Best Actress Ranking - Update

Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold. 

My winning performances are higlighted in red.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
3. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
5. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
6. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
7. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978)
8. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
9. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
10. Susan Sarandon in Thelma & Louise (1991)

11. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
12. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
13. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
14. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
15. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
16. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
17. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
18. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
19. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
20. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)

21. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
22. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
23. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
24. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
25. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
26. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
27. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
28. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
29. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
30. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)

31. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
32. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
33. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
34. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
35. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
36. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
37. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
38. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
39. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
40. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)

41. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
42. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
43. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
44. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
45. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
46. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
47. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
48. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
49. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
50. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)

51. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
52. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Eleanor Parker as Mary McLeod in Detective Story

I don’t want to go into too much detail in this review as I have already written about Eleanor Parker’s nominated performance in Detective Story once before. Many of the things I have written still stand from my point of view but I still upgraded her performance a little bit, as I began to appreciate certain aspects of her work more.

What obviously did not change is the estimation that is an extreme case of borderline between leading and supporting – and I personally still see it as a supporting performance. Detective Story is populated with various stories that happen during one day in a New York police station and Mary’s story is just one of them. The screen time of Eleanor Parker is also likely to be found somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes (maybe a bit more, I didn’t time it…) so it is a very small part – however, the structure of the movie makes the presence of Mary very dominant during her screen time and puts all of the attention on her actions in the past, the present and the future so there are chances for Eleanor Parker to overcome the limitations by the script. Unfortunately, she only used them in very small parts.

In Detective Story, Mary life is suddenly turned upside down when her husband learns that she had a child out of wedlock in the past and from one moment to the other, he stops seeing her as an ideal woman and only as a “tramp”. It’s a part with a certain potential – there are various layers to the character of Mary and an actress can find different ways of interpreting them, hinting at an unknown side that hasn’t been visible and she can also decide how to react to the accusations of her husband.

Unfortunately, Eleanor Parker took a very limited approach in this aspect – her Mary is not only seen by her husband as the ideal wife because that’s how he wants to see her but rather because, in Eleanor Parker’s work, that’s what she also wants to be and is. When accused with the “crime” of her past, she immediately reacts with a never-ending stream of tears and begs to be forgiven for what she has done. Any possible depth disappears in this characterization – maybe Eleanor Parker did not want to be seen on the screen as a woman who is nothing less than appalled with her own actions or a woman who doesn’t understand the anger of her husband but it is a very frustrating realization of the role as it exists only on the surface and doesn’t go beyond tears and sorrow.

These complaints about the role have already been included in my initial review from a couple of years ago, so what made me upgrade her a bit? First of all, even if Eleanor Parker’s acting style often feels very theatrical in contrast to the rather modern work of her co-stars, she still demand attention and her emotional work still comes across a welcome change of pace in the movie. In this way, her (even if limited) approach sets her apart from the rest of the cast, which somehow works in the context of the story, while still setting up a strong relationship with Kirk Douglas – the two actors don’t spend a lot of time together but they succeed in establishing the patterns of their marriage very easily and make the drama of Mary understandable. But most of all, Eleanor Parker succeeds in the drastic turn-around her character makes at the end of the movie. In a way, her performance resembles the work of Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress, only on a much smaller scale. After the initial shock that her husband is apparently unable to forgive her, Mary makes the decision to leave her husband and during the conversation turns more and more bitter, finally telling her husband that she won’t be driven into an asylum like her husband’s father apparently did with his wife. Her voice in this scene is sharp like a knife and Eleanor Parker possesses a face that can change from sweet and confused to bitter and unforgiving in just a second. It is a short scene but it is the best one in the movie and even if most of her work is unfortunately rather forgettable, this one moment delivers an emotional punch that is enough to grant her this little upgrade in my ranking.