1948: Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda

Jane Wyman plays Belinda, who is isolated from everyone else in her small Nova Scotia town due to her inability to hear or speak. She works at her father's mill but has no way of communicating with anyone until a new doctor arrives in town and teaches her to sign, read, and write. Unfortunately, even when she is finally able to connect with the doctor and her father, the other townspeople still think of her as "the Dummy" and treat her as such.

This is the first performance since Janet Gaynor's to win Best Actress without a single line of spoken dialogue. With it, Jane Wyman proves that she was born a generation too late. She would have made an amazing silent film star. Her expressions are perfect in every scene. Even before her character learns to communicate through sign language, the audience always knows exactly how she's feeling. She doesn't need to talk; she says everything with her eyes. While many silent performances use overly dramatic gestures and exaggerated faces, everything she does seems perfectly natural. She engages with people as best she can, but you never doubt that she can't hear, even though as far as I know Jane Wyman actually had perfectly good hearing. I wish they had gotten an actual Deaf actress to play the role, but I'm sure that would have been asking way too much in 1948. As it is, I think this movie was actually quite progressive for its time, dealing with major issues that were rarely touched by Hollywood in that era, such as bigotry and rape. And Wyman makes Belinda seem so real and relatable that the townspeople who think that she's mentally and emotionally deficient simply because she can't speak or hear end up looking like idiots. While this message probably would have been conveyed even better if they'd cast a Deaf actress, I'm impressed that it was addressed at all in an era when most people felt that anything different was necessarily bad.

This movie was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, but only won Best Actress. Personally, I think it deserved to beat Hamlet for Best Picture. I can't believe I'd never even heard of this movie before I started this project; it's so well done. The story is fascinating, and the performances are all incredible. I don't like to call things "jaw-droppingly good" very often, but my jaw literally dropped several times when I was watching this. It should have definitely won more awards, and should certainly be more widely recognized, but if it had to win only one Oscar, at least it won the right one. Because without a sympathetic, believable portrayal of Belinda, the movie could not have worked. Wyman pulls it off spectacularly. I was surprised that Olivia de Havilland didn't win for The Snake Pit, but I understand why now. Giving a silent performance in a talking picture must have been incredibly challenging, yet Wyman makes it look like the easiest thing in the world.

This was Jane Wyman's second of four Best Actress nominations, and her only win. She was also nominated for 1946's The Yearling, 1951's The Blue Veil, and 1954's The Magnificent Obsession. When she won this Oscar, she made the shortest Best Actress acceptance speech on record, saying simply, "I accept this very gratefully for keeping my mouth shut once. I think I'll do it again."

Side note: Jane Wyman was married to Ronald Reagan from 1940 to 1948, which means she is so far the only ex-wife of a U.S. President who has won an Academy Award. Just in case you were wondering.

Next: Olivia de Havilland, who is turning 99 tomorrow, gets her second Oscar

1947: Loretta Young for The Farmer's Daughter

At the beginning of the film, Loretta Young's character, Katrin Holstrom, leaves the farm on which she was brought up with hopes of becoming a nurse. Due to a series of bizarre circumstances, however, she ends up working as a Congressman's maid. Though she falls in love with her employer, she is opposed to his politics, and her outspoken nature leads to conflict.

It seems like about half of the Best Actress winners so far have won by speaking in accents that are not their own, to varying degrees of success. Young's Swedish accent isn't terrible, but you can tell it's not her natural way of talking. Personally, I was impressed that it wasn't worse, especially after some of the pitiful accent attempts I've listened to so far. All in all, I liked Young's performance. Her delivery of Katrin's sharp comebacks when men condescendingly implied that she knew nothing of politics was perfect. The scene when she stood up to challenge the politician that everyone had just been cheering for, and stood her ground and made her arguments even when they were booing her, was probably the best part. Her nervous but determined demeanor ensured that both the crowd and the audience would ultimately root for her. Loretta Young was very good at being wholesome and likeable, which she put to good use in this film, and when that was combined with resilience and strong opinions it made for an interesting, realistic character. If the movie had only focused on her political side, it would have been a fantastic performance. However, there was also a love story element, and in my opinion, that wasn't nearly as good.

