1936: Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld

In this ridiculously long Best Picture Winner, which I blogged about before here, Luise Rainer plays singer Anna Held, who becomes Ziegfeld's common-law wife (though the movie doesn't make it clear that they're not actually married...production codes). Even though she still loves him, she ends the relationship because of his womanizing.

Oh my gosh, this movie feels even longer the second time. It's a little over three hours, which wouldn't be so bad except there's only about an hour's worth of story. Luise Rainer's not actually in that much of the movie, but she's in most of the interesting parts. Her musical numbers are among the best, although maybe I'm just saying that because they don't drag on as long as most of the other numbers. Her performance might seem over-the-top, but her character's kind of a diva, so it works. And she's good at trying really hard to hide her true feelings and failing. Hence the famous telephone scene, which is definitely the best part of the movie - unless you really like women in fancy dresses on staircases - and is generally considered to be the reason she won this award.

It's her last scene in the movie. We haven't seen her for a while; Ziegfeld's moved on. She reads in the paper that he's just married Billie Burke, and she decides to call him and congratulate him. With tears streaming down her face, she manages to put a smile in her voice, and keep all but the smallest trace of a quiver out of it, as she tells him how happy she is for him. Once the call is finished, she collapses into sobs. It's definitely not the most amazing scene ever filmed, and certainly not worth sitting through the entire movie for, but it's a very moving piece of acting, so I would call it Oscar-worthy. If you want to see it, just look up that scene on youtube or something. Seriously, don't bother watching the whole movie. It's not that terrible, but it's not very good.

Luise Rainer won this award again the following year, becoming both the first actress to win two Best Actress Oscars and the first person to win back to back Academy Awards. So I'll talk more about her next.

1935: Bette Davis for Dangerous

 Winning for her first official nomination (not counting the write-in of the previous year), Bette Davis plays a stage actress who is supposedly jinxed, and has therefore stopped working. In the beginning, she's a hopeless drunk, until romance gives her life new purpose. But will her jinx ruin the life of her new boyfriend, too?

As I mentioned in my last post, people were outraged when Bette Davis wasn't nominated for Of Human Bondage, to the point that write-in votes were allowed that year and the following year. She still lost to Claudette Colbert, so I suspected that that might have had something to do with her win for this movie, but I wasn't sure. Now that I've seen Dangerous, I am sure: the only possible reason she could have won for this performance was to make up for the previous year. I haven't seen Of Human Bondage, but it has to be far better than this. It's one of the cheesiest, most bizarre movies I've ever seen. Davis's performance, while one of the better aspects of the film, is over-the-top, and at times even painful to watch. It didn't help that she had zero chemistry with her co-star, Franchot Tone. He did, however, have decent chemistry with Margaret Lindsay, who played the fiancée he deserted for Davis, which just made no sense. Why would you leave a woman you're clearly in love with for a woman you have awkwardly forced love scenes with?

The one good thing I can think to say about this movie is that it isn't super predictable. At least, it didn't always go the direction I thought it would, which was kind of refreshing. Beyond that, the dialogue is terrible and the acting mediocre. Davis definitely has her moments, of course, but most of the time her performance is forced and unconvincing. It's unfortunate that such a legendary performer would win an Oscar for such an awful movie as this and not for, say, All About Eve or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, in both of which she gave incredible performances. Oh well, these things happen; just ask Katharine Hepburn.

Bette Davis was nominated for this award a total of 10 times (again not counting the write-in), which as of right now puts her in third place for most Best Actress nominations, and puts her in a tie for third most acting nominations in any category. She won for her next nomination, three years after this, for a movie which I hope is at least three times better than this, but stay tuned to find out.

Next year's winner is Luise Rainer, in the second Best Picture Winner to win Best Actress.

1934: Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night

 In the first Best Actress winning performance in a Best Picture winner, Claudette Colbert plays heiress Ellen "Ellie" Andrews, who runs away to find the man she's married against her father's wishes. She crosses paths with recently-fired newspaper reporter Peter Warne (played by Clark Gable, who also won an Oscar), who agrees to help her in the hopes that her story will get him his job back. Hilarity and romance ensues. And no, Shirley Temple's not in It Happened One Night, but she presented Claudette Colbert with her Oscar, so that's why she's in the picture. Also, Shirley Temple won the first ever Juvenile Oscar that year, so I think it's appropriate to recognize her.

It's kind of ridiculous that this movie won so many awards because no one wanted to make it. Apparently, five actresses turned down the part of Ellie before Colbert finally accepted it, which she only did because the director, Frank Capra, promised to double her salary and finish filming in only four weeks. She complained the whole time, and apparently thought that it was the worst movie she'd ever made. When the Best Actress nominations were announced, a lot of people were very upset that Bette Davis wasn't nominated for Of Human Bondage, so the rules were changed to allow write-in votes. Colbert was so convinced that Davis would win that she originally didn't show up for the ceremony, and had to be summoned from a train station to accept her award, which probably explains why she's holding her coat. Over eighty years later, It Happened One Night is considered one of the best films ever made, and Colbert's one of the best comedic performances ever given.

I think part of the reason no one thought this film would be successful is no one had ever made anything like it before. It's now considered the first true screwball comedy, a genre that's difficult to precisely define, but which I think can be best described as the earliest form of what eventually evolved into the modern romantic comedy. Prior to this, romantic leads were hired to be attractive and dramatic. Any comedy that existed in romantic films was almost exclusively contributed by supporting character actors. The leading man and woman might have a few witty lines or funny moments, but their general purpose was not to elicit laughs. Similarly, comedies seldom involved romance, and when they did, it wasn't to be taken too seriously. This movie changed that forever. Colbert and Gable proved that being comedic and falling deeply in love were not mutually exclusive. And audiences loved it.

Nowadays, people don't tend to think of rom-coms and Oscars in the same sentence. Actresses certainly don't expect to win Best Actress for starring in a romantic comedy, and, with few exceptions, they generally haven't. In that respect, modern audiences would probably think it odd that Colbert won for this movie. Her performance is good and quite entertaining, but it's similar to a lot of other non-nominated performances, some of which are probably even better. But the thing about those other similar performances is they all came after this one. Colbert set the tone for funny, strong, romantic leading ladies. If she hadn't pulled it off as well as she did, we might not have that type of character in films today, or if we did, it wouldn't be quite the same. So regardless of how you feel about romantic comedies, you have to admit that with this performance Claudette Colbert broadened the range of roles available to actresses. That, in my humble opinion at least, makes it Oscar-worthy.

This was Colbert's only Academy Award, but she was nominated for Best Actress again the following year for Private Worlds, and once more for 1944's Since You Went Away. After that she made a few more films, but then switched to work primarily in television and on the stage.

Next year's winner was Bette Davis, perhaps to make up for her lack of an official nomination this year, or perhaps because she gave a fabulous performance. I'll let you know what I think when I've seen it.

1932/1933: Katharine Hepburn for Morning Glory

In her first of four Academy Award winning performances, Katharine Hepburn plays Eva Lovelace (at least, that's her stage name), a naive young woman from Vermont who moves to New York determined to become a successful Broadway actress. After struggling for a while, she finally gets her big break when the leading lady of a new show decides to become too big of a diva for the producer to deal with.

Okay, before I say anything else, I have to make one thing very clear: I love Katharine Hepburn. I love that she's won more acting Oscars than anyone else so far, and that she's currently tied for the second most acting nominations. She's one of my all-time favorite actresses, and she's one of the main people who got me addicted to movies. I think she was extraordinarily talented, and I would literally listen to her read a phone book if she'd come back from the dead and do it for me. So it is with all the love in my heart that I say this: I am utterly appalled that she won an Oscar for this movie because it's by far the worst performance I've ever seen from her.

I just don't get it. How could she have won for this and not for The Philadelphia Story or The African Queen? How was she not even nominated for Adam's Rib or Bringing Up Baby or Pat and Mike? Granted, I'm ridiculously biased. I mean, obviously the Academy voters in 1933 hadn't seen any of those movies yet. They couldn't see what Katharine Hepburn would become capable of later, and therefore had no way of knowing that this would be one of her worst performances. But it's not just that I think this is a bad performance for Katharine Hepburn; I think it's a pretty bad performance period.

