OVP: So Proudly We Hail! (1943)

Film: So Proudly We Hail! (1943)

Stars: Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, George Reeves, Sonny Tufts

Director: Mark Sandrich

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Paulette Goddard, Visual Effects, Original Screenplay, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Watching films made during World War II about World War II is such a strange situation.  This isn't a unique reality-films have been made during wartime about those wartimes in years since, particularly the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq (from an American perspective), but World War II has such finite dates & involves so many global players that watching those films during the war, about a war that the actors & filmmakers don't know the ending to is a bit surreal.  This is the case for So Proudly We Hail, a movie about American nurses who serve in the Philippines at the commencement of the war, leading up to the eventual surrender in the islands (and the Bataan Death March).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told largely in flashback, as the women, including Joan (Goddard), try to instruct the captain of the ship they've been rescued from why Janet (Colbert) is unable to speak & is basically catatonic.  In the flashback, the women talk about the harshness of wartime life, but also about their friendships and romances.  Both Joan & Janet fall in love, the former with a lug of a soldier nicknamed Kansas (Tufts), and the latter with Lt. John Summers (Reeves), a romance that threatens her being courtmartialed.  Along the way they meet another lieutenant, Olivia (Lake) who is scarred from the war & the death of her fiancé, which eventually bonds her to the other girls once she admits the pain she's been going through.  We eventually learn that Janet is haunted by how she left behind John, whom she marries in a rush as they are evacuating, but gets some assurance that he could be alive, and they'll have the farm they always dreamed of in America, thus making her speak again.

So Proudly We Hail is not a good movie (though it's not horrendous-two stars seems more than fitting).  The film is overlong, and it's pretty sappy.  I am a relatively consistent Claudette Colbert fan, but this isn't much for me.  Colbert is melodramatic & weirdly bad in this film.  Her breakdown on the dock is cringe-y, and her relationship with Reeves makes grounding her character difficult to do.  She plays her role as a boring saint (critics of her may claim she does this too often which I don't agree with), and the anchor of having a lead that doesn't fit the film makes the  movie kind of a drag.

Strangely, it's Veronica Lake, an actress I find fascinating (but is nowhere near the talent of Colbert) that totally nails her small part, and probably would've made the worthiest nomination of the bunch.  Her racist soldier suffering from PTSD after the death of her fiancé during the Pearl Harbor attacks ultimately cannot kill Japanese patients like she wants, and has to (in a gorgeous scene where she lets her down for the only time in the film, suddenly becoming VERONICA LAKE) sacrifice herself in order to save the rest of the nurses.

Instead it was Paulette Goddard who won the Oscar nomination for this film, the only one in her career and though Lake's the better of the two (for my money), it's easy to see why they went with Goddard as she breathes some oxygen into an otherwise dour movie.  She's terrific, flirting with Tufts repeatedly (they have a great rapport), and toes the line between man-hungry & dismissive of men (since they always pay attention to her).  She doesn't get any of the big scenes like Lake does, but she's energy & that's more than welcome.

Before we go, the film received two more nominations I should note.  The Cinematography is big, but not all that outstanding.  The Visual Effects are also big (the giant shots of the boats is gorgeous, and the one cinematography moment that feels fitting of the nomination), but I don't know that they're all that noteworthy compared to other things that we had seen before.  All-in-all, other than Goddard none of these nominations feel all-that-earned, and like they were rewarding the concept of these brave women more than the movie that housed them.

OVP: Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)

Film: Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Stars: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, Eddie Collins, John Carradine, Ward Bond
Director: John Ford
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Edna May Oliver)...there's some confusion over whether this was also cited for Best Cinematography, and I'd love if someone reading this might help me out on what is "official" in terms of nominations, as IMDB and Inside Oscar list this as being of the nominees for Best Color Cinematography in 1939, but the AMPAS database officially doesn't list it, saying the only unofficial nominees were Gone with the Wind and The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex.  I defer to the AMPAS database as my source-of-truth for the OVP, but if anyone has more clarification or sources, I'd love to read them.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

We're continuing on our week devoted to the Best Supporting Actress category with Drums Along the Mohawk, a massive hit from that year that seemed to sprout a classic every week: 1939.  The film might have major, Oscar-winning stars headlining it (Fonda & Colbert), but it was actually character actress Edna May Oliver who won her sole Oscar nomination for her work in the film.  Oliver was not that old when she played Mrs. McKlennar in the film (she was just 56, and was clearly made up to be much older in the picture), but at that point she'd had a long career in both the stage & in pictures.  She originally made her name in the Hildegarde Withers films (about a spinster sleuth, and yes, please sign me up to watch all of those as "spinster sleuth" is about as much of a calling card as I can get), but if you recognize her today at all it's probably from the 1940 Pride & Prejudice where she played the quintessential Austen villain, Lady Catherine De Bourgh.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is set during the Revolutionary War, and follows a young couple who are trying their hand at frontier life.  Lana (Colbert), is from a wealthy family, while her new husband Gil (Fonda) comes from more modest means.  Initially when they move out, Lana struggles, even screaming when a Native American that is friends with Gil shows up at her door.  She starts to adjust to life working the land, and they begin a family (though of course there is the initial miscarriage that seemed to always happen in movies of this era).  When the family becomes unable to stay on their land (due to raids from unfriendly Native Americans, who are led by an Englishman played by John Carradine), they move in with Mrs. McKlennar (Oliver), a spinster who enjoys their company, though during a late raid she is shot by an arrow & killed, leaving her farm to the young couple.  The film ends with a gigantic fight that the men win, aided in no small part by Gil, and the announcement of a new country (America) when Cornwallis surrenders to Washington.

The movie was John Ford's first Technicolor movie, and if you know me at all, you know that I love John Ford, and the man knew how to make a beautiful film in Technicolor (just look at something like The Quiet Man or Fort Apache), and this looks gorgeous.  As I mentioned above, this was kind of nominated for Best Cinematography (the best I can tell it was on what would have been the 1939 equivalent of a bakeoff), and it deserves it-Colbert, in particular, looks radiant in the moonlight.  That said, the movie ages badly (and probably wasn't progressive even at the time) for their depictions of the Native Americans, somehow both portrayed as cruelly cunning & as oafish, and it pulls you out of the movie.  The leads, two I generally like, don't help at all.  Fonda plays the character too flat, and Colbert's part was somehow written by a woman (Sonya Levian) & still she behaves like a damsel-in-distress every chance she gets, screaming & fainting & whining.  It's a pretty ugly, dated movie, and one that has little enjoyment save for the Cinematography.

That includes Oliver's work.  Her Mrs. McKlennar is welcome relief, to be sure-this film needs a jolt, and she's the kind of comic icing that provides such relief, but I don't know that it's fine acting in any capacity.  She rarely gets quiet moments, and her body & face are used as derision without it being earned (we don't feel she, or even the writers, are in on the joke).  It's a loud, brash performance that was pretty par for this category in its first decade, but even adjusting for modern tastes, this isn't all that funny or fun.

OVP: Boom Town (1940)

Film: Boom Town (1940)
Stars: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill, Chill Wills
Director: Jack Conway
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Special Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Hedy Lamarr's career in Hollywood was hitting its stride by 1940, and indeed she was about to have a massive run of hits for MGM before her contract would expire in 1945.  Lamarr, frequently written into parts that would tailor to her unmatched beauty, here managed to be in one of the biggest moneymakers of her career opposite two of the biggest stars on the MGM lot (Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy) as well as an actress of major acclaim who had just left a lucrative contract at Paramount to make a play as a freelancer (Colbert).  Lamarr, as a result, is someone who is getting top billing but nonetheless isn't getting a part that probably warrants it.  That being said, Boom Town is a pretty fun film even if it's not a leading showcase for Lamarr, and one that puts together two stars who proved six years earlier for Columbia that they were a pair-to-be-reckoned with.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around the on-again-off-again friendship & working relationship of two oil men who start the film largely down-on-their-luck: Big John (Gable) and Square John (Tracy).  Both men have dreams of striking it big, and between Big John's know-how and Square John's land purchase in the middle-of-nowhere, they begin to strike it rich.  However, Square John wants to marry a girl that he left home, but when she comes to town, Betsy (Colbert) in fact falls for Big John, not Square John, and they elope.  This sets off a rivalry between the two men as they see their fortunes ebb-and-flow, clearly in love with the same woman.  The back-half of the movie centers around Big John, who has gotten egotistical and is having an affair with a woman named Karen (Lamarr), who feeds him insider information about the oil game as she hears it (in the way that beautiful women always hear everything).  Square John essentially tries to destroy Big John's company in hopes of making him go back to Betsy, his love for her overcoming his own need to be with her, and it works.  In the end both men find themselves broke, trying to find another oil fortune, and Betsy is happy living with them on the frontier.

The film is fun, if admittedly way-too-long.  The picture was nominated for Best Cinematography, which feels a bit of a stretch for a movie so conventional, and for Best Special Effects-both of these nominations come from one extended sequence where one of the oil derricks is on fire, and we have to see the two biggest stars on the MGM lot put it out with nitroglycerine.  It's a thrilling sequence, one that likely required a great deal of visual trickery as well as pragmatic effects, but the rest of the movie is devoid of such technical creativity, relying instead on movie star magic to fill in the gaps, so it's likely the film's gargantuan box office that reminded AMPAS to include it for such honors.

That said, I liked Boom Town a lot-Colbert & Gable, in strangely the only re-teaming they ever did after It Happened One Night, are electric and lovely together, pretty much stealing the picture.  The pickup scene recalls some of their best chemistry, and while Colbert's character has some eye-rolling moments in terms of the film's feminism, overall I enjoyed their relationship; it wasn't perfect, but it was real & we see sides of the marriage that usually disappear behind the end credits sign.

The shoot wasn't a great one for Lamarr.  While she enjoyed Gable, she and Tracy didn't get along at all (Tracy spent most of the shoot moping about getting second-billing to Gable-the two would never make another film together as a result).  There's a scene in the movie where Tracy pushes Lamarr's chest where Lamarr looks visibly upset, and pushes away; apparently he was actually hurting her and she was angry about the way he was treating her while the cameras were rolling.  Despite her success in Algiers, Lamarr needed a hit here as MGM had been giving her crap since then, and she got it-Boom Town got her enough clout to ensure leading roles for years (though some would argue she'd squander that clout, given that she'd soon be turning down Laura and Gaslight which are now considered classics).  Either way, Lamarr's terrific in an underwritten role.  She doesn't show up until over an hour into the picture, but I loved her in it-she takes the "other woman" and makes her genuinely likable, someone that you don't want to break up the central marriage, but honestly hope will end up with a nice guy, as she's much smarter than the men that she's helping get to the top.  Some of the moxie that I enjoyed in Ecstasy finally finds its way into this movie.  Next week, our last with Lamarr, we'll go toward the tail-end of her time in the spotlight with an even bigger hit than Boom Town, and in fact one of the biggest (inflation-adjusted) grossers of all time.

Oscar-Connected Lost Films, Part 2

Last week, we chronicled through the Top 10 missing Oscar-nominated films (the films that keep my OVP-loving heart up at night knowing that I'm doomed to failure even if I manage to hit most of the pictures).  Today, however, I decided to try a slightly different tack (one that includes a bit more of a list).  Here we have lost films starring Oscar-nominated actors or directed by Oscar-nominated directors.  While this list is far from complete, these stand out in my mind as some of the more important feature-length films that are hopefully still in someone's attic.

Note: While I couldn't include every missing feature-length film starring an Oscar nominee, I'm curious about which ones are on your "where is it?!?' list, so please share below in the comments!

12. Tenderloin (1928)

Directed by future Oscar winner Michael Curtiz and starring Dolores Costello and Conrad Nagel, the film is in a weird place in history as it's the second Vitaphone feature, and reportedly featured the first feature where actors actually spoke their lines (though the dialogue was so hammy people actually laughed when it first came out).  Considering its place in history, you'd think this would have hung on, but it's still considered lost.

11. Lilies of the Field (1924)

While it shares the name of an Oscar-winning film, it actually has no connection to the movie starring Sidney Poitier.  Instead, it gets its AMPAS connection through leading lady Corinne Griffith, who would be one of the first women ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (in The Divine Lady).  The film sounds pretty messed up, and I'm curious to see how the sexual politics of the period play out, but like all of the other eleven films on this list, it's lost for now.

10. Red Sky at Morning (1944)

One of several missing films from the early career of future Oscar-winner Peter Finch, this one struck me as odd simply because of its late release date.  While portions of films from the 1940's and 50's are missing (most famously A Star is Born), this entire movie (about a sailor who falls in love with the wife of a captain) is completely gone, which is unusual for a film with a now recognizable star.

9. The Promise (1969)

By far the latest film on this list, and the only one that features a currently living Oscar nominee that I can find.  Sir Ian McKellen, very early in his career, made the first big-screen adaptation of an Aleksei Abuzov play, that is now considered lost.  Weirdly, it featured another actor who'd gained some fame the year previous (John Castle) for starring in an Oscar-winning film (The Lion in Winter) and was reusing Oscar-winning sets from the previous year's Best Picture winner Oliver!, so how this remains lost is also a mystery.

8. Men of Tomorrow (1932)

One of those films where you didn't know what you had until it was gone, the film actually stars Maurice Braddell and Joan Gardner, but it was the supporting cast that calls out a bit more ferociously, featuring Oscar-nominee Merle Oberon and future Oscar-winner Robert Donat in his film debut.  The film apparently was a bit salacious and had to be trimmed for re-distribution (and was dubiously marketed in the United States in 1935 because Oberon and Donat were headliners at that point, even though they weren't the stars of the picture).

7. White Man (1924)

One of the earliest films on this list, White Man would be a largely forgotten film starring Kenneth Harlan and Alice Joyce were it not for a bit part (that of Joyce's brother) played by one of the biggest leading men in Hollywood history: Clark Gable.  Yes, the future Oscar-winner made his film debut in a small role in this film, now largely lost (perhaps due to the fact that Gable wouldn't be a huge star for a bit longer after this).

6. Convention City (1933)

A plethora of big name actors are featured in this film, including Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjeu, Dick Powell, and Mary Astor, 75% of which were Oscar nominees (Menjeu even was a nominee already at that point).  But what sets this film apart is that it is apparently quite scandalous, with a number of double entendres and Blondell's costume budget being smaller than Jack Warner wanted it to be.  As a result, it's one of those movies that you want to see more out of shock value than anything else.

5. The Forward Pass (1929)

This would be worthy of inclusion simply based on the premise alone: how many movies in cinematic history have ever been made about football, and turned into a musical?  Throw in Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and future Oscar-winner Loretta Young and the intrigue is factored up.  But it's a cameo by a 22-year-old John Wayne (in one of only a couple of his films that are considered lost) that makes me truly curious-what was John Wayne like at 22?!?

4. The Callahans and the Murphys (1927)

Toward the top more for the director of the film, and what he was able to do with his leading lady in other films.  George W. Hill, while never an Oscar nominee, managed to helm two major Oscar contenders early on in the Academy's history: The Big House, which was an early Best Picture nominee, and Min and Bill, which won Marie Dressler (who stars in Callahans and the Murphys) her only Oscar.

3. For the Love of Mike (1927)

Another film with a man who'd later bring his leading lady an Oscar, but here we have even bigger names than Hill and Dressler: Claudette Colbert and Frank Capra.  Seven years before both of them won Oscars for It Happened One Night, these two screen icons made a silent picture (Colbert's only one), which bombed and almost caused Colbert to quit the movies.  Thankfully she didn't and went on to make decades of classics, but this one is sadly not one that can be discovered by new film audiences.

2. Hollywood (1923)

What gets a film you've never heard of into the Top 2?  Well, it's that literally every major star of this era somehow managed to make it into the film!  Yes, while the leads are a pair of unknowns (Hope Drown and Luke Cosgrave), you have everyone from Will Rogers to Douglas Fairbanks Sr. to Baby Peggy, as well as six-Oscar nominated/winning entertainers (Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Mary Astor, and Cecil B. DeMille), all made more impressive as the Oscars hadn't even happened when this came out.  Throw in one of the only screen appearances Fatty Arbuckle made after his arrest, and you have arguably the biggest curiosity on this list.

1. The Mountain Eagle (1927)
An easy choice for the list, as The Mountain Eagle is the only lost film of Alfred Hitchcock's extensive filmography.  Hitch reportedly hated the film (and the production was apparently a nightmare) and was glad it was gone, but for the legions of his fans (myself included) it remains a film that we most hope is discovered in someone's attic.  I mean, it's hard to really compare with finally getting the only missing feature-length film from Alfred Hitchcock.

OVP: Skylark (1941)

Film: Skylark (1941)
Stars: Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, Brian Aherne, Binnie Barnes, Walter Abel
Director: Mark Sandrich
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Does anyone else spend most of Claudette Colbert's movies trying to see the right side of her face?  The Oscar-winner famously hated a bump on the right side of her face, and as a result she almost always was filmed and photographed from her left side-can you imagine a star doing that today (aside from Streisand)?  Ahh, old Hollywood-such glamour amid ridiculousness.  These are the sorts of things you have to keep in mind while watching a film like Skylark, which functions very much like your typical marital squabble, has boundless sexism that occasionally veers into the "really?" even for a film in 1941, and genuinely would fall apart were it not for the sheer durability of its always watchable leading woman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Lydia (Colbert) and Tony (Milland), a married couple who are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary and already the romance seems to have died out.  Tony is a typical ad executive, preoccupied with money and climbing the corporate ladder, and like every 1940's husband has his assistant buy presents for his wife, which of course gets him into a Rob Petrie-style comic moment early on in the film when Lydia catches him in a lie.  The film follows as Tony sacrifices Lydia's favorite cook by giving her to the wife of a client (again-very dated), and then Lydia runs off with a charming divorce lawyer (nothing happens, of course), who happens to be having an affair with the rich client's wife as well, which causes her to become jealous.  Lydia is convinced that she should leave Tony, but he lies and says he's quitting his job, and then Lydia catches him in the lie (accidentally getting him fired), and runs off to Reno to get divorced, along with the Lothario (Aherne).  The film, of course, ends with Lydia remembering why she loved Tony in the first place and they end up reunited (in Havana-even more dated...or very, very modern) before the end credits roll.

The film's problems are plentiful, and not just because the plot, even throughout, feels incredibly thin.  Honestly this is the sort of story that a television sitcom would have been able to handle in a half hour, but Mark Sandrich stretches it for ninety minutes, and like the TV sitcom, this story feels dated and a little sexist.  We never really see any of Lydia's concerns about Tony addressed.  After all, he never really learns proper work/life balance, and while he clearly "respects" her in the sense that he loves her, that wasn't what she wanted as much as she wanted him to realize that she was supposed to be a priority.  The fact that they come together during a moment of duress, rather than while Lydia has soundly reasoned that he makes more sense than her lawyer boyfriend (who is, for the record, a cad but one who clearly wants her to be truly happy), makes me think that they both went back to the same patterns once the film stopped projecting.  Lydia is portrayed as silly for wanting such a thing as being a priority and not just something that a piece of jewelry can be thrown at, and as a result the film doesn't age well from a feminist perspective.

The film received a bizarre nomination for Best Sound Mixing, which even for the Academy in this era (when they tended to nominate a buffet of films in several tech categories to keep all the studios happy), one assumes that Paramount could have come up with a better option to campaign (maybe they were just trying to keep highly bankable Colbert happy?).  Either way, the film has nothing notable about its sound design, nor particularly subtle.  The storm sequence at the end might justify the nomination, but honestly I felt like that was over in two minutes and even then had been done in dozens of movies previously.  The rest of the film there is diddily squat.  It'd be like Oscar now nominating a random romantic-comedy from Katherine Heigl for Best Sound-what exactly is going on there?  Considering the film is pretty paltry aside from the general joy of seeing Colbert onscreen (she has timing, that one), I really could have done without the nomination and therefore its mandated inclusion in the OVP.

Those are my thoughts on this dated, kind of dreck-y movie.  Anyone want to disagree with me who has seen it?  If not, maybe weigh in on Colbert (or Ray Milland) in the comments or perhaps on bizarre Oscar nominations that make no sense in hindsight!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 2

Yesterday we started in on the AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, chronicling my favorite performances and the biggest missing parts of their respective canons.  We'll continue on with the next eight women on the list right now (if you haven't read the first half, make sure to click here for a rundown).

9. Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Oscar Nominations: Dietrich would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career, for Morocco, but would lose to Marie Dressler in Min and Bill.
Probably Best Known Today For: This is one of those cases where I just don't think Dietrich is known today (aside from being in the "Vogue" lyrics) to the general populace.  Dietrich's face is likely recognizable and highly distinctive, but her work and films are pretty much non-existent to today's audience, and they probably confuse her with Garbo (which is a pity, but this is the "being honest" portion of these write-ups-if you don't know her or haven't seen one of her movies, get thyself to your Netflix queue and put off watching another season of a television show and watch a movie...or better yet, share your love of her in the comments!).
My Favorite Performance: I have tragically never seen any of her work in the Josef von Sternberg films, so I will go with her wonderful extended cameo in Touch of Evil, where she gets to say those immortal words "he was some kind of man...what does it matter what you say about people?"
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: So many of the von Sternberg classics, chief amongst them would have to be The Blue Angel, which really made Dietrich into a major star.

10. Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crawford would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her first in Mildred Pierce.
Probably Best Known Today For: Faye Dunaway's portrayal of her in the camp classic Mommie Dearest.  More people associate Crawford with wire hangers than anything in her extremely long cinematic career.
My Favorite Performance: Crawford was actually quite a fine actor, never better than in the classic soap opera Mildred Pierce, where she played the most devoted of mothers to the daughter from hell (a bit of an inverse to what Christina wrote about her in her infamous biography).  Deliciously, Crawford's longtime nemesis Bette Davis was originally supposed to have the part, but turned it down; Crawford went on to win her only Academy Award for the role.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen almost all of the iconic Crawford films (Grand Hotel, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), so I'll probably go with her other two Oscar-nominated films: Possessed and Sudden Fear.

11. Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Stanwyck would receive four Oscar nominations in her career, but never actually won any of them.  She would receive an Honorary Oscar, however, in 1982 for her body of cinematic work.
Probably Best Known Today For: It depends on whom you ask.  If I'm saying my generation, Stanwyck is not a particularly well-known star, but she did have enormous success in the 1980's so the generation a bit older than me would surely say her work in The Thorn Birds.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche two times in a row here.  There's no beating Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and there's no beating Barbara Stanwyck as the scheming femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.  Stanwyck owns the screen in this performance-frequently trading that biting wit that she shared so well in a movie like The Lady Eve in for a crackling, cruel evil.  Spellbinding for anyone who loves noir.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen her work in the classic King Vidor weepie Stella Dallas, nor have I seen her in her acclaimed television performance in The Thorn Birds.

12. Claudette Colbert (1903-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Colbert would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her classic It Happened One Night in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Those gams of hers.  Seriously-you'd be hard-pressed to find a more famous scene in pre-Golden Age cinema than Claudette Colbert lifting her skirt and showing her legs while hitchhiking with Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: Most definitely her work in It Happened One Night.  Few people can easily make chemistry look so effortless and smitten as Colbert and Gable do in this film, and this is really one of the high points in the romantic comedy genre.  If you haven't seen it, make sure to add it to the top of your To Do list.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With all due respect to Ms. Colbert, nothing else in her filmography really compares to her work in the Frank Capra classic, at least in terms of critical acclaim. I would probably go with one of her sexually suggestive Cecil B. DeMille roles, since Colbert would always be a bit more innocent in the years that followed onscreen (perhaps 1934's Cleopatra, a Best Picture nominee).

13. Grace Kelly (1929-1982)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly would receive two Oscar nominations during her career, winning in 1954 for The Country Girl.
Probably Best Known Today For: Almost certainly best known today for her romantic relationship with Prince Rainier of Monaco, and as his consort of over 25 years.  Grace Kelly has also become incredibly well-known as the ideal of pristine beauty and poise, and is one of the most emulated stars of her era.
My Favorite Performance: I'm not wild about Grace Kelly as an actress (as a celebrity, she has few equals), but far-and-away my favorite bits of her work are in Hitchcock's films, particularly Rear Window, where she's the perfect untouchable beauty for a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart to obsess over.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Kelly has one of (if not the) shortest filmographies of any of these 25 women, and I've seen most of the classics (High Noon, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, The Country Girl), so I'm going to have to go with her other Oscar-nominated performance in Mogambo for my selection.

14. Ginger Rogers (1911-1995)

Oscar Nominations: Rogers would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career (for Kitty Foyle), though she had the good sense to win for it.  This was the first year that they didn't announce the winners ahead of time, and so she didn't know she was about to top Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, Numbers 1 and 2 on AFI's list.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her longtime dancing partnership with Fred Astaire, which kept the champagne flowing at RKO and made her a fortune, even if they both mildly resented the fact that the public demanded them be together (both would enjoy long careers outside of their ten films together).
My Favorite Performance: You can't really beat Top Hat or Swing Time, and I've always felt picking between the two to be a bit of a chore.  I'd probably go with a slight tip toward Swing Time for Rogers work, though I think Top Hat may be the better picture.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have stunningly never seen Rogers' 1933 classic 42nd Street, where she plays "Anytime Annie" (and which made her a star).

15. Mae West (1893-1980)

Oscar Nominations: West, much like Marilyn Monroe (who clearly borrowed a bit from her look), would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being synonymous with sex and sexual come-ons.  Her "why don't you come up and see me sometime" is a pick-up line for the ages, and no drag queen's oeuvre is complete without donning Mae West's platinum blonde hair and bodacious plunging necklines.
My Favorite Performance: None of the Mae West pictures (which are very few, I must confess) that I have seen are particularly good, but her real triumph was always being Mae West.  Some of these women are on her because they are great actresses or because they are great movie stars.  Mae West is on here because she is one of Hollywood's best ever celebrities, which is a performance unto itself.  If I had to pick a film, it would be She Done Him Wrong (she's by far the best and only reason to see the movie, and it stars Cary Grant so that's saying something), a film at the peak of her fame and one that likely kept the lights on at Paramount.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Definitely Klondike Annie, generally considered to be her finest work and another film from her early-mid thirties period of peak fame.

16. Vivien Leigh (1913-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Leigh would receive just two Oscar nominations in her career, but boy howdy were they earned for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire (she won for both).  It's hard to imagine an actor ever winning a pair of Oscars and being more deserving.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, one of those rare classics that keeps its luster decade-after-decade, and her role at its center keeps her permanently in the public consciousness.
My Favorite Performance: Leigh is one of my all-time favorite actors, and part of me could just sit here going on-and-on about her brilliance in Gone with the Wind or how anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours watching a forgotten masterpiece should give Waterloo Bridge (I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!) a shot, but you cannot beat Blanche DuBois.  This is, in my opinion, a tie for the greatest performance ever captured on film (oddly enough, the other greatest performance ever captured on film is also in this movie, which is why I forgive myself for a tie).  A Streetcar Named Desire is the reason I first fell in love with the cinema, and will always be my favorite Leigh performance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Her two Oscar-winning films are really the reasons she's on this list, but Leigh did make a number of other pictures, and probably the most notable of the ones I'm missing is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

And there we have our middle eight on the list.  We'll finish up the list tomorrow, including getting to the lady that inspired this countdown, Ms. Lauren Bacall (and I have a couple of other articles in mind before we close out this actress love-in), but first, there are eight brilliant women listed above-which is your favorite performer, what are your favorite performances of them, and most importantly, what film are you going to see next that stars one of them?  Share in the comments!