Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress • New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress
Golden Globe Award - Best Actress in a Drama • Cannes Film Festival - Best Actress

1952's slate of Best Actress contenders has gained a bad rap. I had read insinuations that the year is particularly poor on the actressing front, and yet, based on what I've seen so far, I'd conclude that it's largely an imperfect lineup with performances and films that hit a murky gray: be that Susan Hayward's questionably saintlike performance in a run-of-the-mill biopic, Joan Crawford's emoting in a sensationalized B-movie, Bette Davis' wild hysterics in a Sunset-Boulevard-on-bath-salts camp picture, or Julie Harris' pubescent hysterics in a stagey stage-to-film adaptation, this is not a field of contenders that strikes wide-range appeal to the modern masses. That being said, I don't think either are awful, though they do challenge you to conclude otherwise.

This also rings true for Shirley Booth, the victor of this pack: she and her performance in Come Back, Little Sheba are easily more forgotten and receive significantly less share of voice than the likes of fellow winners Judy Holliday, Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. This is in spite of the fact that Booth was a juggernaut during her respective year, picking up nearly every major Best Actress prize available (it should be noted that no other actor that decade, male or female, received prizes from Cannes, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Globes and the Academy for a sole performance).

Julie Harris, The Member of the Wedding

You're four minutes in to The Member of the Wedding before Brandon deWilde's John Henry proclaims aloud, "Frankie's crazy!" It's a flippant line, executed quickly and in a humorous, charming manner, and yet it also serves as a forewarning for what's to come for the next hour and a half: Frankie Addams, played by a fiercely dedicated Julie Harris, is batshit insane, and you the viewer are in for a helluva ride.

Joan Crawford, Sudden Fear

The other week, I had a dream in which I was terrorized by Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. I remember little about the dream outside of the fact that Faye/Joan was incensed about something and screaming at me about it - her face terrifying, flush with fury.

It goes without saying that the symbolism of "angry Joan Crawford," made possible by Mommie Dearest, has ingratiated itself into, and endured as a component of, Crawford's legacy. Crawford's bitter rivalry with Bette Davis stands as another component of this legacy, recently publicized and manifested by Ryan Murphy's Feud: Bette & Joan. It's safe to say that these properties have helped immortalize Crawford to the collective wisdom as a dramatic public figure, her prowess as a skilled dramatic actress known more so to cinephiles and actressphiles such as myself (and perhaps you, dear reader).

I myself am guilty of forgetting about Crawford's talents as an actress, even though I really ought to know better by now. Sudden Fear, Crawford's last Academy Award-nominated performance, is a palpable reminder that there's much more to the actress beyond the feuds, the grandeur, the tempestuousness, the pettiness.