Best Actress 1950

Today I'm restarting Best Actress Editions, which means that all the years I've done I will update and write about all the other years. So I start with one of the most acclaimed year 1950!



Sorry Anne, I'm on Team Bette.


But way was it acclaimed I always come to ask myself. I myself can't understand it. Sure it gave us two of the greatest performances and comebacks of all time, Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. and Bette Davis in All About Eve. But the rest is just ordinary performances by respected actresses. Baxter is the worst of the bunch with her shoing-in a role that could have been made magnificently by anyone else, also it dosn't help that she's outstaged by Bette Davis, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter.



By no means is the other two Parker and Holliday are bad, on the other hand they are very good... but they doesn't truly make anything really memorable neither of them. Both of them would later turn in better and richer performances.

Then there's the two Divas. Gloria and Bette






Even in this picture you can see how good she is in this picture.

Gloria is playing the recluse movie actress from the old days who desperately wants a comeback, she finds it in a playwright who later becomes her sort of gigolo. In the whole movie Gloria portrays her character with insanity and over-the-top feeling which makes her transition to the character a delightful event to watch, even if delightful isn't the turns of event in the movie.

Bette on the other hand plays a succesfull theatre actress, but with age on her neck she's slowly withdrawing against her will from the top. Bette is has good as she's ever been in this role as Margot Channing and really makes a whole event circus around her magical quotes like
"Fasten your seatbealts, it's going to be a bumpy night."


Both of them got great help from the supporting cast who lift them up in the sky, also they both got some of the most memorable quotes in movie history. So it's a tough decision to choose between Gloria and Bette. I would want a tie, but since I don't think Bette would ever accept a tie I must choose Gloria because of her complete scene-chewering.



Bette Davis is looking sour, is because of she losing both times to a newcomer on-screen and off-screen? Or is it because of she couldn't even won over me who is ranking her as the best actress ever? But she's defenitely deserving of her Cannes Film Festival Prize.


Some snubs was Katharine Hepburn, Shelley Winters, Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman.

So Who's your favorite of all these?