Best Actress Ranking - Update

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

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
3. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
4. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
5. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
6. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
7. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
8. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
9. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
10. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

11. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
12. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
13. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
14. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
15. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
16. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
17. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
18. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
19. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
20. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)

21. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
22. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
23. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
24. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
25. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
26. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
27. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
28. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

YOUR Best Actress of 1938!

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Bette Davis - Jezebel (24 votes)

2. Norma Shearer - Marie Antoinette (17 votes)

3. Margaret Sullavan - Three Comrades (3 votes)

4. Wendy Hiller - Pygmalion (1 vote)

5. Fay Bainter - White Banners (0 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1938 - The resolution

After having watched and reviewed all five nominated performances, it's time to pick the winner!

5. Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion

Wendy Hiller achieved to be both completely logical but also strangely inadequate as Eliza Doolittle. The role seems to both over- and underwhelm her and as a consequence she stayed on one note for most of the time. Still, she saves her performance in parts with her own personality that is certainly right for the role and her own instincts which make her mostly do the right things, even though unfortunately often the wrong way. 

4. Fay Bainter in White Banners

                     

Fay Bainter sprinkles with charm and warmth and it is not hard to believe that her smile, her support and her understanding can brighten up the live of anybody she ever meets. It’s neither a complex performance nor a complex role but Fay Bainter does find the right tone, the right face and the right approach to this character, creating some beautiful moments, making her actions and intentions believable and not overdoing the sentiment of the story – she’s strong, believable and loving.

3. Margaret Sullavan in Three Comrades

Margaret Sullavan’s performance is a beautiful example of an actress taking what could basically be considered a throwaway-role and filling it with life, meaning and much more. Her unique screen presence that helps her to appear so completely mature and decisive while also emphasizing the emotional desperation of Pat Hollmann is combined very effectively with her instincts for the role and so resulted in a maybe still limited but much deeper and more captivating performance than expected.

2. Bette Davis in Jezebel

Bette Davis's take on this character is spellbinding, entertaining and unforgettable. Her mysterious screen personality may have prevented her from creating a complete Southern Belle but it turned other moments, even simple ones like walking into a bank, into movie magic. And because of her ability to show various different aspects in Julie’s character while also displaying an honest core, she was also able to make the final moments of Jezebel believable without turning them into hollow pathos.

1. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Norma Shearer’s acting style is not everyone’s cup of tea. But in this case, she has risen to a whole new level of dramatic intensity. When an image of a young Marie Antoinette, rejoicing about her future as Queen of France, is laid over the scene of Marie Antoinette facing the guillotine, it becomes clear on what an exhausting, captivating and heartbreaking journey she has taken the audience and how epic her achievement truly is.

Best Actress 1938: Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette"

Whenever the queens of the Oscars are mentioned, the names Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep are mentioned. And this makes perfect sense since all three of them, at one point in their career, held the record of most Best Actress nomination (and, of course, Meryl Streep still does and most likely will for a very long time). But before these three legendary performers wrote their names into Oscar’s history book, it was Norma Shearer who held the distinction of being Oscar’s favorite performer with a total of 6 nominations until 1938. And it was certainly more than fitting that she received her record-breaking 6th and final nomination which truly turned her into the Queen of the Oscars (even though only for a couple of years until Bette Davis overtook her) for her performance as the doomed French Queen Marie Antoinette who lost her family and ultimately her life during the French Revolution. The Oscar race between Bette Davis and Norma Shearer in 1938 is an extremely interesting one – of course, nobody will ever know how many votes each nominee received but Norma Shearer’s status in Hollywood, the surely still strong sentiment about the death of her husband Irving Thalberg and her popularity with audiences must surely have resulted in a strong number of votes. Of course, on the other hand she surely did not make a lot of friends during her marriage to Thalberg and the royal treatment she received as the ‘Queen of MGM’ which also resulted in a Best Actress Oscar for one of her first talkies undoubtedly put a lot of actresses against her – so maybe her loss in 1938 cannot be exactly considered a surprise. Still, in some ways, the 30s almost belonged to Norma Shearer even though she became largely forgotten during the following decades and rivals like Joan Crawford, who had to play second fiddle during Norma Shearer’s prime, have used her declining fame to great advantage since it enabled them to write her off as an untalented performer who was able to sleep her way to the top. Today, Norma Shearer’s reputation is beginning to improve again and the release of many of her old movies enables a new and comprehensive look at her filmography. And looking at Norma Shearer’s Oscar-nominated performances, one thing becomes clear very soon: her improvement as an actress over the years. During her first talkies, she often displayed a tendency for theatrical over-acting that belonged to the time of silent pictures and she also did not truly know how to use her voice in a natural, unaffected and believable way. But with time, Norma Shearer developed an unexpected strength as an actress that maybe did not always cover her melodramatic acting style but allowed her to dig surprisingly deep into her characters and very often display an unexpected willingness to completely let go of herself, forgetting all awareness of herself and act truly in the moment. And this strength was never more visible than in Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette is as grand, lavish and pompous as one would expect it to be. Costume designer Gilbert Adrian and set decorator Cederic Gibbons obviously followed their credo ‘more is more’ and filled every frame with opulent design, grandiose sets and extravagant gowns. Marie Antoinette screams ‘epic’ at every second of its running time and doesn’t waste one second pretending anything else. But on the scale of ‘epicness’, Marie Antoinette did not reach a very high level because underneath all the glamour and opulence hides a typical melodrama from the 30s. And in some ways, the central performance by Norma Shearer also offers that typical melodrama from the 30s – she stares into the open space, moves her body very often as if she hadn’t realized yet that the invention of sound had brought a new acting style years ago and uses her face with such exaggeration that one feels the need to move a few feet away from the screen. But the miraculous thing is that all these aspects that usually rather destroy a Norma-Shearer-performance this time completely disappeared in Norma Shearer’s overall characterization. Because in Marie Antoinette, Norma Shearer displayed her ability to act ‘without a net’ – she did not act with visible strings between herself and her character but instead wholly let go of her own control and let her instincts dominate her work. This way, her performance became an overwhelming kaleidoscope of human emotions, from the joy and playfulness of a young girl to the broken spirit of a lost soul.