I find her totally unconvincing. She continuously prattles on and on about nothing and expects everyone to be fascinated by her, and for some reason, they are. I guess in some ways it's kind of like her role in Bringing Up Baby, except in that movie the way she does it is actually really funny to watch, whereas in Morning Glory it's just pitiful. Then she does really weird things with her voice, like she hasn't quite gotten the hang of how to use it properly. When she's demonstrating to people who think otherwise that she can act, she's way too melodramatic, but somehow they all fall for it. And the way she handles the whole love triangle thing is just confusing. Like does she really think the slimy, indifferent producer is charming, let alone in love with her, and does she really not notice the cute, young writer pining after her? Granted, that particular flaw is probably more the script's fault than Hepburn's. Still, I think if anyone deserved an Oscar for this movie, it's Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, for managing to convince us that he's actually in love with Eva Lovelace, given how obnoxiously she is played.

This was the second time I've watched this movie, and while it will probably be the last, I'm surprisingly not that upset that I had to watch it again. The first time I was just disgusted that the Katharine Hepburn I knew and loved could give such an awful performance. But this time, since I was prepared for it to be bad, I was able to get past that and see a few small glimmers of promise. It might have been my imagination, but a couple of times I thought I caught a glimpse of the Katharine Hepburn that she was about to become, just barely coming through. Maybe the Academy members saw it, too, and though they couldn't possibly know what it meant, they found it just intriguing enough to vote for her.

This was Katharine Hepburn's first of 12 nominations for Best Actress. After this she lost each of the next eight times, before winning each of the final three. So I'll be blogging about her more later, probably in a much more complimentary manner. But next I'll be blogging about Claudette Colbert, in the first Best Picture Winner to feature a Best Actress winning performance.

1931/1932: Helen Hayes for The Sin of Madelon Claudet

In her first sound film, Helen Hayes, also known as The First Lady of the American Theater, plays a single mother who does everything she can to provide for the son who doesn't even know who she is, which becomes even more complicated when she is wrongfully imprisoned.

This is one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. There are lots of movies about motherly love, and even about single mothers making sacrifices for their children, but they usually involve the mothers trying to stay with their children at all costs. When you're used to that, watching Madelon realize that as an unmarried ex-con she would only hold her son back, to the point that she actually tells him his mother is dead, is startling and heart-breaking. But in order to be powerful, it has to be believable, and that's where Helen Hayes comes in.

Her performance is utterly incredible, especially considering the complexity of both the character and the story. It's broken into many different segments, and in each one, her situation is completely different, yet she manages to maintain a consistency so that we never doubt it's the same person. Whether she's a naive, lovestruck young girl; or an abandoned single mother; or a rich count's mistress; or an unjustly accused prisoner; or a desperate prostitute; or a withering, elderly woman, she's always Madelon Claudet, and she's always thinking of her son (except, of course, before he's born). No disrespect to the previous performances I've blogged about, since, apart from Mary Pickford's they've all been quite good, but I think this is the best so far, and it's certainly the most challenging role. I was particularly impressed toward the end, as Madelon is rapidly approaching old age. Yes, the costumes and makeup help a lot, but the way Hayes changes her voice and mannerisms really brings it all together. Overall, an astonishing performance, and definitely worth checking out, if you're up for a depressing movie.

 Helen Hayes wasn't particularly known for her work in film; she was more of a stage actress, and she also worked in television later. Consequently, she was never nominated for this award again, although she did win Best Supporting Actress for Airport of 1970. She also won two Tony Awards, an Emmy, and a Grammy, making her one of only 12 people so far to have won an EGOT (that is, a competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony). She was the second person, and first woman, to achieve this feat. After seeing what she was capable of in this film, I'm not at all surprised.

Next up: Katharine Hepburn, who was notorious for not showing up to the Academy Awards, so I guess I won't be able to use a picture of her posing with her statue.

Side note: I think it's my duty, since I spent so much of my Best Picture blog complaining about how movies had to be really long to win, to point out here that this does not seem to hold true for Best Actress winning films. Last year's winner was only 65 minutes long (though it felt much longer), and this one is only 75 minutes. If this keeps up, it will make it easier to watch Gone with the Wind again. I don't mind a few long movies; it's just that they were all so long.

1930/1931: Marie Dressler for Min and Bill

Marie Dressler plays Min, the tough, hardened owner of a wharf hotel who is raising a teenager named Nancy who was left with her as a baby. Min does everything she can to keep her ward safe, especially when Nancy's alcoholic mother shows up unexpectedly, which sadly involves pushing Nancy away and trying to pretend she doesn't really care about her.

