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. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
18. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
19. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
20. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)

21. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
22. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
23. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
24. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
25. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
26. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
27. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
28. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
29. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
30. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)

31. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
32. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)
33. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
34. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
35. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
36. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
37. Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear (1952)
38. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
39. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
40. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)

41. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
42. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
43. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
44. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
45. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
46. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
47. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
48. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
49. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
50. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  

51. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
52. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
53. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
54. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
55. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
56. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Joan Crawford as Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear

I have to confess that I have never been a true fan of Joan Crawford in the way I am a fan of Katharine Hepburn or (on a reduced level) Bette Davis. I respect Joan Crawford and I understand her important place in Hollywood history but I never get the urge to watch a movie because of her. With that out of the way, I will say that no matter what kind of movie it is, Joan Crawford is always completely watchable and entertaining, no matter what she does.

This is also true for Sudden Fear. If I don’t think that Joan Crawford was necessarily a truly great actress, I will say that she was undoubtedly a star of gigantic proportions. This was something that was visible in every single one of her performances – even in Trog, no matter how humiliating her role may be, you sense that you are watching someone special. She had that star-quality, that little something extra that made you take notice and recognize her as someone who was just on another level than most actors around her. Again, this is not necessarily due to her acting but simply her undeniable presence. But even if I maybe don’t see Joan Crawford as an amazing actress, I do agree with Bette Davis on one thing - that she was a professional. This is another thing that is always visible in her work – that you are seeing a pro who knows what she is doing at every second of the movie, who has prepared her character, thought-out every detail and every movement until it reached her own level of satisfaction. This is why her acting is always like a flat line for me – it constantly stays on the same level, a level that is entertaining and sometimes reaches a certain greatness and is never bad, but one that is also not truly exciting or engaging for me personally. Of course, all this might change in the future when I re-consider more of her work but for now I can say that while Joan Crawford never has truly bad acting moments in her work, I also never feel that I am watching something truly outstanding but rather a performance that is created thanks to her preparation and star power – and this is also true for Sudden Fear.

Sudden Fear is one of the „damsel in distress“ movies that appear in this category from time to time, similar to Sorry, Wrong Number or Wait until Dark, and maybe a bit to Gaslight or Suspiction but these movies depend less on suspense and shock than on psychological developments. In Sudden Fear, Joan Crawford plays Myra Hudson, a rich heiress and successful Broadway author who marries an unsuccessful actor only to find out that he and his former girlfriend plan to murder her. As a movie, Sudden Fear is no masterpiece but offers some satisfying suspense and good performances but its most intriguing aspect is that it not really starts as a suspense movie. Instead, the movie feels like a standard romantic melodrama for quite some time before Gloria Grahame’s bad girl shows up to steer everything in a completely different direction. Sudden Fear is obviously very much a product of its constructed plot (when Myra explains the mechanics of her dictating machine, you immediately know that this will be important later on) and the actors never give a real feeling of spontaneity but the whole things still works fine – mostly thanks for Joan Crawford’s central performance.

Joan Crawford might not be the most interesting female character in Sudden Fear (that honour belongs to Gloria Graham whose line delivery “Keeps the circulation going” is probably also the best moment in the movie) but as the potential victim turned revenger, Joan Crawford is the central character whom the audience follows along and who needs to be interesting enough to have the sympathies on her side. And here, Joan Crawford’s afore-mentioned star power comes into play. As she knows just how to play every single emotion and build the character of Myra, her fight for her life remains engaging until the end even if her most interesting work as an actress comes in the first half of the movie.

Myra meets her new husband when he is an actor in her new play. During rehearsal, she has him fired as he is not her “idea of a romantic leading man”. In what is probably the most inspired idea of the script, Myra doesn’t see the romance in his performance but then falls in love with him later during a train ride and is seduced by Lester using the words from her play – the very words she had condemned unconvincing when he was saying them on the stage.

