Almost All Winners: Best Actress, 1944

Presenting the 17th Academy Awards' nominees for Best Actress:

Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight

Claudette Colbert, Since You Went Away

Bette Davis, Mr. Skeffington

Greer Garson, Mrs. Parkington

Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity

The Oscar ceremony honoring the films of 1944 took place on March 15, 1945. By that time, Going My Way was enough of a hit that a sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's, was already filming, reteaming director-writer Leo McCarey and star Bing Crosby, and adding Ingrid Bergman as a nun. When the Best Actress category for this year was announced, both McCarey and Crosby had already won their Going My Way Oscars, so when Ingrid Bergman was named the winner for Gaslight, she quipped, "I'm afraid if I didn't have an Oscar, too, they wouldn't speak to me." She needn't have worried.

Some Old Hollywood fans bemoan the win, not because she wasn't good, but because (a) she wound up getting two more anyway, and (b) this was probably the strongest chance Double Indemnity's Barbara Stanwyck had at winning. The other three were all former winners, with both Davis and Garson perennial favorites during this period. And in retrospect, certainly, it makes sense: Stanwyck's portrayal of Phyllis Dietrichson entered the public consciousness in a way none of the other performances have, the grande dame of all femme fatales. She even has her own Wikipedia page, which no other character here, or even in Double Indemnity, can claim!

The one who won, the one who left a legacy, or one of the others - who would you choose? My rankings, from fifth to first:

Oscars 1952: Best Actress

Best Actress 1952 was a year with a clear runaway favorite to win, as only one performance had won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Golden Globe, the National Board of Review - and, hell, even the Tony Award! The Oscar was just the last step in an inevitable march for Shirley Booth:

Her competition included Susan Hayward, the only actress anyone considered a viable threat; Julie Harris, who also recreated a role she played on Broadway; and, in their only direct competition against each other, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The nominees:

Oscars 1941: Best Actress

Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were sisters. They were also rivals. Things didn't get as bad as Cain and Abel, but they were notoriously prickly about each other, and by the time De Havilland won her first Oscar for 1946's To Each His Own, they were barely on speaking terms. Fontaine frequently blamed jealousy, especially since the two were nominated against each other in 1941, each for their second nomination...and Joan won:

Apparently, Olivia was less offended by that and more offended by an insulting (but pretty funny) remark Fontaine made about her sister's new husband ("He's had four wives and written one book. Too bad it isn't the other way around."). And one doubts Olivia could have been too shocked by her sister winning: Joan had just starred in the previous year's Best Picture winner and she had won the New York Film Critics' Circle prize. 

But then, who knows? Maybe De Havilland was rooting for Bette Davis or even someone else. It is, after all, a lineup full of rich performances:

Oscar 1940: Best Actress

My goodness, back in 1940, Best Actress and Best Picture were really linked! This was and is a rarity - let's not forget, the Best Actress race for 2021 had zero women in Best Picture nominees, so 5/5 is insane. Unheard of. Even 1939 and 1941 were both just shy at 4/5, but for this one year, what made five of the Best Pictures of the Year work were the lead female performances at the center.

Those performances? Two veterans (Davis & Hepburn). Two reprising their Broadway hits (Hepburn & Scott). One getting the Selznick ingenue treatment (Fontaine). But only one winner. Yes, even though it wasn't for the movies that made her famous (and still remain her best-known), Ginger Rogers, star of Top Hat and Swing Time, would forever be an Oscar winner.

These were those performances:

1935: Actress

The New York Critics gave their Best Actress award to Greta Garbo for Anna Karenina. She was not nominated at the Academy Awards (which I think is fine, she's weirdly too self-consciously Garbo in that film), something which surely surprised everyone once they realized a number of ties in the voting process led to six official nominees. No write-ins received enough votes to be mentioned. All there were to mention were these six:

1950: Actress

More so than the Best Picture race, the Best Actress race of 1950 has divided Oscar fans and cinephiles for over 70 years. Yes, of course, Bette Davis or Gloria Swanson should have won for their immortal performances in, respectively, All About Eve and Sunset Blvd., who had the audacity to win?

OH, iconic Judy Holliday for iconic Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday? Hm...well...who else was...OH, Eve Harrington herself and the lead of women-in-prison cult classic Caged. Ahem, well, uh, in that case...hm.

