Best Actress and the end of the Great Depression: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Miriam Hopkins in BECKY SHARP (1935), Janet Gaynor in A STAR IS BORN (1937), and Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) were the first 3 Best Actress nominees from full-color movies.

The woes of the Great Depression demanded escapism from Hollywood. Such spectacle came in a myriad of forms, including some technical advancements.

By 1935, the three-strip Technicolor process was ready for features, blessing the silver screen with hues that called themselves natural while shining bright like something out of a dream. New genres came into being, too, sometimes as an echo of the dark times – think gangster pictures and their basis in social realism turned pulp or the rise of horror at Universal – and sometimes as an antidote. The screwball comedy was a child of the Great Depression, alright, with some of its greatest hits holding a blissfully distorted mirror to off-screen miseries, distracting from them and offering some magical impossibility as succor for the soul. In other areas, movies kept getting bigger, upping the ante in ways that recalled the great epics of silent cinema, those endeavors that moved armies and mountains for the camera’s gaze and the audience’s pleasure.

Obviously, this all reverberated through the Oscars, including and especially the Best Actress race. But will my personal ballots reflect it in the same fashion? Well…

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Best Actress, Pre-Code Edition: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Helen Hayes' Oscar-winning turn in THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET is the quintessential Pre-Code Best Actress vehicle, detailing the story of a "fallen woman" with a kind of candor that would be forbidden by July, 1934.

Last time in this alternative Oscar history, we looked at the first three seasons of the Academy Awards through my dream Best Actress quintets. They coincided with the last few years when American silent cinema was still produced stateside by the big studios in town.

The rise of the talkies meant a lot of things for the industry, drastic, often destructive changes that have been fictionalized in such Hollywood self-reflections as Singin’ in the Rain and Babylon. In terms of pure cinematic form, this transition imposed limitations aplenty, generally making movies more static, more awkward and less visually expressive. Not all of them, but a concerning number. In terms of acting technique, the advent of synchronized sound recording ignited a change of the guard that left many a former star in the past and brought thespians of the New York stage to the Hollywood soundstage and Silver Screen immortality – the ones starring in movies that haven’t been lost, of course.

It was also the start of a short period we retroactively call Pre-Code Hollywood. Let’s consider my Best Actress ballot in those years…

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Best Actress in the 1920s: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Janet Gaynor won the first ever Best Actress Oscar with her performances in Borzage's 7TH HEAVEN and STREET ANGEL, as well as Murnau's SUNRISE. Does she also win here?

To misquote Mark Twain, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Or maybe I should go with Dr. Frankenstein by way of James Whale and scream to the high heavens: It’s ALIVE! Now, dear readers, as I try to return to writing regularly for The Film Experience, I feel like I owe you an explanation for my prolonged absence, not to mention an apology.

I’ve suffered from migraines since I was four, but around the middle of July, a crisis like none other began. Unparalleled in intensity and duration – still going, though not as strong as before - it took me to the ER, a CT scan, a cardiologist’s office, a bunch of new medication, and, soon, a wisdom tooth extraction and an appointment with a neurologist. In other words, it’s been hell, endless pain for over a month that mostly left me useless as far as writing articles or anything longform is concerned. Still, movies have been a refuge, as they’ve always been, and social media has allowed me to keep writing in short spurts whenever the pain medication kicked in, mostly about what I’ve been watching. Specifically, I’ve been emboldened by Twitter user HungryBear’s Oscar retrospectives to revisit my Best Actress picks from the very beginning of the Academy Awards, way back in 1928.

What better way to mark my comeback than to share these with you, too? TFE readers seemed to like reading – or enjoyed arguing over and against – my picks from the 80s, when I shared them two years ago, after all. That’s most of what I’ll be doing as I prepare myself for another TIFF coverage in September, with maybe a couple of other things thrown in if my ever-evolving torment nexus of pain permits it. Anyway, to start things off, we have the first three Oscar editions, when the twenties were honored and, with them, the twilight of the silent era…

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My Oscar Completism Project: An Introduction

by Cláudio Alves

Sadly, my Best Actress journey may never be complete as THE BARKER, starring Betty Compson, only exists in the UCLA archive.

Are you an Oscar completist? I'm trying to be, having already seen all the winners in the big five categories and making my way through the rest. However, this year, I'll focus more on the acting races and the nominees that didn't get the gold. After talking with some friends, I realized I'm only 133 films away from having watched every performance ever nominated for an acting Academy Award, from 1928 to 2024. So, that shall be my challenge until December 31st, to check those titles and, hopefully, share my journey with you. This won't be a regularly scheduled series but something more erratic, bound to unravel in fits and starts, free-wheeling to the very end. What matters is that deadline and writing about everything I see until then. To start things off, I decided to take a sample of each category…

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Almost There: Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz"

by Cláudio Alves

On a stressful day such as this, cinema can be a comfort. The movies are often prized for their escapist properties, so why not escape into their celluloid dreams once one's civil duty's done? I propose a trip to Oz before the first Wicked movie redefines what future generations will picture when they think of that magical land with emerald cities and yellow brick roads. But we're not here to talk fairytale architecture, good or bad witches. Instead, our focus shall be on the little girl who adventures into that world, swept by a Kansas tornado, from sepia-toned monochrome into three-strip Technicolor. It's time to talk about Judy Garland's Dorothy, a performance on the cusp of an Oscar nomination once upon a time. She was almost there…

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