The most interesting part of Joan’s performance during the first romantic half of the movie is that she hints as something that the movie doesn’t – the obvious age difference between Myra and Lester. Joan Crawford was 15 years older than Jack Palance and this is also obvious from their locks. The movie never mentions this fact nor does any other character. But Joan Crawford communicates in her performance that Myra is aware of this age difference and she adds a certain desperation to her performance, the fear of losing Lester while constantly being in awe that he actually chose her. This is certainly the most impressive part of Joan Crawford’s performance and one that deserves all admiration for being only added by her work alone and also for not letting any vanity get in her way.

When the suspense part of the movie kicks in, Joan’s performance unfortunately loses some of its fascination even if that part includes the most obvious “acting” and is probably the reason why the Academy decided to include Joan Crawford in its line-up. The most famous moment of the movie is most likely the scene when Myra realises that her husband and his lover plan to kill her when they accidentally recorded their whole plan on her dictating machine. What follows is a long, wordless scene in which Myra reacts to the recording with every conceivable emotion, going from disbelief to heartbreak to pure fear – I’m also impressed that the movie so openly suggests that Myra has to throw-up after having listened to the recording (how many glamorous movie stars of the past have thrown-up on screen?). Again, the scene works because Joan knows how to keep the attention of the viewer – a less interesting screen personality might lose the ability to keep the viewer looking at her silent reactions after a couple of minutes but not Joan Crawford. Sudden Fear is actually a throw-back to the beginning of Joan’s career in silent movies because it very often almost feels like a silent movie. Scenes of Joan Crawford lying awake in bed, searching through the house of her husband’s lover, seeing her own image in a mirror and realising what she wants to do, sweating with terror as she is hiding in a closet again only work because Joan Crawford is such a strong screen presence.

What I mostly appreciate about Joan Crawford’s work after the found out the true intentions of her husband is that she not only relies on the fear in her acting but also adds an element of shame, connecting her work to the desperation earlier. When she throws out the pillow of her husband and looks at the other side of the bed, you realize that Myra is condemning herself for having allowed herself to fall for this man and share her bed with him.

I know all of my praise so far might make it hard to understand why I didn’t place her higher. First of all, even if Joan does invest very strongly to make Myra a three-dimensional person, she loses most of the interesting aspects of her work once she starts her fight for her life. While she again handles every technical aspect of the part very well, portraying fear and terror very believably, it always has a sense of “old Hollywood” and she never reaches the same level of true desperation and believable anguish as nominee Audrey Hepburn did in Wait until Dark. Also, she does sometimes surrender to the melodrama of the movie (scenes such as dictating her “romantic” will or listening to Lester reciting her “romantic” lines just feel a bit too much) and she is unfortunately over-the-top when she hears the voice of Lester in her head, covering her ears with her hands, her eyes so wide that they almost fall out of her head. Again, I am very open to praising the obvious preparation that went into this performance and the technical precision that realised it but even with all the thought-out details in her work, Joan Crawford’s work is still held back by the limits of a movie that mostly exists to create tension and suspense and not a true heroine. The praise therefore happens on a limited level, complimenting an actress for having nothing and turning it into something worthwhile.

YOUR Best Actress of 1945

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Joan Crawford - Mildred Pierce (28 votes)

2. Gene Tierney - Leave her to Heaven (13 votes)

3. Ingrid Bergman- The Bells of St. Mary's (4 votes)

4. Jennifer Jones- Love Letters (3 vote)

5. Greer Garson - The Valley of Decision (0 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1945 - The resolution

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

5. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters

Jennifer Jones is mostly hold back by the script but her shortcomings as an actress, that can be very obvious whenever a role is not truly in her comfort zone, are often visible, too. Still, whenever she is allowed to shine and a scene allows her to display her own mysteriousness with the needed subtlety, Jennifer Jones truly creates some unforgettable and beautiful moments.