Basically, a lot of aspects of Norma Shearer’s performance should not work. Her age alone could have been disastrously distracting – Norma Shearer was 36 during the making of the film and certainly looks like it. Robert Morley was 30 but looks actually older than her. And so it could easily have become rather confusing to watch these two actors play characters who obviously have no idea what to do on their wedding night and feel a strange distance that comes from the difference between the ideas of youthful dreams and the reality of royal protocol. And a grown-up Norma Shearer jumping around at the beginning of Marie Antoinette, playing a young girl expressing her childish happiness about becoming the Queen of France is certainly another moment that could have been a complete failure, especially because Norma Shearer played these early scenes with the expected high-pitched voice and overenthusiastic movements that older actors often display when playing somebody younger than themselves. Yes, this all could have easily become a total disaster – but thankfully it didn’t. Norma Shearer may be exaggerating her acting a little but it somehow so wholly harmonizes with the style of her movie that her performance not only becomes immensely captivating right away from the start but also the human and emotional centre of this lavish production. Norma Shearer did not let the production overshadow her work but instead single-handedly crafted the human atmosphere of Marie Antoinette, may it be joy, love or terror. In her performance, Norma Shearer took the role of Marie Antoinette from the usual level of melodrama and carried her to a level of real, honest and shocking human drama. Everything in Marie Antoinette is solved in the easiest way – Marie Antoinette and her husband are portrayed without any flaws, the world outside their palace apparently filled with evil-minded revolutionaries and if Marie Antoinette was a bit too carefree and careless, then only because her husband denied her physical affection for so long. Yes, Marie Antoinette creates an artificial world full of artificial characters – and even Norma Shearer’s performance emphasizes this artificiality and it’s doubtful if her work would have worked in a context outside of Marie Antoinette but simultaneously she also reached a level of realism, authenticity and plausibility that lifted her performance on a whole new level of excellence.

Right from the start, Norma Shearer takes the viewer on an emotional rollercoaster ride – she believably shows the anxiety of a young woman entering a new life that seemed exciting and adventurous at first but only turns out to be dull and limited. It may be odd to see two so obviously mature actors in the parts of such inexperienced teenagers but both Norma Shearer and Robert Morley know how to portray these aspects of their performance without overdoing it – Robert Morley finds the right amount of shyness and frustration in his work while Norma Shearer plays her disappointment, her attempts to bond with her husband and her anger and frustration that she cannot give France an heir with just the right mixture of girlish inexperience and mature decisiveness. This way, both actors managed to create a remarkable chemistry that may not be truly romantic but turns into a believable friendship and Norma Shearer achieved the almost impossible task to display how much feelings Marie Antoinette actually has for her husband – which made their final moments together at the end even more heartbreaking. But the movie makers obviously thought that they could not tell the story of Marie Antoinette without some true romance – enter Tyrone Power to give the female audience something to dream about and Norma Shearer the chance for some romantic close-ups. And again, everything so easily could have gone wrong in this production but Norma Shearer not only handled these parts of the storyline with wonderful clarity in which she refused to turn the scenes with Tyrone Power into typical love scenes but instead always underlined a certain tension, a certain sadness and impossibility but she also found the perfect balance between the scenes between herself and Robert Morley and herself and Tyrone Power – she displayed a strong chemistry with both actors but both are completely different and seem to exist independent from one another while Norma Shearer also makes it clear how much she is thinking of Power in her scenes with Morley and how much of Morley in her scenes with Power. And Norma Shearer also managed to make it completely believable that Marie Antoinette would not only stay with her husband but also develop feelings for him that may not be the same as for the other man in her life but also strong and honest.

Norma Shearer also may have been handed a character that was written too saint-like but she never actively tried to act her like this – instead, she portrayed the ignorance, the single-mindedness and the arrogance of Marie Antoinette with an intriguing honesty. And even though these feelings might have been born out of her anger of rejection and unhappiness (at least in this movie version), Norma Shearer showed that Marie Antoinette was not fully without flaws – her carelessness at various parties at which she is giving away her jewelry during little games or her flirting with various men may mostly serve the movie’s need for some glamour and excitement but Norma Shearer again refuses to take the easy way out and uses these moments to constantly surprise the audience with new shades of her character which never seem like unconnected attempts to deepen the role beyond the page but instead always create a believable and complete flow. But Norma Shearer always knows when to change Marie, when to develop her and when to let her find new aspects of her own personality – she can challenge Madame du Barry during a ball in front of her father-in-law, she can show her loyalty to her husband when he is made King, she can enjoy his little, awkward moments of affection just as much as the passion of Count von Fersen or fight against the intrigues and gossip of the royal court – and does it all splendidly. Norma Shearer runs the gamut of basically every human emotion in her role and does so with a visible willingness to challenge herself, to prove herself, to display her talents while developing them at the same time. She can be intimidated just as convincingly as she intimated herself, she can be arrogant and loving, scheming and helpless, desperate and hopeful. Most of all, Marie Antoinette is a showcase and Norma Shearer truly delivers, but thankfully without ever turning it into pure attention-seeking but always in harmony with the character.

