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. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
40. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 

41. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
42. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
43. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
44. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
45. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
46. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
47. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
48. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
49. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
50. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)

51. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
52. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
53. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Martha Scott as Emily Webb in Our Town

Compared to my initial ranking of Martha Scott’s performance (1940 was actually the first year I ever reviewed on this blog…memories…), I decided to upgrade her a little bit as there are some moments in her performance that are truly beautiful but she also faces various challenges that prevent her from going any higher on my list.

The character of Emily Webb is certainly one of the most odd entries in history of the Best Actress category. It is a very well-known part in a very famous play so it makes sense that the Oscars recognized her when the play was turned into a movie in 1940 but at the same time she is part of the overall concept of Our Town that doesn’t really present characters but rather puts them in a larger context and mostly asks them to becomes symbols for the play’s message. I admit that I don’t know a lot about Our Town but having seen the movie and a couple of staged productions on YouTube, I see that these are not characters that we are supposed to be involved with but rather characters that are telling us a very specific message – in the case of Emily, it is the message of living your life as if every day was your last, of seeing the beauty around you and treasuring those few precious moments we have on tis earth. Therefore Emily becomes a memorable messenger but she never becomes a character. Emily possesses no depth, no true inner life and no character arc – and this case, this is even wanted and therefore doesn’t allow Martha Scott to do anything else than become the “body with a voice” that carries the playwright’s message.

Apart from these limited opportunities in creating Emily, Martha Scott also faces the problem of a very limited screen time that doesn’t give her the chance to expand Emily in any way. Of course, the amount of screen time does not matter but rather what you do with it but as mentioned just now, Martha Scott didn’t really have much to do with it. 1940 was an interesting race, with newcomer Martha Scott in her film debut up against Hollywood legends Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine and winner Ginger Rogers. The prestige of the movie version of Our Town certainly helped Martha Scott to be carried over in the Oscar race and most likely there was hope to create a new star. This hope didn’t turn into reality as Martha Scott was never seen at the Oscars again and also her subsequent film career never turned her into a true star (though supporting parts in the classics The Twelve Commandments and Ben-Hur did secure her legacy). The fact that Martha Scott was able to break into the leading category also shows that the love story of Emily and George became the most cherished aspect of the movie – Martha Scott is not on the screen for a lot of time in a movie that is a true ensemble piece with various characters and their own stories but the love story is the red thread that lingers during the entire movie and the only real plot line that feels to move from point A to point B. This, in addition to her final scene which is certainly the most famous scene of the play, surely helped Martha Scott to enter the leading category.

But what about the performance itself? How did Martha Scott interpret a role that possesses so little character? In this way, Martha Scott actually succeeded very well. Emily Webb is the ideal American girl, smart and beautiful, marrying the boy from next-door to become the perfect wife and mother. And Martha Scott does truly inhabit this aspect – she is a very charming actress and she also as no problem to play a teenager who experiences love for the first time. She communicates the unconditional love that Emily has for her parents, her hesitation opposite George and her understanding of herself as a person. Also, it is nice to see how Martha Scott, who had originated the role of Emily on the stage and acted here in front of the camera for the first time, so easily adjusted herself to his new medium – her acting is very subtle and quiet, her close-ups never exaggerated and she clearly understands what acting in a movie demands opposite to acting on the stage. But even with these positive aspects, there is still few highlights that can actually be pointed out. She is lovely when she talks to William Holden’s George in front of their house and they talk about their future plans and has the right tone when she asks her mother if she is pretty but these are all moments that any competent actress could realize and the limitations of the part also make it difficult to build any emotional connection to Emily. However, in one small moment, she truly shines and is able to create Emily as a person and also establish her position in the overall messaging – when her father catches her late at night when she is not in bed but rather looking out the window, she delivers the lines “I just can’t sleep yet, Papa. The moonlight’s so wonderful…” with an almost overwhelming beauty. It’s just a small moment but here she establishes how Emily cherishes life and how she already sees things that others don’t and how she understands the wonders that are happening around us all the time without us noticing them. But again, it’s only a small moment and you have to wonder if two beautiful line deliveries are really enough to carry an actress to an Oscar nomination. Because what’s also visible in these moments so far is that while Martha Scott understands her part and plays it accordingly and also displays the right innocent charm, she is not the kind of actress that demands attention. It’s easy to imagine producers in 1940 casting a rather established actress like Ginger Rogers or Olivia de Havilland in this part or it might have been a comeback role for Luise Rainer if she had still been interested in Hollywood and audiences had still been interested in her. Of course, I won’t complain that Martha Scott got the chance to preserve her performance for all time – so many stage performances only exist in memory or in photos so it’s wonderful to see that Martha Scott’s work has not been lost. But still, she doesn’t possess that true star quality that could make Emily more interesting simply by the presence of the actress playing her – obviously, Emily is not supposed to be kind of girl who is a star but in the structure of Our Town, she is the one that in the end will become the one who takes us on the most important journey of the story and Martha Scott lacks this quality that makes it easy to follow her. Maybe this is also one of the reasons why she didn’t establish herself as a well-known leading lady after her first success on the screen.