I love Joseph Cotten as an actor, but I didn't quite believe that he was actually in love with Loretta Young, or that she was in love with him. They both just kind of pined for each other, without any real spark or conviction. I think I would have liked the movie much better if it had cut out the love story altogether. Admittedly, this is more the fault of the story than the performance, but if she had made her character's love seem more genuine, I don't think I would feel the same way. She acted more like a starstruck young girl in the presence of a great man than a strong-willed, intelligent woman in love with a political rival, and I think the film suffers for that. Otherwise, though, it was a mostly very good performance in an entertaining movie.

Loretta Young started making movies when she was a child in the 1910s, but this was her first Oscar nomination. She was nominated just once more, for 1949's Come to the Stable. She only made a few more films after that before moving to television with "The Loretta Young Show".

Coming up next: Jane Wyman

1946: Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own

Olivia de Havilland plays Jody Norris, who falls in love with a WWI pilot and gets pregnant. Unfortunately, her boyfriend is killed in action shortly thereafter, and she's forced to give up their son to avoid scandal. She never stops thinking about him, and tries several times to find a way to raise him without anyone getting suspicious, but he has his own adoptive parents who love and care for him.

I did not have high hopes for this movie, mostly because it was so hard to find. Most of these films I either already owned or could get from the library, or failing that, could at least find on something like YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu. But this movie was never released on DVD, and in the end I had to stream it from a sketchy website that took ages to load. I figured that if it was worth watching, it would be more readily available. Perhaps it's only because my expectations were so low, but I actually really liked To Each His Own. I have no idea why it's called that, but it's engaging, entertaining, and emotional. And Olivia de Havilland's performance is wonderful.

The movie opens during WWII, when Jody's a middle-aged woman. Since I knew nothing about this movie going into it, I didn't know that most of it was flash-backs, and my first thought was, how odd that they would cast the approximately 30-year-old de Havilland in the role of a 45-year-old. And my next thought was, wow, 30-year-old de Havilland is pretty convincing as a 45-year-old, once they make her up to look older. When the flash-backs first started, it seemed like she was playing a completely different character. Initially I thought this was a flaw, but as the story progressed, it made sense. Jody has such a complicated life that she essentially is a completely different person during WWII than she was during WWI. Throughout the film, de Havilland does a tremendous job of portraying the gradual transformation that her character goes through. Her demeanor changes as she becomes slightly more defeated with each failed attempt to get her son back, until eventually she stops trying and moves across the ocean. She never completely gives up hope, though, as demonstrated by how excited she is when she learns that he happens to be nearby. I didn't always agree with what her character was doing, like when she blackmailed her son's adoptive mother into giving him to her, but I always believed in her, which to me is the mark of an excellent performance.

This character is quite similar to the one Helen Hayes won Best Actress for in The Sin of Madelon Claudet. The main difference is Hayes's character's baby sends her on a downward spiral, whereas de Havilland's character is still able to become a successful businesswoman. They both gave remarkable performances, and it's difficult to determine whose was better. It's very interesting to me how many Best Actress winning roles so far have been devoted mothers, especially in the 1940s. I can't help but wonder how many of the Best Actor winning roles are devoted fathers. My guess would be not nearly as many, but I'm not sure. All I know is that, regardless of how similar it may be to others, this is definitely one of the better performances I've seen so far, which I was certainly not expecting. I can't wait to see how good she is in her other winning role, since I've heard that that was way better.

Olivia de Havilland is currently the oldest living Best Actress Winner, at almost 99 years old (her birthday's actually next Wednesday). This also makes her the second longest-living Best Actress Winner ever (Luise Rainer lived to 104). She was also the first sister of a Best Actress Winner to win Best Actress, and personally I think this blows Joan's performance in Suspicion completely out of the water. Olivia de Havilland was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Gone with the Wind, which she lost to Hattie McDaniel for the same film. She was also nominated for Best Actress for 1941's Hold Back the Dawn (which she lost to her sister) before winning for To Each His Own. She was nominated again for 1948's The Snake Pit (which is also an amazing performance, by the way), and won for her final nomination in 1949, so I'll talk more about her soon. But first comes Loretta Young, in another movie that's been difficult to track down.

