OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

OVP: Captain Blood (1935)

Film: Captain Blood (1935)

Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Picture, Sound Recording)...at least in terms of official nominations.  In reality, because of write-in awards, Captain Blood is usually regarded as having been nominated for Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Score (and nearly won the first two) because Warner's block voting allowed people to write in names that weren't actually nominated, so when we finally reach the 1935 OVP I'll have to make a judgment call on what to include...but only Best Picture & Sound are recognized by the Academy as official nominations.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

With some of the stars we've profiled in the past seven seasons, I've had a bit more time to really reflect on their careers and in some cases their careers were traditional enough that it was mostly just talking about that week's movie.  That...will not be the case with Errol Flynn, whose gigantic personal life is worthy of multiple biographies, and you can't really get to all of it in four articles.  So we'll break it up into four sections: his early career (and partnership with Olivia de Havilland), his peak stardom (and the juxtaposition between his big screen & real life personas), the sex scandal that dramatically changed his career (and changed in many ways the way that we talk about Hollywood scandal), and the bizarrely long list of things that were discovered about Flynn after his death, most of which is allegation since Flynn himself wasn't able to commentate on it.

(Spoilers Ahead) If you're going to talk about Errol Flynn's early stardom, you can't really do it without talking about Captain Blood, the 1935 film from Warner Brothers that turned him into a household name.  The film, seeing it for the first time (one of an increasingly small list of Best Picture nominees I've never caught before), is glorious.  It's a story about a young doctor named Peter Blood (Flynn), sold into slavery but bought by a clearly smitten woman named Arabella (de Havilland), and how he slowly works his way up in the ranks, specifically by treating the governor's gout.  In a bid to escape his bondage, he turns into a pirate (but an ethical one!), and storms the Caribbean, eventually finding Arabella captive (and buying her, thus paying his debt), before eventually, thanks to some honorable help to the English army, becoming governor himself, and wedded to Arabella.

The movie is silly, and it's a bit too dry in parts (when it wants to make sure you know that Peter is a fan of social justice, as this is a Warner Brothers movie), but you won't care for two reasons.  One, the production is scrumptious-gorgeous ships filled with detail, and special effects you kind of can't believe.  It's hard not to watch this and think of not just the Pirates of the Caribbean move, but also the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, as it uses many of the same motifs, particularly the battle scene.  If you're a Disney adult, this needs to be added to your list as you won't regret it.

The other is that Flynn and de Havilland are divine together.  At the time they were not famous.  De Havilland was only 19, and Flynn (despite some bit work in film & theater) had not struck it big yet.  But their chemistry is palpable, and they're both so freaking gorgeous.  That's the thing with Flynn-save for maybe Buster Crabbe, he was (by modern beauty conventions) possibly the sexiest man in movies, and he looks it, even with a ridiculously hideous haircut.  You see Olivia de Havilland swoon over him, and you swoon over him too.

And that was what audiences in the 1930's did-they demanded more of Errol & Olivia.  Both actors have been pretty forthright that there was a romantic attraction to each other, but that they did not consummate the relationship.  At the time, Flynn was married to Lila Damita (who, proving how incestuous Old Hollywood was, had just finished an affair with Captain Blood director Michael Curtiz), and de Havilland (whose later Hollywood conquests would include Jimmy Stewart and a tortured affair with John Huston) was about to become one of the many flames of Howard Hughes.  But their professional relationship would create one of the most important duos of the Classical Hollywood era, starring together in eight films between 1935 and 1941, after which Flynn would encounter unfathomable scandal and de Havilland would become a pioneer against the studio system.  But when they were on, they were undeniable.  And in the best-regarded of their movies, The Adventures of Robin Hood, they created one of the most enchanting films ever made.

1948 Oscar Viewing Project

I put this on Twitter, but one of my goals going forward is to have at least one Oscar Viewing Project ballot or one Oscar My Ballot each month until I have finished the project.  Because I just finished being on vacation (I was in Florida, having a blast in DisneyWorld), we're going to actually get a couple of these this month, both from 2024 in a few weeks AND from 1948 today.  Yes, I have officially seen all of the nominated films of 1948, and thus we are going to discuss the movies of this year.  We generally start with a look at the box office from a given year, but I will note that pre-1980 box office numbers are hard to find accurately, as it wasn't as consistently reported in trade papers before then.  Additionally, certain types of films (like, say, Disney films) tend to have been re-released in theaters more frequently than others (hence how movies that were considered flops initially like Bambi would eventually end up in the black).  That said, this is what Wikipedia has for the top domestic grossers of 1948, so we'll use it as a jumping off point (with a grain of salt):

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Paleface

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Easter Parade

6. The Three Musketeers

7. The Snake Pit

8. The Emperor Waltz

9. Homecoming

10. Sitting Pretty

As you'll see below, Oscar didn't start taking a really big detour from what was popular with audiences until the 1990's, as 9/10 of these movies are ones I not only saw, but would've seen in connection with the OVP, the sole exception being Homecoming with Lana Turner & Clark Gable (which I'll see for the My Ballot that year).  Other top grossers that year that sometimes are listed on the Top 10 include Sorry, Wrong Number with Barbara Stanwyck, Yellow Sky (which I have seen despite no nominations because I love westerns) with Gregory Peck, and A Date with Judy starring a young Elizabeth Taylor.  As you can see, Oscar wanted to embrace what was popular, particularly in a year of upheaval for Hollywood, as the theatrical monopolies had ended, and 1948 was a weak year at the box office.  With that context, I want you to go back to a different time, to a time of Truman defeating Dewey, of the creation of both Israel and the frisbee.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (like I said above, hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention, anymore.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture discussed below), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. The Red Shoes

2. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

3. Hamlet

4. The Snake Pit

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: I actually did a podcast devoted to this specific topic (if you go to the Gilded Films podcast site, you can find both of their episodes on 1948, as I'm the guest on both of them) so feel free to listen if you want a voice reveal (and some great convo on this contest).  For me, it's not a difficult decision on the winner here.  The Red Shoes is just on another level.  There are really good movies here (honestly-there is no bad movie in this quintet, though I do frequently have to re-remind myself that I like Johnny Belinda as Oscar liked it way more than me), but the sheer modern scale of The Red Shoes here is unbeatable, besting worthy defenders like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Hamlet.