4. Greer Garson in Valley of Decision

                     

It seems that Greer Garson's talent was simply both too big and too small for movies like this – because on the one hand the role does not offer her anything to truly work with apart from feeling torn apart between different people and groups but at the same time she seems lost with the low quality of her material, unable to rise above it and only able to retreat to her own comfort zone which unfortunately too often contradicted the intentions of the script.

3. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's

There are many moments in Ingrid Bergman's performance that never reach above average but she created something otherworldly during her final scenes and if she had been allowed to be on this high level all the time, then her performance would definitely have been much stronger and memorable. As it is, the strength of the final scenes does not help her to overcome the limitations of the script but she still leaves a lasting, heartwarming impression.

2. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce

Joan Crawford’s work in Mildred Pierce is one of the strangest ones in this category – she so obviously lacks many important qualities that the part needed but she also feels so right in the role, so irreplaceable and so satisfying that it’s hard to deny her the respect she obviously demands. And she clearly fulfills the task of carrying the picture and turning it into a captivating and intense experience, making not only the flaws of her own work but even those of the script seem forgettable.                

1. Gene Tierney in Leave her to Heaven

Gene Tierney gave a chilling and noteworthy performance that perfectly fulfilled all the tasks of the script even if it sometimes remained too limited. Still, her ability to show Ellen’s slow descent into the darkness of her own mind, her inability to stop her actions to be completely alone with the man she loves and her way of beautifully underplaying all the madness and demons that haunt her results in various unforgettable scenes.

Best Actress 1945: Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce"

Somehow Joan Crawford was always there. She was already doing movies when the Oscar was invented. She watched the reigns of Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo, she worked her way to the top and could have won an Oscar for Grand Hotel if the supporting category had already existed back then. She saw the rise of Bette Davis, the arrival of Katharine Hepburn and the sudden road to stardom of actresses like Jennifer Jones, Joan Fontaine or Greer Garson. And yet, by Oscar standards, her success came very late. Sure, she often blamed the fact that Norma Shearer was given the best material since ‘she sleeps with the boss’ as one of the reasons why she did not truly establish herself in the first row of acclaimed actresses but she still had the amount of success, popularity and critical praise over the years that would usually only make it a matter of time before the Academy notices. After all, other actresses reached the top right away – Katharine Hepburn won her first Best Actress award for one of her first movies, Luise Rainer had just come to Hollywood before the golden guy was in her hands, Vivien Leigh had never acted in an American production before Gone with the Wind and Greer Garson was the Academy’s darling right from the start. But despite all this, Oscar took his time with Joan Crawford. Best Actress nominations have more than once been given as a filler but she never benefited from this. And when she suddenly found herself considered ‘box office poison’, things surely did not look much brighter. Katharine Hepburn was able to overcome this label quickly with her comeback in The Philadelphia Story – but where was Joan’s comeback? She had The Women and won strong reviews for A Woman’s Face but after 1943, she stopped making movies – and waited. Considering the well-known feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, it’s one of the biggest laughs in showbiz history that Joan only got her Oscar-winning part after it was turned down by Bette Davis, the studio’s first choice. The fact that director Michael Curtiz famously denied Joan’s request for the part and later insisted on a screen test was another proof that the royal treatment was over – but Joan Crawford would not be Joan Crawford if her comeback would not have been executed and conducted with the utmost precision and attention. A well thought-out combination of anticipation, critical praise, rightly timed word-of-mouth and campaigning finally resulted in one of the most famous comebacks in movie history. And Joan Crawford’s idea to…sorry, her illness which caused her to stay at home and then receive the Oscar in bed guaranteed her an extra amount of publicity no money can buy and helped her to reach the artistic peak of her career – ironically at the same time Bette Davis’s reputation was slowly decreasing.

