Academy Awards Best Supporting Actress Still Living

Best Supporting Actress Nominees pre-1950 still alive, Oscar nonagenarians / centenarian. (Image: Ann Blyth Mildred Pierce, with Joan Crawford.)

Following Celeste Holm’s death today and Ernest Borgnine’s death last Sunday, there are only a handful of 90-year-old+ Oscar winners in the acting categories still alive: sisters Joan Fontaine (1941, Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion), who’ll turn 95 next October 22, and Olivia de Havilland (1946, Mitchell Leisen’s To Each His Own; 1949, William Wyler’s The Heiress), who turned 96 last July 1; and two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer (Robert Z. Leonard’s The Great Ziegfeld, 1936; Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth, 1937), who’ll turn 103 on January 12, 2013.

Also, following Celeste Holm’s death, there are only four pre-1950 Best Supporting Actress nominees still alive – curiously, three of those shortlisted in one single year, 1945. They are Olivia de Havilland (1939, Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind); Angela Lansbury (1944, George Cukor’s Gaslight; 1945, Albert Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), who’ll turn 87 next October 16; Joan Lorring (1945, Irving Rapper’s The Corn Is Green), who turned 86 last April 17; and Ann Blyth (1945, Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce), 84 next August 16.

Eva Marie Saint: Earliest surviving Best Supporting Actress Winner

Currently, the earliest surviving Best Supporting Actress winner is Eva Marie Saint, who won for Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954). Saint turned 88 last July 4. Next in line are the following: Dorothy Malone (1956, Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind), 88 on January 30, 2013; Shirley Jones (1960, Richard Brooks’ Elmer Gantry), 78 last March 31; Rita Moreno (1961, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story), 81 next December 11; Patty Duke (1962, Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker), 66 next December 14; Estelle Parsons (1967, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde), 85 next November 20; and Goldie Hawn (1969, Gene Saks’ Cactus Flower), 67 next November 21.