Category: Best Actress

1931-32 – Helen Hayes

The Sin of Madelon Claudet

This movie actually took me by surprise and in a good way.  It started off as a cookie-cutter typical Hollywood story about a young girl in France who is mistreated by a man, and has to become a single mother.  But her situation goes from bad to better, to worse, to much worse, to shameful, pitiful, to just plain sad.  To make a long story short, she accepts the help of a wealthy man, only to find that his wealth was based on a criminal lifestyle.  She gets unjustly put in jail for 10 years, gets out, and in an effort to anonymously put her estranged son through medical school, she becomes a street walker, a tired old whore.

Helen Hayes was an actress that had an innate sense of frailty about her.  There were times in the story where that really worked to her advantage, but there were times when she needed to be strong, and I’m sorry, but it didn’t always work for me.  There was a scene where she tells off a man who won’t marry her because of her child.  I wanted her to have more strength, more defiance, in that moment, more fierceness on behalf of her son, but it was all under-played.

But later on in the film, as a prostitute, when she is rightly accused of stealing one of her customers’ wallets, she tries to play the meek and innocent card.  Her frailty worked well for the act.  But they do not believe her, and when she smashes a bottle and threatens to cut someone, I very nearly believed it.  There just wasn’t enough crazy in her attitude, her mannerisms, her eyes.  Strangely enough, though, one of her strongest and most confident moments in the movie is when she is staying at the rich man’s house, and is giving the manservant common instructions.  That was the woman I could believe threatening someone’s life.

And what it all translated to was a kind of timidity that made her look like she was afraid to be in front of the camera.  However, the Academy voters saw things differently.  Helen Hayes took home the Oscar for Best Actress.  I mean, after all that, I’m not saying she did a terrible job.  I’m just saying I had a hard time really believing her performance.  Unfortunately, I can’t find the two films that were her competition at the 5^th Academy Awards, so maybe she actually deserved her win.

1930-1931 Marie Dressler

Min and Bill

This was a pretty short movie, but it had some really great scenes in it.  The script was good and the part of Min Divot seemed to have been written specifically for Dressler.  The actress had clearly been acting for years, and knew what she was doing in front of the camera.  There were a few tell-tale signs that she had acted in the silent era, but they weren’t too bad: the over-exaggerated facial expressions, the occasional over-enunciated dialogue, the usual suspects.

Dressler really seemed to understand the character.  She was low-class, hard, and tough, and yet you could see Min’s softer underbelly.  As much as she tried to deny her love for her surrogate daughter, you could tell she loved her very much, even giving up her life savings so the girl could attend a good school.  Every time she tried to convince her daughter that she was through with her, you could see in her eyes how much it hurt her.  And she only tried to do it because she knew Nancy would have a better life away from her.

Dressler had a very expressive face, and she was so convincing in the role.  She had a look that was low-born, but not defeated, angry but not mean, and at times, loving, but not doe-eyed.  And there was a lot of character in her mouth, her natural frown, that could change to silent concern and care with just a little movement.  Dressler really knew how to play the part.  Dressler had been primarily known as a comedic actress, and she even had a few funny scenes to prove it.  But I think that, like many comedy geniuses, she had the ability to turn in a fantastic dramatic performance.  Sometimes, it seems you have to understand the humor to fully appreciate the drama.

The end of the film took an unexpected dark turn, even though it was foreshadowed in the first half of the movie.  She ends up murdering a woman to protect Nancy’s future, and as she is arrested and taken by the police, she smiles, knowing that she save her daughter from a birth mother who would have ruined her happiness.  At first, I wasn’t sure Dressler deserved the Oscar for Best Actress, but after the climax of the film, the murder and the arrest, I can see why she won.

1931-32 – Irene Dunne

Cimarron

Irene Dunne really did a fantastic job in this film.  This is my third time watching Cimarron, and each time I see it, I am reminded of the wonderful way in which she portrayed the character of Sabra Cravat.  She was a woman in love with a man who had a severe case of wanderlust.  He left her alone with her children most of the time, only to show up in brief erratic visits, during which he forcibly imposed his own views, noble as they were, on everyone around him.