I was hoping to really like this movie, but on the whole it wasn't much to write home about. The plot was weak, the dialogue was lacking, and there were too many random fight scenes, not to mention the typical early-talkie sound issues. But I did think the best aspect of the movie was Dressler's performance, which was obviously why I was watching it in the first place. Though I didn't particularly like her character, and kept begging her to just give Nancy a hug and stop pushing her away, I did like the way she was portrayed. Min has clearly had a very hard life, trying to run a business and raise a child on her own while living in a sketchy harbor, and the only way she knows how to survive is by being tough. This involves never showing that she cares too much about anyone or anything, including Nancy. I thought Dressler did a wonderful job of not only maintaining Min's hardened exterior, but also showing the struggle when her love for Nancy threatens to break through that shell.

I also thought she had good chemistry with her co-star Wallace Beery, who plays Bill, a fisherman staying at Min's hotel. Min and Bill clearly have feelings for each other, and they fight like an old married couple, but they're not actually romantically involved, at least as far as I could tell. Around Bill, Min can let her guard down a little. At least with him she doesn't even try to pretend that she doesn't love Nancy, as he'd see through that instantly. I really liked the scenes between the two of them when they weren't fighting, and I wish the film had more of those.

Marie Dressler was born in 1868, which is at least 26 years earlier than any other Best Actress Oscar winner. Unlike the young, thin, conventionally attractive stars who usually win, Dressler was overweight, frumpy, and had just turned 63 when she received the award, making her the oldest recipient for fifty years, until Katharine Hepburn won for On Golden Pond at age 74. Though Min and Bill isn't anywhere near my favorite movie, I think it's nice that at least for this once, in an era when glamour was considered essential to a film actress's success, the Academy was able to recognize that acting talent doesn't always come in the same package.

Dressler was nominated for Best Actress again the following year for Emma, but then only had a chance to make a few more films before dying of cancer in 1934, thus becoming the first Best Actress Winner to pass away. After seeing how good her performance was in this, I can only imagine how amazing she would have been given better material and even slightly more advanced sound equipment.

Coming up next: Helen Hayes breaks the Canadian streak

1929/1930: Norma Shearer for The Divorcee

Based on the title of this movie, I thought it was going to start with the end of Norma Shearer's character's marriage and go from there. So I was rather surprised to find that at the beginning she hasn't even been married yet, although she is in love. Toward the beginning, her boyfriend proposes and they get married, with every expectation of living happily ever after. Unfortunately, on their third anniversary, as he's about to leave on a business trip, she discovers that he has been unfaithful to her. He brushes it off, says it doesn't mean anything, and leaves on his trip. She is so angry and upset that she spends the night with another man. She regrets it immediately, and confesses to her husband when he returns home, but he refuses to forgive her, and that's how she becomes a divorcee.

I love how feminist this movie is. I love how it points out the folly of society thinking it's no big deal for men to cheat on their wives, but the end of the world for women to cheat on their husbands. I love that even when they're married she's working, but no one makes condescending remarks about how unusual she is for being able to manage a husband and a career at the same time. I love how she tries to enjoy her life after her husband leaves her, even though it doesn't really work. And I really love how much of the time Norma Shearer's wearing pants. It's kind of sad watching this movie 85 years later, knowing that, apart from the pants part, things haven't really progressed that much, and for a while in between they were a lot worse. But anyway, this is a Best Actress blog, so let's talk about Norma Shearer.

Because of her "proper lady" image, Shearer had to work hard to persuade MGM producers, including her husband Irving Thalberg, that she could play this role. Apparently, she did some sort of scandalous photo-shoot that finally convinced Thalberg. After seeing the finished product, he must have wondered why he had ever doubted her. She is absolutely fabulous. Her facial expressions are those of a talented silent actress, but unlike many of her peers, she knew how to use her voice with her face. It helps that her voice sounded pretty normal, unlike Mary Pickford's, but it's the way she says her lines, not merely her voice itself, that's impressive. Okay, yes, I'll admit, there were a few moments that I thought were a bit over-the-top, but on the whole her performance was remarkably controlled. Much of the time, particularly in the scene when she confronts her husband about his infidelity and the scene soon afterward when she confesses her own, it doesn't even seem like a performance at all. In my experience, this is unusual for early talkies, and is unquestionably one of the main reasons why she won the Oscar.

