I know I previously stated that the 1958 Best Actress race (see blog) was the greatest, but the 1962 contest may have been the strongest of all time. Every performance could have easily won, and nobody could complain as all five ladies were brilliant.

1962 Best Actress nominees:

Bette Davis
Davis was down and out when she agreed to star in the low-budget shocker Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? But co-starring with her old rival Joan Crawford did not please her. The film (see previous blog) was directed by Robert Aldrich on the cheap and in a record 21 days. Warner Brothers—the old stomping ground for both Davis and Crawford—released the film, and it was the shock smash hit of the year. Bette Davis was devilishly grotesque as the fading child star who packs on the makeup and soaks up the gin while tormenting her crippled sister, Blanche, who also just happened to be a former great movie star. Joan Crawford was quietly restrained in her performance, letting Bette devour the scenery. Baby Jane is now considered a classic, but the critics of the day were pretty horrified by seeing former movie idols Davis and Crawford reduced to such pathetic material. But Bette Davis was back with a vengeance and received her final Best Actress nomination.

Kate Hepburn
Hepburn was a star from her first film in 1932 and made so many classic films that one forgets she too was once box office poison. After her two great ’30s films, Holiday and Bringing Up Baby, she left Hollywood and returned to the stage, scoring a huge hit with The Philadelphia Story, expressly written for her by Philip Barry. With the screen rights in her control (thanks to boyfriend Howard Hughes), Hepburn returned to Hollywood on her terms. Insisting on stars Cary Grant and James Stewart to support her, Hepburn—with the help of her old mentor George Cukor—created the finest comedy ever filmed. The Philadelphia Story is so tailored to the talents and quirks of Hepburn that one cannot imagine any other actress playing the role. (Grace Kelly did a musical remake—High Society, her last film—and while she was quite good nobody could duplicate the great Kate.) Kate Hepburn sailed through the next 20 years getting more Oscar nominations, pairing up with Spencer Tracy and doing some extraordinary stage work. When Long Days Journey into Night—the great Eugene O’Neill play of a tortured New England family—came to the screen, Kate got to play the tormented, drug-addicted Mary Tyrone. Director Sidney Lumet (Network) created a brilliant film that was so devastatingly perfect that the four cast members jointly won the Cannes Film Festival Best Acting Award. Hepburn received another Oscar nomination and astoundingly there would be three more Academy Awards in her future.

Geraldine Page
Page was a great Broadway actress who also had a brief Hollywood sojourn, receiving a 1953 Best Supporting nomination for Hondo supporting John Wayne. She too went back to Broadway and made history with her spectacular work in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth. Playing the aging, drug-addicted movie star Alexandra Del Lago, Page was at the top of her game. When the movie was cast, Page got to recreate her role as producers figured co-star Paul Newman (bare-chested for most of the film) would bring in the crowds. Geraldine Page is truly spectacular as the sex-hungry, booze-ridden star on the run because she thinks her last film was a bomb. She picks up rent boy Paul Newman and they return to his hometown. Newman thinks that he has found his ticket to Hollywood. The play had to be “cleaned up” for the screen. Co-star Shirley Knight (also Oscar-nominated) didn’t get syphilis from Paul—just an abortion. And Newman was not castrated at the end of the film—just beaten up. But all this was secondary to Geraldine Page. She dominated the film with her great lines. Waking up with Newman, she puts on her glasses, checks him out and purrs, “Well, I may have done better, but God knows I have done worse.” And her great telephone scene, where she learns from Walter Winchell that her film is a hit, was spectacular. The only problem with the film is that there is way too much Paul Newman and Ed Begley (who won the supporting Oscar) and not enough of Geraldine Page. Page had been nominated the previous year for another Tennessee Williams hit, Summer and Smoke. Page would finally take home the gold in 1985 for The Trip to Bountiful.

Lee Remick
Remick gave an amazing performance as Jack Lemmon’s alcoholic wife in Days of Wine and Roses. Lee Remick’s career began with her sexy role in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. She became a star with her great role as a trampy wife in Otto Preminger’s epic Anatomy of a Murder. Playing the supposed “rape” victim whose husband killed the attacker, Remick was sensational in her scenes with James Stewart as the lawyer hired to defend her abusive hubby. Remick was considered a likely nominee for Best Actress in 1959, but Doris Day was the surprise nominee. Days of Wine and Roses is a depressingly realistic study of a husband who gets his wife hooked on the sauce. The depressing end of the film has Lemmon going to AA and trying to stay sober for the sake of their child. But Remick cannot stop, and the devastating last scene has her walking out forever. Remick has some great lines in the film. When Lemmon confronts her, she brushes him off with “A couple of drinks.” And finally she confesses, “The world looks so dirty to me when I’m not drinking.” Lee Remick was a great beauty and a fine actresses. She died of cancer at age 55.

Oscar night found Anne Bancroft in New York appearing in Mother Courage. Hepburn of course did not attend. Bette Davis fully expected to win, and her great friend Olivia de Havilland came from Paris to view the historic moment. Joan Crawford had gotten permission from Anne Bancroft to accept for her. Bancroft was a long shot that night. Bette Davis was in a backstage dressing room with Olivia. Joan was in the one next door. Max Shell came out and made the announcement—Anne Bancroft.

The TV director recounts what happened next:

“Joan instantly stood erect—shoulders back, neck straight, head up. She stamped out her cigarette, grabbed the hand of the stage manager … then soared calmly onstage with that incomparable Crawford composure. Backstage, Bette bit her cigarette and seemed to stop breathing. Joan was out there; suddenly it was her night.”

Joan was resplendent in her Edith Head silver gown. Time magazine dubbed Crawford “The triumph of the Evening.” Joan had stolen the show from Bette who grumbled about the slight for years: “I was positive I would get it.. And of course the fact that Miss Crawford got permission to accept for any of the other nominees was hysterical. I was nominated, but she was receiving the acclaim. It would have meant a million more dollars to our film if I had won. Joan was thrilled that I hadn’t.” Joan made more headlines the following week when she delivered the Oscar to Anne Bancroft after her Broadway performance.

Joan vs. Bette would never stop. The one time they were both up for the Oscar (1952), both lost to Shirley Booth. And Joan was to co-star with Davis in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, but after a short time on location in Louisiana became “ill” and took to her hospital bed. She was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The divas never worked together again.