Today's number is 28. I trust you know that Gloria Swanson was ALWAYS ready for her close-up.
She's best remembered for Sunset Blvd (1950) but that movie couldn't have existed, at least not in the perfect form it does, were it not for her earlier silent screen stardom. Her first Oscar nomination came for Sadie Thompson (1928) in the very first year of the Oscars. The movie was also nominated for Best Cinematography but both the DP and Swanson lost the Oscars to Janet Gaynor and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, respectively. Swanson wasn't the only female superstar to play Sadie...
W. Somerset Maugham's story about a former prostitute and a religious man who wants to "save her soul" has been adapted to feature three times officially, though it's surely influenced other pictures, too. It's not every role that gets multiple actual superstars playing it, whenever it's remade. But that's just what happened with Sadie Thompson which was remade for the talkies in 1932 and then again in 1953 with full color and musical numbers.
Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson in RAIN (1932)
Rita Hayworth as MISS SADIE THOMPSON (1953)Swanson's successors were Joan Crawford (whose celluloid melting close-ups are EVERYTHING in Rain) and Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson. Neither of them were nominated for playing the character though, so in this threeway imaginary battle, Swanson wins.