1940 – Jane Darwell
The Grapes of Wrath
This was an Oscar that was well-deserved. Darwell owned this character and she was even a scene stealer at times. She had such a strong on-screen presence and her performance was so authentic that she was simply captivating on the screen. She played Ma Joad, the matriarch of the family, the strength and determination of them all. She is the woman who can bend, but never break. She keeps going when everyone else is ready to quit. She has more than enough cause for anger or depression, and yet is filled with a stalwart sense of right and wrong, and love enough to care for the world. This is what Darwell brought to thr screen.
She had several scenes in which it clearly came to the surface. The first of which was the scene where the Joad family is forced out of their home and off their land, and they are loading up a truck for the move to California. As she is burning the contents of a box of memories, letters and the like, she finds an old pair of earrings. She holds them up to her ears, and you can see in her eyes the memories of when she was young, of happier times when such adornments were taken for granted. Then her expression changed to one of sadness, as the present returned, and I could imagine her wondering if she would ever have occasion to wear them again. There was no dialogue in that scene, but Darwell didn’t need any to show us what Ma Joad was thinking.
The other scene that stood out to me was the one in which she wakes in the middle of the night, only to find that her son, who must go on the run from the law, is leaving. The sadness and motherly love Darwell brought to the scene was amazing to watch. This was really the film’s climax, and in the very next scene, as the remaining members of the family are moving on, themselves, she expresses Ma Joad’s strength yet again, proving that she is the glue that holds the family together through good times and bad.
Darwell really understood the character and she acted the hell out of the part. This is one of those times when I completely agreed with the Academy’s choice in the awarding of an Oscar. Even looking at her fellow nominees, I’m glad she won.