I can imagine that Martha Scott was a stronger presence as Emily on the stage – simply because the idea of Our Town works better in this environment. Our Town doesn’t really ask the audience to become involved but rather to observe and understand and this is always easier on the stage since this environment is more obviously make-believe while it’s easier to get lost in a movie. This also affects Martha Scott’s final scene even if this one also presents her greatest success. Up to that moment, it’s hard to understand what exactly made Martha Scott stand out enough to garner an Oscar nomination (an earlier scene where she and George confess their love for each other was also a slight misstep in her work as her attempts to underplay Emily’s feeling resulted rather in the opposite) but when Emily apparently dies in childbirth and then re-visits her sixteenth birthday only to lament how much she lost and how much she will miss the ordinariness of life with all its beauty, Martha Scott finally gets the chance to stand out and create some unforgettable moments. On the plus side of this scene it is to say that Martha Scott again avoided any exaggerated acting in this moment and express all her pain and love through her face and her voice that slowly begins to crumble as Emily realizes “So all this was going on…and we never noticed”. She evokes a certain pain these scenes comes very unexpected and suddenly and therefore enhances the effect of her speech. It is certainly the only true unforgettable moment in the movie and in her work but it is enough to leave a satisfying impression after having made the viewer wonder about the purpose of the character for so long. In this scene, Martha Scott inhabits the message of the play very clearly without making it too obvious – she never gives the impression of delivering this message but rather makes it appear that it is Emily who is having these thoughts and feelings. It is a beautiful and touching moment that stays with the viewer or a long time. On the minus side, there are again some obstacles that make it very hard for Martha Scott: first of all, the scene, while impressive, does again not really need any character – the scene itself happens rather out of context and in some way could be delivered by anyone. Because Emily is such a small presence during Our Town, it never really feels that this is her personal loss and so her speech does not really feel like a part of her. Obviously, Martha Scott did deliver it beautifully but is doesn’t really seem to be part of her creation of Emily as a person. Also, the medium of motion pictures again seems to be working against her – on the stage, it’s easy to imagine how the losses of Emily overwhelm the audience. In the movie, her ghost-like appearance that sometimes make it hard to clearly see her face and the fact she often just hovers in the background lessen the impact of her monologue. Personally, I don’t think the fact that the movie changed the ending of the play truly matters in regards to her performance – if Emily dies or lives in the last scene does not really influence her speech before. But still, the scene never truly feels as affecting as it could be – and I finally understood why when I saw the stage production with Penelope Ann Miller in a Tony-nominated (in the featured actress category) performance as Emily Webb online. In her performance, that final scene finally displayed all its potential and suddenly it became obvious just how devasting this monologue and this speech can truly be and how it can truly evoke an overwhelming feeling of loss and regret in just a few moments. Martha Scott’s approach to the part was obviously different, less emotional and more intellectual which also works on its own but doesn’t seem to grab that scene so completely.

So, it’s a performance where it’s hard to point out anything negative as Martha Scott did a lot with a role that barely exists as a true person but the effect sometimes still feels too small. Still, the beauty of her approach and her final scenes are enough to give her this position in my ranking.   

YOUR Best Actress of 1940

Thanks to everyone who voted!

