2024-25 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Debbie Reynolds & Audrey Hepburn, two of
our stars this year

It took longer than I expected, but we have finished up our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.  I will be honest-I don't entirely know whether or not this will be our final season.  I have two ideas rolling around my head for a theoretical seventh season (I do love this series...along with the My Ballots, it's my favorite thing I do here), both of which would be interesting, but I also am respecting that I chose to step away from longer-term blog commitments for a reason, and to some degree I'm making more of that time (exercising more, watching more OVP movies, reading considerably more), while other writing projects I've not yet gotten a good routine around in the way I used to have for this blog.  If we do do another season, it won't be until January, so we will for sure be getting a few months off regardless as I attempt two writing projects in the meantime.  I am unequivocally glad that I decided to finish this season up, though, regardless, as I don't love an unfinished project, and this had been bugging me.

One of the things that I'm struck by this season is that, for a large part, the movies this season were not as well-received by me as our past five years.  Part of this is my self-imposed rule that I don't repeat films I've already seen.  Some of these women have been in great movies, occasionally (like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill) in movies that I would happily name-check as all-time favorites.  But I will also own that the title of being "America's Sweetheart" means that, even more than our second season focusing on sex symbols, the public limits how much risk the studio is willing to take on you.  With the exception of Sally Field, none of the women we talked about this month were able to have the same level of financial success when they were America's Sweetheart as they would after they would free themselves of that title, and thus while there are definitely good performances...they aren't as frequent.  I did still see some great work (and great movies), but I will own that none of the 12 films that I saw this year looks like a future medalist in our My Ballot Best Picture category (at best, it'll be one of the other titles that fill up the ten-wide Best Picture field), and only a couple of the performances will likely end up as My Ballot nominees for acting.  Still, there's more to life than awards, and there's lots of fluff & fun to recommend here.  Below, find my superlatives from our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Mary Pickford, Sparrows

February: Shirley Temple, Curly Top

March: June Allyson, The Glenn Miller Story

April: Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

May: Doris Day, The Pajama Game

June: Debbie Reynolds, Mother

July: Annette Funicello, Beach Party

August: Sandra Dee, Gidget

September: Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

October: Sally Field, Norma Rae

November (but really August 2025): Julia Roberts, Mystic Pizza

December (but really September 2025): Meg Ryan, Joe Versus the Volcano

5 Favorite Performers (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

June Allyson

Doris Day

Sandra Dee

Audrey Hepburn

Julia Roberts

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Sally Field, Norma Rae

Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

Debbie Reynolds, Mother

Mary Pickford, Sparrows

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Babes in Toyland

Beach Party

Courage Under Fire

The Glenn Miller Story

Love in the Afternoon

Mystic Pizza

Norma Rae

The Nun's Story

Ordinary People

The Poor Little Rich Girl

Sparrows

Two Girls and a Sailor

Top 12 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Frankie Avalon, Beach Party

Josh Brolin, Flirting with Disaster

Jimmy Durante, Two Girls and a Sailor

Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People

Tommy Kirk, Babes in Toyland

Hattie McDaniel, The Little Colonel

Jimmy Stewart, The Glenn Miller Story

Donald Sutherland, Ordinary People

Elizabeth Taylor, Little Women

Bobby Van, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

Denzel Washington, Courage Under Fire

Ed Wynn, Babes in Toyland

That Hagen Girl (1947)

Film: That Hagen Girl (1947)

Stars: Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple, Rory Calhoun, Conrad Janis, Lois Maxwell

Director: Peter Godfrey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Shirley Temple was the biggest star in Hollywood in the 1930's.  But that would not extend to the 1940's, when she would be forced to grow up onscreen.  Temple was still a big name, and there were studios that tried to woo her, including MGM (where Arthur Freed allegedly sexually exposed himself to her, and when Temple laughed, he refused to work with her), but no one could find material that fit Temple.  Compared with figures like Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland, she didn't have the talent or the singing ability to transform into a proper adult movie star, and most of her films of the era were flops.  She did have two memorable films (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant and Fort Apache with John Wayne & Henry Fonda), but I've seen both of those movies, and so instead as we talk about the end of Temple's career (and what came next) we're going to talk about one of the most notorious films of the 1940's, generally considered to be one of the worst movies ever made: That Hagen Girl.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of this movie is insane so bear with me on this.  The movie is about Mary Hagen (Temple), a young woman whom the entire town assumes is the illegitimate daughter of Tom Bates (Reagan), an attorney who used to live there.  Mary's mother has died, and most of the town's "polite society" won't let their children be party to her because they think she's too scandalous.  Tom befriends Mary, and it's not entirely clear whether the two are meant to be romantically-involved or it's just Tom befriending a girl who might be his daughter, as they form a strange love triangle with Julia Kane (Maxwell, who randomly got a Golden Globe nomination for this that is weird even by HFPA standards), Mary's teacher.  As the film ends, it chooses the weirdest possible ending, with it turning out that Mary is not the byproduct of an affair (Tom is "not the father" to use Maury Povich speak)...and the two end up together romantically after an entire movie where we're led to believe that he might be her father, with Julia Kane stepping aside and letting this grown man marry her student.