First, Dunne had to deal with the physical characteristics of the progressing age of the character.  Not only did makeup and costume changes show her getting older, but Irene’s movements and vocal performance sold it as well.  As a young girl, she was outspoken and aggressive, though always subservient to her beloved husband.  And by the time Sabra was a white-haired old lady, her movements were slower, her glances more wise and calm, a trait that only the more experienced in life can possess.  And Dunne played it all with confidence and skill. 

But I also have to say that upon watching it for the third time, I have to praise Dunne’s use of facial expressions.  At times, she had the ability to say more with her eyes and her demeanor than with her voice.  She didn’t have the natural ease of presence that her fellow nominee Norma Shearer had, but she did have an air of practiced precision about her that left no doubt as to what she was trying to portray in the character.  There was one scene in which she really showed off her skills as an actress.  It was the courtroom scene, where Sabra’s husband defies her, and argues passionately on the side of the town hussy, whom Sabra wants to convict.  Her look of self-righteous anger and indignation were perfect.

Really, I have to admire Dunne’s performance in Cimarron more than her leading man, Richard Dix’s.  True, Dix was also nominated for Best Actor, but Dunne was the real star of the film, The story was Sabra’s story, and she carried the movie.  The character had an arch, starting off one way, with attitudes of racism and superiority.  But by the end, she grudgingly changed her views to ones of acceptance and graciousness, and Dunne was the one who brought that arch to life.

1929-30 – Gloria Swanson

The Trespasser

Here we are a second time with Gloria Swanson.  The first time she was nominated for the Best Actress category was two years earlier at the first Awards ceremony for the movie Sadie Thompson.  There, she played a strong, independent woman, struggling through her trials on her own.  All the men wanted her.  And I must say, she played it quite well.

Here, she played Marion Donnell, a strong, independent woman, struggling through her trials on her own.  All the men wanted her.  Again, she played it well, but I’m beginning to see a pattern.  And although Swanson starred in many films during the silent era, I think she did a fine job transitioning into the talkies.  In fact, this was her first All Talking picture, and I’m guessing that part of her success was due to the fact that she was playing a somewhat familiar character.

Unfortunately, she still had some of those overly-dramatic mannerisms and facial expressions that she had to have in her silent films.  But if this was an offense, she didn’t transgress too often, which was all for the better.  They even had her singing in several scenes, but her voice suffered from the poor sound quality of the times.  Her soprano notes sounded just a bit shrill.  Even her speaking voice had a slight tendency to lean towards a higher pitch.

Marion Donnell was a woman who eloped with a man, but left him during the honeymoon because his wealthy father shamed her commoner status.  Her new husband is under the thumb of the crotchety old man, and she walks out on him for not standing up for her.  Skip ahead to a few years later, and we learn that she has had a child, and chooses to raise him as a single parent.  Swanson did a good enough job.  It’s just that I’ve seen her play a similar part before.  Her most dramatic scene is when she gives her son to his wealthy father so that the boy will have a better life than she can provide for him.  As she watches him go, she breaks down in tears.  Swanson played it well, but I don’t know.  The role just didn’t seem to merit the nomination, especially when compared with the other actresses nominated in the category.  There was something just a little lackluster in the part.

Anna Christie

Romance

1929-30 – Greta Garbo

Anna Christie / Romance

There was a reason why Greta Garbo is considered one of the superstars of her day.  For one thing, she was absolutely gorgeous.  Now, I know I shouldn’t put too much emphasis on physical beauty, but right or wrong, it plays a significant part in the concept of the Hollywood Machine.  Let’s face it.  We all love watching attractive people on the screen, and Garbo was a rare beauty.  But more than that, her beauty would have meant nothing if she couldn’t act, and she could.

Now, granted, her acting, while good, was, at times, a bit… melodramatic.  Her gestures were often grand, her glances calculated, her smiles practiced.  True, she was captivating to watch, and I can understand why people loved her.  But every now and then, her acting consisted of barely more than posing and looking pretty.  She did love to throw her head back and strike a pose for the camera.

