1939: Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind

In this epic Best Picture Winner, which I blogged about before here, Vivien Leigh plays Scarlett O'Hara, a strong-willed Southern Belle who is desperately in love with Ashley Wilkes. Unfortunately, he is engaged, and later married, to Melanie, who is probably the kindest person on the planet, but whom Scarlett despises. It takes Scarlett three marriages and a civil war to discover that she and Ashley really aren't very well suited, and she actually loves her third husband Rhett Butler, but by then he frankly and famously no longer gives a damn.

When Margaret Mitchell's novel was published in 1936, it became an instant bestseller. The public loved its main characters, and people were pretty much in agreement from the beginning that Clark Gable should play Rhett Butler. But the casting of Scarlett was far more controversial. The studio gave the public opportunities to vote on which star they wanted, and dozens of actresses were screen-tested, including Bette Davis, who had just played a remarkably similar character in Jezebel. But no one was quite right, so they actually started filming before the role was cast. Apparently, Vivien Leigh came to watch them shoot, and the producer, David O. Selznick, noticed that she looked a lot like the way Scarlett was described in the book, so he offered her the part. Given that she was born in India to an English father and French/Irish mother, she must have seemed an odd choice to play the Belle of Georgia, but now no one questions it because she did such a phenomenal job.

In some ways, I find this performance very difficult to evaluate, simply because Scarlett O'Hara is one of the most frustrating characters for me to watch. On the one hand, I admire her for pursuing her dreams in the midst of extreme hardship, especially in such a restrictive society, but the way she goes about it is so despicable that I also kind of hate her. I typically spend most of the film yelling at her (as my family members who were watching it with me this time can attest), mostly something along the lines of, "No you do NOT love Ashley, so just stop it!" or "Come on, just ask Frank for the money, don't steal him from your sister!" Then, in the last hour or so, when she's finally starting to realize that she loves Rhett but won't let him know, I usually shout, "USE YOUR WORDS!" at least four or five times. But the fact that I get so frustrated with her means that I do actually care about her, which would not be possible if she hadn't been played so well.

So while I really don't know how to feel about the character, I do know that this is one of the best onscreen performances I've ever seen. Leigh perfectly brings Scarlett to life with her facial expressions, her mannerisms, her emotions, and a very convincing Southern accent. This movie is literally four hours long, and she's in pretty much every scene, and she has to portray a wide range of emotions that involve lots of different types of crying, not to mention significant character growth shot out of sequence, and she is always perfectly spot on. I'm fairly certain there's not a moment that could have been played better. I understand why people have problems with a Civil War film from the South's point of view, and the "happy slave" aspect is certainly cringe-worthy, but if you let that stop you from watching this film you're seriously missing out. Vivien Leigh's fantastic performance alone would make this film well worth watching, but when it's combined with the rest of the incredible cast all giving some of their best performances, gorgeous cinematography, and an engaging - albeit frustrating - story, Gone with the Wind becomes a must-see.

Vivien Leigh is an unusual movie star in that she won both of her Oscars for her two most famous, and quite possibly best, performances. Her second was for 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire, so stay tuned for more about her in a while. But in the immediate future, I get to talk about Ginger Rogers.

1938: Bette Davis for Jezebel

 In her second and final Oscar-winning performance, Bette Davis plays Julie, a scheming Southern Belle who is always determined to have her own way. This would involve marrying banker Preston "Pres" Dillard (Henry Fonda), but she picks one too many quarrels with him and he leaves for New York, where he meets and marries Amy, a Northerner. Julie is determined to get Pres back, but the yellow fever epidemic might get him first.

As a whole, this movie didn't quite do it for me. Too much of the plot relied on old-fashioned Southern traditions that were never really explained. Presumably, audiences were supposed to understand why it was such a big deal for an unmarried woman to wear red to a ball and why mentioning a woman's name was cause for a duel, but I kept feeling like I was missing something. I also thought Julie's character was rather inconsistent: she blatantly disregarded the arbitrary dress color rules, but then was very condescending toward Amy for not bothering to learn all the Southern traditions. If you care about traditions so much, why do you ignore them? I'm pretty sure this was intentional, but I was still unclear as to what the film was trying to say. If they were trying to point out the fallacy of 19th century Southern tradition, they shouldn't have had Julie and Pres end up together.