You might think "different era," but even in 1947, this reads as creepy, and more so it's weird because it never comes across to the characters played by Mary & Tom that them ending up together is unthinkable given at one point Mary was convinced Tom was her father (Hays Code, were you just napping through this film?).  In some world this might've been seen as a tawdry soap opera, but neither Temple or Reagan are good enough actors to pull that off (or at least give us a little bit of camp like someone like Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor would've done with this script).  It reads as a staid, boring melodrama with the world's most insane plot.  The "worst movie ever" title feels earned.

Temple would retire from film in 1949 with A Kiss for Corliss, but like her costar Ronald Reagan, she would have a second act in politics, albeit not as successful.  A devout Republican, Temple ran for Congress in 1967 as the most right-leaning candidate to replace J. Arthur Younger in California's 11th congressional district, coming in second.  After Henry Kissinger took her under his wing, she would end up a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, and would serve as Ambassador to Ghana & Chief of Protocol of the United States during the Ford administration, and later during the first Bush administration, as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, where she witnessed the fall of Communism in the country and developed diplomatic relations with Vaclav Havel, the country's final president before it became the Czech Republic.  Temple would never go back into acting during her diplomatic career, but would pick up numerous awards including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Kennedy Center Honor, and the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award.  She died in 2014, at the age of 85.

Next month, we're going to talk about another devout Republican (it was more common in Classical Hollywood than you'd think), and another America's Sweetheart.  But this America's Sweetheart managed to pull off the feat in the 1940's, when the trope of America's Sweetheart was decidedly out of fashion...and still cobbled together a hugely successful career that would end (sadly) with her becoming something of a sitcom punchline.  We'll get to her on Friday.

Curly Top (1935)

Film: Curly Top (1935)

Stars: Shirley Temple, John Boles, Rochelle Hudson, Jane Darwell, Esther Dale

Director: Irving Cummings

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For as long as there have been child stars, there have been child star cautionary tales.  Child performers ranging from Carl Switzer & Bobby Driscoll to Dana Plato & Amanda Bynes have suffered from depression, suicide, criminal behavior, and drug addiction.  One of Shirley Temple's child actor rivals during this era, Judy Garland, would become the textbook example of a "doomed child star."  But Shirley Temple, the world's biggest star and arguably the most important child actor in film history, largely escaped such plights...though if she had succumbed, there would have been reason for it.  Behind the iconic curls & adorable grin, Temple's offscreen life was tough.  In 1934, she was such a big deal that she made ten movies, and another four a piece in 1935 & 1936, virtually all of them as the lead.  Keep in mind that in 1936, Temple turned eight-this was an enormous amount of pressure to put on such a little girl.  During this time, her father spent much of the fortune she was bringing in (despite a court order that they keep it aside for her), nearly leaving her broke in adulthood.  She had an attempted assassination at the age of 11 when a woman became obsessed with Temple for "stealing her daughter's soul" and she was worked to the bone, frequently being forced to film when she had suffered injuries or after an eardrum operation.  All of this is to say that, while Temple would become the counterpoint to Garland, as the child star that got through the industry unscathed, it wasn't like Hollywood wasn't trying to take her down as they made a profit off of her.

(Spoilers Ahead) We are focusing today on Curly Top, one of the four starring roles that Temple took on in 1935, when she was basically printing money for Fox her box office was so consistent.  Here she plays Elizabeth (Temple), who goes by the nickname Curly because of her hair.  She and her older sister Mary (Hudson) are adopted by a wealthy man named Edward (Boles), after Edward meets them both at an orphanage.  He does this, though, under the guise of being a surrogate for a "Mr. Jones" rather than admitting he and his aunt are adopting Curly and serving as Mary's guardian.  Curly loves both her sister and Edward, but it's clear that Edward, over the summer, has developed romantic feelings for Mary.  By the end of the summer, Edward & Mary have found love, and decide to get married, finally providing Curly with the kind of home she'd always dreamed of in the orphanage.