Norma Shearer takes the viewer on an artistically utterly fascinating journey – and all this even before her real tour-de-force begins. Had Norma Shearer mostly found the human drama in the opulent melodrama so far, she rose to a level of dramatic excellence that she never had before – and few actresses would ever after. From the moment she watches her husband as he loses the respect and loyalty of his troops to the scene when she runs around her room, looking for her clothes to pack as the royal family plans to escape the occupied palace, she slowly, step by step, introduces the human drama that is about to follow. And Norma Shearer not only displays these moments but, like few other performances, is able to create such an atmosphere of helplessness, of confinement and desperation that these final moments of Marie Antoinette become almost unbearable in their tension and devastation. In these scenes, she does not become the messenger of the movie’s story but instead shapes and defines the story herself, adds the tragedy and horror instead of projecting it. Her scene when she watches her husband and her children, knowing that this is their last night together, is completely heartbreaking and with her silent suffering, her ‘smile through tears’, Norma Shearer again proved how much she had developed herself from the theatrical and mannered performer she had been at the beginning of the decade. And later, when she listens to the execution of her husband, Norma Shearer once more displayed her willingness to completely surrender herself to the moment, to the context of the story – her head shaking uncontrollably, her eyes so wide with panic that they seem to fall out at any moment, could have been so overdone but Norma Shearer’s instincts perfectly guided her though the scene. But in the last part of Marie Antoinette, Norma Shearer constantly manages to top herself – her delivery of the line in which she asks the men, who came to pick up her son just moments after the execution of her husband, what they just said is one for the ages. No shrill panic, no over-expression – instead, she delivers her line completely calm, almost amused as if she thinks that these men are joking since she cannot believe that they would take away her son now, at this moment. The way she slowly stands up, hiding her child behind her back, trying to fight the men away is done masterfully and her final acceptance of the inevitable, her comfort of her son and her telling him to be brave while clearly dying inside is certainly one of the most shocking and harrowing scenes in movie history. And in a later scene, she gives one of the most unforgettable displays of silent acting ever put on the screen when Marie, alone in prison, recognizes an old friend coming to say goodbye – her disbelief, her shame, her fear, her desperation all wash across her face in just a few seconds. It’s a towering moment that brings the exhausting journey of Marie Antoinette to a tragic end.

I admit that Norma Shearer’s acting style is not everyone’s cup of tea – very often not even mine. But in this case, she has completely won me over. Her slight smile as Marie Antoinette is brought to the place of execution could have been played so easily but Norma Shearer finds so many different emotions in this expression that it seems impossible to mention them all. And when an image of a young Marie Antoinette, rejoicing about her future as Queen of France, is laid over the scene of Marie Antoinette facing the guillotine, it becomes clear how epic her achievement truly is. For all this, she receives

Best Actress 1938: Margaret Sullavan in "Three Comrades"

In 1938, Margaret Sullavan became a member of a group of many actresses who were not awards magnets in any sense of the word but still well-known and popular actresses who did manage to receive at least one Oscar nomination that would forever enable them to carry the famous expression ‘Academy Award nominated actress’ in front of their name – others are Marlene Dietrich, May Robson, Carole Lombard, Gene Tierney, Dorothy McGuire, Julie Harris, Ava Gardener or Doris Day. In the case of Margaret Sullavan, it’s a small tribute to a very underrated career even though Three Comrades is certainly not among her most well-known performances – rather, her work opposite James Stewart is mostly remembered today, especially her role as Klara Novak in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop around the Corner. But the height of Margaret Sullavan’s critical success did most certainly come in 1938 – not only the Academy recognized her but also the New York Film Critics who gave her their Best Actress Award and apparently the donations for organizations fighting against tuberculosis went up significantly after American audiences watched Margaret Sullavan die from it on the screen. This one nomination maybe did not change the curse of Margaret Sullavan’s career – she never again received another nomination but it adds to her overall reputation as a talented and a strong performer who should not be as forgotten as she probably is today.

Three Comrades tells the story of three friends in post-war Germany and of one woman, Patricia Hollmann, who enters their life and eventually marries one of them. This description already suggests what can be expected of the character of Pat Hollmann – she is the girlfriend, the woman, the wife, the obligatory female presence in a movie mostly about men. And yes, these expectations do come true – Margaret Sullavan plays a part that has been played countless times and sometimes gets nominated for an Oscar even though the actress almost always suffers from the limitations such a role brings – there is almost always hardly any character at all, no development, no depth, especially if the actress misses a strong screen presence to fill some of the emptiness of the character with her own personality. So yes, just like Fay Bainter in White Banners, Margeret Sullavan faced a limited character in Pat Hollman – she mostly exists in relation to the three male characters, she rarely gets a chance to develop her own personality and lacks the typical screen time of a leading player. But – yes, Margaret, here comes the but – sometimes an actress is able to overcome these limitations and not only fill the part with her own spark but actually add to the character, bring more layers to it and create something beautiful to watch – despite all the obstacles. And this is what Magaret Sullavan did as Pat Hollmann in Three Comrades. There is something about this visibly intelligent and thoughtful actress that enabled her to create something very tragic, disturbing, moving and captivating in her character. Her voice, her eyes and her looks somehow turn her into a mix of Bette Davis, Romy Schneider and Greta Garbo and even though she may lack all the fascinating qualities that these actresses usually display, she is still much more than just ‘the woman’ who adds some emotional tragedy to an otherwise rather straight and direct story.

In her role, Margaret Sullavan uses the ultimate fate of Pat Hollmann to great effect because she handles it with so much subtlety – Pat knows that she is dying and this is clearly and obviously influencing her life and her character but it does not prevent her from finding joy and happiness. Margaret Sullavan demonstrates how Pat always seems to think inside her head if something or someone is worth her time since she cannot waste it – death is always flowing above her but never dominating her. From the moment she gets out of a car at the beginning of Three Comrades, Margaret Sullavan makes it clear that Pat is not a two-dimensional character but a deeply troubled and at the same time strangely uplifting person. In her role, Margaret Sullavan does not truly deepen Pat by suggesting at countless untold backstories but rather by simply emphasizing her present and her thoughts about the future and what it might bring to her – and what will remain unreachable forever. In some way, Margerat Sullavan keeps the character of Pat constantly in the dark – she rarely opens up and shows a more intimate side but mostly keeps her feelings outside but simultaneously, Margaret Sullavan achieved to actually do show a deeper and more meaningful side to Pat simply by focusing on her obvious worries and the pain she is carrying around inside. She shows that Pat is neither an empty shell waiting for the inevitable end nor a woman who is destined to get everything out of life before it is over – rather she portrays her with a serious but also loving side that covers a hidden melancholia under it. Pat has accepted her fate – death may constantly be on her mind but she learnt to push that thought aside even though it is never completely gone. Pat is also a woman whose fate has made her strong but also lonely – she clearly longs for an emotional connection with somebody but she also feels guilty because she knows the position she is in and how it will affect anybody close to her. That way, Margaret Sullavan avoided to turn Pat into a victim of her own fate and instead crafted her independently from the ultimate outcome of the story without downplaying it at the same time.

Margaret Sullavan’s performance in Three Comrades mostly consists of two tasks – add the necessary amount of tragedy and create a female love interest. And she not only fulfilled the first task but thanks to her strong characterization and her mysterious screen presence was able to add a constant amount of secrecy to her role. And this also helped her to become more than a female love interest – she never lets the male characters of the story, even though they are its center and constantly redefine it, overshadow her work or her character but uses all her scenes very wisely to create strong presence that is able to maybe not dominate the movie but be one of its strongest assets nonetheless. She lets Pat become a whirlwind of different emotions and reactions but always very calmly and contained. And she also chose a very simple yet very effective way to let Pat become more than ‘the woman’ of the story – by letting her become the fourth comrade. Margaret Sullavan is not the typical love interest as she is neither charming in the usual sense of the word nor overly erotic and not even actively trying to get married or even get attention. She clearly did not expect love to come to her and Margaret Sullavan never portrays Pat as a truly desirable woman since she constantly downplays her appeal. Her chemistry with all actors is always more that of a friend and she’s the kind of woman that would never break up a group of men but instead becomes a part of it She perfectly fits into the group of male characters and that way displays an even greater appeal – she manages to be completely natural, relaxed and non-caring which beautifully contrasts with the seriousness of the part. In her role, Margaret Sullavan is very mature and manages to be both light and seriousness. This way, she was able to be a romantic dreamer, a best friend and a true companion.

The biggest miracle in Margaret Sullavan’s performance is the fact that she was actually able to find so many layers in her role because, as mentioned at the beginning, it is a very thin and underwritten part. But, considering the nature of the role, she does achieve various beautiful successes that may never turn into something truly amazing but are still remarkable nonetheless. But most of all, Margaret Sullavan truly created some unforgettable moments during the last part of her performance – her quiet acceptance, her beautiful display of love and happiness, her ability to find so much magic in such a tragic scene is truly heartbreaking. And even surprising since the inevitability of that scene had been clear right from the start.

In the end, Margaret Sullavan’s performance is a beautiful example of an actress taking what could basically be considered a throwaway-role and filling it with life, meaning and much more. She shows that Pat Hollmann is a woman who is longing for something else while having accepted her tragedy at the same time. Her unique screen presence that helps her to appear so completely mature and decisive while also emphasizing the emotional desperation of Pat Hollmann is combined very effectively with her instincts for the role and so resulted in a maybe still limited but much deeper and more captivating performance than expected. For this, she receives

Best Actress 1938: Fay Bainter in "White Banners"

It’s certainly very interesting that so many actors and actresses who made Oscar-history have basically become completely forgotten by now. Luise Rainer was the first actress ever to win two acting awards – but apart from people actually interested in the Oscars, who does actually remember her? And the name Fay Bainter isn’t exactly common knowledge, either. But she, too, was the first one to achieve a very remarkable feat that has been copied only a few times since 1938 – being nominated in the leading and the supporting category in the same year. And in the case of Fay Bainter, this is even more special because she is foremost one of those typical supporting actresses who almost never got a chance to truly shine in a leading role – other wonderful actresses like Gale Sondergaard, Mercedes McCambridge, Alice Brady, Jane Darwell, Ethel Barrymore, Anne Revere, Gladys Cooper and many more know about this, too. And so it’s refreshing to see Fay Bainter not only being given a leading part but also receiving an Oscar nomination for it – she was neither an overnight sensation in 1938 nor a veteran finally getting her share of the spotlight but instead simply an actress who managed to impress enough Academy members with her two performances to earn two nominations. Nothing more and nothing less. In the supporting category, she won the Oscar for playing Bette Davis’s worrying and suffering aunt in Jezebel while her performance as a mysterious woman who becomes a cook and housekeeper for an overworked science teacher and his family earned her a leading nod (which she lost against Jezebel herself, Bette Davis). All this makes her nominated work in 1938 surely a little bit more interesting than it otherwise might be – but at the end, it’s all about judging her work independently. So, what about her performance in White Banners?

