “Whales,” who valiantly tries to suppress her wounded feelings when reminded that her license to drive has been revoked, Sothern felt out of the Hollywood mainstream, and, four years ago, retired to Idaho.

She was snubbed by the agents who mastermind much of film and television activity, according to her agent, Tom Korman, of the Agency for the Performing Arts.

“A lot of these new young agents are just looking to hitch their wagon to some hot young star like a Tom Cruise, and they don’t really pay any attention to what this business is all about,” Korman said. “A lot of them didn’t even know who she was.

“With great pride and dignity, she said, ‘Listen, if they’re not going to buy me, I’m not going to sell myself to them.’ ”

TV’s classic “The Ann Sothern Show” and “Private Eye”--which featured Sothern’s droll blond Susie character as TV’s original working woman--are hits again on the Nickelodeon cable channel.

And Sothern is selling herself--hard.

She makes no secret that she’s raring to star with Richard Pryor in “Driving Miss Daisy,” a film version of the Off-Broadway stage hit about the relationship between an elderly Jewish woman and her elderly black chauffeur that producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown have planned.

“We’d eat ‘em up!” said Sothern.

“That’s her idea,” Korman pointed out. “The project right now is being written. They have not cast it.” (Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman, who is nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar, originated the starring roles on stage.)

According to Korman, “There aren’t a lot of scripts around for older ladies. That’s as simple as that. But whatever’s around, she’s in the top echelon of people being considered for it.”

When casting director Howard Feurer was looking for an actress to play the longtime Brooklyn housewife who is mom to Cher’s character in “Moonstruck,” the film’s producer told Feurer that if the production had the money--which it didn’t--Ann Bancroft would be the perfect choice.

Feurer recalls replying: “If you want someone with no name, Olympia Dukakis would be at the top of the list.”

The same might have been said of Anne Ramsey, who is Momma in “Throw Momma From the Train.” Both women were nominated for the biggest role they have ever had in a film, though they have been working actresses for decades.

In the past 15 years Dukakis has performed in more than two dozen New York plays, won two Obie awards--Off-Broadway’s equivalent of an Oscar--and played Marlo Thomas’ mother in Broadway’s “Social Security.”

However, the turning point in her career, according to her agent, Gene Parseghian of Triad Artist’s New York office, may have been her decision to keep one foot out of New York theater by moving to New Jersey and co-founding the Whole Theater there.

Serving as the theater’s artistic director and performing in many of its productions “has given her a chance to hone her skills and to play roles that she wouldn’t have played in New York City because the role would have gone to a major star,” he said.

According to Parseghian, Dukakis has turned down two television roles--in a pilot and a series--since her nomination. But, said the agent, “In terms of film, there have been no offers of stunning roles in stunning projects. She is being discussed seriously for several terrific roles in very good projects, and this is something that hasn’t happened for her before, but it’s not stuff I even want to make her aware of because it’s too early and I don’t want to get her hopes up.”

Several minutes go by before Parseghian decides to mention a small role Dukakis has already accepted in “Working Girls,” an upcoming movie from director Mike Nichols, to star Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver.

That offer came since the nomination, but “it’s not because of the nomination,” he said. “It’s not in substance a role one would look at and say this is the appropriate place to go after the role in ‘Moonstruck.’ ”

Meanwhile, Dukakis is at the Whole Theater, starring in a production of “The Rose Tattoo.”

Ramsey’s comical “Momma” is the sort of character who can live beyond one picture, and for that reason alone some performers would try to take the character and run with it.

Ramsey won’t, according to her agent, Margaret Henderson of Henderson Hogan Agency Inc., because, as the agent stated simply: “Annie’s an actress.”

Indeed, while fighting off tongue cancer with radiation treatments three years ago, Ramsey continued to act, performing in guest spots on TV’s “Hill Street Blues,” “Night Court” and “Knight Rider.”

Since her nomination, “There’s been interest in projects that would be built around her,” Henderson said. But the only definite offer--and script--Ramsey has received was a reprise of her “Momma” role, which the actress turned down.

As a result of Archer’s nomination, she’s competing with “Diane Keaton, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver and all those other delicious actresses,” said Archer’s agent, Hyler. The actress recently had an opportunity to co-star in Bette Midler’s next movie, but after she and other actresses auditioned with Midler, Barbara Hershey emerged with the part.

Hyler didn’t mention--and was not available to comment on--an upcoming TV movie, which Archer agreed to before the nomination, and a TV commercial for Seagram’s wine cooler which Archer signed for “almost simultaneously” with the nomination, according to a source.

The already-filmed Seagram’s commercial is from the director-cameraman (Rick Levine) who filmed the award-winning Pepsi commercial starring actor Michael J. Fox.

Nonetheless, Archer is worried that producers of movie roles she is up for now will react negatively to the TV exposure.

Meanwhile, Aleandro is taking the non-commercial route. She’d like to follow her first English-speaking role in “Gaby” with a film set in Central America.

“We’ll take it to places (American production companies) to see if we can set it up, but it’s an art project as opposed to something people think they can make a lot of money from,” Streitfeld said. “The financial response would be ‘Yeah, she’s a very good actress, but what does she mean in terms of money?’ ”

Aleandro isn’t afraid to attach herself to non-mainstream movie ideas, however. She grew up performing on the stage in Argentina and has plenty of work there, according to Streitfeld: “She’s not desperate. She’s not neurotic. She doesn’t feel her life is going to be over if she doesn’t get 10 movie offers.

“We’ve had a couple of offers for things that she’s passed on because you can’t go down from ‘The Official Story’ and ‘Gaby.’ You basically have to keep going up. The problem is finding the roles.”