Here are the results of the poll for Best Actress 1940:

1. Ginger Rogers - Kitty Foyle (15 votes)

2. Joan Fontaine - Rebecca (9 votes)

3. Katharine Hepburn - The Philadelphia Story (8 votes)

4. Bette Davis - The Letter (1 vote)

5. Martha Scott - Our Town (0 votes)

Best Actress 1940 - The resolution!

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

5. Martha Scott in Our Town

Martha Scott clearly felt very comfortable in her role but there was nothing she could do nor that she was allowed to do to find any kind of woman in the thin creation that is Emily Webb. A beautiful performance, turned into an indecisive miscue by the screenplay and the direction.

4. Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle

Ginger gives a surprisingly strong performance in this dramatic role but the banality of the script makes it hard for her in this competition. Still, Ginger carries the movie beautifully.

3. Bette Davis in The Letter

A typical, intense and strong performance from the great Bette Davis. After one of the greatest openings ever her character keeps us fascinated until the dark end.

2. Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story

Katharine Hepburn does everything right in a part that fits her like a glove. Her combination of drama and comedy is a joy to watch and her chemistry with Cary Grant and James Stewart makes this movie one of the all-time classics.

1. Joan Fontaine in Rebecca

Joan is pitch-perfect as the young second Mrs. de Winter who is haunted by the memory of her predecessor. She creates a fascinating character, always tense, always insecure. A flawless performance that carries one of the greatest movies of all time.

Best Actress 1940: Martha Scott in "Our Town"

It’s always interesting to find one nominee among the five contenders for Best Actress whose name is not as familiar today anymore as it maybe used to be when the nominations were first announced. Because the level or popularity of a certain performance is certainly in no way an indication for its quality and, who knows, maybe some underseen gem is hiding behind this unknown name. Expectations are completely open when neither the actress nor her acting style nor her movie are truly familiar. And in a line-up that included Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine and Ginger Rogers, the fifth nominee Martha Scott can easily be called ‘the forgotten nominee’. To be fair, she is not a truly forgotten nominee like other names this category has seen (Maggie McNamara? Ann Harding? Diana Wynyard?) – she played Charlton Heston’s mother in two of Hollywood most well-known epics, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, and acted on the stage, on the screen and on TV. Maybe it is because of the fact that her competitors were such still famous actresses that her name just automatically appears to be unfitting. And, of course, 1940 also offered what many consider the career-height of another Hollywood legend, Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday – her omission is often mentioned as one of the Academy’s biggest oversight and if she had been included, this line-up would truly have consisted of five legendary actresses from Hollywood’s Golden Age. This omission makes Martha Scott’s nomination even more interesting – clearly her entrance into the world of motion pictures was extremely well-regarded in 1940 – Martha Scott is a prime example for an actress who may have lost her popularity over the years but made a large impression during the beginning of her career. She created the part of Emily Webb in the Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town and later reprised the role when the play was turned into a movie in 1940. Maybe the fact that the movie stayed very close to the original play was the reason why newcomer Martha Scott was able to accompany the role of Emily to the screen instead of being pushed aside for an already established film actress. And casting a stage-performer who has already achieved a high reputation for her or his performance in a later movie version can often add credibility and a high level of critical respect (prime examples are Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker, Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac or Shirley Booth in Come back, little Sheba who all won Oscars for their efforts) and sometimes the exclusion of a stage performer can even result in a lot of criticism or even outrage (with Julie Andrews omission for the role of Eliza Dolittle in the movie version of My Fair Lady probably being the most famous example). Martha Scott would probably fall somewhere in the middle of all this – surely there would have been few complaints if an actress like Olivia de Havilland or Ginger Rogers had taken over the part in the movie version and in fact, many other actresses were tested before Martha Scott was finally considered for the role, but at the same time she had already connected herself with the name of Emily Webb strongly enough to make her casting something of a logical choice and an anticipated star-making sensation. Well, the sensation lasted only one Oscar season but she was, after all, the only cast-member to receive an Oscar nomination despite a supporting cast of such seasoned veterans like Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi or Thomas Mitchell. So, choosing Martha Scott for the role of Emily did add respectability to the production and was therefore clearing a risk that paid off – and in the case of Martha Scott, it was not only her mostly unknown name that presented a risk but also the fact that she had never acted on the screen before. Our Town marked Martha Scott’s movie debut and it’s well-known that movie acting and stage acting are worlds apart. And just because a certain performer is successful on the stage does not guarantee the same level of success for the screen. Is the actor or actress able to adjust the acting for the camera or is he or she acting for the last row of the second balcony instead?