Anybody who has seen Jezebel (and I suppose that’s more than those who have seen White Banners) knows that Fay Bainter is a very warm and earthy, but also elegant and dignified actress who is able to express a lot of inner pain and troubles with heartbreaking facial work that never is too obvious nor too subtle – and that way extremely effective. Jezebel is mostly a one-woman-show for Bette Davis but Fay Bainter’s sad face as she either watches Julie disgrace herself in various situations or worries about her well-being is among the most memorable aspects of the entire production. But Fay Bainter is also an actress whose effects seem to be stronger when her appearances don’t dominate her movie – she is able to create very memorable moments but she also suffers from a certain limitation that very often reduces her performances to two different expressions in which she either looks sad or gives an encouraging smile. In a supporting role, these limitations are not too noticeable because they are enough to fill her performance with enough depth and energy to bring her character to life but in a larger part, a feeling of repetition starts to grow after a while. In the case of White Banners, this feeling is strengthened by the fact that the part of Hannah Parmalee adds to this impression since it’s a role that benefits from Fay Bainter’s acting style but also even more underlines the limitations of both the performance and the character. This means that Fay Bainter fills the small range of the role with her beautiful acting style and screen presence – but does not widen her in any way. Because of all this, this performance might easily have turned into a two-dimensional and narrow portrayal, resting on the sentiment of the movie – but Fay Bainter thankfully knew how to use her own limitation to her advantage. So yes, her acting style may feel underdeveloped at times but at the same time she excelled within these limitations – combined with her warmth, charm and loveliness, she was able to give a very mature, loving and touching performance that works in great harmony with the movie’s sentimental nature without feeling like a manipulating attempt to win the audience’s sympathy.

In some ways, the character of Hannah Parmalee resembles the most beloved nanny of all times, the magical Mary Poppins who appears out of nowhere to take care of a chaotic family. Hannah Parmalee, too, appears out of nowhere as she suddenly stands in front of the house of Mr. and Mrs. Ward – she actually only wants to sell apple peelers but just a few moments later she is already cooking the dinner and washing the dishes. In these early moments, Fay Bainter is surprisingly honest in her portrayal – the woman who is walking into the Ward’s home isn’t some kind of saintly angel but a worn-out, cold and exhausted person who has obviously been living a hard life so far. Unfortunately, this interpretation soon gets lost when the movie starts to treat Hannah exactly as this saintly angel, a woman who not only helps Mrs. Ward to run her home but also becomes a guidance for their daughter and a constant voice of encouragement for Mr. Ward who is inventing an ‘iceless icebox’. Fay Bainter does all this with an expected performance that misses every bit of complexity but what she misses in depth, she makes up for with warmth and charm. The character of Hannah Parmalee only exists to improve the lives of the Wardens but Fay Bainter truly understands to fill all these little moments of her performance with her own loveable screen presence. She is like a combination of a wise and warm grandmother and a supportive best friend and even though her facial work may often seem like a never-ending repetition, she still avoids to lose her grip on the character simply by displaying this support and this worrying with honesty and seriousness. Fay Bainter may to a certain extent miss a needed spark that would enable her to portray more different emotions at the same time and that way find a little bit more complexity in Hannah, but she still knows how to portray these single emotions and thoughts that are the driving force behind her character. When Hannah convinces Mr. Ward to go on with his work, with a fierce determination in her voice, Fay Bainter shows how much strength is actually hidden behind her dignified face and her calm voice and in her work, it is always believable that Hannah may have such strong and yet so subtle influence over the other characters of the story. Hannah may be very selfless and noble but never to a point where she appears to be lacking her own personality. And she is also completely believable in all her worries about the Warden’s daughter and she always knows how to create her character accordingly to the seriousness of the situation. She can be standing outside the house in the cold, worrying about the health of a close person, or sell the old furniture of the Warden’s to get them some extra money – all simple moments but somehow enlightened by Fay Bainter’s beautiful simplicity. She may never surprise in these moments or create a truly three-dimensional character but to watch her worry and suffer is somehow incredibly heartbreaking because her face was simply made for these kind of close-ups. She perfectly knows how portray her character with the utmost dignity without making her preachy or arrogant.

But step by step, White Banners reveals that there is actually something hiding underneath Hannah’s constant friendliness and support – years ago she gave birth to a child out of wedlock and is now trying to find some closeness to the boy who has turned into a young man and the boyfriend of the Ward’s daughter. This storyline allows Fay Bainter to actually widen Hannah a bit and give her some extra looks of sorrow and grief that she doesn’t play in the usual way but this time tries to hide, soften and cover. When Hannah meets the father of the boy again, Fay Bainter, just like in the earlier scene with Mr. Ward, shows that she can act with much more fire and energy if she wants to – her plea to him to keep quiet about the boy’s real extraction, her determination to remain unknown is striking to watch and provides the movie’s best moments.

When Hannah leaves the household of the Ward’s again in the end, it becomes clear that she is, after all, not truly Mary Poppins – meaning that Hannah is the kind of character that seems to be forgotten the moment she leaves the scene because Fay Bainter always shines whenever she is on the screen but does not have a lasting, truly unforgettable appeal. Yes, singular moments are hard to forget (just like with her work in Jezebel) but these are always individual scenes that are highlightened by the context of the story – but the character herself feels strangely separated from these moments, remaining rather pale and slowly becoming forgotten. Fay Bainter does have the power to be truly memorable – but somehow the character of Hannah does not.

