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?

Laurence Olivier, Henry V

as HENRY V, KING OF ENGLAND

Won: New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor | Special Academy Award - Actor, Producer, Director

After having watched Laurence Olivier play the role of the heartthrob in films like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and Pride & Prejudice to somewhat mixed reviews, I was excited to see him graduate to the next phase of his career, that of the Shakespearean Olivier, the Olivier that most everyone thinks him to be. Or, rather more simply put, the actor Olivier.

Rosalind Russell, Sister Kenny

as ELIZABETH KENNY

Won: Golden Globe Award - Best Actress

It's Rosalind Russell as a nurse!! It's the female The Story of Louis Pasteur (or companion piece to Madame Curie??)!! That just about sums up my viewing experience of Sister Kenny. And I'd like to preface this by saying that by no means do I want to diminish the legacy of trailblazing nurse Elizabeth Kenny; but Sister Kenny the film is formulaic oatmeal. It runs too long, its story too conventional and too outdated, with that old-Hollywood touch that makes it another film in a library of sappy 'prestige' biopics that mean well but stink of mediocrity.

Larry Parks, The Jolson Story

as AL JOLSON / ASA YOELSON

By now, I've watched a number of biopics and a number of films about actors, but I believe this is the first Oscar-nominated performance in which the actor in question plays a real-life performer who was in Hollywood movies. And so The Jolson Story has got that going for it I suppose. Watching it is like watching a literal lovechild of Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Great Ziegfeld, and Larry Parks is tasked with the hefty challenge of carrying a monotonous film runs much too long.

Jane Wyman, The Yearling

as ORRY BAXTER

I've spent a lot of time complaining about female archetypes and gender roles and the limitations they've played on many a Best Actress Oscar-nominated performance. And Jane Wyman's Orry Baxter--a wife, a mother, and pretty much tertiary to the shenanigans of Jody and Penny--embodies everything I'm not looking for in a Best Actress performance. But herein lies a surprise: in spite of my hang-ups on domestic representations, I didn't think Wyman was so bad. In fact, I think she elevated the role's limitations in the very best way an actress possibly could.