The movie's plot reads as a bit "sus," and it'd be a lot more problematic if it made any sense at all.  The film was actually remade with Fred Astaire & Leslie Caron in the 1950's and was called Daddy Long Legs, though I suspect that plot will have changed (I've weirdly never seen it, but always meant to), since this one focuses solely on Temple.  That's partially why it doesn't come across as particularly nefarious-Mary & Edward are just props being moved around so that Temple can mug for the camera, sometimes literally (there's a lot of confusing fourth-wall breaks in this picture).

That said, Temple's a delight here.  This is the source of "Animal Crackers in My Soup," which is one of her signature songs, and it's sweet in the film.  Temple is better in the first half of the movie when she's off getting into mischief at the orphanage rather than when she's being doted upon in the latter half of the picture.  Your mileage on this will vary on your tolerance for precociousness, but I get why fans of Temple's frequently name-check this as one of their favorites-it has pretty much every reason to like Temple (cute one-liners, dancing, musical numbers) all wrapped into 75 minutes.

The Little Colonel (1935)

Film: The Little Colonel (1935)

Stars: Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore, Evelyn Venable, John Lodge, Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel

Director: David Butler

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Shirley Temple was such a big star by 1935, that at the age of seven, she managed to pull off something no other actor could've pulled off in a Hollywood that was still deeply segregated when it came to star billing.  In the 1930's through the 1950's, the Hays Code held back Black performers onscreen, and you rarely saw Black actors in major parts in movies.  It's worth noting that Hattie McDaniel not only would be the first Black actor to win a competitive Oscar, she'd do it 24 years before another Black actor would, basically the entire stretch of the Classical Hollywood era.  In 1935, Temple became part of the first interracial dance team with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, starting with The Little Colonel, our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about an intergenerational fight between Colonel Lloyd (Barrymore), his daughter Elizabeth (Venable), and his grand daughter Lloyd aka the Little Colonel (Temple).  When Elizabeth marries a man that the Colonel thinks is unworthy of her, Jack (Lodge), he cuts her out of his life.  Years later, Elizabeth moves back to living in the house that her mother left her in her will (down the road from her dad), and she brings with her her daughter Lloyd.  Little Lloyd doesn't understand the feud, particularly since she adores her father, and so she befriends the Colonel, who develops a soft spot for her.  Jack finds himself in a bad business deal, and is nearly broke (frequently Little Lloyd is concerned about them ending up in the "Poor House"), but when the deal turns out to be good for them, he is nearly cheated out of it by men trying to steal the deed to his land...until the Colonel, after some coaxing from Little Lloyd, storms in and aids in the arrest of the men trying to steal from his son-in-law.  All reconciled (and suddenly in Technicolor, the only time a young Temple was ever shot outside of black-and-white) they are finally a family again.

The movie is cute, with Temple about as adorable as can be here; she has great chemistry with her cast, and unlike some of her other movies, working alongside Barrymore & Hattie McDaniel, she has stronger actors to play off of and it improves the quality of the picture.  The movie's racial politics are suspect.  This is one of the few films (outside of Gone with the Wind) that I've seen where McDaniel is a definite featured, large role.  She has wonderful chemistry with Temple, and honestly is the best performance in the movie (she even steals scenes from Shirley, not an easy task), but being stuck playing a comic-relief maid during a Reconstruction Era South, this is not the most progressive role for McDaniel, and was one of the parts she'd be criticized for by the NAACP.  Still-there's no denying she's giving good work here.

As I mentioned above, this film featured the first (and most famous) dance sequence between Temple & Robinson, with the two of them dancing up a flight of stairs when little Shirley doesn't want to go to bed in her grandfather's house.  The two would end up being in four films together (the others being The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Just Around the Corner), and would become lifelong friends.  The scene wouldn't be seen in the South, though.  The first interracial dance team, even between a little girl and a grown man (whom in the confines of the film, works for her family), would've been unthinkable to play in the South, which would regularly delete scenes featuring Black actors throughout the coming decade.  So this scene, like all of the later scenes with the two dancing, was cut out of Temple & Robinson's films together.