Overall, Fay Bainter sprinkles with charm and warmth and it is not hard to believe that her smile, her support and her understanding can brighten the live of anybody she ever meets. It’s neither a complex performance nor a complex role but Fay Bainter does find the right tone, the right face and the right approach to this character, creating some beautiful moments, making her actions and intentions believable and not overdoing the sentiment of the story – she’s strong, believable and loving. For this, she receives




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Best Actress 1938: Wendy Hiller in "Pygmalion"

The story of Professor Higgins who makes a bet that he is able to turn the common flower-girl Eliza Doolittle into a true lady by teaching her to speak perfect English is probably well-known all around the world – but not necessarily because of the original play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw but rather because of the later musical version My Fair Lady which is among the most beloved and successful musicals of all time. And if that wasn’t enough, the movie version of My Fair Lady took home 8 Academy Awards and connected the characters of Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle forever with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. But a ‘beloved’ movie does not automatically indicate ‘acclaimed movie’. Yes, My Fair Lady did sweep the awards in 1964 and critics adored the way George Cuckor brought the musical extravaganza to the screen but today, My Fair Lady is often considered one of the more overrated movie classics and especially the performance of Audrey Hepburn is often called one of the weakest efforts of her career – while critics in 1964 mostly complained about her non-singing, movie fans today often criticize her inability to become a truly believable flower girl because her charm, poise and grace are always visible and her attempts at a Cockney accent are often considered too over-the-top. Because of all this, Wendy Hiller’s performance in the original 1938 movie version of Pygmalion is often considered a superior effort, a kind of insiders’ tip since she was not a glamorous star but a British character actress who could be both – the common and the transformed Eliza. Do I agree with this? Let’s find out!

Right from the start, Wendy Hiller shows that her physics are just right for the part of Eliza Doolittle – her hard but strangely captivating face, her strong voice and her whole body language serve the character well and craft Eliza Doolittle as the common, uneducated flower girl she is supposed to be. Wendy Hiller does not possess the natural sweetness that Audrey Hepburn displayed in 1964 but Pygmalion and My Fair Lady actually strive for different goals – even though My Fair Lady consists of basically all the original dialogue (with some songs added in between), it’s still a much brighter and more entertaining look at the story of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, filled with more focus on a possible romantic relationship between these two characters. In 1938, Pygmalion appears much darker, more grown-up and neither Wendy Hiller nor Leslie Howard intended to turn their characters into loveable outsiders. Her Eliza Doolittle isn’t the kind of amusing girl she would become in the musical version but instead a more realistic and flawed character, a woman who does her best to survive on the streets of London and doesn’t care about how she might seem to others. In this aspect, Wendy Hiller clearly understood Eliza Doolittle and she can easily be admired for being so honest in her portrayal of both the early, unrefined Eliza and later the more self-assured, independent Eliza who not only found a new way of speaking but also a new way of thinking. She also never overdid any aspects in the transformation process – again, My Fair Lady is a grand spectacle and so it made sense that Eliza Doolittle turned into a beautiful, elegant lady but Pygmalion is much smaller and tries to be more realistic and because of that Wendy Hiller did the right thing by always keeping true to the original Eliza – in her work, Eliza Doolittle discovered a new world and a new life but this does not mean that she completely changed. There is a new intelligence in her, a new view on the world and also Professor Higgins but she is not a new woman who completely cut all the connections to her old life and her old existence. On the contrary, Wendy Hiller used the former life of Eliza Doolittle as a foundation for her transformation and displays that Eliza did not completely change but rather develop, becoming a combination of her old life and the new life Professor Higgins taught her.

All of this does sound as if Wendy Hiller did indeed succeed in turning the character of Eliza Doolittle into a wonderful triumph – but there is also a different side. Wendy Hiller may know what to do with Eliza Doolittle – but she often did not know how to do it. Her own appearance and screen presence and her clear understanding of her material helped her to give a performance that is certainly right from a technical point-of-view – but as right as her work seems on the surface, it feels rather shockingly empty on the inside which puts Wendy Hiller in the interesting situation of inhabiting the character without acting the character. Most of all, she constantly seems to rush through her role as if she wanted to get off the set as quickly as possible. This way, she missed almost every chance the script offered her to either deepen the character of Eliza or underlining the tone of the story. Actually, both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller miss almost every single chance for humor or drama that the script is offering to them. Neither has the ability to let a joke unfold its effect, going from one line to the other without barely any pause between them, either over- or underplaying their dialogue and that way missing their chance to turn their characters into full human beings. Wendy Hiller behaves like Eliza Doolittle and speaks like Eliza Doolittle but she never becomes Eliza Doolittle. Her acting stays too much on the surface of the character and the story which results in a performance that never realizes all the possible potentials that were given to it. Wendy Hiller often focuses on one single emotion or feeling per scene, overlooking the drama in comedy moments or forgetting the comedy during the drama and that way hardly doing anything at all. She walks through the movie with all the right movies but she mostly feels like a disciplined dancer who knows all the right movements but forgets to put any meaning into them.

Pygmalion mostly suffers from the fact that Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard have absolutely no noticeable chemistry. Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison knew how to work together to show two people disliking each other immensely but still growing closer and closer together. Neither Leslie Howard nor Wendy Hiller achieved the same in Pygmalion. Their constant fights and insults come and go without every defining effect since both seem to act almost independent from each other. Of course, it should normally not be necessary that these two characters develop a strong relationship or that the actors portraying them develop a believable chemistry simply because Pygmalion is originally not supposed to be a love story. Professor Higgins may show Eliza Doolittle a world beyond Covent Garden and beyond the limits of her own mind but he also symbolizes a certain type of man, of class who cannot accept human beings unless they are a product of his own demands. It’s a fight of classes and of the sexes, and a very serious one in which both characters try to keep their dignity and their own point-of-views. So yes, Pygmalion is not the romantic My Fair Lady but a certain kind of chemistry between two leads in a movie is necessary, especially if the relationship between these two lead characters is the foundation of the whole movie. And, of course, the fact that Pygmalion is not the same romantic story as My Fair Lady is only half the truth – because even though My Fair Lady is often accused of its ending in which Eliza Doolittle returns to Professor Higgins, this ending had already been added to the story in the movie version of 1938. But in this case, it comes so sudden, so unexpected and even…unwanted. The way Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard portrayed their characters, there is basically no reward in seeing these two come together at the end. It may be that Wendy Hiller wanted to portray a more independent and dominant Eliza but she also had to consider what was expected of her during the final moments of the story. Maybe this suddenness even makes sense because the question always remains if these two characters will ever be able to stay together but this is a question for the future – as for the presence, Wendy Hiller simply failed to build Eliza’s final decision on any believable foundation.