So, why did Oscar finally pay attention? What surely must have helped was the simple fact that Mildred Pierce was not just another Joan-Crawford-picture but a praised film noir, coming right after the success of Double Indemnity, offering the kind of juicy part that the Academy often loves to honor – a self-scarifying and suffering mother who not only does everything she does for the benefit of her daughter(s) but later has to face the fact that all her hard work and efforts have been wasted since her oldest daughter Veda is not only her biggest treasure but in some ways also her biggest enemy. So, in some ways, Mildred Pierce actually is a Joan-Crawford-vehicle as it is completely focused on its central character and driven by everything she does. Therefore, it is not truly surprising that Mildred Pierce finally earned Joan Crawford her first Oscar nomination and her only win – it was a promise that was finally fulfilled and, like many other actresses before and after, she benefited from the fact that 1945 was her year, when everything was working in her favor and when a win for her just seemed like the most logical decision, even if she was up against a strong field of popular and praised competitors.

Joan Crawford’s work in Mildred Pierce is the essential ‘star performance’ of her career. She was never a character actress or an artistic chameleon but she was often able to use her talents with great effect and mostly excelled when she was playing women who were either terrified or strong, dominant and unforgiving. Her Mildred Pierce somehow falls in the middle of all this, being less strong and terrified than most of her other creations. And so, her Mildred is not necessarily the performance that displays her talents as an actress the most but it is undoubtedly the performance that displays all her talents as a star the most, showing how she could use her personality and charisma to give a performance that is not flawless but still captivating and entertaining from start to finish. Like few other actresses from her era she combined star power with a certain talent for perfecting her own style and presence, a triumph of style over substance. Joan Crawford knew what she could do and what would work – seldom has an actress ever displayed so much confidence in front of the camera and so much ability to dominate everything around her without suffocating her supporting cast or the movie itself. The dominance of Joan Crawford is something that came to her completely naturally as a result of her own style and character. Not even her nemesis Bette Davis possessed such a strong, almost threatening screen presence that dared anyone who would not give 100 percent of his or her attention to her work. Such a presence is obviously a grand help when it comes to playing a role that is the whole center of a movie, carries it and shapes almost every single moment and scene. But the part of Mildred Pierce only benefited from Joan Crawford’s natural advantages – because outside her strengths, her acting could often feel disappointingly empty and melodramatic and since Mildred Pierce is a character that not only needed style but also substance, Joan Crawford’s acting choices often missed important aspects and understanding. On a scale of excellence, she always moved on a certain level, never falling very low but also seldom reaching any heights – there was a consistency in her work that made her performances always strangely satisfying, entertaining and almost always helped her to fulfill all the tasks she was given by the screenplay and the character. She always seemed to realize her scenes with the precision of a robot but expressed them both emotionally and intellectually. Her ability to stay on a certain level without hardly ever leaving it made her work much less distracting than that of other actresses from her era who often combined moments of brilliance with dated over-acting. But – sorry Joan, there has to be a but – the fact that Mildred Pierce is not a character that truly falls into her own comfort zone made it, as mentioned before, often hard for Joan Crawford to truly grasp the motives behind her. She crafted her performance with clear dedication and craftsmanship but there are moments in Mildred Pierce that make Joan Crawford’s limitations as an actress too visible. But strangely enough, these flaws, even though clearly harming her work in many aspects, never truly spoil the effect of her overall performance. Joan Crawford often doesn’t know how handle more emotional scenes and whenever she has to enter this territory outside her comfort zone, she tends to get rather monotonous and repetitious – but thanks to Joan Crawford’s natural screen presence and ability to glide through her movies with that undeniable competence of a gifted performer, her Mildred Pierce is still a captivating and memorable pierce of work. She did not only overcome her own limitations and flaws but made them seem strangely unimportant, too.