This was the final year that actresses were allowed to be nominated for multiple performances at the same time. Both Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo were nominated for two of their 1929/1930 films. For some reason, unlike Janet Gaynor, who two years earlier won for all three performances for which she was nominated, Shearer only won for The Divorcee. I haven't seen the other film, which is called Their Own Desire, but while I'm sure she was wonderful in it, I can't see how it could have possibly topped this performance. Apparently it was another of her typical "good girl" roles, so it certainly couldn't have surprised the Academy as much as this one did.

Although this would prove to be her only Oscar, Shearer was nominated for Best Actress four more times: for 1931's A Free Soul, 1934's The Barretts of Wimpole Street, 1936's Romeo and Juliet, and 1938's Marie Antoinette, after which she only made five more films before retiring in 1942. With her fourth nomination, she became the person most nominated for this award, pulling ahead even further with her fifth nomination. Though her record was broken only a few years later by Bette Davis, I still think it's cool that Norma Shearer was the first person to receive five Best Actress nominations, since in 87 years only 18 others have managed it, and only eight of them have gotten more than five.

Next up is Marie Dressler, only the fourth winner and already the third from Canada. Was there some sort of Canadian conspiracy or something?

1928/1929: Mary Pickford for Coquette

In Mary Pickford's first talking picture, she plays a flirtatious Southern belle who has most of the young gentlemen in town wrapped around her finger. But then she falls for a lower class so-called scoundrel, despite her father's strong objections, and eventually she must choose between the man she loves and the father she adores.

It might be just because it's such an early talkie, but I didn't think this movie was very good. It took a while for people to completely figure out how to record the sounds they wanted in the film without recording sounds they didn't want, so by today's standards it's laughable from a technical standpoint. Yes, a lot of the lines are hard to hear, and some scenes are kind of awkward because camera movement was limited, but I was kind of expecting that, and I don't think that's why I didn't like it. Honestly, I thought the performances were kind of terrible, Pickford's included.

For one thing, everybody had a really bad Southern accent, and Mary Pickford's was probably the worst. In real life she was Canadian, which is kind of the opposite of Southern, so I guess that makes sense. She also had a really obnoxious, squeaky voice. I'm not sure if that's how she actually talked, or if she was putting it on as part of her accent, or if it was just the early sound recording, but it's difficult to focus on what she's saying when you can hardly bear to listen to the way she says it. And then there were the overly dramatic faces and over-the-top gestures that worked really well in silent films, but just seemed ridiculous when combined with actual talking. There were a couple of times throughout the film when it actually started to get watchable, but invariably someone would mess it up by getting too melodramatic. Most of the time I felt like I was watching The Dueling Cavalier from Singin' in the Rain, and I kept waiting for the sound to get out of sync. To be fair, Pickford did have a few minutes of really good acting, but overall her performance was less than impressive.

Before watching this movie, I had read that Pickford only won this Oscar because she was one of the Academy's founding members, and because she kept inviting the judges over to her mansion for tea. I don't know how accurate that is, but I can definitely see why people don't think she deserved the award for this performance. However, I'm not too upset about it because I feel like she deserved to win for something. Pickford was a legendary silent film star, and, together with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, was part of one of Hollywood's first power couples. Her first film was made in 1909, and twenty years later, Coquette became her 246th. Since by then she was one of the few actresses to actually have control over her own films, it was presumably her own idea to jump on the talkie bandwagon with this film. Unfortunately, that marked the beginning of the end of Pickford's career. She was one of the many silent film stars who failed to successfully make the transition into talking pictures, which is probably at least partially due to how weird her voice sounded in this film. But if the Academy Awards had started a few years sooner, she probably would have won Best Actress for at least one of her silent films. Granted, I wasn't there, but it seems to me that her winning this was probably a combination of her status, her lobbying, and the Academy making up for missing out on her earlier performances. I guess there are worse reasons for winning an Oscar.

Since she stopped making films only a few years later, Pickford was never nominated for another Academy Award, but she did win an Honorary Oscar in 1976. Next up is Norma Shearer, another Canadian silent film star.

1927/1928: Janet Gaynor for Street Angel, 7th Heaven, and Sunrise

 
Anyone who's at all familiar with the Oscars generally knows how Best Actress works: five different women are nominated, each for one performance. However, in the early years, this wasn't necessarily the case. In the first Academy Awards, there were five films nominated, but only three unique actresses. Thus Janet Gaynor is not only the first Best Actress winner, but also the only one to win for multiple performances at once. She was also the youngest winner until Marlee Matlin won for Children of a Lesser God of 1986. In addition, no other actress has won this award for a silent picture. So Janet Gaynor is kind of a big deal.

