Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#195098
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Kay Sutton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Kay is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kay Sutton appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kay. Sergeant York is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with George Sidney, Howard Hawks, Mark Sandrich and others, Kay Sutton helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Sergeant York (1941) as Saloon Girl (uncredited) · Roberta (1935) as (uncredited) · Carefree (1938) as Miss Adams
Career snapshot
Ranked #195098 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1935–1964
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Sergeant York
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Sergeant York
Most frequent director
George Sidney
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With George Sidney
Most common genre
Romance
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.6
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
6.9 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Sergeant York — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Carefree, The Mad Miss Manton, Roberta.
Most productive era
1930s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s | 1960s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.53 films | — | 6.21 film |
| Crime | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.53 films | — | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1935Roberta
Where our catalogue meets this career, as (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1941Sergeant York
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1964Viva Las Vegas
The current state of the argument, as Showgirl (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
5 of 5 films
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
Directed by Howard Hawks
as (uncredited)
Directed by William A. Seiter
as Showgirl (uncredited)
Directed by George Sidney
as Miss Adams
Directed by Mark Sandrich
as Gloria Hamilton
Directed by Leigh Jason
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Saloon Girl (uncredited)
Sergeant York (1941)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Saloon Girl (uncredited) gives Kay Sutton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
(uncredited)
Roberta (1935)
Performance score6.6
Roberta asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Showgirl (uncredited)
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Performance score6.5
Viva Las Vegas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Showgirl (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Miss Adams
Carefree (1938)
Performance score6.5
Carefree asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Miss Adams is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
Start here. Sergeant York is the clearest statement of what Kay Sutton does — accessible, 134 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kay at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Roberta (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Sergeant York — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Carefree (1938)
Keeps the romance register of Roberta but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Mad Miss Manton (1938)
Keeps the romance register of Carefree but asks for a colder reading of it.
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Keeps the romance register of The Mad Miss Manton but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
William A. Seiter
Director
1 film together
Notably Roberta
Leigh Jason
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mad Miss Manton
Mark Sandrich
Director
1 film together
Notably Carefree
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together
Notably Sergeant York
George Sidney
Director
1 film together
Notably Viva Las Vegas
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sergeant YorkWilliam A. Seiter
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RobertaMark Sandrich
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CarefreeLeigh Jason
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Mad Miss MantonGeorge Sidney
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Viva Las VegasSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Roberta
as (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Viva Las Vegas
as Showgirl (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Kay Sutton has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
29 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Romance Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in romance, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Mad Miss Manton
as Gloria Hamilton
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Roberta
as (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Mad Miss Manton
as Gloria Hamilton
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sergeant York
as Saloon Girl (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Carefree
as Miss Adams
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Viva Las Vegas
as Showgirl (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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