I’m not necessarily saying she should have won the Oscar for playing Elaine Robinson. Though I do think she gave a considerably more nuanced performance than the script necessarily required of her, since mostly what she’s there to do is react. I do, on the other hand, think she deserved it more than Estelle Parsons did for Blanche Barrow, a performance that wouldn’t know nuance if it tripped over it. (I am not the largest fan of Bonnie and Clyde.) While she is still working steadily, she also seems to have slipped from public awareness more than I think she deserves.

I’m not going to say the problem is the ’70s; she was great in The Stepford Wives in 1976, after all. But she gave a couple of very good performances in ’67 and ’69 (she was Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and then we hit that era that was considerably more interested in men’s stories and didn’t leave room for an Elaine Robinson—and let’s not forget that her mother doesn’t seem to have a first name, though that has a lot more to do with commentary on Benjamin than anything else. The nice thing is that Joanna, her Stepford Wives character, is basically an example of how women’s agency gets removed as soon as possible?

Still, she is working steadily, which is nice. All things considered, I like to hope she’s working exactly as much as she wants to. I will also say I’m intrigued to discover that she was never on Murder She Wrote, because she seems to be exactly the right age and level of fame to be tearfully confiding in Jessica Fletcher somewhere along the line. There are certain shows I’ve just gotten used to seeing on people’s IMDb pages when I’m writing this column, and she wasn’t in any of them. She’s a bit young for Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. She’s considerably too young for Perry Mason. She’s a bit old for the Law & Order/NCIS/CSI pantheon. But how can she have missed Murder She Wrote and Columbo?

It’s a little sad to me that she’s one of the people I’ve done for this column where you almost universally have to say, “You know, from [movie]?” She’s good. She’s very good. But she doesn’t shine in the same way a lot of people we’ve done always seem to—she never really had a role that guaranteed we’d know her actual name. I don’t think we’ll ever forget Elaine Robinson, but I’d say there are about a half-dozen people in that movie whose real names people are more likely to know. Though I admit part of that is that two minor characters went on to really major things; it’s not anyone’s fault that Richard Dreyfuss has a small role in the movie and went on to win an Oscar.

I have an aunt who’s been married four times. I stopped making fun of that a few years ago, for several reasons, but largely because I realized she’d been married to her fourth husband for twenty years and had clearly found the right person. (Also because I came to see the value in recognizing that a relationship is over and moving on!) Katharine Ross is a bit older than my aunt, no more than ten years, and has been married five times. Including to Sam Elliott since 1984. So I guess she found the right person.