Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold.
If five performances from the same year are included, the winning performance is 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. Katharine Hepburn in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
12. Edith Evans in The
Whisperers (1967)
13. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
14. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka
(1939)
15. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie
and Clyde (1967)
16. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
17. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
18. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
19. Bette Davis in The
Little Foxes (1941)
20. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
21. Rosalind Russell in
Auntie Mame (1958)
22. Glenda Jackson in
Women in Love (1970)
23. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
24. Elizabeth Taylor in
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
25. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of
Fire (1941)
26. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
27. Julie Christie in
Away from Her (2007)
28. Shelley Winters in A Place
in the Sun (1951)
29. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
30. Meryl Streep in The Devil wears Prada (2006)
31. Ingrid Bergman in The
Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
32. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
33. Judi Dench in
Mrs. Brown (1997)
34. Helen Hayes in
The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)
35. Jane Fonda in
Coming Home (1978)
36. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
37. Doris Day in
Pillow Talk (1959)
38. Meryl Streep in
One True Thing (1998)
39. Joan Crawford in
Sudden Fear (1952)
40. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
41. Katharine Hepburn in Guess
who’s coming to dinner (1967)
42. Marsha Mason in
Chapter Two (1979)
43. Jane Wyman in
The Yearling (1946)
44. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
45. Teresa Wright in The
Pride of the Yankees (1942)
46. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters
(1945)
47. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next
Year (1978)
48. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
49. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
50. Vanessa Redgrave in
Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
51. Diane Keaton in
Marvin's Room (1996)
52. Loretta Young in Come to the
Stable (1949)
53. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
54. Sissy Spacek in
The River (1984)
55. Shirley MacLaine in
The Turning Point (1977)
56. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
57. Ruth Chatterton in
Madame X (1928-29)
58. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)
59. Bette Davis in The Star (1952)
Bette Davis as Margaret Elliot in The Star
This decision was obviously a very difficult decision because placing a performance
last in a ranking (even if the ranking is far from finished so who knows where
the performance will be in the end) is never pleasant. And it becomes even more
difficult considering that I am not talking about some unknown performer who
might have been lucky with an undeserved nomination but rather one of the
greatest actresses of the 20th century – how can she be last? And on
top of that, with this placement I seem to contradict some of my own reasons from
the past. In the case of Mary Pickford, I decided to not rank her last despite
an often disastrous performance simply because she had an entertaining factor
and always remained watchable, even during her bad moments while the
performances below her felt completely uninspired to me. And if I want to be
completely fair, then yes, I have to admit that Bette Davis in The Star is also
entertaining – after all, this movie is about a washed-up former movie star who
dreams of a comeback and takes her Oscar statuette for a drunken car ride
around town. How could I not love this? But the thing is – Coquette, a dreadful
movie, totally depended on Mary Pickford’s performance and whatever good
moments came out of it, happened only of her. In the case of The Star, a movie
not much less dreadful than Coquette, all the entertaining factors come from
the screenplay. Again, it’s not a good screenplay but if you love old Hollywood
and backstage dramas without thinking too much, then yes, it delivers – but
Bette Davis is not necessarily the reason for this.
In the end,
everything about my ranking is obviously extremely subjective but my final
decision on her position was simply based on this: of all the performances that
I have ranked so far, Bette Davis’s work in The Star is the only one that I
would describe as “lazy”. In the case of Diana Wynard or Ruth Chatterton, even
if their actual acting left a lot do be desired, I at least got the feeling
that they thought about their characters and tried to go a bit deeper or at
least had some idea about what kind of person they want to represent. In the
case of Bette Davis, you get the feeling that she simply showed up, did her
“Bette Davis-thing” and went home again. I never like to accuse actors of
“playing themselves” or similar criticism, but in this case, it just feels
strangely true. If the role in The Star had been played by another actress and
you would wonder “How would Bette Davis have played that part?”, you get your
answer right here – because every mannerism, every line, every single moment in
The Star is delivered exactly in the way you imagine Bette Davis would deliver
them. There is nothing surprising, no depth, nothing of the maturity from All
about Eve or the playfulness of her earlier work. Bette Davis simply took this part and seemed to think "You want Bette Davis? I give you more Bette Davis than you can handle!" and that way ended with a performance that feels uninspired and unoriginal at every moment. And this is why everything
about this work just feels “lazy”.