While I didn't love the movie, and I didn't really like her character, I was impressed by Bette Davis's performance. It was definitely a lot better than her other Best Actress-winning performance in Dangerous. In that film she was way over-the-top, but in this she was far more controlled. Her Southern accent actually worked pretty well, considering she was actually born in Massachusetts. And while I really wanted to hate Julie for being manipulative and self-destructive, I still couldn't help rooting for her. Somehow, Davis managed to elicit sympathy for a truly awful character. There are probably a lot better standards for judging a performance, but as an audience member who generally prefers nice people, I'm always impressed when actors can make me feel for characters that I definitely wouldn't like in real life. I still think All About Eve is the best Bette Davis movie I've seen, but I'd call this performance Oscar-worthy.

Though this was Davis's last Oscar, she was nominated 8 more times: for 1939's Dark Victory, 1940's The Letter, 1941's The Little Foxes, 1942's Now, Voyager, 1944's Mr. Skeffington, 1950's All About Eve, 1952's The Star, and 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As of when I'm writing this, she is one of only 13 people to win multiple Best Actress Oscars, and one of only 3 people to have at least 10 Best Actress nominations. She is generally considered to be one of the greatest film actresses of all time, so while I don't think she won for her best performances, I'm glad that she won two Oscars, since so many legendary performers have been snubbed by the Academy. At least they recognized Bette Davis.

Next up is Vivien Leigh, another non-Southerner playing a Southern Belle, in the third Best Picture Winner to feature a Best Actress winning performance.

1937: Luise Rainer for The Good Earth

For the second year in a row, Luise Rainer won the Academy Award for Best Actress. This time, she plays O-Lan, a Chinese slave who is given in marriage to a poor Chinese farmer. The film tells the story of their life, with its many ups and downs.

Luise Rainer was German, but apparently Hollywood filmmakers liked to ignore that. In The Great Ziegfeld, her character was apparently supposed to be French (although the real life person she was portraying was born in Poland to a German father and French mother), which I guess is kind of close, but they definitely went too far by casting her as a Chinese person. It's very difficult for me to impartially evaluate her performance because I think O-Lan should have been played by a Chinese actress. Not that there were very many of those in 1937 Hollywood. Also, once Paul Muni was cast as Wang Lung, the Hays Code dictated that his wife also had to be Caucasian, since they didn't want to offend racist people by portraying interracial marriages. Though why they couldn't cast an Asian actor as Wang is also beyond me. Most of the other main characters were also played by white people wearing Chinese clothes, which made me so uncomfortable I could barely watch them. No, this movie did not age well. But honestly, given when this movie came out, I was surprised that it wasn't more racist.

For one thing, all the characters were portrayed with respect, as actual, realistic people, rather than the caricatures that racial minorities were often reduced to in films from that period. For another, some of the important characters and most of the background characters appeared to be played by actors who were, if not Chinese, at least of Asian heritage. By some miracle of genetics, Paul Muni and Luise Rainer managed to have three children who were actually Asian. So yes, there are cringe-worthy aspects of this film, but there were fewer than I was anticipating. There's really no legitimate justification for casting white people in Chinese roles, but the fact that it was made 78 years ago comes close to a good excuse.

Sorry, I'm talking too much about the movie as a whole and not enough about the Best Actress winner. Okay, if you can get past the whole German-playing-Chinese thing, which I'm not convinced is possible, Rainer's performance is actually quite good. While she was not at all believable as a Chinese person, she was very believable as a former slave trying to make the best of her life. Her character didn't have too many lines, which worked well for two reasons. First, while it's difficult to take a Caucasian pretending to be Asian seriously in the first place, it's pretty much impossible when she speaks in a thick German accent. Second, and probably more importantly, her facial expressions are perfect. Rainer had the whole hopeless, pitiful look down, and she gets to use it a lot in this film. The scene when she prepares to kill their ox to keep from starving and the scene when she finds jewels and is then almost executed for looting are two of the best scenes in the movie, and she pulls them off flawlessly without having to utter a word. The best silent film actors would have been proud of her performance. Again, she was definitely not right for the part, but she did the absolute best that was possible.

With this win, Rainer became the first person to receive this award twice, and at the age of 28, she remains the youngest person to receive a second Best Actress Oscar. As of when I'm writing this, she's also the most recently deceased Best Actress winner. She passed away last December at the age of 104, making her not only the longest living Best Actress winner so far, but also the only one to make it past the age of 100, although Olivia de Havilland is getting pretty close. After this film, Luise Rainer's career declined sharply, and she pretty much stopped making films a few years later. Consequently, she was never nominated for another Academy Award, which means she won 100% of the Oscars she was nominated for. Though I didn't love either of the films she won for, she was clearly very talented, and I wish she had been given better roles.

Next up: Bette Davis becomes the second person to win two Best Actress Oscars