An embarrassment of riches, clearly, so much so that I wrote much more about these performances than I did their male counterparts. But there's just so much to chew on, such great choices made by each performer, in such rich roles, how could I resist? See for yourself:

Cinema '62: Best Actress

Full stop, this might be one of the greatest Best Actress lineups of all time, not a whiff in the lot, everyone giving their all, sometimes above and beyond what's asked of them. The nominees:

Reflections in an Olden Eye: Murder with Mirrors, 1985

All month long, we're celebrating the Queen of Crime as she and her works appeared on screen, with a grand finale of five Murder on the Orient Expresses the first full week of November. Today, and all this week, we're looking at Miss Jane Marple. We've seen her on the big screen; now, a look back at one of two TV Marples of the 80s...

Murder with Mirrors
dir: Dick Lowry

The New Guy in Town: Death on the Nile, 1978

All month long, we're celebrating the Queen of Crime as she and her works appeared on screen, with a grand finale of five Murder on the Orient Expresses the first full week of November. Today, and all this week, we're looking at the main source of her bread and butter, the little Belgian himself, Hercule Poirot. Yesterday, we talked about 1965's The Alphabet Murders; today....:

Death on the Nile (1978)
dir: John Guillermin

The Detective

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

The Victim

Lois Chiles as Linnet Ridgeway

The Suspects

Bette Davis as Mrs. Van Schuyler

Mia Farrow as Jacqueline de Bellefort

Jon Finch as Jim Ferguson

Olivia Hussey as Rosalie Otterbourne

George Kennedy as Andrew Pennington

Angela Lansbury as Salome Otterbourne

Simon MacCorkindale as Simon Doyle

Maggie Smith as Miss Bowers

Jack Warden as Dr. Ludwig Bessner

With

Harry Andrews as Barnstable

I.S. Johar as Manager of the Karnak

David Niven as Colonel Race

1974's Murder on the Orient Express was a hit - admiration from critics, the 11th highest-grossing film of its year, an Oscar, even the approval of Agatha Christie, who never liked film adaptations of her works. It was only natural that the producers would want to produce a follow-up, using the same formula: glamorous period costumes and sets, an exotic locale, an all-star cast. And so they did, four years later, with this: the second EMI Christie caper, the third and last Christie flick to get Oscar attention, and my personal favorite....Death on the Nile.

Casting Coup Tuesdays: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte

With the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were hot commodities once again and psycho-biddy films were born. And Hollywood being, in the end, all about the green, you know they had to have a sequel of some sort for the Oscar-winning, fourth highest-grossing picture of 1962. Of course, the way Baby Jane ends, a direct sequel would be impossible, not to mention anticlimactic.

Luckily, source novelist Henry Farrell had another gem in paperback: What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?. It's another faded beauty gem, this time set in a dying plantation in Louisiana, where mad Charlotte Hollis has been living for forty years. Haunted by the mysterious murder of her married lover John Mayhew in 1926, a crime which she was suspected of but never convicted for, Charlotte's only company is poor white trash companion Velma and the workers trying to demolish her home to make way for the new highway. Charlotte loves Velma; the workers, on the other hand, she fires at with her daddy's shotguns. Desperate to save the place, she calls upon citified cousin Miriam to help her keep the place -- but Miriam is more interested in the vast wealth of the estate, wealth that would be hers if she can successfully have Charlotte committed. And with the help of former lover Dr. Drew Bayliss, she may get her way...

Once again, Lukas Heller adapted (this time with some help from Farrell), Robert Aldrich directed, and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford acted opposite each other. This time, Crawford was to play the cunning manipulator to Davis's shut-in, though of course the latter was getting the juicier role. Alas, the first publicity still featuring the two divas on location is all we'll see of the Crawford-Davis version: the animosity between them finally came to a head, and Joanie walked off the picture. Davis recommended her friend, fellow two-time Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland...and surprise of surprises, her subtler, more insidious performance almost steals the show from Davis's histrionics!

Once again, audiences responded: the film was the ninth highest-grossing flick of 1964, ahead of A Hard Day's Night and right behind Viva Las Vegas!. And although it didn't bring home the gold come Oscar night, the film was still graced with seven Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead as Velma; Best Film Editing (Michael Luciano); Best Original Score (Frank De Vol); the black-and-white categories for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design (Norma Koch) and Best Cinematography (Joseph Biroc); and Best Original Song.

Of course, we've covered most of this before: last year, I did a retrospective of the year 1964, and I did profiles for five of those categories. So strong were the technical categories that year, I couldn't even give my personal vote to Score or Song, both of which I play repeatedly on my iTunes. My own Hollmann Awards could only fit Moorehead in -- and once you've seen the performance, you'll understand why.

I expect interest in this film, which has never really weakened, to come on still stronger in the near future. People will want to check out the Bette Davis Psycho-Biddy Double Feature that started it all once Walter Hill's remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is completed. And if they want to give the same treatment to Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte...well, shouldn't they stop here for a look first?