So far, there has been very little talk of Martha Scott’s actual performance. Why? Is it a very hard performance to write about? Yes, it actually is. Again – why? Did she not succeed to transfer her acting style from the stage to the screen? Luckily, this is one aspect of her performance that cannot be criticized – Martha Scott made the transfer to the screen with a beautiful subtlety and played her part with a touching and lovely restraint that suits both the style and the message of the movie.  So, her work does not need to hide behind that of fellow nominee Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story who also reprised her own stage role without any sign of stage acting (but of course, Katharine Hepburn had the advantage of having already established herself as a screen actress of first class). No, the problems cannot be found here – Martha Scott clearly had an intuitive understanding for the film camera right away and played her part with a very honest quietness that is much different from the quietness that can be found in a stage performers. In this aspect, her performance shines and it shines much brighter than that of the cast members around her – Martha Scott easily established herself as the most interesting cast member of Our Town, mainly because her role allowed her to be a silent flow that goes along with the story instead of appearing to interrupt it like the supporting cast does. And Martha Scott also feels truly genuine in crafting Emily Webb – her quietness, her shyness but also her determination to succeed in school, this typical presentation of a young, American girl who is well-behaved, likeable, beautiful, bright, charming and responsible comes across as very natural and believable in her performance.
So, with this early praise, why is it hard to write about this performance?

Maybe it is because of the fact that Martha Scott always remains more admirable for what she is than for what she does. Yes, she establishes the character of Emily Webb beautifully – but after this, she has nowhere to go, neither with the role nor with her characterization. What surprises about Our Town is what little presence Martha Scott is during the first 50 minutes of the movie. She is barely on the screen and mostly reduced to some little conversations with William Holden who is playing the boy next door and with whom she slowly falls in love. Martha Scott knows how to portray this youthful and frightened discovery of love and she is always believable as a young teenager but it’s hard to find a moment in her performance that goes beyond the surface of this underdeveloped character. I mentioned before that Martha Scott is the most interesting cast member – that is true but mainly because the other parts are even less developed and present even less depth and complexity. Emily Webb is never really a person but rather a symbol and always open to interpretation – and therefore Martha Scott plays her too harmless, without any edges or interesting angles, as straight-forward as possible, never truly developing any kind of personality to constantly keep her like a white piece of paper on which the viewer can write his or her own thoughts on this woman. So, her performance is charming and lovely to look at but it’s almost impossible to find any true character – Emily falls in love with George, she talks to him a few times and gets married. All this happens in a couple of scenes stretched out over the storyline. Again, she does all this fine – when she asks her mother if she is pretty or helps George with his homework at night, she shows Emily’s natural simplicity but this simplicity also affects her performance in too many ways. Emily is barely a character and no scene shows any development – or even a foundation for any possible development. A later scene in which she meets George in a Soda shop and they talk about their plans for the future and slowly realize their feelings for each other again gives Martha Scott the possibility to display Emily’s innocence but again – it’s all too simple, an almost lifeless presentation because there is almost no life inside Emily.

Martha Scott uses her screen time wisely and despite all the obstacles is able to make Emily a lasting character despite her limited appearances and character but this is mostly due to the fact that, in the limited surrounding of Our Town, Emily is the only person to ever achieve any kind of visibility. Because of this, her performance is strangely touching and completely unremarkable at the same time, a bizarre example for ‘wanting more’ from an actress but not getting it. In some cases, the viewers want more because of the strength of the performance or the character but in some cases, they only want more because the performance feels so incomplete and narrow. Unfortunately for Martha Scott, the latter is the truth. She does the most she is allowed to do but this is just too little – both because the screenplay simply sees Emily, despite her intelligence and dreams, as a woman who, even though not ready to get married, only exists to eventually do get married, and because the structure of the movie asks her to be as flat and pale as possible to prevent her from pushing the character in any kind of direction. Martha Scott cannot be blamed for any of the flaws in her work – but this doesn’t change the fact that everything in Our Town is constantly holding her back.

So, her nomination for Best Actress is, in some ways, a head scratcher. But what probably explains it is her final scene, the only one in which she truly becomes the center of attention. After she has given birth to a child, Emily apparently died and watches as a ghost over her family and herself when she was a teenager, remembering the joy of living and taking over the part of the movie’s conscience, telling the viewers to notice the beauty of life while living, finding fulfillment in the little things that shape our daily existence. Martha Scott handles those strange scenes beautifully as she finds the right way to play this long monologue, realistically and yet strangely unearthly. But she also suffers in this scene – playwright Thornton Wilder apparently not only wanted to put the weight of the play and his own ideas onto Emily’s shoulders but rather the weight of the whole world. Just like the rest of the movie, Martha Scott is not truly to blame for all these shortcomings as she succeeded in creating a strangely lost and helpless feeling but the heavy-handed monologue she is given only feels powerful while it lasts but becomes strangely unsatisfying when it is over.

Martha Scott clearly felt very comfortable in her role but there was nothing she could do nor that she was allowed to do to find any kind of woman in the thin creation that is Emily Webb. A beautiful performance, turned into an indecisive miscue by the screenplay and the direction. It’s frustrating to see an obviously talented performer being held back so strongly but her dedication and success in the dreamlike final sequence help her to receive

Best Actress 1940: Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story"

After having been declared ‘box-office poison’, Katharine Hepburn returned to the stage and regained respect and popularity in the comedy The Philadelphia Story. The central part of Tracy Lord was written especially for Katharine Hepburn so it is no surprise that she also reprised the role in the movie version directed by her good friend George Cukor. The success of the movie reconciled Katharine Hepburn with Hollywood and brought her her third Oscar nomination.

The Philadelphia Story is a classic screwball comedy that tells the story of Tracy Lord, a spoiled heiress who is getting ready for her second marriage but suddenly finds herself with her ex-husband and two reporters in her home and suddenly the question of “Who marries whom?” isn’t as easy to answer as it was before…

Like every screwball comedy, The Philadelphia Story shows the never ending fight of the sexes with witty dialogue and fast deliveries. Kate may have played the part on Broadway for a while before she did the film version but thankfully she was already an experienced movie actress at the time so that she was able to transfer her performance from stage to screen without the typical ‘stage-acting’ that can be seen in so many other performances that were originated in that medium. Katharine Hepburn is absolutely flawless in her part and she was one of the few actresses who was able to shine in both drama and comedy and in The Philadelphia Story she could combine these two with wonderful effect.

Katharine often brought a certain kind of superiority (maybe even arrogance) to her film roles and this never worked better than here. At the beginning, Kate shows Tracy as a very secure woman, totally confident of herself and, yes, maybe even arrogant. When her fiancée talks about reporters, she simply answers “Not in my house”. He has to remind her that it will be “our house”. Katharine shows that Tracy is not only confident but also very decisive – about her own life but also about everybody else’s. She sees the world in her own way, her truth is an universal truth and she has problems not only to accept, but even to recognize other people’s point of views. Katharine Hepburn is wonderfully able to show these sides of Tracy but she never forgets to also invest her with a wide sense of comedy. Her sarcastic line delivery, her way of laughing at her own character without ridiculing her are some of Kate’s most precious talents.

Even though The Philadelphia Story is a classic and a real gem, it is not flawless, especially because of a dated script that blames Tracy for apparently everything, even her father’s affair and it’s frustrating to see Tracy even accept that her demanding and strong personality is to blame for her emotional distance to other people. But Katharine Hepburn is still wonderful enough in the part to help overlook these facts and enjoy the amazing chemistry between her, Cary Grant and James Stewart. And even though the transformation in Tracy’s character may have been motivated by rather dubious reasons, it is still magnificent to see Katharine Hepburn show how she begins to doubt herself and see things differently. In the night before the wedding, due to a lot of liquor, everything sort of seems to fall out of place for Tracy but that way everything turns out for the better. Katharine Hepburn is wonderful in those scenes opposite James Stewart when they are talking after the party and he tells her that she is not made out of bronze, but a living and passionate human being.

In every minute of The Philadelphia Story, Katharine Hepburn shows both the dramatic and the humorous aspects of the story. Her incredibly talent for comedy is certainly the most visible in the scenes when she decides to make a ‘show’ for a pair of reporters and behave just the way they expect her to behave. Her non-stop talking, her arrogance, her ability to ask more questions than the reporters is hilarious to watch. And who can forget her “Oh, j’espère bien que ce n’est pas les smallpox!”? Or when James Stewart talks about his friends and she says with her fantastic sarcastic voice “Of whom you have many, I’m sure!”

Katharine Hepburn gives a wonderful, layered and multidimensional performance that, as fantastic as it is, never overshadows the work of her amazing co-stars. The Philadelphia Story may be a Katharine-Hepburn-movie but it’s also an ensemble piece and everybody is able to shine in the most magnificent way.

In a part that fits her like a glove, Katharine Hepburn gives on of her greatest and most iconic performances for which she gets

Best Actress 1940: Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca"

Before 1940, Joan Fontaine was mostly known as the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland but she was able to outdo a lot of well-known actresses – including her older sister – for the part of the shy, young and inexperienced bride of Maxim de Winter, the owner of a wonderful country house called Manderlay in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rebecca.

Joan Fontaine’s character is not Maxim’s first wife, but his second. The first Mrs. de Winter is never shown – she drowned in the sea after her boat overturned. But her presence is everywhere. Even after her death, she is still felt at every moment in every room of the house. Her things are still used, her name ‘Rebecca’ is mentioned constantly. Everyone describes her as a woman of tremendous beauty, style, wit, grace and charm. She was worshipped by everyone who knew her and it seems sure that Maxim de Winter will never be able to get over her death.

Joan Fontaine as the second Mrs. de Winter pales in comparison – she is shy, unsure of everything and completely lost in her new life as the landlady of Manderly. She doesn’t possess any of the qualities of Rebecca – beauty, style, grace, a talent for socializing and all the other things that made her so unforgettable. As Mrs. Denvers, her devoted housekeeper says: “She knew everyone that mattered. Everyone loved her.” Most of all, this young bride is too desperate to be accepted by everyone. Especially her husband. Like everyone else, she, too, believes that he will never get over Rebecca’s death. Her self-esteem is much too low to think of herself as a loveable and charming woman.

Joan Fontaine’s character is always in Rebecca’s shadow. It goes so far that the character doesn’t even has a name – she is only known as “The second Mrs. de Winter”. Nothing more.

This character is not easy to play. She begins as a young girl, insecure of herself and too shy. When she meets Maxim de Winter, she immediately falls in love with him – he is strong, he is secure, he can give her the lead she needs in life. But she not only gets a husband – she gets a new life, too. She was only a companion (that is to say, a better servant) for a rich woman and now she is thrown into a new world – the world of Manderly. For a shy girl like herself, nothing worse could have happened. She is not able to handle such a big estate, she can’t communicate with rich and confident people who expect her to be one of her own and who can’t hide their disappointment when they see this mousy little girl. She knows that she is watched and judged and always compared to Rebecca. She finally tells her husband: “What a slap in the eye I must have been to them then. I suppose that's why you married me, cause you knew I was dull and gauche and inexperienced.”

The second Mrs. de Winter is even afraid of the servants who judge her just as everybody else. She always knows that she doesn’t really belong here, she is always asking herself if Maxim really loves her or if he is just trying to forget Rebecca.

Rebecca.

More than anything, Joan Fontaine’s character is afraid of her memory. That overwhelming memory that is everywhere in the house. So strong is it that Joan Fontaine’s character even fears to lose her own husband to that memory.

During these parts of the movie, Joan Fontaine does masterful work. She is the viewer’s guide through the movie. Everything is seen through her eyes, everything is experienced with her. Her shy behavior, her fear, her loneliness – Joan Fontaine does everything in the most natural way without ever losing the audience’s sympathy. How easy would it have been to overplay the annoying aspects of the character but Joan Fontaine avoids all that and makes her a real, honest and, most important, understandable heroine who is caught in a strange world. Her performance adds a lot to the tension of the movie and helps to create the always felt suspension.

But the character is not static. She is an ever growing person. She learns, she tries to fit in. But it’s the famous scene in the cottage on the shore that shows how fully Joan Fontaine understands her character. When she learns the truth about Max and Rebecca, not only the whole direction of the movie changes – also the second Mrs. de Winter does. When Max tells her that he never loved Rebecca, Joan Fontaine reacts with a combination of shock and relief. Suddenly, her biggest fear is gone – Max really loves her and he never loved Rebecca. Now, that she is finally sure of that love, she is not willing to let the past haunt her anymore and destroy her happiness. Now, she is willing to fight. Suddenly, Max becomes the weak person and his new wife has to take the lead. As he tells her: “It's gone forever, that funny young, lost look I loved won't ever come back. I killed that when I told you about Rebecca. It's gone. In a few hours, you've grown so much older.“ Joan is wonderfully able to show that shift in character without making it seem too sudden or unbelievable – she is always in full control of her scenes without appearing calculating or over-rehearsed.

Joan Fontaine creates a truly fascinating character, always tense, always insecure. A flawless performance that carries one of the greatest movies of all time and for this, she gets

Best Actress 1940: Ginger Rogers in "Kitty Foyle"

Ginger Rogers received the only Oscar nominations of her career – and won the award – for her role as the title character in Kitty Foyle, a white-collar working girl trying to make her way in the world and caught between two men.

With Kitty Foyle, Ginger Rogers proved that she could just as easily handle drama as comedies and musicals and it’s surprising that her natural talent for dramatic parts hadn’t been discovered earlier.

Kitty Foyle is mostly told as a flashback. Ginger’s Kitty has the opportunity to run away with the love of her life, Wyn Strafford, who is from a rich family – and married. The fact that he offers Kitty the possibility to become his mistress and that Kitty actually agrees with this is certainly shocking considering the time the movie was made. But right after she agreed to Wyn’s offer, Kitty’s conscience starts to talk to her – in the form of her mirror image.
Kitty begins to think about her future and her past and how they are interweaved. What lessons can she learn from her life so far to decide what’s best for her future?

Kitty grew up alone with her sick father who may have had a weak body but whose spirit was never broken and he always taught Kitty one thing: that she is just as good as everybody else – the rich people in Philadelphia whom she admires are in no way better than her and that she can achieve anything she wants. Ginger Rogers shows her closeness to her father and the things he taught her by making Kitty a very strong and self-confident character who isn’t afraid to open her mouth and say what’s on her mind. She makes Kitty a pretty no-nonsense character who knows who she is and that she is worth just as much as everyone else.

Ginger Rogers is able to survive a very mediocre movie with a dated, sometimes silly and over-the-top script and deliver a strong and memorable performance that carries the movie beautifully and makes even the most awkward scenes work. She is also able to turn Kitty into her own person – the story basically tells the viewer that Kitty isn’t worth anything without a man by her side but Ginger Rogers still creates a Kitty that isn’t defined by men but who only defines herself.

Still, love and men are the center of Kitty’s life which is a story of love found and lost with Wyn and of love found and lost with Mark, a doctor who is crazy about Kitty but she is never as crazy about him as she is about Wyn. Ginger’s chemistry with her co-stars works very well and Ginger is able to get the most out of her character. She never overdoes the dramatic moments of the script but keeps her performance very subtle and in tone with her character. What works best about this performance is that Ginger Roger never tries to get the audience’s sympathy but instead shows her as a woman who will never give up – and who doesn’t care about what others think..

Ginger Rogers’s best scenes come when her character is at it’s lowest: when she has to defend her marriage with Wyn to his parents or decides to have a baby without a man or when she hears some terrible news in a hospital. Ginger portrays the low points in Kitty’s life beautifully without ever forgetting that Kitty is a fighter who is never beaten but always keeps going according to her own rules. The greatest and most unforgettable moment in her performance comes when she meets Wyn’s new wife and his little son who could have been hers: the look on her face, full of heartbreaking sadness and memories of a lost life, is just wonderful but again Ginger Rogers doesn’t rest on the sentimentality of the moment but instead uses it to show the growth in her character.