All about
Eve feels like a good reference in this review. I am pretty sure that there
were comparisons when The Star came out and it does feel inevitably to compare
Margo Channing and Margret Elliot – both played by Bette Davis only two years
apart, both Oscar-nominated performances that show an actress with many
problems. But while All about Eve is obviously a masterpiece that offered Bette
Davis a very multidimensional character, The Star is essentially just a B-movie
that might seem to offer a great part because Margaret Elliot is basically in
every scene of the picture and gets many “big moments”, but it’s actually a
very thin part, in no way helped by Bette Davis’s uninspired performance.
The Star
begins with an auction where the belongings of Margaret Elliot are sold. One of
the buyers is her agent who apparently has no problem to benefit from Margaret’s
misery. The scene that follows shows that Margaret doesn’t get any more parts
and is too old for the one part she would like. This scene also sets up a
pattern for the other scenes that follow – Margaret asks to borrow some money,
is denied and then angrily tells how much money she has given over the past. This
happens with her agent, the new wife of her ex-husband and her sister and
brother-in-law. And in all cases, Bette Davis makes one thing very clear:
Margaret is mad. Bette Davis basically starts shouting the moment the movie
begins, widening her eyes in anger, spitting out the words at every
opportunity. And she will stay on this one note for pretty much the entire
picture – as I said earlier, if you would create a Bette Davis performance in
your mind simply based on the mannerism you know, the performance in The Star
would be the outcome.
The sad
truth is that none of these big emotional moments have any impact on the viewer
or make Margaret in any way interesting as a character. All the fascination
from her Margo Channing is completely gone. Her outbursts are far too
over-the-top (throwing her sister and brother-in-law out of her apartment while
screaming at the top of her lungs or being thrown into jail while screaming
“YOU DON’T SEEM TO KNOW WHO I AM”), her crying scenes too theatrical (staying
in front of her old house, sobbing “going…going...gone”) while scenes such as
joy or love feel completely unbelievable altogether. But the sad truth goes
even beyond that as Bette Davis never feels remotely believable as a former
movie star – as shocking as it seems but there is nothing “star-like” about
her. This might be intentional as Margaret’s best days are over but I would
expect a certain amount of star quality nonetheless.
Another
difference between The Star and All about Eve is how the movie treats its
central character – All about Eve understood the worries and problems of Margo
and presented them in a way that made her character understandable even in her
most childish moments. The Star, while putting much more focus on Margaret as
its central character than All about Eve did with Margo, often rather treats
Margaret as an intruder, a woman who deserves what happened to her and guides
her to a completely unsatisfying ending. The movie constantly tells us that
Margaret should accept her fate and focus on what is truly important – being a
woman and a mother.
Of course,
the missteps of the movie are not Bette Davis’s fault but honestly – was there
another actress in Hollywood’s golden era less suited to play a part that ends
with her running into her lover’s arm, realizing that love is the only thing that matters? Or less suited to play a woman who
recognises the importance of her maternal instincts? Hardly – and this harms
everything the movie intends to be. This is also due to the fact that Bette
Davis and Sterling Hayden are certainly among the most unbelievable lovers in
movie history (of course, Sterling Hayden makes a piece of wood look alive in
comparison so Bette Davis did not have much to act with here...). They have such a lack of chemistry that I actually missed that
they were supposed to be in love and was completely confused by the ending.
It’s not only that Sterling Hayden’s literally appears out of nowhere suddenly
in the movie but there is nothing between these two actors – the script
actually doesn’t give them a lot to work on as Sterling Hayden’s Jim seems more
like a big brother but both Bette Davis and he constantly almost seem to ignore
each other in their performances (on top of that, even though Bette Davis was
only eight years older, they often look like aunt and nephew). Additionally,
whenever I think back to
The Star, I completely forget Natalie Wood’s presence
and the fact that Margaret is supposed to have a daughter because Bette Davis
again completely fails to portray this part of Margaret’s life in any
believable way.