The two movies for which Garbo was nominated for Best Actress were vastly different.  In Anna Christie, she played a poor, emotionally damaged woman who thought of herself as trash.  In Romance, she played a grand and dramatic opera star.  The two characters she played couldn’t have been less alike.  Personally, I was more impressed with her performance in Anna Christie, simply because it was a more dramatic part, and Garbo got to dig a bit deeper into her emotional well.

In Ana Christie, she played a woman who had been raped as a child, and became a prostitute to survive.  She felt that she was unable to love, and was therefore unlovable, until she met a rough sailor who loved her and stole her heart.  And Romance was a dramatic romance.  It had a lot of intensity, but only a little depth.  The worldly opera singer falls for a priest who is madly in love with her.  But neither can leave their different worlds, so the romance is doomed to go unpursued.

Garbo was good in both roles, and of course, she looked fantastic.  If there was one thing that bothered me about her, it was that her Swedish accent was, at times, a little thick.  There were a few times, in both films, that I had a little difficulty understanding her lines.  But I think maybe that had been part of her overall allure.

1929-30 – Ruth Chatterton

Sarah and Son

There were several things about this movie that surprised me and most of them had to do with Ruth Chatterton.  She did an exceptional job in the film, playing the poor immigrant woman whose baby is abducted by her lazy, drunk husband, and sold to a wealthy family.  Her performance was very real and authentic.  Chatterton really impressed me with her skills as an actress.

First, she used an Austrian accent.  Accents are dangerous for actors because they can so easily sound false, or be inconsistent, or both.  Chatterton overcame both these hurdles with what seemed like ease.  I know a little bit about Slavic accents from my own experience, and hers sounded pretty natural.  In the beginning of the film, the accent was thicker and her speech patterns were more pronounced.  Later in the movie, as her character has gained 12 years of experience with the English language, the accent became lighter without vanishing completely.

She also got to show off her singing talent, since the character of Sarah Storm was first a Vaudeville performer, and then later, a world renowned opera star.  She only sang one song during the film, Brahms’s Wiegenlied, more commonly known as Brahms’s Lullaby.  Her singing of the song was almost a plot point, and she sang it in 2 separate scenes.  To be sure, she sang it competently, though to be honest, I’ve heard better.  I think maybe the film’s overall poor sound quality may have hurt her performance in that respect. 

The character of Sarah went through some things that were unspeakably horrible.  Chatterton played the part with two things that I particularly liked: frailty, and madness.  The frailty came from the fact that she was a timid immigrant who was alone in a strange place, and the madness came from the tragedy of losing her son, and being told that she could be put in jail if she insisted on pestering the wealthy family and trying to take away their baby.  True, the infant was really hers, but who would the police believe? The wealthy Ashmores, or the poor, delusional foreigner?    Chatterton did a fine job, but I agree with the Academy voters.  Norma Shearer’s performance in the Divorcee was just a bit better.

1929-30 – Nancy Carroll

The Devil’s Holiday

Now here’s what I want in a Best Actress nomination.  Nancy Carroll’s performance was incredible.  Not only was the part written well, it was acted beautifully.  There was drama, personality, a wide range of emotions, and a believable character arch.  This is what so many other performances seem to lack, a good script and a bit of passion.  There was an ease about her, a confidence that made her look completely comfortable in the lead role of the film.

She played Hallie Hobart, a gold-digger who cared nothing for men, except for the money she could get from them.  The thought of falling in love was laughable to her.  She wanted to be a carefree party-girl with exciting friends and beautiful clothes.  So of course, we know what happens.  When her con-man friend tells her of a mark, a rich young country rube in town to make a business deal for his father, she gets him to fall for her.  She even marries him to have access to his family’s money, but in the end, she ends up falling in love with him.