The whole process of turning Eliza Doolittle into a lady is done without any truly interesting moments – oh, they would be there but both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller fail to see them in their work. Only when Eliza Doolittle for the first time ‘tries’ her new personality during a tea party of Professor Higgin’s mother does Wendy Hiller find a shining moment. Her awkward delivery of Eliza’s learned lines and finally the story about her aunt and those who ‘had done her in’ shows that, if she took more careful attention at her material, she was able to bring a more captivating side to Eliza. But this one scene remains the only highlight in her work and even during her later, more dramatic moments she again feels too much like an actress reading her lines since she puts almost no feeling or emotion into her words. This way, the fate and the awakening of Eliza Doolittle becomes never as interesting as it might have been. In a way, the audience might look at Eliza Doolittle like Professor Higgins does – a bit appalled, slightly amused, but always distant and never truly interested.

Wendy Hiller achieved to be both completely logical but also strangely inadequate as Eliza Doolittle. The role seems to both over- and underwhelm her and as a consequence she stayed on one note for most of the time. She saves her performance in parts with her own personality that is certainly right for the role and her own instincts which make her mostly do the right things (but unfortunately the wrong way). Most of all, Wendy Hiller is a too subtle actress for this kind of character. The technical aspects of her performance may be fine but she never truly connects – maybe her work would have impressed more with the distance of a stage than the personal intimacy of a movie. So, for her work that is both correct and wrong, in which her instincts are always right but her acting mostly distant, uninspired and shallow, she receives an overall grade of

Best Actress 1938: Bette Davis in "Jezebel"

After Dangerous won her an Oscar she mostly considered a ‘consolation price’ for not having been nominated for her star-marking performance in Of Human Bondage the year before, Bette Davis suffered the same fate Luise Rainer would suffer two years later – finding that an Oscar win was considered a good way by producers to take an acclaimed actress and give her weak material in the hope that critics would not notice the weakness because of the involvement of an Oscar-winning actress. Luise Rainer surrendered to this treatment and left Hollywood for good only a short time after she had become the first two-time winning actress in Oscar history (of course, her personal problems and dislike for the Hollywood way of life did not exactly encourage her to stay either…). Bette Davis also left Hollywood – but only to fight against the studio system that was forcing her to play parts she did not want and were not worth her talents as an actress. Even though she did not win the legal battle that followed her departure to Great Britain, she received better material nonetheless and would start a basically unparalleled streak of financial and critical successes which brought her a record five consecutive Best Actress nominations. At the beginning of this stood Jezebel, the movie that would win Bette Davis her second and final Oscar (it certainly must be wonderful to win two Oscars so early in your career but it can’t be much fun to receive unsuccessful nomination after unsuccessful nomination after that) for her portrayal of the head-strong, popular but also manipulative Southern Belle Julie Marsden.

Jezebel seems to be a movie that is always standing in the shadow of a much bigger, more spectacular and more famous saga of the old South that amazed the world one year later – Gone with the Wind. And yes, the comparisons are easy to make – a headstrong Southern belle who ruins the lives of many because of her selfish character, the love of her life who is married to another woman and the whole structure of the movie which puts the actions and doings of this woman into its center. Even David O. Selznick wrote to Jack Warner how unpleased he was about Jezebel since he saw it as a movie that featured a lot of scenes and characters similar to his upcoming Gone with the Wind. Well, he surely didn’t need to worry – until this day, Gone with the Wind is the classic of classics, a timeless masterpiece and while Jezebel surely has its fans and admirers, it doesn’t even come close to its ‘bigger brother’. And Vivien Leigh has also basically defined the character of the Southern Belle so strongly that hardly any other approach at this character has a chance to shine simply because the comparisons will always be made. But Bette Davis did, after all, attack this kind of role one year before Vivien Leigh did and even though Julie Marsden is no Scarlett O’Hara, Bette Davis was given very strong material and brought the character of Julie to life with a very impressive combination of fierce strength and tender loveliness. So maybe a comparison with Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara would not do Bette Davis’s performance any favors – but performances should only be judged on their own merit and considering that Bette Davis was entering the most celebrated period of her work, it’s no surprise that her performance is strong, memorable and captivating.

Bette Davis was an actress who could easily go overboard. She knew that she was different in her willingness to attack all her parts with uncompromising honesty and dedication – and she was very eager to make sure that everybody else knew so, too. That’s why very often her performances tend to go over-the-top because Bette Davis may have known what she could do but she did not really know how to use her gifts – she did not seem to have the instincts that told her when to hold back or when to decide that ‘less is more’. Instead, she always wanted to display that her characters are larger than life and that she had no problems to show her characters as unpleasant, appalling or plain shocking. This talent and this willingness of Bette Davis was both her greatest advantage and her greatest flaw – because in the hands of a director who was not able to handle Bette Davis and guide her in a way in which she used her instincts and talents without exaggerating them, her performances could easily enter the dangerous territory of incredibility, fulsomeness and overall rather resemble an out-of-control wild animal than a talented actress. Because of this, it was certainly a wonderful coincidence that Jezebel marked the beginning of Bette Davis’s collaboration with director William Wyler. Like few others, William Wyler knew how to handle Bette Davis and how to use all her talents and gifts for the advantage of the movie and the character she was playing. It might have often taken up to 50 take to get a scene right but Bette Davis apparently did not mind because she knew that he was guiding her the right way and therefore also respected his decisions. A less skilled director might easily have let Bette Davis ‘do her thing’ and considering the emotional structure of Julie Marsden, this might have led to an over-the-top and uncomfortable portrayal but the combination of Wyler and Davis turned out to be a wonderful success that they would repeat later with The Letter and The Little Foxes.