Bright Eyes (1934)

Film: Bright Eyes (1934)

Stars: Shirley Temple, James Dunn, Lois Wilson, Judith Allen, Charles Sellon, Jane Withers, Jane Darwell

Director: David Butler

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Shirley Temple wasn't a star from birth, but she comes closer than anyone we've profiled in six seasons of this series.  Basically considered to be the prototypical (and biggest) child star in the history of the movies, Temple was working in film as early as the age of four in comedy shorts for Educational Pictures where children pretended to be adults.  This eventually led to Temple being signed to a contract at Fox, where she began being paired with actor James Dunn, including in today's film Bright Eyes, which was the first film specifically written for Temple to see if she had what it took to stand on her own after successful co-lead roles earlier that year.  The film was Bright Eyes, and it was a big hit, the first of many that she would have with Fox over the next few years.  At the height of the depression, the Number One box office draw in America was about to become a 6-year-old girl.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Shirley Blake (Temple), a maid's daughter who is raised by her working mother (since her father died in a plane crash), and her godfather Loop (Dunn), a fellow pilot who was best friend's with her dad.  Her mother is about to be fired, just after Christmas (Bright Eyes is tangentially a Christmas movie in the same way that something like Die Hard is), but before that happens she dies in a mid-movie twist, getting hit by a car while her daughter is off entertaining the pilots with a song-and-dance routine.  This leaves her in the care, for a moment, with the snobbish rich family her mother had worked for thanks to the wealthy uncle of the group (played by Charles Sellon) being soft on Shirley.  But Loop also wants to take care of her, and this sets off a legal battle, with Loop, Uncle Ned, and Loop's former romantic flame Adele (Allen) all fighting for who gets to take care of her.  In the end, they all do-they form a sort of makeshift family of people who love Shirley, and Uncle Ned's money-hungry relatives are left with nothing.

The movie reads as a comedy, and it is, though it's weirdly serious.  There's a scene where Dunn takes Temple up into an airplane, and has to tell her that her mother has joined her father in heaven, and it's very moving, but also bizarre because the film isn't really prepared to handle the grief of a little girl losing her parents at such a young age.  They basically treat her faith as something akin to her belief in Santa earlier in the film, something that will need to be addressed at a later date, but we are just going to ignore the fact that Shirley has had an awful life, and maybe it's okay to let her be sad for a little while.  As I've seen no other of Temple's films as a child actor, I'm intrigued to see if this is a common refrain or if this is exclusive to Bright Eyes.

It's easy to see, though, why America fell in love with Temple-she has oodles of charisma, is adorable, and is a born star.  This film is most famous for her rendition of "On the Good Ship Lollipop" which she performs to a group of military pilots to rapturous applause, and she's adorable during it.  You understand why later films would capitalize on her talents as a singer, putting centerpiece musical numbers at the heart of the film.  She's matched in terms of star quality by Jane Withers as the bratty Joy.  Withers would also become a star during the era, one of several stars at the time (Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, & Deanna Durbin were others) who would become major box office draws as a teenager or younger, largely due to the studio wanting to try this approach thanks to the massive success Temple received from films like Bright Eyes.  Withers & Temple hide the fact that the rest of the cast (save maybe Oscar-winner Dunn) is not good in this movie, and the adult women are somewhat identical & interchangeable.  But you don't go to a Shirley Temple movie for the adults-you go for Shirley, and this is a good start to our month-long tribute to her.

Saturdays with the Stars: Shirley Temple

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  Last month, we talked about Mary Pickford, an actress whose stardom lasted most of the Silent Era & who established the title of "America's Sweetheart" before spending decades dealing with addiction & tragedy.  This month, we're going to do something unique, the only time this season (and indeed, I believe the only time in six seasons of Saturdays with the Stars we've done this): we're going to focus on a child star.  Like Pickford, she was for a time the biggest name in Hollywood, and the biggest box-office draw throughout much of the Depression, before struggling to establish herself as an adult actress.  This month's star is Shirley Temple.

Temple was born in Santa Monica, California, the only daughter of George & Gertrude Temple.  From an early age, Gertrude Temple pushed her daughter to get into the performing arts, taking her to singing, dancing, & acting classes, and styling her with what would be a signature of the star: ringlet hair.  She was discovered by Educational Pictures, and put in a series of "Baby Burlesks" where preschoolers imitated famous movies of the day (which is why there's video of Shirley Temple doing an impression of Mae West in She Done Him Wrong).  This brought her to the attention of Fox, where she began making movies like Curly Top, The Little Colonel, and Stand Up and Cheer, all major hits for the studio at a time when they were struggling to keep up with MGM.