This is where Nancy really got to show off her acting skills.  The young man has fallen deeply in love with her, and when he is injured, she rushes to his side, prays over him in his sick-bed, and sheds tears of joy when he recovers.  This really put the actress through her paces, and Carroll was up to the challenge.  I’m finding that many actors of this era are turning in performances that are good, but not great.  But Carroll was great, especially in these final scenes.  Her frantic and selfless love was powerful to watch and I think she must have given the Oscar winner, Norma Shearer, a run for her money that year.  But let’s face it.  Shearer was a pretty hard one to beat.  But Carroll was fantastic.

When I looked at a complete list of acting nominees, I was surprised to find that this was the only time Nancy Carroll every earned an Academy nomination.  So I looked up what other movies she was in.  There were only 39 films on the list.  She stopped acting in movies around 1938, but then spent the 50s and early 60s acting for television.  If any of her other performances were anything like The Devil’s Holiday, she should have been a bigger star than she apparently was.

1929-30 Norma Shearer

The Divorcee

Again, these still being pretty early films from 1930, I was only able to find The Divorcee to watch and review.  I’ve seen the movie before, and knew that shearer did a fantastic job.  And really, this is the film she took home the Best Actress Oscar for.  Not to downplay her performance in Their Own Desire, which I’ve no doubt was just as good, I think her portrayal of Jerry Martin was strong enough to earn her the statuette on its own merits.

This was a welcome example of a female empowerment film that suffered from the social attitudes of the time in which it was made.  Jerry is madly in love with her husband, played by Chester Morris.  But when she learns that he has been unfaithful, I noticed the unfortunate flip-flop back and forth between ‘how dare you’ and ‘I forgive you.’  I’m not sure if this movie would ever be made today.  A strong modern woman would never put up with Ted’s attitude.  When he cheated, it didn’t mean a thing, but when she balanced the scales, she was branded as wicked. 

Shearer was gorgeous, and she had a smile that could light a room.  It just made her sadness all the more dismal when it was turned off.  And when the tears finally started to flow, it was heartbreaking to watch.  Once the divorce was finalized, she went on a sexual spree to celebrate her freedom.  But eventually she broke down when she revealed that she was tired – tired of being promiscuous, tired of all the constant partying, tired of the mess she had made of her life, and tired of the shame she ultimately felt because of her wild escapades.  Shearer played that scene perfectly.  All that weariness came through in every line she delivered.

Shearer was wonderful.  She seemed to have an ease about her that made everything she did seem effortless.  She acted so naturally, that it justified the plot device where all the men were in love with her.  She created a character that I bet audiences wanted to know in real life.  Shearer just seemed so genuine.   It’s too bad I was not able to find Their Own Desire to watch.  But I’ve looked at the list of Best Actress nominees, and I have four more upcoming films starring Shearer to look forward to, if I can find them.

1929-30 – Norma Shearer

Their Own Desire

It’s a good thing I’m only reviewing Shearer’s performance in this movie, and not the movie, itself.  There were things about the plot and a few of the characters that I didn’t like at all, but her acting was fantastic.  She was made to be in front of the camera.  I’ve said it about her before, and I’ll say it again.  There was an ease about her that was unmatched by any other actress, in her own time, or in the modern pantheon of movie stars.  She was amazing, and it is utterly clear why she was a Hollywood superstar.  She draws the attention like a moth to a flame.

Here, she played Lally Marlett, a young girl whose world is crushed when she learns that her father has left her mother for another woman.  Then she reluctantly falls in love with a horrible bully of a man, who, it turns out, is the son of the woman with whom her father had an affair.  She spends about a third of the movie trying to get him to leave her alone, but John is so in love with her that he thinks he owns her the moment he meets her, and that no means yes.  But fall in love she does. 

The role gave Shearer a chance to show off her acting chops with a few dramatic scenes that might have challenged a lesser actress.  But she pulled them off with grace and ease.  The first of these scenes is the one in which she catches her father in the arms of his lover.  The shock, confusion, and disbelief are so clear on her face and in the way she moves.  But the real scene where she nails her craft is the climax.  John is very nearly drowned and she is on the edge of madness as she cradles his still form in her arms.  She is so distraught, she has lost touch with reality.  She can’t even see the world around her.  She was fantastic in that scene! I just love watching Shearer on the screen, no matter what movie I see her in.  She had a way of inhabiting a character, not through force, but through subtlety and ease, ease of speech, ease of movement, and ease of attitude.  She is just a delight.  She never looked like she was trying to be her character.  Her acting just seemed so effortless, like she didn’t even have to think about what she was doing.  Of course, she was nominated for two films at this Awards Ceremony, and she took home the Oscar, an honor I think she totally deserved.

1928-29 – Bessie Love

The Broadway Melody

Alright, this is actually the 4^th time I have seen this movie, and this time I was paying close attention to Bessie Love’s performance.  I was trying to analyze the role itself, Love’s skills in portraying the character, the range of her emotions, her commitment to the drama, her understanding of the story.  In light of that, I think she absolutely deserved the nomination.  Furthermore, I think she must have given the winning actress a real run for her money.  Bessie Love really did a fantastic job!

She played the character of Hank, one half of a sister act with dreams of making it big on Broadway.  She was so focused on her goal, she failed to notice that her sister, Queenie, really didn’t even want to be a performer.  On top of that, Hank’s long-time fiancée, Eddie, had fallen in love with Queenie.  Not only was Hank in danger of losing her dreams of stardom with her sister, but also her man, which is exactly what eventually happened.

The story was actually a lot more dramatic than I have given it credit for in the past, and Bessie Love did most of the heavy lifting.  Yes, she was good throughout the entire film, but the emotional climax of the film is where she really stole the show.  Her dreams come crashing down around her.  Queenie has just thrown her to the ground and walked out on her.  In order to save her sister from the selfish attentions of a rich cad, Hank forces herself to spurn her beloved Eddie.  Trembling and in tears, she reveals that she knows he loves Queenie, and she sends him off to fight for her honor.  Now utterly alone, she suffers a complete emotional breakdown.  It is actually a difficult scene to watch.  The tears, the sobbing, and the pain were all let loose, and Bessie Love really impressed me.

I’m not sure why this scene didn’t stick with me after the first three times I watched the movie, but it finally did, and I’m beginning to understand not only  why Bessie Love was nominated for Best Actress, but also why the film won the award for Outstanding Picture.  I am glad I’ve had the opportunity to become reacquainted with this movie.  Strangely enough, it just seems to get better every time I see it.

1928-29 – Corinne Griffith

The Divine Lady

This was an ok movie.  Good but not great.  If you want a better telling of the story of Lord Nelson’s lover, watch That Hamilton Woman from 1941.  But Corinne Griffith did a competent job.  She certainly had a lot of costume changes, and the tale was an epic one that spanned years.  Everybody seemed to age properly except Griffith’s character, Mrs. Hamilton, which, I suppose, wasn’t the actress’s fault.  The most they did for her was to update her hairstyle to a more matronly coif, but nothing more.  Well, it was just something that I noticed.

As far as I know, this was the last silent film from the 1920s that had a nomination in any of the acting categories.  It is also interesting to note that the version of the film I found on YouTube had been altered slightly.  Someone had taken all the dialogue cards and translated them into Spanish.  Unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish, so I missed out on that aspect of the film.  But silent films are made to tell a lot of the story without dialogue.

Corinne Griffith did a good job of doing this, moving the story along with the expressiveness of her face, her eyes, her movements.  And she looked beautiful doing it.  There was one scene in particular where she was made up to look gorgeous.  It was a wonderful romantic scene between her and Victor Varconi, playing the part of Horatio Nelson.  The cameral had been focused on a tight close-up of Griffith’s face, as she held a flower between her lips and those of her lover.  Griffith was widely considered one of the most beautiful women of the silent era, and after watching that scene, I can understand why.

And her more dramatic scenes were also played pretty well.  I can understand why she was nominated for Best Actress, but after watching all of the other nominees’ performances, I can understand why she didn’t win.  She was good, but to put it bluntly, I thought others were better.