Right at the beginning, Joan Crawford is off to a rather rocky start – when she argues with her husband in the kitchen and tells him that her children always come first and also has to handle the emotions of a woman who is very well aware that her husband is cheating on her (even having to listen to him talking to his lover on the phone), Joan Crawford feels rather lost, going through the expected emotions but never letting them become part of her character. Joan Crawford often did not truly develop full characters but rather went from scene to scene, doing what she was supposed to do without having a grip on the bigger truth – this is most visible in these early scenes but actually in an even earlier one, too. The misplaced and miscalculated opening scene of Mildred Pierce might be more the fault of the screenplay than anyone else but Joan Crawford also added this misfire. Right at the start of the movie, Mildred is apparently contemplating suicide, going so far as evidently making up her mind and wanting to jump into the ocean before a police officer stops her. Okay, suicide has always been treated as completely ordinary in many movies, as something that one wants to do in the spur of the moment before everything goes back to normal again. Seen by itself, this might be an exciting introduction to both the movie and the character but taken in the context of the whole story and Joan Crawford’s following characterization, this moment is too out-of-place and too far away from everything else that is going on to be believable in any way. A later scene that has Mildred taking a gun with her just because the screenplay needs it later demonstrates that Mildred Pierce and Joan Crawford are actually doing the same thing – scarifying greater truth and logic for the sake of single moments. In this way, the marriage of Joan Crawford and Mildred Pierce seems like a perfect match and it actually is to a certain extent but it is one with many problems – caused by both sides.

This is also true for the biggest flaw in Joan Crawford’s work – her relationship to her daughters. Considering that Mildred’s whole life is circling around the two little girls in her life, it’s frustrating to see Joan Crawford give barely any explanations for the constant actions of her character. More than anything, Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth unfortunately constantly seem to act past each other. Ann Blyth shows the spoiled, mean, arrogant and hateful side of Veda very well but never once gives any reason why her mother should love her so much. Because of that, Joan Crawford’s own work often suffers since she fails to explain why Mildred either loves her daughter so much that she cannot see all the things that everyone else sees in her or why she is willing to constantly ignore them. Joan Crawford is such a strong force on the screen that any scenes of her appearing either weak or helpless often feels too much like an actress attempting a certain emotion on the outside but failing to be completely convincing. The melodrama in Joan Crawford’s acting style tends to bring her down in those moments even if her ability to stay on her own level on that scale of excellence helps her to prevent her performance suffering from it. So, on the outside, Joan Crawford’s work almost always remains strong and completely watchable – but what are the motives of Mildred Pierce? Why is she so unable to distance herself from her daughter? Joan Crawford never answers them since the screenplay does not help her in those moments. Too often, the script jumps around, taking Mildred from one situation to the other without connecting them in any way. Why did the screenplay treat the fate of Mildred’s younger daughter so nonchalant when Mildred so often stated that her daughters were the most important aspect of her life? It’s refreshing that Joan Crawford refused any overacting in this moment but she basically exaggerated her underacting as a result. And why did Joan Crawford think that a vague ‘Oh…no’ when she hears the news of her daughter’s illness was all that such a dedicated mother would do at this moment? There are endless and exciting possibilities to explore the character of Mildred Pierce, give reason to actions that seem to lack them – but Joan Crawford unfortunately surrendered to the script in these moments, following it too tightly and never trying to go beyond the written word. Her chemistry with Ann Blyth may be excellent and on the short run both women always satisfy the viewer whenever they share the screen – but in the long run, the superficiality of what could have been a deep and complex human relationship becomes too apparent.