1945: Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce

Joan Crawford illustrates the importance of not spoiling one's children as the title character in this film noir. The movie opens with the murder of Mildred's second husband and reveals her back-story through an interview with a detective who's trying to discover the identity of the killer. Through the ups and downs of her life, Mildred has remained firm in one thing only: her complete devotion to her obnoxious, bratty daughter, Veda.

This movie frustrates me so much. This is the fifth time I've watched it, and I still haven't decided whether I like it or not. Mostly it's well-done, although the story drags a lot, which I think is partly to build suspense. My main problem is that I kind of hate all the characters, except for Mildred's younger daughter and Eve Arden's character, neither of whom is in very much of the movie. I feel bad for Mildred, but I also don't because most of the bad things that happen to her are her own fault. In most films about mothers, their devotion to their children is portrayed in a positive light, but not this one. Mildred worships Veda, who consequently grows up spoiled and horrid. This then raises the question: how much are parents to blame for the way their children turn out? I don't know the answer, but I have to blame Mildred for a significant proportion of Veda's awfulness. Yet I still can't help sympathizing with her. Crawford brings such a sense of reality to the character that the ridiculous things she does to try to please Veda almost seem logical. So even though I do blame her for most of her own unhappiness, I'm nevertheless rooting for her throughout.

Although I'm not sure how I feel about this film, I do know that it's very well-acted, at least by the actresses in it. The actors leave something to be desired, but the male characters are fairly one-dimensional, so they didn't have much to work with. But the actresses are very good. Eve Arden and Ann Blyth were both nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and I think they should have gotten to share it, but they both lost to Ann Revere for National Velvet. Crawford won the film's only Oscar, and she pretended to be sick because she didn't want to be at the ceremony if she lost (she let the press into her room when she won). Anyway, she does a remarkable job of playing Mildred. She's particularly effective at conveying her emotions while appearing to try to hide them, which makes us feel that we know her better than the other characters in her world. It's this connection with the audience that made Crawford such a marvelous actress, and this is one of the best examples of it I've seen from her.

Joan Crawford had a very interesting career with several different phases. It began in the silent era and continued into the early 1970s, during which time she played a wide variety of roles, to varying degrees of success. If I'm not sure how I feel about Mildred Pierce, I'm utterly befuddled when it comes to my feelings about Joan Crawford. I do find it rather fascinating that she won her Oscar for playing a terrible, over-indulgent mother, given that, at least according to her daughter, she was in reality a terrible mother in the opposite extreme. But many of her fans to this day fervently deny the claims of Mommie Dearest, so let's not get too deep into that. Anyway, this was Crawford's first Best Actress nomination, and her only win. She was also nominated for 1947's Possessed and 1952's Sudden Fear. I think she deserves her recognition because despite my confusion about her, one thing is clear: she certainly had talent.

Stay tuned for Olivia de Havilland, the earliest Best Actress Winner who's actually still alive right now!

1944: Ingrid Bergman for Gaslight

In this profoundly disturbing, incredibly well-done movie, Ingrid Bergman plays Paula, an orphan whose aunt and guardian is brutally murdered. Ten years later, with the murder still unsolved, Paula moves back into the house where it happened with her new husband, Gregory. At first she's happy, but Gregory keeps telling her that she's very ill, and when things start to get moved and go missing for no apparent reason, Paula begins to wonder if she is going insane.

As I mentioned a couple of years ago, I absolutely love this movie, and my favorite thing about it is Bergman's performance. She is thoroughly convincing in every stage of Paula's journey, especially as she descends into the madness of her husband's creation. This is a gradual process, and she portrays each step perfectly, as her facial expressions and mannerisms slowly lose their vigor until she starts to resemble a zombie. I also love the way she interacts with the other characters, and how her interactions change when she thinks she's crazy. There aren't very many other characters in this movie, since for most of it Gregory confines Paula to their house. Before that, she seems rather outgoing and friendly, but after several months of only interacting with her abusive husband, the flirtatious maid who hates her, and the nearly-deaf cook, she becomes awkward and suspicious around others. I think it would have been easy to turn Paula into merely a weak victim, but even though she comes close she never completely loses her strength, as she demonstrates in the climax, which is one of my favorite movie scenes ever. While this is certainly not a feel-good film, it's a very well-told story. In my opinion, it's also Ingrid Bergman's best performance, which is definitely saying something.