SHERIFF LUKE STANDISH

Who is He: Local sheriff, knows and respects the Hollis family, tries to reason with Charlotte but more or less knows its fruitless.

Originally played by:

Wesley Addy (Tora! Tora! Tora!, Network)

My Choice: SAG Award Nominee for Best Ensemble (Dreamgirls)

Hinton Battle (Foreign Student, TV's Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story)

BIG SAM HOLLIS

Who is He: Charlotte's daddy, a wealthy man who sought to separate his daughter from the married John Mayhew. It was his party that played host to murder, with his gazebo as the star.

Originally played by: Academy Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?)

Victor Buono (The Greatest Story Ever Told, Beneath the Planet of the Apes)

My Choice:

Ken Howard (1776, J. Edgar)

HARRY WILLIS

Who is He: An insurance investigator posing as a journalist, he's poking about for the truth behind John Mayhew's decades-old murder.

Originally played by: Academy Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (The Luck of the Irish, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?)

Cecil Kellaway (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Harvey)

My Choice: Golden Globe Nominee for Best Actor - Drama (Wilde), SAG Award Winner for Best Ensemble (Gosford Park)

Stephen Fry (Tales of the Riverbank, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)

DR. DREW BAYLISS

Who is He: A local doctor and old friend of the Hollis family, he courted Miriam as a young man but left her after the murder of John Mayhew. Now that Miriam's back in town, single, and close to a fortune, Bayliss is more than happy to pick up where they left off.

Originally played by:

Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane, The Third Man)

My Choice: Academy Award/Golden Globe Winner/BAFTA Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Adaptation), SAG Award Winner for Best Ensemble (American Beauty)

Chris Cooper (The Town, The Muppets)
Can bring a slick Southern charm, and also nail the sleazier aspects. Cooper's a master, of course, and I dare say he'd find a more nuanced approach than Cotten (and don't get me wrong: I adore Cotten).

JOHN MAYHEW

Who is He: The husband of Jewel Mayhew, he was going to elope with Charlotte Hollis the night of Big Sam's party. Instead of marital bliss, a hatchet to his hand and head saw to it that he enjoyed a honeydoom.

Originally played by: Hollmann Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (The Great Gatsby), Academy Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Coming Home)

Bruce Dern (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Driver)

My Choice: SAG Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (J. Edgar) and Best Ensemble (The Social Network)

Armie Hammer (Billy: The Early Years, Mirror Mirror)

MRS. JEWEL MAYHEW

Who is She: John's widow, respected in the community, still in mourning-dress, more reclusive. Oddly, she seems to bear little ill will for Charlotte; it's Miriam who sticks in her craw.

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress (The Great Lie)

Mary Astor (Dodsworth, The Maltese Falcon)

My Choice:

Morgan Fairchild (Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, TV's Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady)
The first to be cast, actually. I was thinking, "Who could pull off the small but important role of widow Jewel Mayhew? Who could do it but not be so distracting as to take away from the film?" Diane Keaton? No, something didn't sit right with that. Morgan Fairchild? But of course! She could bring the aging beauty queen thing into it, the former belle who's still got the confidence to hurl a metaphorical loogie in Miriam's face.

VELMA CRUTHER

Who is She: Charlotte's loyal cook, housemaid and companion, white trash from the bayou who'd do anything for her employer but talk down to her. She knows the truth about everything that goes on 'round these parts...if only she would keep her mouth shut!

 

Originally played by: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte), Academy Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (The Magnificent Ambersons, Mrs. Parkington, Johnny Belinda, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte), Golden Globe Winner for Best Supporting Actress (Mrs. Parkington, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte)

Agnes Moorehead (Raintree County, The Singing Nun)

My Choice:

Beth Grant (Crazy Heart, The Artist)
A large role worthy of her talents, one that allows her to "LET IT RIP" as far as her dialect goes. She's played homely before, but rarely as central as this. You know I love her.

MIRIAM DEERING

Who is She: Charlotte's glamorous cousin from the city, still a beauty, who's come to town to take care of Charlotte and the estate. Like all beauties throughout history, however, Miriam is playing another, more manipulative game, one that ends with Charlotte in the madhouse and Miriam in a penthouse. She's a "vile, sorry little bitch".