So, when all is said and done, it seems that there are hardly any positive aspects in Joan Crawford’s work, doesn’t it? And yes, there are flaws – a lot of them, actually. But it’s still impossible to overlook that Joan Crawford still managed to succeed in this role, as strange as it may seem. An actress can make her flaws extremely obvious or she can somehow manage to overshadow them. Joan Crawford did neither of these two things but instead managed to fit her flaws into her performance in a way that never made them truly disappear but somehow they also never seem to matter. Joan Crawford’s inability to move outside her own comfort zone might prevent her from realizing all the possibilities of Mildred Pierce and yet at the same time, the part seems to fit her like a glove. She clearly benefitted from the structure of the movie that made her character the central aspect but never actually a very complicated one. Actually, Mildred Pierce is a rather limited character which often appears grander and more demanding than it really is. And so, Mildred Pierce and Joan Crawford were an almost perfect match – the part is flashy without being too demanding, dominant without any true challenges. It’s the kind of part that almost automatically makes the actress look good even if both the writing and the acting are flawed. Joan Crawford always keeps the movie going, goes from worried mother to tough business woman, from scorned wife to love interest, from strong and knowing to helpless and unaware. In doing this, Joan Crawford might not connect a whole but she knows how to craft the parts. Her instincts don’t lead her to a deep performance but still to one that seems logical and strong even when it isn’t. She makes her worries for her daughter whom she sees singing in a cheap bar just as moving as she believably shows her inner exhaustion and disappointment when she finds two people in the little house on the beach. Joan Crawford’s own strong screen presence also never makes it doubtful that Mildred would pursue any path she decided to follow with the same determination – may it be being a housewife, a waitress or a successful business woman. And when she finally throws her daughter out of the house, Joan Crawford displays all the anger but also sadness that is troubling Mildred at this moment with a beautiful clarity. Most of all, Joan Crawford wisely made the decision to play Mildred as straight-forward as possible – there are no hidden agendas, no secret desires or dark feelings inside of her. Instead, Mildred is a very direct, even simple woman with a single determination – this was another factor that worked in Joan Crawford’s favor since her own direct acting style fits perfectly to a direct character like this. Overall, few actresses have been able to make the flaws in their own performances appear so unimportant and neglectable. The relationship between Mildred and Veda might not be truly explained but Joan Crawford makes the viewer forget all this when she gets to deliver one of her perfect close-ups. These silent moments, demanding her to express her character’s inner feelings without uttering a word, are always golden and never fail to impress.

Because of all this, Joan Crawford’s work in Mildred Pierce is one of the strangest ones in this category – she so obviously lacks many important qualities that the part needed but she also feels so right in the part, so irreplaceable and so satisfying that it’s hard to deny her the respect she obviously demands. And she clearly fulfills the task of carrying the picture and turning it into a captivating and intense experience, making not only the flaws of her own work but even those of the script seem forgettable. Maybe that’s why Mildred Pierce displays the star Joan Crawford better than almost any other of her performances – the role was not an easy one for her and she never actively tried to go the easy way even if she did her best to adjust the part of Mildred to her own acting style instead of the other way around but in the end, it all comes down to the essential Joan Crawford who both saves and harms the movie but always does it with style, elegance and an undeniable force. Joan Crawford is simply on fire, even if it turns into a misfire sometimes. Of course, her flaws and missteps prevent her from receiving a truly strong grade but her sheer ability to move through Mildred Pierce without ever stumbling over her own shortcomings or the ones of the script helps her to receive  

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Best Actress 1945

The next year will be 1945 and the nominees were

Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's

Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce

Greer Garson in Valley of Decision

Jennifer Jones in Love Letters

Gene Tierney in Leave her to Heaven

YOUR Best Actress of 1947

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Rosalind Russell - Mournng Becomes Electra (19 votes)

2. Susan Hayward - Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (7 votes)

3. Joan Crawford - Possessed (4 votes)

4. Loretta Young - The Farmer's Daughter (2 votes)

5. Dorothy McGuire - Gentleman's Agreement (0 votes)


Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1947 - The resolution!

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

5. Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement

Dorothy McGuire gives the most uninteresting performance of the most uninteresting character in the most uninteresting part of the movie. She obviously tries to make Cathy an open and relaxed character but her performance always remains a bit too stiff to ever become really memorable.

4. Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter

                     

Loretta Young obviously tries to add some depth and complexity to the character with several unexpectedly serious line-deliveries or other small gestures but a lot of times she decided to be serious even when a scene could have used some comedy. But even though her performance may not be very humorous, the characterization of Katrin as a dependable, intelligent, good-hearted and loyal woman is consistent and played well.

3. Joan Crawford in Possessed

Joan Crawford’s performance is a constant up and down of nice underplaying and mad overacting, mixed with her obligatory melodramatic acting that becomes dominant whenever any emotional scenes are involved. It’s obvious from the first moment that Joan Crawford doesn’t intend to show realism but she is able to use her theatrical acting style to give a compelling performance that carries an equally theatrical movie.

2. Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra

Rosalind Russell’s acting choices more than once seem rather unnatural and dated but the way she slipped into the character always impresses. Her arrogant, domineering, manipulative and slightly insane Lavinia never feels forced or calculated. Instead, Rosalind Russell slides through the movie in a way that makes it look easy but at the same she constantly tries to make sure that every viewer is aware that it’s in fact very difficult. She impressively towers above the entire cast and helps to make Mourning Becomes Electra worth seeing despite its length and dark subject.                       

1. Susan Hayward in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman

Susan Hayward plays all the parts of her role with beautiful subtlety and even in her most desperate or drunken situations she never overdoes it. She believably demonstrates what effect alcohol has on her life and her behavior and she is also able to make this behavior understandable. She clearly shows what causes her irrational actions and how Angelica is always torn between knowing that she is destroying everything she loves and not being able to stop it.

Best Actress 1947: Joan Crawford in "Possessed"

Two years after her win for Mildred Pierce, Joan Crawford was back with what she considered the most difficult role of her career.

The movie starts with a very quiet scene. A woman is walking down a street in Los Angeles. It’s very dark and silent but there is something weird about this woman. The way she walks shows that she is either very tired or distracted. When we finally see the face of the woman, all these thoughts seem confirmed. The women seems exhausted, even a bit confused as if she doesn’t know what she is doing or where she is.

It’s an interesting beginning to an entertaining movie even though Joan Crawford already uses this first close-up to show that melodramatic acting style which she brought to perfection over the years. It’s obvious from the first moment that she doesn’t intend to show realism but Joan Crawford is able to use her theatrical acting style to give a compelling performance that carries an equally theatrical movie.

Joan does a nice job at the beginning of the movie when she is searching a mysterious David and sees him in every man she meets but Joan is never fully convincing when she is showing the weak or vulnerable sides of her character. She trusts too much on her ability to look hurt and speak with a broken voice but Joan is never able to disappear into these lonely souls.

So it’s no surprise that her performances improves after her character has been sent to a hospital where she slowly gains back her consciousness. In these scenes, Joan shows that she has a great talent for big eyes and a look of shock and fear. Her expressive face is masterful in showing these emotions.

Like Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman, Possessed shows a woman in hospital while flashback tell us her story. We learn that Louise, Joan’s character, had a relationship with a playboy called David but right at the beginning it’s clear that Louise has different expectations of this relationship than him. She wants commitment while he only wants to have fun and so he quits the relationship.

Joan is very good at showing right from the beginning that Louise is obsessed by her love for David. She is unwilling to let him go. It’s not told why she has such strong feelings for him and Joan also doesn’t explore this subject any deeper but instead turns Louise into an addicted character for whom more and more boundaries begin to fall. Her performance is a constant up and down of nice underplaying and mad overacting, mixed with her obligatory melodramatic acting that becomes dominant whenever any emotional scenes are involved.

The movie and the character of Louise are a weird of mix of all sorts of genres. Louise is not only obsessed with David but it seems that she is generally going crazy. She begins to see situations that don’t happen, hears things that aren’t there. Joan does all this with a memorable collection of nervous ticks that include the obligatory widened eyes, a shaking body and nervous hands. What’s a little disappointing is that she is not able to find any progression in her showing of Louise’s madness. Even though the script tells us that her problems become worse it doesn’t show in Joan’s acting since she seems already crazy from the first day.

Still, her scenes of despair, madness and hate are certainly impressive and fit Joan like a glove. She gives a highly stylized but nonetheless captivating performance that helps to make Possessed the entertaining movie that it is and she is believable for most of the time.

Overall, it’s an interesting and dramatic performance that gets

Best Actress 1947

The next year will be 1947 and the nominees were

Joan Crawford in Possessed

Susan Hayward in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman

Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement

Roaslind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra

Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter