The truly deserving Oscar winners

In yesterday’s 76th Academy Awards, I was for a while worried that Hollywood voters would go sentimental and crown Dianne Keaton with the Best Actress award (for Something’s Gotta Give) instead of my bet Charlize Theron, who – to my great relief — went home with the trophy for outstanding actress in a lead role (for Monster).

Of course you and I know that not all winners in these awards races – whether here or abroad, are all deserving of the prize. Sometimes, actors win because they are sentimental favorites. Sometimes, they are rewarded for having been overlooked in previous years. The worst case – and this happens I’m telling you is when the awards are manipulated by the studio or by the actors themselves who shamelessly lobby just to bring home the much-coveted trophy. In the Oscar history it is common knowledge that not all the winners were deserving of their respective trophies.

Having watched so many old Hollywood films (since the invention of the Betamax), I’d like to think that I’d be able to make a comparison among contenders in the Oscar Best Actress race (usually the most colorful contest) in certain years. Below is the list of Best Actress winners who in my book are truly deserving of their Oscar trophies.

Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938)– It is generally acknowledged that Bette Davis won her first Oscar for Dangerous in 1935 because she failed to get even a nomination for Of Human Bondage in 1934 and everyone in the Academy made up for that deliberate snub (instigated no less than her home studio, Warner Bros., which wasn’t too pleased with the possibility that she would win an award for a film by another movie company since she was just on loan for Of Human Bondage). The Best Actress award for Dangerous may have been a consuelo de bobo, but her win for Jezebel was well-deserved.

Believe it or not, I watched this film only less than a month ago after I saw a VCD copy of it on sale at National Bookstore. Of course, her performance in Jezebel was in keeping with the acting style of the pre-war years, but it doesn’t look funny or awkward when compared to today’s more realistic acting techniques. And then, people compare her performance to Vivien Leigh’s more popular Southern belle character and say that the British actress Scarlet O’Hara portrayed in Gone With The Wind is far better. This may be true, but then, they didn’t compete in the same year and so I say that Bette Davis truly deserved her Best Actress for Jezebel in 1938. (An American critic, Danny Peary, however, insists that Margaret Sullavan did a better job in Three Comrades that year, but that is his opinion.)

Vivien Leigh for Gone With The Wind (1939) – Scarlet O’Hara is truly one of the best – if not the greatest–roles for lead actresses in the history of Hollywood and it’s such a relief that it went to Vivien Leigh who did an excellent job in the movie. And for a British actress to be playing a Southerner, that makes her Oscar win even more thrilling.

Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette (1943) – This was a performance I saw year after year during Holy Week when The Song of Bernadette would be shown on late night TV (alternating with The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima and The Robe). Surely, there were other great performances that year (including that of Ingrid Bergman who was nominated in For Whom the Bell Tolls, but also deserved another nomination for Casablanca). But I am quite satisfied with the Jennifer Jones victory because she was able to project quite effectively the saintly qualities required of her character in this religious flick. And to prove that she is really a versatile actress, her depiction of harlot roles in her later films were just as realistic.

Ingrid Bergman for Gaslight (1944) – Who will dare question an Ingrid Bergman win in any acting contest? Her performance as a woman driven to insanity by her husband (Charles Boyer) in Gaslight is truly remarkable. But how I wish that the prize that year went to Barbara Stanwyck for Double Indemnity since the late Ms. Bergman won two more Oscars later in her career (Best Actress for Anastasia and Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express), while the lovable Ms. Stanwyck had to content herself with an honorary Oscar when she was old and gray in the ’70s.

Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress (1949) – An acting piece, Ms. De Havilland gave justice to this role of the spinsterish Catherine Richardson, who is being courted by the devious Montgomery Clift who is only after her inheritance in The Heiress. (Our very own Maricel Soriano also essayed this role in 1992 in Carlos Siguion-Reyna’s Ikaw Pa Lang ang Minahal.) But Olivia de Havilland’s best performance ever is in The Snake Pit where her work, unfortunately, was overlooked by Academy members.

Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – As Blanche Dubois, she plays another Southern belle, but aging this time. This is another one of the great performances of Vivien Leigh, who actually only made 12 films, but won two Oscars from that short list.

Joanne Woodward for Three Faces of Eve (1957) – Her performance is truly amazing as a woman with multiple personality disorder. Here, she has three personalities: Eve White, a housewife who suffers from headaches; Eve Black, a vulgar, crass and carefree woman and Jane, who is quite normal and well-balanced Ms. Woodward normal and well-balanced. Ms. Woodward is fantastic in her characterization of all three personalities trapped in a single body. But pitted against Sally Field who had 16 personalities in the TV-movie Sybil in the mid ’70s, Joanne Woodward’s performance in The Three Faces of Eve would have been reduced to chop liver. And you better believe me. After all, didn’t Sally Fields bring home two Oscars herself in close succession in the ’80s?

(To be concluded)