Best Actress 1934
Winner: Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night
Nominees: Grace Moore, One Night of Love
Norma Shearer, The Barretts of Wimpole Street

The Field: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★


Ranking Oscar's Ballot
 
 My Pick:
Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

From There:
Norma Shearer, The Barretts of Wimpole Street ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
A very pleasant surprise—the kind of performance that snaps you back to attention, even after you think you've got a performer and a genre pegged. No one could accuse Shearer of being the most technically skilled actress (excepting her most inspired passages in Marie Antoinette), and "serious" projects like this one often froze her up a little, even as MGM banked her reputation on them through most of the '30s. Still, she has clearly connected to the role of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the basis of her performance is not dull adulation for a great lady and her words, but rather Elizabeth's active skepticism about her controlling, almost lascivious father. More and more aware of how dangerously he hems her in, Shearer's Elizabeth wrestles with the confusing stakes of being caught amongst an illness, a parent, and a lover. She lets Fredric March bounce around as Robert Browning without slackening her own performance in response to his giddy mood, and her climactic flight from the Barrett abode works terrifically, mostly because Shearer has so clearly, gradually telegraphed Elizabeth's rational and emotional divorce from her father's influence. Hardly a turn for the all-time trophy case, but both the performance and the movie are more richly shaded than I expected.

Grace Moore, One Night of Love ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Who gets your vote in this field, and on my dream ballot below? VOTE HERE!


My Favorites from 1934:

My Pick: Claudette Colbert, Imitation of Life
Nominees: Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night
Nominees: Myrna Loy, The Thin Man

Honorable Mentions: Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress; Norma Shearer, The Barretts of Wimpole Street; Bette Davis, Of Human Bondage; Ginger Rogers, The Gay Divorcée; Grace Moore, One Night of Love; Leni Riefenstahl, The Blue Light


Gourmet Prospects: Josephine Baker, Zouzou; Marion Davies, Operator 13; Irene Dunne, The Age of Innocence; Greta Garbo, The Painted Veil; Jean Harlow, The Girl from Missouri; Carole Lombard, Twentieth Century; Myrna Loy, Manhattan Melodrama; Norma Shearer, Riptide

Further Research: Mary Astor, I Am a Thief; Fay Bainter, This Side of Heaven; Constance Bennett, The Affairs of Cellini; Constance Bennett, Moulin Rouge; Elisabeth Bergner, The Rise of Catherine the Great; Edna Best, The Key; Edna Best, The Man Who Knew Too Much; Joan Blondell, Dames; Claudette Colbert, Cleopatra; Joan Crawford, Chained; Joan Crawford, Sadie McKee; Bette Davis, The Big Shakedown; Bette Davis, Fashions of 1934; Bette Davis, Fog over Frisco; Bette Davis, Housewife; Claudia Dell, The Woman Condemned; Katharine Hepburn, The Little Minister; Miriam Hopkins, All of Me; Kathleen Howard, It's a Gift; Myrna Loy, Broadway Bill; Myrna Loy, Evelyn Prentice; Jeanette MacDonald, The Merry Widow; Karen Morley, Our Daily Bread; Merle Oberon, The Scarlet Pimpernel; Jean Parker, Have a Heart; Zasu Pitts, The Meanest Gal in Town; Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables; Shirley Temple, Bright Eyes; Genevieve Tobin, Easy to Love; Lupe Velez, Laughing Boy; Evelyn Venable, Death Takes a Holiday; Fay Wray, The Countess of Monte Cristo; Loretta Young, The House of Rothschild

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