Ingrid Bergman is one of the most talented actresses ever to grace the silver screen. She was always impressive, even though some of her roles weren't that great - for example, she got all of the cheesy lines in Casablanca - so it's particularly amazing to watch her play a part that's as well-written and interesting as her role in Gaslight. She was nominated for a total of seven Oscars (six Best Actress and one Best Supporting Actress). This was her second nomination. She was nominated the previous year for For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the following year for The Bells of St. Mary's. She was nominated without winning once more, for 1948's Joan of Arc, before winning again for 1956's Anastasia. She then won Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express of 1974, and was nominated for Best Actress once more for 1978's Autumn Sonata. I haven't seen Anastasia yet and I've heard that it's kind of boring, but we'll see what I think when I get there. In the meantime, the next winner is Joan Crawford.

1943: Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette

Jones plays the title character, a simple, sickly young girl who sees a series of visions of a beautiful lady, which eventually leads to the creation of a spring that seems to heal people. Though she is constantly taunted and persecuted by both secular and religious leaders, she continues to insist that her visions are real.

In a year when four big stars were nominated for Best Actress (Jean Arthur, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, and Greer Garson), somehow the unknown newcomer came away with the statue. She had appeared in a few things before this, but always credited under her birth name Phyllis Isley. No one knew who Jennifer Jones was before this movie, which means that she won solely for this performance, and not for her status in Hollywood as some past winners seem to have done. While I do have several complaints about this movie in general, I must admit that she was darn near perfect for the role.

This film isn't bad, but it's very cheesy, and the background music makes it significantly more so. I was sick of the music after the first ten minutes, and it would not stop. Apparently the score won an Oscar, too, somehow, which makes me wonder how terrible the other nominated scores must have been. I think Jones was far more deserving of her award. She exudes such innocence and conviction that the whole time I just wanted to smack everyone who refused to believe her and thought she was perpetrating a fraud. Yes, the movie was cheesy, but it could have been way cheesier if the character of Bernadette hadn't been so believable. I couldn't really relate to her, as she literally let nothing bother her, except when people prevented her from going to the place where she could see the lady. Suffering from terrible asthma, people calling her stupid, being doubted and accused of madness or fraud, even dying of bone cancer; nothing caused her to deny what she'd seen, or even to complain. Bernadette is a truly saintly character, and the film does a good job of portraying the hypocrisy of those who oppose her. Hokey music aside, I would probably be quicker to recommend this movie if it didn't drag so much. The performance was very good, but the movie needed to be at least a half hour shorter.

For some reason, people seem to have forgotten about Jennifer Jones. Most of the other stars of her era have names that are still at least vaguely familiar to most people, but not her, which is odd since she was nominated for a total of five Oscars, starting with this one. The following year she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Since You Went Away, and then she was nominated for Best Actress in 1945's Love Letters, 1946's Duel in the Sun, and 1955's Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Though this was her only win, I think she deserves to be remembered more than she is, especially with the talent she demonstrated in this performance.

Next up: Ingrid Bergman, in the only Best Actress winning performance to make it onto my 10 Views in 10 Years blog.

1942: Greer Garson for Mrs. Miniver

As the title character in this World War II Best Picture Winner, which I blogged about before here, Greer Garson helps keep people's spirits up in the midst of extremely difficult times. Though her family and everything else she holds dear is threatened by the war, Mrs. Miniver keeps her positive outlook, and thus encourages audience members to do the same.

