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.

Olivia de Havilland, The Snake Pit*

as VIRGINIA CUNNINGHAM

Won: New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress | National Board of Review - Best Actress | Volpi Cup for Best Actress

Having built the foundation to her career playing saints in the likes of Gone with the Wind and Hold Back the Dawn, it's shocking to see Olivia de Havilland so completely, flagrantly flawed in The Snake Pit. And while she took a quick detour from this image as a semi-flawed yet redemptive woman in To Each His Own, there's little atonement to be had for Virginia Cunningham. de Havilland goes absolutely go-for-broke with in this film, and the resulting performance is polarizing in a most literal sense. 

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?

Olivia de Havilland, Hold Back the Dawn

as EMMY BROWN

It seems as though Olivia de Havilland's work in Hold Back the Dawn is primarily associated with being the nominated performance to which she was pitted against Joan Fontaine in an epic SISTER VS. SISTER showdown, and not as much is written about the actual performance itself. And perhaps rightfully so. After having recently rewatched Gone with the Wind, I found myself supremely impressed by the warm veritas of de Havilland's Melanie Hamilton, much more so than on my very first watch years ago. Her role as Emmy here in Hold Back the Dawn is pretty much in the same vein as that of Melanie, and I mean that as both a good and a bad thing.