Entries in the Category "janet gaynor"
The Best Actress Fallacy
One of the more controversial Oscar winners from this past weekend was Sandra Bullock. This past summer, her career was seemingly in the toilet thanks to that All About Steve fiasco, and then suddenly The Proposal made a buck or two (although if my sister didn’t like it, I do not see what it could possibly have to recommend itself as a romantic comedy). And then this The Blind Side thing happened, and somehow her career trajectory veered so crazily in the opposite direction that she—as predicted—won a Razzie and an Oscar in the same year.
So the question becomes: does Sandra Bullock, mistress of pratfalls and goofiness, big opening weekends and almost supernatural hotness in her mid-forties (YES, REALLY), fit the profile of the Academy Award-winning actress?
First, we need to establish what the profile is. There’s this tendency to think of Oscar winning actresses as grande dames of cinema.
Bette Davis in All About Eve, for example
Or Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
Would it surprise you to discover that both of those women went up for Best Actress in the same year, 1951? And that both of them lost? Who swiped the award from these two women in the prime of life, tackling two of the meatiest roles in Hollywood history?
Judy Holliday (age 29) in Born Yesterday
Nothing against Judy--that's a great movie, and her performance is more nuanced than 'dim bulb with a heart of gold.' Although that's a lot of it.