At Death’s Door: Best Actress, 1960

These are the 1960 nominees for Best Actress:

Greer Garson, Sunrise at Campobello

Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners

Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment

Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday

Elizabeth Taylor, BUtterfield 8

What a storied race this was! Melina Mercouri made a splash for a Greek film but refused to "campaign", saying the publicity from the nomination made her miserable. Greer Garson, absent from the ceremonies since her neat five-in-a-row run in the 1940s (I didn't realize when I chose Hitchcock nominations I'd be getting Garson history, too!), got a final nod (and a Golden Globe!) in a biopic. Deborah Kerr believed she should have won the Oscar this time around. And Shirley MacLaine had as good a chance as any, with her Golden Globe win and the lead role in a Best Picture nominee.

Then there's Elizabeth Taylor, in a huge moneymaker that received good enough notices. And more to the point, she was at death's door. While filming Cleopatra in Europe, Taylor fell ill with a number of issues, with pneumonia finally delivering a near-fatal blow that had the world holding its breath. When news broke that she received an emergency tracheotomy and made a miraculous recovery...everyone else declined their invitations. Watch her category at that year's Oscar ceremony, she's the only nominee who showed up...or had reason to:

And did she deserve it, whatever the quality of the film itself? My rankings, from fifth to first:

Joan Gets Hers: Best Actress, 1945

Joan Crawford did not show up to collect her Academy Award in person. 

By 1945, Crawford had been in the industry for 20 years. She'd been a critical and box office darling since 1928's Our Dancing Daughters, was one of the "all-stars" in the 1931-32 Best Picture winner Grand Hotel, and was even dubbed Queen of the Movies by Life in 1937. But, as happens, her star waned, especially when she was listed among other notables as being "box office poison" in a Hollywood Reporter ad taken out by an independent exhibitor. Oh, she worked, yes, but to increasingly dismal results, and she parted ways with longtime home studio MGM. 

At Warner Bros., she begged Michael Curtiz for the lead role in Mildred Pierce, about a working woman who sweats and slaves to provide her children with perhaps more than they can afford, and who is rewarded with a booming business...and an ungrateful daughter and a scheming new husband. He wanted Barbara Stanwyck, and forced Crawford to audition. Which she did. And won the part. And the movie was a hit. And now, for the first time ever, she was nominated for an Academy Award.

But she did not show up. Blame those first-time jitters, perhaps, but Crawford begged off from appearing, claiming illness. Still, she had the show playing on the radio, and when she heard she won, she jumped into action. By the time the morning papers came out, there she was: in her sickbed, full face of makeup, clutching her Academy Award for the suddenly summoned photographers.

She had to face off against another first-timer and three previous winners. The nominees being:

Ingrid Bergman, The Bells of St. Mary's

Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce

Greer Garson, The Valley of Decision

Jennifer Jones, Love Letters

Gene Tierney, Leave Her to Heaven

Ingrid Bergman had just won last year, and here she was playing the leading lady in the sequel to last year's Best Picture winner, Going My Way: she plays a nun who occasionally butts heads with Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley. Greer Garson was nominated last year, too, and here she was for the fifth time in a row, having won once for 1942's Mrs. Miniver: she plays the daughter of an embittered former worker who works for, and falls in love with the son of, the man her father worked for and hates. Jennifer Jones was nominated for Supporting Actress last year, but this was her third nomination in a row, having won for 1943's The Song of Bernadette (she came back the next year, too): she plays an amnesiac who may have murdered her husband. Gene Tierney is the only nominee who got a one-and-done, but it's worth noting that her role in Leave Her to Heaven came about due to the success of last year's Laura, in which she played Laura: here she plays a woman so obsessed with her husband, she tries to isolate him by any means necessary.

My ranking, from fifth to first.

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 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: