As is often the case, the Academy likes to hand out the Oscar for a lesser performance, when they realize in hindsight that they blew a particular Oscar the year before. The “Whoopsie” award this time around went to Bette Davis. While I think she would have been given the Oscar if she had shown up in an Andy Hardy movie as a substitute teacher with rickets and an unfortunate overbite, she got it for Dangerous, a movie which is anything but:
Her competition included Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never:
Bergner was supposedly the model for the Margo Channing character in All About Eve, but you couldn’t tell any of her talent in this stagy performance as a wild child.
The next nominee was Claudette Colbert, riding on the high of her deserved win the year before for It Happened One Night with a nomination as a doctor in a mental hospital in Private Worlds:
Katharine Hepburn went middle class bourgeoisie in Alice Adams:
Miriam Hopkins appeared in the first full-length Technicolor film as the adventuress Becky Sharp:
The last official nominee was Merle Oberon in The Dark Angel, a WWI love triangle with Fredric March and Herbert Marshall:
The Academy ignored a newcomer, Olivia de Havilland, who had very fine turns in both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Captain Blood:
If you would like to make other suggestions, please do so below in the comments!
As always, I have much more to say in my book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OPEELH0
And now, please vote!
You’ve got the wrong “Escape me Never.” The 1935 movie starred Elisabeth Bergner, Hugh Sinclair and Griffith Jones. The movie of the same name with Errol Flynn was made in 1947.
Thanks to Brad for noting I had the wrong poster up! I appreciate the correction 🙂
What about Garbo in “Anna Karenina”? She won the first New York Film Critics’ award as Best Actress, but was not even nominated.