Ten Best Female Screen Legends Who Never Won the Oscar

Who said an actress’ greatness is measured by the number of Oscar trophies she brings home? Minus the infamous curse, winning an Oscar really doesn’t matter nor it help boost a star’s wattage. As a matter of fact, some of the greatest actresses in history are not Oscar winners, as proven by these 10 screen thespians who ruled Hollywood’s Golden Years.



1. Deborrah Kerr

Best Film: From Here to Eternity(1953)

Perhaps Hollywood’s greatest actress never to scoop an Oscar, Kerr’s genteel, ladylike performances were notable in From Here to Eternity (1953), The King and I (1956), Heaven Knows Mrs. Allison (1957), Separate Tables (1958), and The Sundowners (1960). To this day, she holds the record of being the actress with the most Best Actress nominations, at six– with no wins. However she was given an honorary Academy Award in 1994 for her “impeccable grace and beauty,” and for being “a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.”

2. Greta Garbo

Best Film: Camille (1932)

The Guinness Word Record named the Swedish legend as the most beautiful woman in the world. Her sphinx-like allure, inscrutable dramatic performances in Anna Christie (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), Camille (1936), and Ninotchka (1939), and hatred for publicity solidified her goddess-like persona that went on to this day. She scooped four Oscar nominations and received an honorary award in 1954 for “her unforgettable screen performances.” In 1999, the American Film Institute placed Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female screen legends of all time.

3. Barbara Stanwyck

Best Film: Double Indemnity (1941)

Well-loved by directors and crews for her professionalism at work, “Director’s Actress” Barbara Stanwyck was equally popular among audiences for her versatility on screen, as shown in her memorable roles as a longsuffering mother (Stella Dallas, 1937), burlesque queen (Ball of Fire, 1941), femme fatale (Double Indemnity, 1944), and screaming invalid (Sorry, Wrong Number, 1947). She won four Oscar nominations and was given an honorary award by the Academy for her “superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting.”

4. Irene Dunne

Best Film: Love Affair (1939)

From musicals to heavy dramas, Irenne Dunne was a star. She began her career on stage and parlayed her acting prowess in such heavy-weight, Oscar nominated roles in Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939), and I Remember Mama (1948), all unforgotten to this day by movie buffs and critics alike. She was inducted to the Kennedy Center Honors in 1985.

5. Rosalind Russell

Best Film: Auntie Mamie (1958)

Rosalind RUssell was perhaps one of a handful of actresses who can give justice to dramas, thrillers, and comedies. She won Golden Globes (and Oscar nominations) for her performances in My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958). After her film career began to wane, she shifted focus on charity and humanitarian causes. Her efforts proved fruitful; in 1972, the Academy honored her with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

6. Lillian Gish

Oscar-worthy performance: Night of the Hunter (1955)

Considered as the greatest actress of the silent screen, Lillian Gish did not have to speak to convey her message– her eyes, face, and movement spoke for her. When talkies came, she was relegated to character roles, but lead or not, she was an acting powerhouse. She was most memorable for her roles in the seminal Birth of a Nation (1915), controversial western Duel in the Sun (1946), terrifying thriller Night of the Hunter (1955), and as an elderly sister in The Whales of August (1987. She received an Honorary Academy Award in 1971 “For superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures.”

7. Thelma Ritter

Best Film: All About Eve (1950)

Considered as the most critically acclaimed character actresses of her time, she appeared as support to some of Hollywood’s most revered leading ladies, including Bette Davis and Doris Day. She earned six Oscar nominations for best supporting actress for All About Eve (1950), The Mating Season (1951), With a Song in My Heart (1952),Pickup on South Street (1953), Pillow Talk (1959), and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

8. Eleanor Parker

Best Film: Interrupted Melody (1955)

Dubbed as the “Woman with a Thousand Faces” for her versatility, Eleanor Parker came in and out of various film genres with ease and confidence. She played a prison inmate in Caged (1950), a detective’s wife in Detective Story (1951), and Marjorie Lawrence in the biopic Interrupted Melody (1955), although she is best remembered today as the baroness in the Sound of Music (1965). For her compelling role in Caged, she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in the Venice Film Festival.

9. Marlene Dietrich

Best Film: Morocco (1930)

Marlene Dietrich was the quintessential embodiment of cool, elegant, ambiguously erotic glamour. She constantly reinvented herself through time, although she was at her best in her roles in Blue Angel, Morocco (both 1930), Shanghai Express (1932), and Destry Rides Again (1939). “Dietrich was not just one of the most extraordinary women the movies created; she was also a personality who has exercised her spell as powerfully off screen as on.”

10. Judy Garland

Best Film: A Star is Born (1956)

Judy Garland was one of a handful of child actresses who succeeded as mature stars. She was a singer, dancer, actress, and performer rolled into one, although her personal struggles for most of her career eclipsed her popularity as an actress. Nevertheless, Garland was at her best in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), while her compelling performance in A Star in Born (1956) nearly earned her an Oscar. Earlier in 1940, she was awarded the Juvenile Performer Academy Award.

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Greta Garbo: Hollywood's Immortal Goddess

When talking about Old Hollywood, it would easily pass into your mind the intensity of Bette Davis, the glamour of Audrey Hepburn, the allure of Marlene Dietrich , the notoriety of Lana Turner, the independence of Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and Luise Rainer, and the whims of other similar, yet less stellar Hollywood icons. But when we talk about Garbo, we can’t say anything but be awed by her presence or, should I say, immortality.

She made a mere 17 films in Hollywood and yet, each of those films assured her stature as Hollywood’s bona fide goddess, looked upon, admired, sometimes mocked by others. But all in all, Garbo became the epitome and probably the most inscrutable star of the Hollywood of the 1930s.

Early Years

Greta Gustafson was born in Stockholm Sweden in 1905 to poor parents. At an early age, when her father became too ill to win bread, Greta worked as a barbershop latherer and sales lady at a department store in Stockholm. There, she sometimes appeared as model or actress during the plays sponsored by the store. At one of those plays, she caught the sight of Sweden’s formidable director, Mauritz B. Stiller. Later, she won a scholarship to the Royal Dramatic Theater.

Welcome to Hollywood

Her first foray into acting took place when Stiller cast her in The Atonement of Gosta Berling (1924), afterwards, she became herself a sensation in Sweden. In 1925, together with Stiller, she sailed to the United States, where she played as a contract player in Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Hollywood’s brightest studio.

The Flesh and the Devil and Gilbert

Her first year in Hollywood became uneventful. Louis B. Mayer had earlier found her stout and stiff when acting, thus, she was cast as a Spanish maiden in some uneventful silents. However, things took their turns in 1926 when she was cast opposite Hollywood’s top leading man, John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil. After it turned out to be a box office hit, Garbo was propelled to stardom. With her exotic looks and mystifying aura, the audiences cannot help but be lured by the seemingly goddess-like image of Garbo. Other than being her breakthrough film to celebrity status, Flesh and Devil also introduced Garbo into a love affair with Gilbert that lasted until his death in 1934. They ultimately became the hottest loveteam, on and off screen, during the last years of the silent film era.

Garbo was the ultimate run-away bride. Rumors had it that there were wedding bells heard, culminated by their affair. Only it was halted when Garbo felt cold feet in marrying him and decided to run away. She did it twice until Gilbert got tired and married another silent film actress, Ina Claire.

Garbo Becomes a Superstar

Garbo’s stellar rise was further solidified with continual smash hit, one after the other. With Love and The Divine Woman (both in 1927), The Mysterious Lady and A Woman of Affairs (both in 1928), and Wild Orchids (1929), she became silent screen’s last superstar. And she was also the era’s last actress to transition into speaking roles. Ending her silence with The Kiss (1929), Garbo waited until 1930 to make her first speaking part in Anna Christie (1930). She earned two Oscar nominations for her performance in this film and for Romance (1930), only to lose to fellow MGM queen, Norma Shearer.

Indeed, the early part of the 1930s where her most glorious. Her next vehicles, Sussan Lennox (Her Fall and Rise) and Mata Hari in 1931 proved too well at the box office, enough to justify her salary demand of half a million dollars for the two films (she hurdled more than three million dollars by 1941, after she left Hollywood, a very huge fortune at that time).

Garbo, alongside Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West, was already Hollywood’s leading lady and one of the industry’s highest paid and legendary stars of the era. But it was her performance in the Oscar-winning, all star Grand Hotel (1932) that made her an immortal. In this film, she uttered her legendary line “I vant to be alone,” all in her thick, husky Swedish accent.

After Grand Hotel, Garbo sailed back to Sweden after MGM failed to meet her salary demands. She returned in 1933 after the studio offered the unheard-of quarter a million dollars and more clout to appear as the eponymous lead in Queen Christina. She exercised her control over the film when she had Laurence Olivier replaced by her former lover and then- already tarnished John Gilbert. It was a box office hit and her last time to pair with Gilbert. When news of Gilbert’s death reached her while on the set of The Painted Veil (1934), Garbo collapsed.

Garbo continued to her success with Anna Karenina (1935) and Camille (1936), costume dramas which made more money abroad than it did in the US. Both were critically acclaimed and won her back to back best actress awards during the New York Film Critics Award, the latter earning her her third Oscar nomination. This time, she lost to fellow MGM star Luise Rainer. Rainer herself was already dubbed “new Garbo” because of her refusal to bow to convention.

Box Office Poison

Garbo’s next film, Conquest, became a flop. Until 1949, it was the biggest money loser of MGM. And though it fared well at the box office, it failed to coup its staggering expenses. By 1938, together with Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, and May West, she was dubbed box office poison.

Garbo Laughs

However, she quickly rebounded in her first comedy film Ninotchka (1939), one of the most memorable films during Hollywood’s Golden Year, 1939. It was a box office and earned Garbo her fourth and final Oscar nomination. She lost to Vivien Leigh.

Garbo Runs Away

Garbo did not make another film until Two Faced Woman, her last. It was both panned by critics and audience and Garbo planned a what should have been temporary retirement. However, it became permanent.

In 1951, she became a naturalized American citizen. In 1953, she transferred to New York and bought a seven-room flat where she lived for the rest of her life. In 1954, she received in absentia an Honorary Academy Award for her contribution to the motion picture industry.

Death

Garbo died a very wealthy woman in 1990. She frugally spent her money and wisely invested her million-dollar income in real estate. Her beauty and image was so haunting that to this day, one would still count her not just any other actress. She was a goddess and only very few of her colleagues can equal her. None of today’s star can ever surpass her. She was very much a star; a legendary superstar, that is.

(reposted from my Friendster blog)

Read Garbo's biographies and be enchanted by her life:

   

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