What amazes
me about The Star is why Bette Davis decided to make this movie in the first
place (the movie, after all, seems sometimes more designed to promote real-life
starlet Barbara Lawrence than its leading lady). Sure, after All about Eve she
might have thought that a similar story (even if it really isn’t) might help
her to win that desired third Oscar and movies about women learning that a man
is more important than a career were surely very common and the role
itself offered many flashy scenes that allowed her to go big – but The Star somehow
constantly seems to contradict what Bette Davis apparently stood for, the drive
for success, the willingness to suffer setbacks and come back again, the
importance of her professional life. Most of all, there seems to be one theory
that, even though maybe not true, might be the best explanation for all of
this: apparently, The Star was based on Joan Crawford and Bette Davis also
based her performance on her famous competitor (from certain fashion choices
right down to her use of the expression “Bless you”). Looking at this, maybe it
all makes sense? Margaret Elliot might have been a great actress (as she states
herself “You don’t win an Academy Award for nothing”) but is most of the time only
interested in fame and vanity instead of artistry (after all, even her perfume
is “the most expensive perfume in the world” – however, it is not too exclusive
to be sold on the counter of your friendly drugstore next door in what looks
like a 5 litre bottle – and when she thinks she is back on top, the first thing
she does is buy new cloths and look at new houses). Is this performance maybe
some big inside-joke by Bette Davis? It would make sense from a certain point
of view because the movie as well as Bette Davis’s performance enjoy to put all
the blame on Margaret – she is told various times that she should move on with
her life (meaning stop being an actress and becoming a wife and mother) and her
vanity constantly gets in the way of her own success, making her responsible
for her own downfall (losing her job at a shopping centre because she is
recognized as Margaret Elliot and of course famously ruining her own screen
test for an important supporting role because she insists to play the part like
a young girl in the hope to be cast as the lead – it’s a scene that is almost
surreal because the question is if Bette Davis herself is bad or if she is only
acting bad but even if it doesn’t answer this question, it does show that
Margaret herself has lost all sense of what she can or can’t do). So, maybe
The
Star was a message by Bette Davis to Joan Crawford, telling her that she was
over-the-hill, that she had lost her talent, that her ego was bigger than her
acting abilities and that she would be better off by just leaving acting all
together and find the right man (the movie goes so far to have a screenwriter
basically lay this all out for Margaret at the end when he tells her about a
new script about an actress who has been “denied her birth right. The glory and
the privilege of just being a woman”). Of course, this is all speculation but
it does provide an answer to some questions that arise during a screening of
The Star…
The funny
thing is, however, that this meta level can just as easily be attributed to
Bette Davis as well. Bette Davis apparently told journalists back then that the
whole movie was shot on first takes – similar to the disastrous screen test of
Margaret Elliot where she is so bad and so uncooperative that the director
decides that one try is enough to which Margaret happily replies “You mean I
got it in one take?” This idea of an actress being so sure about what she is
doing despite being horribly over-the-top and a director who doesn’t care about
it or doesn’t want to argue with this diva might very well apply to the making
of The Star as well because so many scenes would have benefitted from another
try, from a calmer angle, from a more developed point-of-view but every scene
goes for cheap effects, for big and loud, for over-emoting at every chance that
it’s easy to believe that these were all first takes. And when Margaret later
watches her screen tests and begins to scream “It’s horrible!”, it again
reaches a strange meta level as this is was the audience has been yelling at
Bette for over an hour already.
As I said
at the beginning, I won’t deny that it’s all highly entertaining – who doesn’t
love to see Bette Davis yelling “It is a disgrace! Margaret Elliot waiting on a
couple of old bags like you!” or grabbing an Oscar, saying “Let’s you and me
get drunk!” I also know that most reviews on the Internet think rather highly
of this performance, many even comparing if favourably to Margo Channing. From
my point of view, it all works on a humours level if you see it as one big “F**k
You” from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford (even though Joan’s career was certainly
not worse than Bette’s at this point and Joan herself had a better performance
in the same year) but from an artistic point-of-view as an Oscar-nominated
performance, it’s just a big No.