Director

1. John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

3. Anatole Litvak (The Snake Pit)

4. Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda)

5. Fred Zinnemann (The Search)

The Lowdown: With The Red Shoes out of the race, I've got a much closer contest, pitting John Huston & Laurence Olivier for the top spot against each other, much like in real life (weirdly, both were directing themselves, as both of their pictures in the collage are from them acting in their movies, though Olivier was the lead while Huston had a bit cameo).  I actually like Olivier's Hamlet more than most modern critics, as I think it's moody and just a little bit creepy (it's easy to see how the Coen Brothers were inspired by this when they did their telling of Macbeth), but Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of those movies it's impossible to deny Huston's impact, giving us a perfect decrescendo into hell with Humphrey Bogart.  Kudos also to Antaole Litvak who also had a lot of modern touches (rare for a social issues picture) in The Snake Pit.

Actor

1. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

2. Montgomery Clift (The Search)

3. Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

4. Lew Ayres (Johnny Belinda)

5. Dan Dailey (When My Baby Smiles at Me)

The Lowdown: Bogart's snub in 1948 was a big deal, some calling it the biggest of its kind since Bette Davis was looked over for Of Human Bondage in 1934.  It's insane, given how good he is (he'll be on my My Ballot for this year) that he was missed, but looking at just Oscar's choices, I'm going with the same selection as the Academy, giving Laurence Olivier (an actor I am very hit-or-miss with) a pretty easy victory.  Olivier might be too old for this part, but he leans in really well with the uncomfortable Oedipal overtones that Shakespeare provides his prince for his mother Gertrude, and while Clifton Webb is delicious & Monty Clift has a terrific star-is-born turn, this is a case of an actor's "time" also being for some of his best work.  I will also say that Dan Dailey getting Humphrey Bogart's nomination here is both perplexing (like...why?) and bordering on a war crime he's so bad.

Actress

1. Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)

2. Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number)

3. Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

4. Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama)

5. Ingrid Bergman (Joan of Arc)

The Lowdown: No one is as bad as Dan Dailey of the 20 nominations (an embarrassingly terrible performance), but Best Actress is not a great lineup compared to the guys despite having generally better actors.  Irene Dunne is playing I Remember Mama like she's channeling Loretta Young (not a compliment), and Ingrid Bergman once again proves that for one of the best actresses of her generation, Oscar nominated her for the wrong roles.  The win is between de Havilland, whose really raw performance adds to The Snake Pit's accuracy-to-life, and Barbara Stanwyck as a truly vicious femme fatale who totally nails the film's rough ending.  Stanwyck is the opposite of Bergman (she tended to get nominated for her best work, this being the least of her four nominated turns but still solid), but I'm going with de Havilland given she provides more accuracy.  Jane Wyman, the actual winner, uses physicality well in her role but doesn't add enough beyond being great casting given her giant saucer eyes are so crucial to filling in gaps in the underwritten plot.

Supporting Actor

1. Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda)

3. Cecil Kellaway (The Luck of the Irish)

4. Jose Ferrer (Joan of Arc)

5. Oscar Homolka (I Remember Mama)

The Lowdown: Both of the supporting turns I'm going with the actual Oscar winner, and while I'm usually cognizant that I have a bias toward the actual victors (because, unlike the 2000's & 2010's, the winners here have been the "winners" my whole life), unlike Olivier (where Clift or Webb would make acceptable victors), the supporting winners are heads-and-shoulders above the rest (again, both will make my My Ballot list).  Huston's turn as a weathered gold miner is so calculating, and filled with such meaningful backstory in the way he portrays it, I wish that he'd worked with his son on ten more pictures.  The only thing that comes close to it is Charles Bickford's concerned father in Johnny Belinda, but even there it's not close to what Huston is bringing to a better movie.

Supporting Actress

1. Claire Trevor (Key Largo)

2. Agnes Moorehead (Johnny Belinda)

3. Barbara bel Geddes (I Remember Mama)

4. Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama)

5. Jean Simmons (Hamlet)

The Lowdown: Finishing out the acting races is Claire Trevor.  Trevor is one of those actresses who rarely played leading roles despite leading lady beauty, but she was also better suited for character work, as she understood the assignment in westerns & noir.  In Key Largo, she gets one really critical scene where she belts out a torch song to her own humiliation (it's a hard scene to watch, but it makes the movie), but she's good throughout.  No one else is in the same hemisphere as her.  Even second place Agnes Moorhead (not as good as Bickford, despite being a more reliable actor otherwise) is only in second because I didn't have anywhere else to turn and I like her as a rule.  This is all Trevor.