It's very hard to summarize this movie without making it sound a little hokey, but the movie itself is surprisingly not. I think a lot of that has to do with Garson's performance. She makes Kay Miniver seem like a living, feeling human being. Yes, she remains positive, but that doesn't mean nothing ever fazes her; she just knows how to recover quickly. For example, she is clearly terrified throughout the scene when the German pilot has her at gunpoint, as we can see in her eyes and her behavior, but she doesn't let her fear paralyze her. Not only is she able to find a way out of that seemingly hopeless situation; she's even able to joke about it later that same day. Obviously, at the time this was meant as a way to encourage people to help the war effort, but even now it serves as an important reminder that nothing is as hopeless as it seems at first. This wouldn't be nearly as effective of a message if Mrs. Miniver had not been portrayed in such a realistic and likeable way that nearly everyone can and wants to relate to her.

There are, of course, other great aspects of the film besides Garson's performance. The story itself is very engaging. It's refreshing to see a war film from a woman's perspective. The rest of the cast is also quite good, although some of them have pretty pathetic British accents. Garson was born in London, so this was not a problem for her. Nor was it a problem for Dame May Whitty, who was absolutely delightful in this film. I think she should have gotten to share the Best Supporting Actress Oscar with Teresa Wright, who was also wonderful, as usual, although her accent was a little lacking. At least she did a way better job than Walter Pidgeon, who didn't even try, and Richard Ney, who almost got it sometimes but mostly just sounded weird. Speaking of weird, Ney played Garson's son in this movie, and the following year he became her husband in real life. Anyway, the point is, Greer Garson's portrayal of the title character is probably the best thing about this movie, but it is by no means the only thing to recommend it. I was glad for an excuse to watch it again, although the accent thing bothered me a lot more this time.

This was Garson's third of seven nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She was also nominated for 1939's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 1941's Blossoms in the Dust, 1943's Madame Curie, 1944's Mrs. Parkington, 1945's The Valley of Decision, and 1960's Sunrise at Campobello. The only Oscar she received was for Mrs. Miniver. Evidently she was beyond thrilled to win; her acceptance speech lasted five and a half minutes. Perhaps that has something to do with why she never won again.

Stay tuned for: Jennifer Jones

1941: Joan Fontaine for Suspicion

In this Hitchcock thriller, Joan Fontaine plays a high society lady who falls in love with and marries a man without knowing very much about him. The more she learns about him, the more sketchy he seems, and eventually she fears that he's trying to kill her for insurance money.

Apparently, the Academy only liked Hitchcock and Fontaine when they worked together. The previous year, she starred in Rebecca, his only Best Picture Winner, and he directed her only Best Actress winning performance. In fact, this is the only time an actress or actor won an Oscar for a Hitchcock film. I'm not really sure why, since I've seen all of Hitchcock's American films, and several of his British ones, and this is one of my least favorites.

Part of the problem is the ending. If you don't want to have it spoiled, or if you only want to see what I have to say about Joan Fontaine's performance itself, skip this paragraph. But basically, they set it up so it really looks like her husband is trying to kill her, and then at the very end it goes, "Psych! He's actually not," and it's super cheesy and awkward and then ends really abruptly. This is probably because, as legend has it, Hitchcock actually wanted the husband to be trying to kill the wife, but he was played by Cary Grant, and the producers didn't think anyone would want to see the popular, handsome hero play a villain. While I absolutely love Cary Grant, I really, really wish they would have let him be the bad guy, just this once. He actually does a very good job of playing a despicable character, so that in the end it's like, really? He's not evil? I don't buy it.

Okay, sorry for the tangent, but I needed to rant about that. Now on to Joan Fontaine. I honestly don't know how I feel about Joan Fontaine. I mean, on the one hand, she's a legend, and I respect that, but on the other hand I've never seen a performance of hers that truly impressed me. She has a variety of facial expressions that all end up looking like different versions of worry and confusion. Admittedly, this makes her perfect for Hitchcock films, since his typical female victim character spends most of the film feeling worried and confused. But honestly, I thought she was way better in Rebecca than in this. At least in that movie, I feel sorry for her character, whereas in this movie I just want to yell at her for marrying a guy whom she doesn't know and who never treats her very well. It would be one thing if I just didn't like her character, but I think she plays her really weirdly: as if she knows exactly what she wants but is still confused about herself and life in general. I would rather have seen her either over-confident and wrong in her choice of husband or totally naive, but trying to be a combination of both just did not work at all. She does the naive thing really well in Rebecca, so I think she should have won for that rather than Suspicion. If anyone should have won an Oscar for this movie it's Cary Grant for playing against type (until the end at least), but the Academy very unfairly refused to recognize him until his 1970 Honorary Oscar, so that didn't happen.