In Street Angel, she plays Angela, a poor woman whose mother is dying of disease. She tries to sell herself on the street to raise money for medicine, and when that doesn't work she gets desperate and grabs someone's money. Obviously, she gets caught, and sentenced to a year in prison, but she runs away, finds out that her mother is dead, and joins a circus troupe. During her travels, Angela meets Gino, a painter, and they fall in love. Keeping her past a secret becomes increasingly difficult when Gino insists on moving back to her hometown, where there's a policeman who vaguely recognizes her.

In 7th Heaven, she plays Diane, who at the beginning of the movie is living with her abusive sister and, though they never actually say it, they're both working as prostitutes to survive. A sewer worker who follows his dreams to become a street washer (because apparently that's way better) stops her sister from killing her, and later keeps Diane from going to jail by claiming that she's his wife. The police threaten to check up on this, so she goes to live in his house, just until the police come. But of course, they fall in love and decide to actually get married...but then a war comes.

Those two performances are pretty similar; in both, Gaynor's character basically hits rock bottom at the beginning, is "rescued" by a man (in both cases played by Charles Farrell, with whom she made a total of 12 movies), and then realizes that she needs her own inner strength to both hold on to the man and ultimately save herself. The third is completely different. In Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, instead of a prostitute, she plays a devoted wife and mother. In the beginning, her husband is having an affair with a floozy who convinces him to drown his wife and make it look like an accident so that they can run away together. So he takes her out in a boat and starts to attack her when he changes his mind. After she runs away and freaks out for a little while, she realizes how truly sorry he is, and they spend the day renewing their relationship.

From a movie perspective, Sunrise is hands-down the best of the three. It's certainly the most visually interesting and least cheesy. It won an Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production, which was discontinued the following year, so many people consider it to have tied with Wings for Best Picture. I agree that it was unique and wonderfully artistic, so I'm glad I got an opportunity to watch it, since I only watched Wings when I was watching Best Pictures. That being said, I don't think it was necessarily Janet Gaynor's best performance of the three. It was nice to see her in a completely different role, but a lot of the film is from the husband's perspective, so she doesn't get to do as much, whereas in the other two, she's definitely the main character.

I had originally intended to pick the best performance and discuss what I thought she should have won for if she could only win for one, but I don't think I can choose. I found myself feeling deeply for her character in all three. She somehow manages to seem both innocent and world-weary at the same time, which works particularly well for her prostitute characters, but also comes through in Sunrise. I thought she did an amazing job of showing character growth in 7th Heaven, going from meek, afraid, and suicidal to strong, confident and optimistic, all the while portraying a consistent character. On the other hand, 7th Heaven is kind of hokey in parts, and a couple of times Gaynor crosses the border into melodramatic. Street Angel is somewhat less cheesy, and she does an amazing job in the middle of the film of portraying a woman who's happy on the surface, but just beneath is terrified that her boyfriend will learn about her past. However, I don't understand why her character thinks disappearing for a year is better than just telling him she has to go to jail because of what she did to try to save her mother. In Sunrise, her pleading, innocent face is enough to convince her wayward husband both to spare her life and to fall back in love with her, but I still find it a bit disturbing that she's so willing to spend an entire day with him right after he tries to kill her. Yes, he's very penitent, but that's a common abusive tactic, and no, it wasn't in this case, but still.

So I can't blame the Academy for giving her this award for all three films because I can't pick a standout winner either. Though they have their flaws, they all demonstrate Janet Gaynor's incredible acting abilities. Granted, I haven't seen an overabundance of silent movies, but she's certainly one of the best silent actresses I've ever seen. Though this would prove to be her only Academy Award, she was nominated again for A Star is Born of 1937, which illustrates that she was one of the few performers to successfully transition from silent pictures to talkies. If you're not familiar with her work, I'd strongly recommend checking out some of her films. All three of these are on youtube, which may not be the best versions out there, but poor picture quality in no way undermines her incredible talent.

While I'm glad I got to watch all these movies, I'm looking forward to only blogging about one film at a time from now on (except for the year when it was a tie, but that's not for a while) because this was exhausting. The next year's winner is Mary Pickford, which was apparently very controversial, but I'll talk more about that when I've seen the movie. Sorry this was such a long post; the rest will be shorter, I promise.