Motion Picture Story

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. The Search

5. Louisiana Story

The Lowdown: A quick reminder that Motion Picture Story is technically about the concept of the movie, which is a writing gift, but it's not (for example) about the specific dialogue in the picture.  This helps a movie like The Naked City, which is really better as an idea than a picture itself (though I liked it), but I have to dock points for something like Louisiana Story, whose almost documentary-like naturalism gets in the way of the actual tale it's attempting (or is it...this is a weird movie, speak up if you've seen it in the comments).  My top prize goes to The Red Shoes, which is really gifted in the way it uses its romances almost as a red herring, over Red River (which, conversely, uses its ambition as a red herring to cover some of its romances).

Screenplay

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

2. The Snake Pit

3. The Search

4. A Foreign Affair

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: 1948 is the most recent year where the Screenplay categories were not split out between adapted & original screenplay, and so we have four adapted films against the original The Search.  I actually wish I could give this to The Snake Pit, because it's the sort of picture that Oscar generally loves and I generally don't (social issue pictures are not my jam), but it's done so well I could actually find some common ground between us...but in this case both Oscar & I are siding with the work of John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the truly great studio film screenplays of the era (no notes-even the Hays Code couldn't ruin this one).

Score

1. The Red Shoes

2. Hamlet

3. Johnny Belinda

4. The Snake Pit

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Movies are rarely gusty enough to do what The Red Shoes does with its score.  Look at a film like Tar, for example, which is about classical music and thus uses actual classical music throughout the picture to instruct that.  But The Red Shoes literally spends so much time talking about how it is written for a classic ballet, but instead of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev, it's literally original music.  The chutzpah...and that they land it, making it sound like a genuine classic...it's impossible to deny, though the moodiness of Hamlet or the windswept grandeur of Johnny Belinda both would've made fine wins (this is the best of the many Johnny Belinda nominations, and the one that I'll come closest to duplicating with my My Ballot even though I won't actually).

Scoring

1. Easter Parade

2. Romance on the High Seas

3. The Pirate

4. The Emperor Waltz

5. When My Baby Smiles at Me

The Lowdown: Similar to Motion Picture Story, I'm not entirely sure how to grade this, and it's more difficult as we'll actually have this for the My Ballot for 1948 (we will not do the same for Motion Picture Story).  But I'm going to look at this as the best overall musical in terms of the way it's staged, sung, & conducted in the picture itself (with perhaps a bonus point or two for truly original song scores).  With that in mind, you can't really beat Easter Parade, with Judy & Fred sounding lovely, particularly with him taking on "Steppin' Out With My Baby" and our first real Ann Miller MGM musical.  Romance on the High Seas benefits from a young Doris Day, and The Pirate has a beautiful choreography from Gene Kelly, but neither are as good as what Easter Parade is achieving.

Original Song

1. "It's Magic" (Romance on the High Seas)

2. "Buttons and Bows" (The Paleface)

3. "The Woody Woodpecker Song" (Wet Blanket Policy)

4. "For Every Man There's a Woman" (Casbah)

5. "This Moment is Magic" (That Lady in Ermine)

The Lowdown: Yes, for those who grew up watching his cartoons, the title song from Woody Woodpecker performed by the Kay Kyser Orchestra, was Oscar-nominated (the only time in the history of the Best Original Song category where a short film was nominated).  But while it's a cute little ditty, I have to go with "It's Magic" as it does a really incredible job of establishing Doris Day as a star in the picture.  "Buttons and Bows" is also a standard, but it has less to do with the success of the film (and let's be honest, is more of a standard than a classic, if that makes sense).

Sound

1. Moonrise

2. The Snake Pit

3. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: One of the big reasons that the Oscar Viewing Project will take me so long is that, just a few years earlier, the Sound categories were popping out a dozen or so nominees each year, and then by 1948 they randomly became only a three-wide affair.  The quality here is better, though, with only a trio of nominees, and gives us the single finest "hidden gem" nomination of this bunch: Moonrise.  Moonrise is a dynamite picture (if you've never seen it, please add it to your Letterboxd Watchlist as it's masterful), and it's also a cool nomination.  The film features one song moment (though it's not a musical one), that is executed perfectly, and it also works really well with the circus motif to create strong background noise to heighten tension.  Oscar gave the statue to the also solidly authentic work in The Snake Pit, but for me it's all about Moonrise.

Art Direction - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: For the record, we will not be separating between Black & White and Color for my My Ballot's (though we will have five nominees, so for this at least we'll have more than Oscar).  The win here is easy for me-Olivier's Hamlet is a really cool combination of stage play and realism (again, much like the Coen Brothers' lauded turn with Macbeth), and totally upstages anything that is done in Johnny Belinda.  Honestly, the real credit from staging in Johnny Belinda is believably making California look like Prince Edward Island (if there was an Oscar for location scouting...this is the one it should've won).

Art Direction - Color

1. The Red Shoes

2. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Both very worthy nominees (say what you will about the end product of Joan of Arc, it surely looks terrific), but much like Moira Shearer, I cannot deny The Red Shoes.  Even the title cards for the movie are crafted to match the set, as if they are somehow part of the movie itself, everything so careful, beautiful, and deliberate.

Cinematography - Black & White

1. A Foreign Affair

2. Johnny Belinda

3. The Naked City

4. Portrait of Jennie

5. I Remember Mama

The Lowdown: Back to the arbitrarily chosen nominee count, Oscar went with the naturalism of The Naked City, which is understandable.  Shot entirely on location in New York, the movie uses real life so well it's hard not to fall for the gimmick (this is one of the hardest My Ballot quintets I'll have ever had to assemble, for the record, as I don't know that any of these will end up on it, and normally the Top 3 would be gimme choices).  I'm instead going to pick the naturalism on display in A Foreign Affair to reward, where Marlene Dietrich is shot in actual war-torn Berlin as if she was back with von Sternberg (compliment).  At some point someone needs to explain to me how I Remember Mama got a nomination in this category when much better options existed (hell, if you just stick to movies Oscar was already watching, you have Moonrise or The Snake Pit right there!).

Cinematography - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Three Musketeers

3. Green Grass of Wyoming

4. The Loves of Carmen

The Lowdown: There's literally room for one more nomination, and in one of those situations where I have to assume there was a paperwork mistake (like Roddy McDowall accidentally going lead for Cleopatra), The Red Shoes was cut from this, which it definitely should've won.  With that out of the way, I have a moment to honor its competitor Joan of Arc, though honestly not by much-this is not just the best lineup of this list, it's also one of the best lineups I've seen Oscar assemble during the Classical Hollywood era...every single one of these I gave 4/5 stars in my personal rankings (which is hard to get as I grade on a curve).  Even The Loves of Carmen in last place has a wonderfully vibrant motif (and Rita Hayworth has rarely looked so lovely).

Costume - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. B.F.'s Daughter

The Lowdown: Despite costumes being in movies since the dawn of time, it took until 1948 for the Academy to bother rewarding the men & women who made them (this is the first year of the category).  For Black & White, I will go with Hamlet, which gives us not just lovely frocks for Jean Simmons to prance about in, but we also get some attention-to-detail loveliness in the menswear (guys like wearing pretty things too).  BF's Daughter gets nominated almost entirely for a stunning white-and-gold dress that Barbara Stanwyck wears about halfway through (hopefully this link works, but you can see it here) which is breathtaking...but nothing else in the movie compares so it can't really be on the same level as Hamlet.

Costume - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Emperor Waltz

The Lowdown: Similar to how we constantly talk about John Williams in Best Score and whether or not I'm giving him another Oscar (he was nominated so often), we'll be doing the same for Edith Head.  In our second profiled year of Head's 35 competitive nominations (we did 1957 here) Head won, but while I was intoxicated by Joan Fontaine's glorious green dress with matching hat in The Emperor Waltz, it was the only look that really stood out to me, and so I'm more inclined to the many armored outfits of Ingrid Bergman wore in Joan of Arc instead.

Film Editing

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Fun fact-The Red Shoes will not be sweeping the My Ballot awards in the way you're thinking right now because, well, there are a lot of really good movies in 1948 that Oscar chose to ignore that I'll get into.  But I cannot deny with this specific lineup that the Powell & Pressburger film shouldn't take the cake.  The way that the ballets are structured and shot, jumping the line between reality and fiction, are made in the editors' room, even against solid naturalism in The Naked City and the gigantic cattle drives of Red River.

Special Effects

1. Portrait of Jennie

2. Deep Waters

The Lowdown: The early years of the special effects categories are odd because while effects have always been a part of the movies, that doesn't mean that they were as common as they are now (where even crowd work in a rom-com is likely done at a computer).  Portrait of Jennie takes out Deep Waters both because Deep Waters doesn't really have a lot of effects to champion (just a gigantic storm sequence late in the picture), and because of the way it uses the film's cinematography as a tool with the color lensing in the water effects at the end of the movie to give us an ethereal beauty.

Lady in a Cage (1964)

Film: Lady in a Cage (1964)

Stars: Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, Jeff Corey, Ann Sothern

Director: Walter Grauman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ann Sothern: click here to learn more about Ms. Sothern (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week, we left our star Ann Sothern broke, her career nearly over, and drowning in medical bills after a three-year fight with hepatitis.  Thankfully, this is not where we're going to leave her in our final film devoted to our April star.  Sothern, a few months after The Blue Gardenia, signed a contract for a television show called Private Secretary for CBS.  Sothern, like Lucille Ball & Jack Benny before her, had made her name in movies but never quite caught on as a name-brand star in the way that she would be throughout the 1950's as a television headliner.  Private Secretary would run for five seasons, regularly be a Top 10 smash, and would get Sothern four Emmy nominations for Best Actress.  After it finished, she went on to do three seasons of The Ann Sothern Show, also a hit (after a rocky start) which would win her a Golden Globe.

This was the height of Sothern's stardom-she finally became the household name that the 1940's hadn't really afforded her beyond Maisie, but when The Ann Sothern Show ended its run in 1961, she was in her fifties, and a return to leading work in movies didn't feel like an option.  Instead, she took on the guise of a character actress, and had quite a bit of success in 1964 for two roles, both of which got her serious Oscar buzz: Gore Vidal's The Best Man and the famed hagsploitation film Lady in a Cage.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place largely in one house, and focuses on Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland), a wealthy widow whose son is leaving for the weekend.  Cornelia's hip has broken, and so she uses an elevator to get up-and-down the stairs.  When the elevator is stuck, she realizes that she's trapped.  Initially, she waits & rings an alarm to an oblivious public, and then a drunk (Corey) comes, bringing with him a former prostitute Sade (Sothern) who both start to ransack the house.  They are soon superseded by a group of delinquents (meant to play as sociopaths), lead by Randall (Caan, in his first credited film role), who eventually kill the alcoholic, lock Sade in a closet, & began to torture Cornelia, first with threats of death, and then in a late-stage twist, when she realizes that her (apparently gay) son has decided to kill himself.  The film ends violently, with Caan being blinded by Cornelia as she tries to escape, and finally the ugliness of Caan's bloodied eyes stops passersby, who eventually arrest all of the intruders and leave a distraught Cornelia behind, the fate of her son unknown.

The movie was part of a very brief period after the smash success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? where actresses of the 1940's & 50's suddenly had work playing aged versions of themselves titillating the audience by showing yesterday's glamour girls in horrifying, violent displays.  De Havilland did two such films in 1964, both successfully (though she wasn't the original choice to play the lead in Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte, a part originally intended for Joan Crawford, but that's a fantastic story for a different day).  Lady in a Cage was a hit, partially because of the sheer curiosity of arguably the most dignified leading lady of the 1940's being put in truly shocking scenes of sex & violence.

At the time, the film (and de Havilland herself) were heavily criticized for being involved with such a project, and even today, reviews are mixed on the movie but count me as a fan.  It's not a campy sort of fun like Baby Jane or some of the other Grand Guignol movies of the era, but it's really solid as a genuinely terrifying horror movie.  Caan's character is nasty, with the actor doing his best version of Brando crossed with Alex DeStrange, and de Havilland plays her character at just the right hilt.  Cornelia is certainly not the film's villain, but she's also meant to be obtuse & not a particularly good person.  Her ignorance of other people's feelings, particularly her son's, and the way she behaves quite ridiculously (to use modern parlance, she is decidedly "extra") all create a great deal of depth to her performance.  I liked what she did here, what can I say?

Ann Sothern is also excellent, and gives the film its most well-rounded performance.  Unlike Caan's Randall, her villain gets a proper arch, going from greedy-by-circumstance to genuinely horrified by the brutality she's unleashed by invading this woman's home.  The role got her loads of Oscar buzz, as I mentioned above, but it didn't get her an Oscar nomination, and she quickly found herself back in television, primarily as Lucille Ball's frequent costar on The Lucy Show.  It would be another 23 years before she'd finally get her date with Oscar, nominated for her final film The Whales of August opposite two other aging screen legends, Lillian Gish & Bette Davis.  Always just a hair's breadth away from bigger stardom, Sothern couldn't get that final moment of glory & lost to Olympia Dukakis.  Next month we will take a look at an actor who like Sothern spent much of the 1940's & 50's getting to play opposite bigger stars, letting them take the glory...until television provided him with not one but two roles that would define his career.

Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

With the passing of Olivia de Havilland earlier this week, obviously we lost a film legend.  We also lost the answer to a lot of longevity questions when it comes to the Oscars.  De Havilland got her first nomination in 1939 for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone with the Wind), her first Best Actress nomination in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn, and her first win for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.  This meant that de Havilland was the earliest (not to be confused with oldest, though she was that too) living Best Supporting Actress nominee, Best Actress nominee, and Best Actress winner.  With her death, I honestly didn't know the answer to who was next in line for these three titles (though I had a correct guess for Supporting Actress), and so I figured it was time to do some research, cause I don't let Oscar trivia questions go unanswered.  Below you will find for the directing and four acting categories who are chronologically the earliest (again, not oldest) living nominees and winners.

Best Actress

Nominee: Leslie Caron (1953) for Lili
--Runner-Up: Carroll Baker (1956) for Baby Doll
Winner: Joanne Woodward (1957) for The Three Faces of Eve
--Runner-Up: Sophia Loren (1961) for Two Women

As you can tell, de Havilland's death truly put an end to the 1940's in terms of Best Actress, as there were no nominees after her that are still with us until 1953 with Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals, possibly alongside Mitzi Gaynor the only real figure left from that era's biggest films, that she should get an Honorary Oscar, and post-haste as she's 89).  Baker, who was just 25 when she was cited for Baby Doll, is next up, though you have to go to 1957 for a living winner with Joanne Woodward (who has been very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who has another movie coming out later this year).

Best Actor

Nominee: Sidney Poitier (1958) for The Defiant Ones
--Runner-Up: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
Winner: Sidney Poitier (1963) for Lilies of the Field
--Runner-Up: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection

Best Actor winners tend to be older than the other three categories, so it's not shocking to me that we have to go back further to find living recent winners here.  Technically Poitier is actually his own runner-up for Lilies of the Field, but I figured that wasn't fun to track so we're going with Michael Caine three years after Poitier's landmark win.  Unlike the Best Actress field, all of these men already have Oscars, though Caine is the only one that still works in film.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Angela Lansbury (1944) for Gaslight
--Runner-Up: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Scratch the above comment-Shirley Jones is also living and obviously in the same league as Caron & Gaynor in terms of classic Hollywood musicals (truly random aside, but I remember many years ago seeing an interview with Jones & her husband Marty Ingels where he let strangers that were there for a yard sale of some sort hold Shirley's Oscar-I can't have imagined this, but have never found the interview...any ideas internet?). Blyth actually ties Angela Lansbury for runner-up as Lansbury was nominated in 1945 for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Up until quite recently Joan Lorring who was nominated that year for The Corn is Green was also alive (she died in 2014) and the other two women nominated that year both lived into the 1990's, so this field might have a record for longevity at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominee: Don Murray (1956) for Bus Stop
--Runner-Up: Russ Tamblyn (1957) for Peyton Place
Winner: George Chakiris (1961) for West Side Story
--Runner-Up: Joel Grey (1972) for Cabaret

There are no provisos here for runners-up.  Don Murray is not only one of the longest-lived Supporting Actors ever, he's also one of the rare ones to have been nominated for his screen debut.  Also, with Tamblyn alive, maybe I should stop pointing out a lack of classic actors from major Hollywood musicals not being alive, but that we should still consider Caron for an Honorary Oscar-who wouldn't want to watch her thank Fred and Gene in the same speech?  Looking ahead here, it's weird to think that just eight years behind Joel Grey is Timothy Hutton, who was so young when he won for Ordinary People that he's not even sixty yet.

Best Director

Nominee: Claude Lelouch (1966) for A Man and a Woman
--Runner-Up: Norman Jewison (1967) for In the Heat of the Night
Winner: William Friedkin (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Francis Ford Coppola (1974) for The Godfather, Part II

Admit it-when I typed Coppola for Godfather II, at least half of you said "wait, what about the first one?" before you remembered Bob Fosse won that year for Cabaret.  Looking at this list, I had never put together that Lelouch was so young when he made A Man and a Woman (I loved this movie, and will surely have to see it again before we do the 1966 OVP, but when I saw it in college I found it intoxicating), being not even 30 when he was nominated for an Oscar for the film.  With the exception of Jewison (whose last film was 2003's The Statement with Michael Caine & Tilda Swinton), all three of these men have made movies in the past five years, though Coppola has threatened frequently to retire.

Olivia de Havilland and the Last 14 AFI Stars

Olivia de Havilland was not, despite what you might read on news releases and tributes to her, the last major star of Hollywood's Golden Age (or Classical Hollywood, as it also known).  The Classical Hollywood era's beginning is up for debate (some say as early as the 1910's, others say it began in the early 1930's, still others state it began in 1939).  Either way, there is a solid amount of agreement that the era ended in the early 1960's, so not only are there still actors alive from this era who were headlining films in the 1950's & 60's, there are some (like Harry Belafonte & Shirley MacLaine) who are still working today.

But de Havilland is probably the last major star of the 1940's and certainly of the 1930's to have still been alive, and with her passing, I wanted to discuss something we haven't done an update on in about two years on the blog (not since the death of Tab Hunter).  In 1999, the American Film Institute created a list of 50 (25 male, 25 female) of the greatest stars of Classical Hollywood, capping requirement at people who made their film debuts in or before 1950 (so people like Belafonte & MacLaine wouldn't have been eligible).  They did so from a list of 500 performers, most of whom at that point were already dead.  Though she didn't make the Top 25, one of the actors that was among those 500 was Olivia de Havilland.  We have in the years since checked in on those 500 stars, arbitrarily thrown together but significant enough to make the ballot, and since de Havilland has passed away, I wanted to see how many were left still from the list.  This is not an all-encompassing list of all of the actors who made their debut before 1950 and had a significant role in Hollywood (off the top of my head Arlene Dahl & Glynis Johns come to mind as actresses who would've qualified for this list but aren't on it), but it is a reminder of the few actors from Classical Hollywood (enough so that the AFI took note), who are still alive.

(For the curious, in addition to de Havilland, Kirk Douglas, Max von Sydow, and Doris Day have also passed since we last looked at this list.  Also, quite a few of these people still don't have Oscars of any kind, so hopefully the Academy takes note!)

The Living Actors...

Sidney Poitier (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: His first credited screen appearance came in 1950's No Way Out, which launched his landmark film career in a big way.
Oscar Nominations: Poitier received two Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (becoming the first black man to win Best Actor).  Poitier also won an Honorary Award in 2002.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being an iconic and celebrated figure in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and along with Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Harry Belafonte, being one of the very first black movie stars (he was also Ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan, as he actually has dual citizenship with both the Bahamas and the United States-random fact!).  Poitier is one of the most widely-respected actors in the industry, and one of its most enduring stars.
Is He Still Working?: Poitier quit acting in 2001, with the television movie The Last Brickmaker in America-his final theatrically-released film was 1997's The Jackal with Richard Gere & Bruce Willis.
My Favorite Performance: I know that some like to quibble about how Poitier never received an Oscar nomination for In the Heat of the Night, but part of me thinks it was more to do with vote-splitting (he also had Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love out that year) than racism.  Still, he certainly deserved an Oscar nomination for his iconic Virgil Tibbs.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never actually seen the movie that landed Poitier his Academy Award.  For whatever reason Lilies of the Field has never made it to the top of my queue, though I've seen a lot of Poitier films through the years.

Dean Stockwell (1936-Present)

Screen Debut: 1945's The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson & Gregory Peck
Oscar Nominations: Stockwell has received one Oscar nomination, for 1988's Married to the Mob (he lost to Kevin Kline).
Most Famous For: The career of Dean Stockwell is a fascinating one, as he is one of those rare child actors who went on to have a very strong career as an adult, though in this case in character actor parts. Starting acting as a cherubic-faced youth in movies like Gentleman's Agreement and Anchors Aweigh, he eventually became a hit actor as an adult, dropped out of acting to get involved in the hippie subculture, reappeared in the 1980's in the art house cinema of David Lynch and Wim Wenders, and is most well-known today for playing Al Calavicci in Quantum Leap and Brother Cavil in the revival of Battlestar Galactica.
Is He Still Working?: Stockwell suffered a stroke in 2015, and has since retired.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've actually seen a few Stockwell pictures, and thought he was terrific if terrifying singing Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in the exceptional Blue Velvet.  I'll go with his Oscar-nominated work as my missing piece, though I have always meant to watch the revived Battlestar Galactica.

The Living Actresses...

Claire Bloom (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1948's The Blind Goddess
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: For her long and illustrious career on the British stage, as well as her many tabloid romances.  Ms. Bloom made her stage debut at sixteen opposite John Gielgud and a young Richard Burton, whom she had a passionate love affair with (Burton claimed he loved two women before Liz Taylor-his wife Sybil and Claire Bloom).  She would perform on in the West End for decades, and continue having tabloid-worthy relationships, including marriages to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth, as well as affairs with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brynner.
Is She Still Working?: Yes!  Her most recent work was in the BBC Miniseries Summer of Rockets as Aunt Mary opposite Toby Stephens & Timothy Spall.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With Bloom it's hard not to pick her first international starring role in Limelight, where she plays a suicidal ballerina in the only film that features both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Ann Blyth (1928-Present)

Screen Debut: Chip off the Old Block (1944) with Donald O'Connor & Peggy Ryan
Oscar Nominations: 1 nomination (for Mildred Pierce)
Most Famous For: Portraying the selfish daughter from hell in Mildred Pierce.  Her work opposite Joan Crawford won her an Oscar nomination early in her career, and she eventually went on to become a major star of musicals, at one point being a rival for Kathryn Grayson at MGM.  She eventually moved completely away from the cinema, instead starring in a series of television guest spots, including a memorable turn as a potential murderer opposite longtime friend Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote and as an actress with a secret on The Twilight Zone in "Queen of the Nile."
Is She Still Working?: Blyth quit working in film after her role in The Helen Morgan Story with Paul Newman.  She quit television in the 1980's, though she does occasional do interviews still.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen Mildred Pierce and The Great Caruso, the two most important pictures in her filmography, so maybe Brute Force with Burt Lancaster, where she plays a woman dying of cancer whose husband is in prison.

Rhonda Fleming (1923-Present)

Screen Debut: While she did work before then, her first onscreen credit was in Spellbound, making her the (only?) person to play a significant role in one of Hitchcock's films of the 1940's.
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being the "Queen of Technicolor."  Along with Maureen O'Hara and Arlene Dahl, Fleming's red hair made her a major motion picture star, and one that photographed particularly well in Technicolor, which was very in fashion during the height of her fame.  Her best known films are probably from the 1940's, when she had supporting roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and the brilliant Out of the Past, but she was a bigger headliner in the 1950's when she appeared opposite Dana Andrews, Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas.  Like a number of women on this list, she was an ardent Republican in her personal life, particularly as an advocate for school prayer.
Is She Still Working?: No-her most recent film would be 1990's Waiting for the Wind with Robert Mitchum, her Out of the Past costar.  She still frequently makes appearances, though, and has participated in the Turner Classic Film Festival.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: In case you missed it, Rhonda Fleming was one of our Saturdays with the Stars actresses last year, so I'm actually very familiar with her work.  As a result, I'll pick the curiosity of Fleming playing Cleopatra in Serpent of the Nile as the next of her movies I want to investigate.

Mitzi Gaynor (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1950's My Blue Heaven (which we talked about earlier this year when were discussing Betty Grable in February)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being Krusty the Clown's go-to name drop?  Just kidding (Simpsons reference!).  Gaynor was in fact one of 20th Century FOX's biggest stars in the 1940's and 1950's, starring in a number of hit musicals.  While she could boast costarring roles with Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly, it was with Rossano Brazzi, a little-known Italian actor, that she enjoyed her biggest and most enduring cinematic success.  The movie?  Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, with Gaynor as the main character of Nellie Forbush, forever washing that man right out of her hair before a very enchanted evening.  She also had one of the most famous numbers in Oscar history (though she wasn't nominated for or even in the film) when she got the longest-standing ovation in the history of the ceremony for her performance of "Georgy Girl" in 1967.
Is She Still Working?: While she no longer acts, she frequently is featured in documentaries chronicling the Golden Age of the musical, and actually won an Emmy for her 2010 documentary "Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle!"  Also, she's on Twitter!
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Gaynor was also one of our stars last year, and so I've seen most of her major movies, though I have not caught the big-screen adaptation of Anything Goes.

Marsha Hunt (1917-Present)

Screen Debut: The Virginia Judge (1935)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Her politics.  A star for both Paramount and MGM in the 1930's and 1940's who watched her career unravel during the 1950's as part of the blacklist, Hunt was a vocal advocate for free speech and freedom to petition, and refused to denounce her activities protesting Congress on behalf of the blacklist...and therefore didn't work for most of the 1950's, extinguishing her career.
Is She Still Working?: It doesn't appear so-Hunt quit acting in 2008, but does make some public appearances and grant interviews despite her advanced age.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm going to go with Born to the West, starring an extremely handsome John Wayne in his twenties, which gives Hunt an unusually robust screenplay to work with for a love interest role in the 1930's.

Angela Lansbury (1925-Present)

Screen Debut: Gaslight (1944) with Charles Boyer & Ingrid Bergman
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as an Honorary Oscar in 2013).
Most Famous For: Lansbury has enjoyed an incredible amount of succcess throughout her career, principally on Broadway (she has won five Tony Awards) and on television (as J.B. Fletcher on the long-running CBS show Murder, She Wrote).  Of course, Lansbury has had a plethora of film roles as well that have become part of her own personal lore.  Her work in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Disney's Beauty and the Beast would be toward the top of the public consciousness.
Is She Still Working?: Yes-one of her most recent rolls was as the Balloon Lady in Mary Poppins Returns just two years ago.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Here I've seen enough of her work (I've even seen her on-stage) to have a favorite performance (The Manchurian Candidate, though honestly I've loved almost everything-she's a personal favorite) and have all three of those Oscar-nominated roles done, so I'll go with the comic classic The Court Jester, which I have for some reason never gotten around to and in which she plays Princess Gwendolyn opposite Danny Kaye & Glynis Johns.

Piper Laurie (1932-Present)

Screen Debut: Louisa (1950) with Ronald Reagan & Ruth Hussey
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God)
Most Famous For: Laurie is most known to film audiences as the mother from hell in Carrie (oddly enough, Angela Lansbury arguably plays the cinema's other most famous mother from hell on-screen in The Manchurian Candidate).  Laurie also was Paul Newman's love interest in The Hustler, and got a Best Actress nomination for it and was Catherine Martell on Twin Peaks.
Is She Still Working?: After an eight year absence, Laurie was on movie screens opposite Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh in White Boy Rick in 2018.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I have somehow never seen The Hustler, one of those great films from the 1960's and one of the most important roles of Paul Newman's (and of course Piper Laurie's) careers.  I should get on this quickly.

Gina Lollobrigida (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: Return of the Black Eagle (1946)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Look at the picture to the left and I'll give you one (err...two) guesses.  Lollobrigida was the Italian sex symbol, a counterweight to the American Marilyn and the French Bardot.  She did make a handful of films with the leading men of the era (Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra), but quite frankly it was her incredible beauty and her bizarre change in careers late in life (she became a journalist, and eventually managed to land an interview with Fidel Castro of all people in the 1970's) that made her a household name.
Is She Still Working?: She is not acting, but she does still stay in the tabloids for her charitable giving and bizarre love life (as well as the occasional public snipe at her longtime rival Sophia Loren).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't know if I've ever actually seen a Lollobrigida film, so I would probably make it a bit of a marathon to catch up.  I'd start with her Golden Globe-winning work in Come September with Rock Hudson, follow it with her Esmerelda opposite Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finish things with her Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, which has the distinction of being King Vidor's final film.

Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

Screen Debut: Bluebeard's Six Wives (1950)
Oscar Nominations: Loren received two Oscar nominations in her career, winning for Two Women in 1961 (the first person to win for a foreign-language film).  She would go on to win an Honorary Oscar in 1991 for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: For starters, thankfully being alive and still working (the only woman on the Top 25 still with us, and along with Poitier the only person who charted on either list).  Loren's most recent film is Rob Marshall's Nine, but is probably best known for her enduring beauty.  Consistently considered one of the most striking and attractive women in the history of cinema, she was a major star at the height of America's fascination with foreign language cinema. (Completely Random Aside-I once had a car that I named after Loren because the car was so pretty...my brother still drives it).
Is She Still Working?: After an 11 year absence, Loren is returning to the movies with The Life Ahead, which has a significant part for her (could this be a third Oscar nomination if it's done well?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Let's go with The Fall of the Roman Empire, which was a huge film for Loren, and made her the second (after Elizabeth Taylor) actress to receive $1 million for a film.

Rita Moreno (1931-Present)

1950: The Toast of New Orleans (1950) with Mario Lanza & Kathryn Grayson
Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1961's West Side Story)
Most Famous For: For thoroughly enjoying life in Ame-RIC-a.  Moreno starred in one of the great American musicals in 1961, taking over the role made famous by Chita Rivera on Broadway and becoming a household name as a result (as well as an Oscar-winner).  Though at that time she had been featured in three of the best-loved musicals of all-time (she was also in Singin in the Rain and The King and I), she didn't star in a lot of high-profile films again (a Latina actress in the 1960's frequently had to rely on stereotypical roles, which Moreno refused to partake of).  Instead she forged a bold multi-platform career, winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony in the 1970's to complete her EGOT.  She is best known from this period for her work on The Muppets and The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman).  Moreno also had a pretty spectacular personal life, being romantically involved with both Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley during her career.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely-she was one of the key players in One Day at a Time and supposedly has a role in Steven Spielberg's upcoming West Side Story.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her three iconic musicals, so I'm going to go with The Ritz, which earned Moreno a Tony Award on Broadway and a Golden Globe nomination on film.

Margaret O'Brien (1937-Present)

Screen Debut: Journey for Margaret (1942)
Oscar Nominations: None, though she won the Juvenile Academy Award in 1944.
Most Famous For: Being one of the biggest child stars on the planet.  Margaret O'Brien was to the 1940's what Shirley Temple & Judy Garland were to the 1930's.  She even appeared opposite Garland in the most famous of O'Brien's movies: Meet Me in St. Louis, where she played Tootie.  O'Brien was a major star, but couldn't jump to adult roles like Garland, whom she is oftentimes compared to, and instead only made the occasional television or film appearance.  If you ever want a fun story, read about O'Brien's Oscar and how she lost it for some fifty years before it finally returned to her.
Is She Still Working?: I think so-it looks like she has a relatively long recent IMDB cast page but it's not entirely clear if these are just clips of her in her youth or her actually playing a role.  If the 2017 movie where she stars opposite Mickey Rooney in a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde actually exists, I need to see it immediately.  Her last roles you'd have heard of would have been guest spots on The New Lassie and Murder, She Wrote in the early 1990's.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably go with the film that made her a star, Journey for Margaret with Robert Young and Fay Bainter, as I've seen (and loved) Meet Me in St. Louis before.

Jane Withers (1926-Present)

Screen Debut: Bright Eyes (1934)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being insufferable.  Or rather, playing insufferable, in the Shirley Temple classic Bright Eyes, where Withers plays her bratty nemesis.  Withers became one of the biggest stars of the late 1930's, joining Shirley Temple as a major box office draw despite being a child star, and then eventually going into supporting roles, like her work in Giant (she and James Dean were good friends) and eventually commercials, taking on what would become her most famous role for the Baby Boomer generation: Josephine the Plumber in the Comet commercials (for comparison's sake, think of Flo from the Progressive commercials and her ubiquity).  And continuing our streak, she was in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
Is She Still Working?: From what I can tell her most recent work would be voiceover contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, which happened almost 18 years ago, so she does appear to be retired.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I think Bright Eyes, Withers' most noted work, would probably have to be at the top of the list.