Shirley Temple's career was a bit of a supernova, unlike Pickford's where her stardom lasted for decades.  While she spent most of the 1930's as the #1 box office draw in America, the country didn't want the little girl on the screen to grow up, and didn't accept her as she moved into teenage roles, though she did briefly work as an adult in films.  We're going to talk about her career at the top, and the terrible working conditions she was forced to work in (and the way her father burned through her fortune).  But we're going to also discuss the unusual second act Temple would take hundreds of miles away from Hollywood, when Shirley Temple went to Washington.

OVP: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

Film: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Stars: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Rudy Vallee, Ray Collins
Director: Irving Reis
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Original Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's always a little bit strange to see child stars as they grow up, especially if they aren't well-known as adult actors (the likes of Patty Duke or Jodie Foster aren't nearly as jarring as someone who largely is ingrained in our memories as a young performer).  Considering that Shirley Temple is the most iconic child star of all time, perhaps no person quite personifies this shock more than she does.  While I had seen one other of Temple's films as an adult (1948's classic Fort Apache), it's still a bit of a "whoa" moment to see her not as the little girl that saved Hollywood during the Depression but instead as a young woman not necessarily playing "Shirley Temple."  That was the case with this now largely forgotten film from 1947, which in its day managed to be a big hit and won a surprise Academy Award for best screenplay.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is rather a trifle, especially in its plot.  The movie follows Richard (Grant) a charming, boozing ladies' man (when is Cary Grant not playing this role is probably a better question?) who ends up in court in front of Judge Margaret Turner (Loy), whom he immediately takes a fancy toward but she pays him no mind as he seems like a playboy and she's a no-nonsense type that wants someone serious.  As the film progresses and through happenstance, Richard meets Margaret's younger sister Susan (Temple), who immediately swoons for him and finds him irresistible despite their age difference.  Through logic that can only be found in a movie, Margaret's Uncle Matt (Collins) convinces everyone that the best way for Susan to get over her infatuation with Richard is to let them date each other, despite the protestations of both Richard and Margaret.

As one might expect, the film falls into place in the same way that you'd anticipate.  Richard eventually wears Margaret's dislike of him down by proving to be a pretty good guy, and he wins her heart over the "more proper" ADA Tommy (Vallee), while Susan eventually wears out her crush on Richard and gets back together with her high school beau.  The film ends with Margaret and Richard randomly meeting at an airport, and suddenly we have the happy ending that a Golden Age Rom-Com demands.

The film would hardly be remembered today (it's fine, and Grant and Loy are such wonderful performers that putting them together works even if it's not nearly as funny as you'd hope), but it did receive a rather startling Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  Considering the film was up against both the far more dramatic A Double Life and Body and Soul (not to mention the classic Monsieur Verdoux and Shoeshine) it's perplexing to wonder how a random romantic comedy managed to snag such a nomination in 1947, let alone that it took the win.  The screenplay is fine, but it's incredibly predictable and Temple doesn't really have the comedic timing that her costars do (and occasionally even Loy doesn't know how to make herself frosty enough), so this feels like a bit of a miss in terms of the Oscars actually giving out the trophy.  "Fine" is hardly what you'd consider worthy of an Oscar.  Weirdly enough, the film is written by none other than bestselling novelist Sidney Sheldon, who had a rather bizarre career starting as an Oscar-winning screenwriter (this was his first script!), then going on to writing several classic musicals (Easter Parade and Annie Get Your Gun), followed by a stint working in sitcoms (The Patty Duke Show and I Dream of Jeannie), and then finally ending his career as a massively successful novelist, writing Number One bestsellers like The Other Side of Midnight, the latter of which he is most remembered for today.  It's strange enough to think of Sheldon, a suspense novelist of the 1970's/80's, having an Oscar-it's even odder to think it happened for a Cary Grant romantic comedy.

Those are my thoughts on this picture-what are yours?  I'm positive that there are some fans out there (it's not a bad movie, just not a great one)-want to share your defense in the comments?  What phase of Sidney Sheldon's career do you most enjoy?  And what is Shirley Temple's greatest film, period?