Jezebel is certainly a star-vehicle – Fay Bainter won a well-deserved Oscar for her supporting role as Julie’s worrying aunt but the whole movie is completely focused on its leading lady, highlighting her performance and her eyes at every possible moment and using the supporting cast as one huge vessel that only exists to feed her lines and let her character go through various different scenes of emotional intensity. But Bette Davis was indeed an actress who could carry such tasks – because in 1938 she already completed trusted her own talents and the strength of her own work. She knew what she could do and William Wyler helped her to do what would work. So many scenes are displayed with an intriguing subtlety by Bette Davis that works much better than any grand emotions would ever have – her reaction to Pres’s introduction of his wife which she only registers with a slightly surprised ‘Your wife?’ while everything is happening behind her eyes or her way of manipulating Pres to take her to the ball in her red dress by questioning his ability to defend her honor are moments that turn Julie into a very engaging character who is able to fascinate the audience despite her questionable actions. Bette Davis constructs Julie as a woman who is too confident of herself and constantly likes to tease those around her, especially Pres. She uses every chance to question his love or find new ways to test his devotion as if she is trying to make sure that she is always ahead of him, unwilling to become a ‘little wife’. Julie is a woman who is unable to control herself – she often reacts out of spite, out of anger or out of frustration. In this way, Jezebel often treats the central character in a rather disappointing way – everything about Jezebel seems to indicate that Julie is to blame for all that is happening and that she deserves every bit of misery in her life. But Bette Davis succeeds in showing Julie’s inner depth and how she is unable to stop herself, overestimating her own power and influence and that way keeps the character’s dignity and fascination alive. Bette Davis clearly has her fun with this role – maybe because Julie, too, likes to do what she feels is right and likes to test the limits of her own abilities. When she arrives late for her own party and then enters the room in her riding dress, it's a perfect symbiosis of character and actress loving what they do at this moment.

Bette Davis knows how to guide Julie through her many personal ups and downs. The look on her face when she enters the ball room and slowly changes from spiteful pride to real fear is done beautifully and her close-ups also turn this whole sequence into the movie’s most memorable moment. Her dance with Pres is basically the end of her life as it used to be – she gambled and she lost. She lost the respect of the town, her own power, her self-confidence and the love of her fiancée. The movie again may take too much pleasure in humiliating Julie at this moment but Bette Davis knows how to play the scene without letting Julie become a defeated victim of her own doings. And in the following scene she shows how Julie is again unwilling to bend her own character to prevent the inevitable break-up with Pres. Bette Davis especially knows how to combine the fake pride of Julie with her hurt feelings and desperation and that way makes the later scenes when she kneels in front of Pres and asks him to forgive her in an attempt to win him back both chilling and believable – Bette Davis has so far shown a lot of strength in Julie but also weakness and the recognition of her own flaws. But the vulnerability of Julie is never visible for a long time as the arrival of Pres with his new wife again turn her into the old, manipulating and short-tempered woman that has already ruined her own life once before. Bette Davis biggest accomplishment in the second half of Jezebel is that she never makes it unbelievable that Julie does indeed love Pres – the scene in the garden could easy have seemed like an attempt by a spoiled child to get a precious toy only because another child is playing with it. But Bette Davis always shows that, behind her strong pride and anger, Julie does act out of love and the hopelessness of her own situation. Moments like her singing with the slaves or her attempt to prevent a duel between two men only emphasize the impression that Julie is constantly acting both out of honesty and resentfulness.

The ‘Southern Belle’ is certainly a great character for every actress. It allows her to be lovely and dangerous, honest and pretending, charming and repellent, fascinating and disappointing. And to make all this work, the actress needs to display a huge amount of personal strength and personality because she needs to make it understandable why this woman always gets away with her doings, why she always becomes the center of attention and why she can basically manipulate everyone the way she wants without hardly any consequences. Bette Davis certainly had this overpowering screen presence and she used it very wisely for the part of Julie – but sometimes she did not fully grasp the complexities and demands of the role. This means that she knew how to project the both manipulating and lovely woman and the structure of Jezebel turns Julie into an ‘outsider’ rather often as most people mostly see through her intentions but Bette Davis sometimes did not fully give reason to the still very important popularity of Julie Marsden. Even in her most relaxed and charming moments, Bette Davis’s Julie appears to be mostly acting, even looking down on those around her – while this is certainly true to her character, a bit more convincing joviality at this moment would have been needed. It seems that another comparison with Vivien Leigh is necessary – she perfectly understood how to create Scarlett O’Hara as a woman who is clearly playing with everyone around her but possessed all the necessary character traits to get away with it. Bette Davis’s own powerful screen presence sometimes seemed to get in the way of the delicacy of Julie Marsden.

But in the case of Bette Davis in Jezebel, these are complaints on a high level. Her overall take on this character is spellbinding, entertaining and unforgettable. Bette Davis’s mysterious screen personality may have prevented her from creating a complete Southern Belle but it turned other moments, even simple ones like walking into a bank, into movie magic. And because of her ability to show various different aspects in Julie’s character while also displaying an honest core, she was also able to make the final moments of Jezebel believable without turning them into hollow pathos. Her overall performance does not quite make the cut to a 4,5 but she gets as close to it as possible. So, her beautiful and enchanting performance receives a very strong

Best Actress 1938

The next year will be 1938 and the nominees were

Fay Bainter in White Banners

Bette Davis in Jezebel

Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion

Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Margaret Sullavan in Three Comrades