I'm not saying Fontaine's performance is terrible; it's just not that good. There are moments that work well, especially when it makes sense for her to be confused or worried. But most of the time I'm wondering what she's doing, why she's making that face, why she said her line the way she said it, and that's a frustrating position to be in as an audience member. So again, not the worst performance so far, but definitely in the bottom half.

Joan Fontaine was nominated for a total of three Oscars: first Rebecca in the previous year, then Suspicion, and then two years later for The Consant Nymph. She continued to act in films and TV for several decades (her last imdb credit is from 1994), and passed away at the age of 96 in 2013. Her older sister, Olivia de Havilland, won two Best Actress Oscars and is still alive, but Joan won first, and she beat Olivia this year. Also they were in back to back Best Picture Winners, since Olivia was in Gone with the Wind and Joan was in Rebecca. Apparently they had major sibling rivalry issues, but I haven't seen any of Olivia de Havilland's Best Actress winning performances yet, so I can't pick the better winner, though I will say I liked her performance in Gone with the Wind much better than Joan's performance in Suspicion. But I'll have to see what I think of her other performances.

In the meantime, the next winner is Greer Garson, in the fourth Best Picture Winner to feature a Best Actress winning performance, and the last one until 1975.

1940: Ginger Rogers for Kitty Foyle

Ginger Rogers plays the title character, who at the beginning of the film is faced with a difficult choice: marry the kind, devoted doctor, or run away with the rich man she's hopelessly in love with who is married to somebody else. Through a series of flashbacks, narrated by her mirror/conscience, we watch her fight her way through the Great Depression, and her history with both men is revealed.

I am a huge Ginger Rogers fan, and even though this is definitely not my favorite of her films, I love that she won this year. From 1933-1939, she was in nine musicals with Fred Astaire, and while she also made several other movies during that time, those were by far the most popular. Wanting a career of her own, rather than to be known only as Fred Astaire's dance partner, she decided to stop working with him altogether after 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (although they did star in one more movie together in 1949). And the very next year, lo and behold, she won Best Actress. So I guess it worked. She proved that she could succeed in dramatic roles in addition to lighthearted musicals.

That being said, I definitely prefer Rogers in comedic roles. Her best moments in this film are when Kitty's joking around or being clever. She gets this great little twinkle in her eyes, and her delivery of funny lines always makes them even funnier than they should be. Unfortunately, Kitty Foyle has a pretty hard life, so most of the movie is pretty dark. In most of the Ginger Rogers films I've seen, when she's doing comedy she seems like a genuine human being whom I can relate to, but as soon as she gets too serious it's like she's holding a sign that says, "I'm acting! Look, watch me act!" I can't figure out a way to say that without sounding mean. Sorry, Ginger, I love you! And actually, to be fair, there are only a few moments like that in this film, and they're almost all towards the beginning. A lot of that probably has to do with the hokey writing in the first few scenes. Once the story picks up, she seems more like a person and less like an actress, though what she ever saw in that sleazy Wyn guy I'll never understand. Anyway, the point is, I generally don't like Ginger Rogers as well in dramatic roles as comedic ones, but this is probably the best dramatic acting I've seen from her. And while I still think Katharine Hepburn should have won an Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, I certainly don't begrudge Ginger this win. Hepburn did end up with four of them after all.

Possibly because she was best suited for comedic roles, which the Academy seems loath to recognize, this was Ginger Rogers's only Oscar nomination. She continued to star in films of various genres throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and appeared on television several times in the 1950s and 1960s, and occasionally after that. She is still best remembered for her partnership with Fred Astaire, but rather than merely his backup, she's generally considered his equal. At least she won a competitive Oscar, which he never did.

Next up: Joan Fontaine, starring opposite my very favorite actor of all time, which will make it difficult to blog about her rather than him, so we'll see how that goes.