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 3

I'm on a roll here, so I'm just going to keep this countdown going (we'll possibly have a quick break in-between Parts 3 and 4, but we're only at the halfway point here so lots of great actressing to come).  If you missed Parts 1 or 2, please click here and here so you're all caught up.  And now, onto the last nine actresses from the AFI's 25 Greatest Actress countdown.

17. Lillian Gish (1893-1993)

Oscar Nominations: Gish would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career for the bawdy western Duel in the Sun.  The Academy wisely gave her an Honorary Oscar at the 43rd Academy Awards for an extraordinarily long (it would stretch 75 years) career.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her incredible longevity, and having a name that is synonymous with Silent Era cinema.  She doesn't have a specific film role that people know her from, but the name Lillian Gish conjures a bygone era of Hollywood.
My Favorite Performance: Her career stretched so many decades and so many periods it's difficult to pick a specific favorite, so I'm going with two and I don't care what you think.  If it's Silent Era Gish, it would have to be her mesmerizing work as Eternal Motherhood in Intolerance (a film that has to be seen to be believed), but if it's Sound Era Gish surely I would need to go with her work as Rachel Cooper (forever brandishing that gun) opposite Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: It would probably have to be one of the D.W. Griffith films (she starred in all five of his most acclaimed and successful pictures), and considering it contains one of the most iconic images of her, I'll go with Gish floating on ice in Way Down East.

18. Shirley Temple (1928-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Temple never received a competitive Oscar nomination or win, but she did pick up the first Juvenile Award at the Oscars in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential child star.  Like Gish, very few people could name an actual Shirley Temple movie, but everyone knows who she is, thanks to those dimples and her curly hair.  Her moniker is also synonymous with a fruity non-alcoholic cocktail that every little kid has in hopes of emulating the fancy (not so angelic) drinks their parents are imbibing.
My Favorite Performance: All right, the third leg of this competition is when my shame grows exponentially.  I have never seen a single child performance of Shirley Temple's.  That said, I have seen some of her work as an adult, and though it has been many (MANY) years since I last saw it, I actually remember her fondly in John Ford's Fort Apache.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Clearly there's a few that I need to get caught up with, so I don't know if I should cite Temple on the staircase with Bill Robinson in The Little Colonel, her pining for "Animal Crackers in Her Soup" in Curly Top, her iconic work as Johanna Spyri's titular heroine in Heidi, or jumping aboard the good ship lollipop in Bright Eyes.  I probably need a marathon.

19. Rita Hayworth (1918-1987)

Oscar Nominations: Ms. Hayworth is our third performer to never win or be nominated for an Academy Award, proving that clearly the bombshells did not play well with classical AMPAS (the other two so far being Marilyn and Mae West).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her iconic looks and glamour.  Though not as central to pop culture as Marilyn, she was the 1940's equivalent of the actress, and her name conjures sophisticated beauty and a spectacular mane of red hair.  She also has a key role (as a poster) in The Shawshank Redemption, which many modern film stars will recognize her photo from.
My Favorite Performance: This is going to make me hang my head, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don't believe that I have ever seen a Rita Hayworth movie.  I was always entranced by her beauty as a cinema-adoring young man, but without AMPAS to guide me in her direction I never got into one of the movies.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Surely Gilda has to be at the top of the list (I have seen her "put the blame on Mame" in film clips, of course), what with her brilliant hair-tossing.  My adoration of Orson Welles also means that The Lady from Shanghai would also be high on my wish list.

20. Lauren Bacall (1924-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Bacall would receive an Oscar nomination very late in her career for The Mirror Has Two Faces (losing in a major upset to Juliette Binoche).  In 2009 she would receive an Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
Probably Best Known Today For: Her short but memorable marriage to Humphrey Bogart.  Bogie and Baby are one of those couples like Liz and Dick and Paul and Joanne that continue to dominate the public's obsession with Hollywood romance to this day (Brangelina, anyone?).
My Favorite Performance: I mentioned this in my obituary to Bacall, but To Have and Have Not remains my favorite of her work.  I love the sheer confidence that she portrays, never really seeming the nineteen-years-old she is onscreen, and commanding that leading role in a way few other actors could in their debut performances.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen half of the Bogie/Bacall filmography, and of the two I have remaining, I think The Big Sleep is probably the more pivotal movie to check out (rather than Dark Passage), though both flicks are in my Netflix queue.

21. Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

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 this list still with us).  Loren recently starred in 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 Favorite Performance: I am pretty lax in my Loren film-watching, but I can claim that I have seen her Oscar-winning work in Two Women, and for lack of a better choice, I'm going to go with that for my favorite (still have a lot to see here).  I also remember really liking Houseboat as a kid.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I am going to go with Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, which unites Loren with one of her favorite directors (Vittorio de Sica) and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

22. Jean Harlow (1911-1937)

Oscar Nominations: Like our three other major sex symbols on this list, Harlow would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original Marilyn.  Harlow was to the 1930's what Rita was to the 1940's and Marilyn was to the 1950's-a bombshell the public couldn't get enough of, and like Monroe, she is also remembered for her tragic early demise (from kidney disease in 1937 at only 26).
My Favorite Performance: I could totally cheat here and say City Lights, which is indeed one of my favorite silent films and a truly wonderful movie, but Harlow has only a bit part in it.  As a result, Harlow joins Rita Hayworth on the list of actors whom I have seen no major movies of their filmography.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: At this point, everything, clearly.  I'm most looking forward to Red Dust, where she is at her most glamorous, and the critically-acclaimed Dinner at Eight.  Honestly, though, you could easily add Hell's Angels, The Public Enemy, Platinum Blonde, or Libeled Lady to that list and I would have no qualms.

23. Carole Lombard (1908-1942)

Oscar Nominations: Lombard only received one Oscar nomination in her career, for her work in My Man Godfrey in 1936 (she lost to Luise Rainer).
Probably Best Known Today For: If Lombard is known for anything today, it is likely her tragic demise.  Lombard, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and at the peak of her career tragically died in a plane accident when her aircraft crashed into a mountain.  The death was felt all over Hollywood, and the press heavily covered her mourning husband, Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: It's hard to really top My Man Godfrey, one of a string of truly brilliant comedies of the 1930's (the dramatic films, in my opinion, didn't hold up to the screwball masterworks of this era), and Lombard had wildly good chemistry with William Powell in the picture (this despite them having been divorced several years earlier-can you even fathom that happening now with someone like Brad and Jen or Tom and Nicole?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not To Be, which has been rescued by cinephiles after a tepid initial reception.

24. Mary Pickford (1892-1979)

Oscar Nominations: Pickford received one Oscar nomination in her career, and thanks to her insane celebrity at the time she won despite its questionable quality (for Coquette).  A more appropriate award came over 45 years later when she picked up an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original America's Sweetheart.  Much like Lillian Gish, most people would have difficulty coming up with any of her films, but her name brings to mind the Silent Era and her role as one of the biggest stars of early cinema (likely the biggest female star of the era).
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to balk on this one, as the only Pickford performance that I have seen is Coquette, which is tragically bad (possibly the worst Oscar-winning performance I have ever seen).  I don't think it'd be appropriate to pin one of Hollywood's most significant founders with that as their best work.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Obviously most of her principle work in silent pictures.  I would probably start with Sparrows, which is considered one of her finest and most interesting pictures, and far more in her acting wheelhouse than Coquette.

25. Ava Gardner (1922-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Gardner would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career, for Mogambo in 1953 (she would lose that year to Audrey Hepburn).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her extremely high profile marriages to and relationships with some very famous men.  She was married three times, to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and most notably to Frank Sinatra in one of the most storied Hollywood marries of the 1950's.  She was also in a romantic relationship with Howard Hughes (chronicled in The Aviator, where she was played by Kate Beckinsale), and had a strong (possibly romantic) friendship with Ernest Hemingway.
My Favorite Performance: I haven't seen a lot of Gardner's work, but certainly my favorite of her performances was in Show Boat, partially because of Gardner but mostly because it's one of my mom's favorite films.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the classic 1959 drama On the Beach, where she stars opposite Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire in a movie about the fallout of nuclear war.

And there you have it (fifteen years after the fact)-a look at the 25 greatest actresses from the American Film Institute.  We'll continue our five-part series tomorrow, but in the meantime head to the comments and discuss today's nine actresses-who is your favorite in the bunch?  What are your favorites of all of their films?  And what movies did you just write down as ones you still need to see?

Deanna Durbin (1921-2013) and the History of the Juvenile Oscars

This past week Deanna Durbin, Universal's girl-next-door, passed away at the age of 91.  Durbin is probably not well-known to today's movie audiences, but in her time she was a huge star.  Her movies even saved Universal Studios from declaring bankruptcy.

