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:

A Reluctant Return, A Distinguished Debut: Best Supporting Actress, 1944

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

Ethel Barrymore, None But the Lonely Heart

Jennifer Jones, Since You Went Away

Angela Lansbury, Gaslight

Aline MacMahon, Dragon Seed

Agnes Moorehead, Mrs. Parkington

Barrymore is a widow whose ne'erdowell son returns after years away, and now both are tempted into crime. Jones is a young woman whose father is at war, now falling in love with the grandson of her mother's boarder. Lansbury is a young housemaid whose indolence makes her unaware of (or accessory to?) Boyer's schemes. MacMahon plays the elder matariarch of a Chinese family navigating life under the occupation of the Japanese. And Moorehead is a French aristocrat who becomes the best friend and closest confidante of her ex-lover's new wife.

A prominent and prestigious stage star, Barrymore's film work before None But the Lonely Heart is scattered, comprised mostly of pre-20s silent films and one talkie team-up with screen star siblings John and Lionel, 1932's Rasputin and the Empress. Her return to film, a medium she disliked, was financially motivated and meant as a one-off, but she wound up doing more and more of them in her last years. Maybe winning the Oscar for her performance here helped, even though she did not attend the ceremony and later described the win as “very pleasant.”

On the other end of this stage veteran and reluctant screen actress, is Angela Lansbury in her film debut. Lansbury was born and raised in London, but the Blitz led her mother, actress Moyna Macgill, to bring the family to the United States in 1940. Lansbury studied acting, began performing professionally (albeit while lying about her age), and so she was ready when Macgill moved the family to Los Angeles. At a party, the 17-year-old Lansbury met the screenwriter John van Druten, whose adaptation of Gaslight was casting for the role of a cockney maid...and here we are today, discussing her first nomination for her first screen role in a career that would last eighty years.

Two great stories, and three others besides. So who would I vote for? My rankings, from fifth to first, after the jump... 

Crime and Christmas: 1944, Part Nine

Our last batch of reviews before we get into the Oscar categories themselves: