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).

Vivien Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress | Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup, Best Actress

Many actresses have that one powerhouse performance which goes on to define their filmographies. Some produce multiple, truly great performances. Where Vivien Leigh's legacy stands out is through two pieces of performance art which are not only "great," but widely considered as monumental, iconic acting achievements that belong in the upper echelon of Oscar's Best Actress category. No other actress holds this distinction.

With that being said, there's a question I've grappled with: is Leigh the definitive Blanche DuBois?

Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday

as Billie Dawn

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress • Golden Globe - Best Actress, Comedy or Musical

Within the time-honored tale of 1950's Best Actress race, two questions present themselves: how in the hell did newcomer Judy Holliday manage to beat out the career-defining work by legendary veterans Gloria Swanson and Bette Davis? Furthermore, was Holliday's victory an injustice?

When Holliday saunters through the first few minutes of Born Yesterday, she's just your usual gun moll...pretty, glammed-up, and bearing a gaze which reads as mostly unimpressed (or is it vacant? or both?) And then, out of the blue, you're hit with it: "WHAAAAAAAT?" It's a brief yet sharp, potent, Donald Duck quack-like sound with enough power to stimulate at least a smile on your face. My feelings towards that first exchange with Billie essentially summarizes how I feel about Holliday's entire performance.

Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress

as CATHERINE SLOPER

WON: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress | Golden Globe - Best Actress

And so, after a strenuous two year journey perusing through Oscar's finest of the 1940's, we end the road with William Wyler's The Heiress. I saved this one for last for obvious reasons: film quality notwithstanding, Olivia de Havilland's work in the film is often regarded as the sole saving grace for an embarrassingly desolate slate of Best Actress options in 1949. I was worried that she might not live up to the praise seemingly everyone gives her, and perhaps this might have rang a tiny bit true, but the fact is: The Heiress is a superb film, and its lead actress delivers a superb performance.

Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda

as BELINDA MCDONALD

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | Golden Globe Award - Best Actress

Behold, the first silent performance for me to review since the 2nd Academy Awards! I will preface this post with the reiteration that I've never been all that great at reading into and interpreting silent performances--they're not quite my cup of tea, and I've always found them to be more limiting than those that utilize the sound medium. To that note, I wasn't huge on Jane Wyman's performance in Johnny Belinda, and I'm thinking it's due to a mix of her own acting as well as the film's writing.

Loretta Young, The Farmer's Daughter

as KATRIN "KATIE" HOLSTROM

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

It was of course a shocker at the time, but in retrospect, Loretta Young’s Best Actress victory should come as a surprise to nobody. Because when you're up against a reckless alcoholic, an embittered woman with a murderous family, and a woman losing her mind, the morally-correct-small-town-farm-girl-who-excels-at-all-domestic-tasks-and-has-big-dreams-of-being-a-nurse-but-instead-gets-sucked-into-an-impromptu-political-career is a much more friendlier female archetype for the for the Academy to channel its attention to. So sure, this one definitely goes down in Oscar history as one of those stunning come-from-behind victories, but the role and performance itself bears no elements of excitement to match the glory of its actual win.

Olivia de Havilland, To Each His Own

as JODY NORRIS

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Jody Norris in To Each His Own is exactly what Academy Award winning performances are made of. Jody Norris is also pretty similar (surprise!!) to that of Helen Hayes's Academy Award winning performance in  The Sin of Madelon Claudet. So why is it that we often find ourselves in situations where we have winning performances which check every single box on the figurative Oscar Bait Checklist, and yet here we are, decades and decades after the fact, and these very performances have been all but completely forgotten?

Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce

as MILDRED PIERCE

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Mildred Pierce is the film that Joan Crawford is known for. In many ways, the iconography of Mildred in the film nails the image in my head of what I think Crawford to really be--seeing Crawford, steely eyed, stroll about and into a police station, adorned with fur all over her body, only reiterates the perception of Crawford as a glamorous Old-Hollywood icon. On the flip side, seeing this woman play submissive to the characters and circumstances within the film completely contradicts the Mommie Dearest image that has ingrained itself onto Crawford's legacy. In other words, she is as expected and is as not expected here--but overall, she's magnificent.

Norma Shearer, The Divorcée

as JERRY

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Mary Pickford, Coquette

as NORMA BESANT

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Janet Gaynor, Street Angel

as ANGELA

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Janet Gaynor, 7th Heaven

as DIANE

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Janet Gaynor, Sunrise

as THE WIFE

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight

as PAULA ALQUIST

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

When you have a film like Double Indemnity and a performance like Barbara Stanwyck's having solidified its places in Film Noir and cinematic histories, it's obvious that the performance which beat Stanwyck will have a mini-bad rap. Outlets like The Dissolve proudly proclaim that Ingrid Bergman's Best Actress win for Gaslight is a victory for the wrong role, but I think that's totally unfair to the actual performance itself, and underwriting the performance as a whole. Realistically Bergman would probably have won for anything that year, but Oscar politics aside, she does wonders as the scarred and fragile Paula, whose husband is slowly manipulating her towards insanity. There's no question that hers is the more forgotten performance when placed next to Stanwyck's, and it's not as though it's one of the most memorable winning performances in Best Actress history, but I do believe that it deserves more praise.

Jennifer Jones, The Song of Bernadette

as BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | Golden Globe - Best Actress

The Role: as a sweet and sickly girl who has visions of the Virgin Mary, this was undoubtedly a "star is born" type of role that shot Jennifer Jones into Hollywood stardom for the duration of the 1940s. I'll say now that my discontent towards religious fare really didn't play into how I feel about The Song of Bernadette and Jones' performance all all (though it does get exhausting after awhile), and in fact, I did like the film/was quite engaged at times. But the role of Bernadette and this over-stressed archetype of saintly womandom is what I found most unsavory here, and while that's no fault of Jones', I think that she's at a crossroads of not being able to do much via the material as well as not possessing the skills to do much with the material either.

Greer Garson, Mrs. Miniver

as KAY MINIVER

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

As you might have already read, I wasn't a fan of Mrs. Miniver. But my discontent with the film doesn't totally sync with my feelings towards Greer Garson. I'll start off by saying that I think she's perfectly fine in this part--the part being that of the warm, radiant, strait-laced upperclass lady. But I'm not interested in that. I care more about what Kay Miniver goes through and whether or not Garson can impress beyond the dull confines of the film as well as the confines of what we expect from her. And typically I'm pretty sold with one-woman shows à la Erin Brockovich or La Vie en Rose, but this one was a little lacking in the excitement department.

Joan Fontaine, Suspicion

as LINA MCLAIDLAW

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress

Joan Fontaine was bestowed the eternal title of "Academy Award winner" only a year after having made a big splash with an acclaimed performance...and just like good 'ol Jimmy Stewart, she ultimately won for a performance that has been deemed by many as being lesser than its predecessor. Obviously her winning is not her fault, and the fact that Suspicion is a terribly messy and narratively confounding picture isn't her fault either. Her victory can be easily be written off as a "makeup" prize, but the fact that she was named Best Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle (Inside Oscar says that RKO hadn't even planned on giving Suspicion a qualifying run until Fontaine had unexpectedly nabbed up the prize) as well suggests to me that voters in 1941 must have seen something here that they liked. I'll admit, after having read many negative critiques on Suspicion and Fontaine's win, I came in with the worst expectations. But surprise, surprise--I didn't think Suspicion or Fontaine was that bad (big fat sloppy mess? Yeah. AWFUL? nah).

Ginger Rogers, Kitty Foyle

as KITTY FOYLE

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress

Ginger Rogers' Academy Award winning performance is one of those wins that you don't hear a whole lot about nowadays, not necessarily because it's bad per se but because the work and films of three of her competitors have held up much better in the 70+ years that have passed. Yet it's easy to see why the folks of 1940 took to Rogers so strongly at the time—for starters, it's an old-fashioned little picture which features the everyday working woman faced with issues of class (how modern!), yet it's also a melodrama that thrusts its heroine through a slew of tearjerking situations (how gutwrenching!), and if there's anything Oscar likes about his ladies, it's a de-glammed long-sufferer. But in spite of the film's out-of-date and confused attempt at purveying feminist modernity, Kitty Foyle is actually quite a charming little flick, made all the more watchable by Rogers' lovely presence.

Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind

as SCARLETT O'HARA

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress

As the story goes, in 1939 a little known actress came along to the states from across the pond and surprised everyone when she snatched up what author Helen Taylor called "the longest, most prestigious female role in Hollywood's most ambitious, epic film." This during a studio era in which the "star system was most fully developed and films were financed, promoted, and celebrated on individual star names..." The rest is simply glorious cinematic history.

Bette Davis, Jezebel

as JULIE MARSDEN

It seems unfortunately inopportune that Bette Davis won her second and final Oscar for a 1938 film. Because if Of Human Bondage indicated the arrival of a star and Dangerous existed to represent the official crowning of a star, then Jezebel is really just Davis warming up for the superstar phase of her career. There were so many iconic roles and films awaiting Davis in the decades ahead and yet she would never win another statue again. On top of that, any significance made by Jezebel and Julie Marsden would forever be trumped by Gone with the Wind and Scarlett O'Hara the following year.