Ginger Rogers certainly proved her talent with her performance even though the weakness of the movie more than once harms the overall effect of her work. Still, she makes Kitty a loveable, sassy, out-spoken and honest character with a big heart and also a lot of pride and for this, she gets

Best Actress 1940: Bette Davis in "The Letter"

By 1939, Bette Davis had already won two Oscars for her work in Dangerous and Jezebel, but her most memorable and celebrated screen performances were yet to come. In 1940, the perennial nominee received her fourth nominations for her work as Leslie Crosbie in William Wyler’s The Letter.

Leslie Crosbie – a strong, manipulating, passionate woman – is a perfect part for Bette Davis and her strong screen presence, her no-nonsense approach to the role and her talent as an actress of unusual determination work perfectly together.

In this part, she also has one of the greatest opening scenes ever – Leslie walks out of her house and shots a man, one time, two times, three times and more. Bette’s face in this scene is wonderful – apparently rid of any emotion and at the same time full of them. It’s impossible to say what Leslie is feeling at the moment when she shoots and a few seconds later, when she looks at the dead body. Right from the start, Bette Davis’s interpretation of Leslie gives an endless array of questions and she refuses to open her up until the right moment.

The Letter is a classic, very well-made melodrama from the 40s and Bette Davis, as usually with these types of roles, sinks her teeth into the material and gives a typical strong and dominant performance with her effective eyes and her characteristic voice. When she is telling about what happened before she shot the man, her whole monologue is a clear combination of learned lines and instinctive expressions – again it’s impossible to tell if Leslie is telling the truth or hiding a dark secret.

The Letter is set in the hot, sultry atmosphere of Malaya – an atmosphere that also influences the acting characters. Bette Davis mixes the apparently cold and efficient woman she is playing with a certain sexuality and sensuality that is never obvious but always hidden. She also effectively shows the constant tension in Leslie’s character – her way of walking up and down, her never-ending needle work, her way of talking (carefully planned words that seems spontaneous, always on the alert about the reactions of her opposite), it all displays a woman who is knowing more than she admits and does her best to keep it that way.

Bette Davis’s performance seems a bit too artificial in the first parts of the movie but this serves the character of Leslie well who is mostly pretending in these scenes. But the more the script tells the audience about the true events in that tragic night, the more Bette Davis opens Leslie and changes her characterization – her acting becomes more honest and real and at the same time, she begins to show that Leslie’s strong and apparently easygoing character is only a façade to hide her hurt feelings and her fear of being exposed.

Even though Bette’s performance sometimes still seems a little too forced, too strong for its own good and too melodramatic (it’s hard to tell how many times she sits in a chair and then suddenly begins to shake and then dramatically turns around to hide her face between her arm and the back of the chair), it serves the script well and adds to the overall quality of the movie even though she sometimes is overshadowed by her supporting cast. Especially in the scenes opposite of Gale Sondergaard, who is hilariously miscast and incredibly perfect at the same time, Bette Davis wisely holds her own acting back and lets Gale dominate the scene. It’s especially in these moments that Bette also shows a surprisingly soft side in Leslie – her pleading and begging look at Gale, her fear of that little piece of writing that could expose the truth, never seems fake or calculated, instead, Leslie’s instincts to survive are at full display.

Also the later moments in her performance show this soft, fearful side. The most unforgettable moment comes when Leslie leaves the court room, smiling with relief until she suddenly sees her nemesis and her face becomes frozen with fear. Bette Davis constantly keeps the suspension of the movie going and is able to create a central character who can carry the movie and bring the audience on her side despite her doings and flaws.

Only her final moments are again too over-dramatic and Bette Davis relies too much on her talent to make over-the-top moments entertaining instead of trying to maintain the subtlety of the character that she had displayed so effectively before.

Still, it’s a wonderful performance from one of the great actresses that gets

Best Actress 1940

The first year will be 1940 and the nominees were

Bette Davis in The Letter

Joan Fontaine in Rebecca

Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story

Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle

Martha Scott in Our Town