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner for Best Actress (To Each His Own, The Heiress), Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress (The Heiress)

Olivia de Havilland (Gone with the Wind, The Swarm)

My Choice: Academy Award/Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress [Drama] (Blue Sky) and Best Supporting Actress (Tootsie), BAFTA Award Nominee for Best Actress (Tootsie), SAG Award Nominee for Best Actress (Blue Sky)

Jessica Lange (Broken Flowers, The Vow)
Still lovely, capable of a regal bearing, and great at playing controlling or sinister family members. Plus, she'd have great chemistry with my Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE HOLLIS

Who is She: Big Sam's impressionable daughter, she never got over the murder of her lover -- especially since she's the Number One Suspect! The kiddies sing, "Chop-chop, sweet Charlotte/Chop-chop 'til he's dead..." But Charlotte's miserable without him, her family, her riches, aging away in a dying plantation set for demolition, close to crazy already before Miriam and Bayliss get their hooks into her.

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner for Best Actress (Dangerous, Jezebel), BAFTA Award Nominee for Best Foreign Actress (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), Golden Globe Nominee for Best Actress - Drama and Musical/Comedy (All About Eve, A Pocketful of Miracles, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?)

Bette Davis (The Nanny, Death on the Nile)

My Choice: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Get Low), Academy Award Winner for Best Actress (Coal Miner's Daughter), BAFTA Award  Nominee for Best Actress (Coal Miner's Daughter, Missing, In the Bedroom), Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress - Musical/Comedy and Drama (Coal Miner's Daughter, Crimes of the Heart, In the Bedroom), SAG Award Winner for Best Ensemble (The Help)

Sissy Spacek (Carrie, An American Haunting)
 Could find the crazy and the lady, creating an entirely fresh performance out of a character we all think we know. I imagine something in the vein of her Crimes of the Heart character. And speaking of that film: she and Lange have been sisters before, so why not cousins this time around?

A Trip Down Unsettling Memory Lane

When my roommate and I were going over the Netflix Instant Watch the other day, we knew that before the week was up, we would watch one of the two Hag Horror titles that just became available: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, which I first saw in high school and have seen twice since, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which I first saw in second or third grade and never watched again. Since neither of us had seen it in a long time, and since my sister and I had just discovered over Christmas that Bette Davis recorded a groovy single of the same title, we opted to go with Baby Jane. I hoped that I would remain entertained throughout the two-plus hours of old lady torture. I hoped it was as good as I remembered. I hoped I would be able to cry foul that it only won one Oscar (for costume).

I was not disappointed. Baby Jane is just as explosive as I remembered, a campy, tragic melodramatic thriller that is impossible to look away from. The film focuses on two sisters: one a former child star, the other a former Hollywood starlet. They age together in a decaying manor, driving each other mad.

When I first saw it in third grade, I remembered feeling confused. Not that the plot lost me at all; it's pretty easy to follow. No, for me it was the realization that some characters can be complicated. At that point, I was in love with Dracula and The Wolf Man and The Phantom of the Opera, and while one can't say that these are shallow creations, they were all monsters. Baby Jane, on the other hand, had no monsters, but people. There's poor, crippled Blanche (a mostly reserved Joan Crawford), who just wants her meals to not come from the cellar; and then poor, deluded Baby Jane (Bette Davis in her greatest performance since, and including, All About Eve), whose mental illness leads her to torture her sister while planning an ill-advised comeback.

SPOILERS HEREIN
In my mind, Baby Jane should be the monster. And while I was used to rooting for Dracula and The Phantom, I still demanded justice be done. Yet Baby Jane, who slaps Blanche around, serves up pets for dinner, unplugs her phone, and goes all sorts of madhouse on her -- Baby jane was a woman who moved me, even at seven or eight years of age. There was something so sad about her screeching of her childhood hit, "Letter to Daddy". And the joy on her face when she plans her comeback was not lost on me. I kept telling myself that she couldn't have murdered Elvira (who is Maidie Norman and why is she so awesome?), that she really didn't mean to do all these things to her sister, but the horror and revulsion that I felt simultaneously could not be denied. How could I want Jane to be ass-kicked by her sister, yet able to stage her comeback? I could not reconcile this with my third-grade self.

Seeing it thirteen years later was a jaw-dropping experience. While I couldn't help smiling throughout -- because at twenty, I am totally on Team Jane -- I was flabbergasted. Not only did I remember most of the movie, but I realized what a large part of my cinematic love was shaped by this film. What Baby Jane does is often horrifying, but the line "He hates me" hurts me: I literally feel a pain in my chest when that line is spoken. That final scene is as hauntingly triumphant as it ever was. And of course, "Letter to Daddy" almost moved me to tears.
END SPOILERS



That Davis was able to create such an over-the-top but believable character speaks wonders about her talent, one that I find many people either underestimate or take too much for granted. Not everyone could pull that off. The movie always sat around in my unranked "all-time favorites" based on memory, but having seen it again, I think it's time it moves up the ladder. I need to get a hold of both the DVD and the original soundtrack by Frank DeVol. The music is crazy, but it works perfectly.