As a result of this, she won a special Juvenile Academy Award in 1938, the second person to win the award (the picture to the left is Durbin with her trophy).  At the time, the Oscars didn't generally recognize childhood performances in competitive categories, and so from 1934 to 1960, twelve individuals received Juvenile Academy Awards.  While there are only twelve (the same number as the number of men who have walked on the move-coincidence?...probably), and the last award was presented over sixty years ago, thanks to the young ages of many of the recipients, a number of these men and women are still alive, and in honor Deanna Durbin, I thought it would be fun to check to see what happened to each of them in the years that followed.

Shirley Temple
Born 1928 (still living)
Won in 1934

Temple, one of the biggest stars in the history of cinema, and probably the most well-known child actor of all-time, was a surefire winner in 1934.  After becoming the biggest Box Office draw in America, she slowly saw her popularity decline as she entered adulthood.  She, did, however, enjoy one of the oddest second acts in Hollywood, becoming a U.S. Ambassador to both Ghana and Ireland, and racking up a myriad of accolades to go with her Oscar, including the Kennedy Center Honor, the SAG Life Achievement Award, and the National Board of Review Career Achievement Award.

Deanna Durbin
Born 1921 (died in 2013 at 91)
Won in 1938

As mentioned before, Durbin won at the height of her fame as America's girl-next-door.  Like Temple, she couldn't find as much work in the years that followed, and eventually retired in 1949.  She was frequently asked to return to the screen, but spent the rest of her life in Paris, living a deeply private life with her husband and two children.

Mickey Rooney
Born 1920 (still living)
Won in 1938

The girl-next-door needed the boy next door to go with her, and so Mickey Rooney picked up the first Oscar of his career in 1938 as well.  It's hard to believe since he's been such a parody of himself in the years since, but at the time he was headlining the Andy Hardy movies and playing opposite Judy Garland (as well as Spencer Tracy in 1938's Boys Town).  Rooney received an Oscar nomination the next year for Babes in Arms and four years later for The Human Comedy.  After serving during World War II, he returned to Hollywood and enjoyed fame in film and television, receiving Oscar nominations for 1956's The Bold and the Brave and 1979's The Black Stallion.  He became the only Juvenile Oscar winner to win a second trophy in 1983, another Honorary Academy Award.

Judy Garland
Born 1922 (died in 1969 at 47)
Won in 1939

Is there a star that burned as brightly and fell as far as Judy Garland?  Judy received her Oscar after one of the biggest years of her career, with The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms (her costar Mickey Rooney gave her a kiss on Oscar night, as seen in the photo to the left) both tearing up the Box Office.  Garland would of course go on to be the ultimate comeback kid several more times in her career, gaining two Oscar nominations for A Star is Born (losing in one of the closest Oscar races ever against Grace Kelly) and Judgment at Nuremberg, and giving one of the most lauded performances in the history of entertainment at Carnegie Hall in 1961.  She died from an overdose of barbiturates in 1969.

Margaret O'Brien
Born 1937 (still living)
Won in 1944

Following in Judy's footsteps (career-wise), O'Brien won the Juvenile Oscar five years after Garland, primarily for starring opposite her in Meet Me in St. Louis.  O'Brien couldn't cut it as an adult star, and only made occasional appearances on the silver screen in the later years.  There's a great story about O'Brien's Oscar, which had been stolen by a maid in the 1950's, finally returning to her in 1995 after being found at a flea market.

Peggy Ann Garner
Born 1932 (died in 1984 at 52)
Won in 1945

The brilliant young performer from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn won right after O'Brien, and gave one of the best performances to be honored for this award (though I haven't seen them all, Garner is one of the few I would have nominated in the competitive awards).  Like almost everyone on this list, Garner was unable to break-out into adult film roles, though she did feature in Robert Altman's movie A Wedding in 1978.  She passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 52.

Claude Jarman, Jr.
Born 1934 (still living)
Won in 1946

Jarman won this award after his film debut, The Yearling, a film that scored seven nominations in 1946 and could have probably made it eight if Jarman didn't have this avenue to win his award (he was the Hailee Steinfeld of his day).  Headlining a Best Picture for your debut film typically means that you're destined to fall a bit, and Jarman's career was quickly over.  Interesting side note though-he ended up having seven children in three marriages, so yeah, that's a lot of kids.

Ivan Jandl
Born 1937 (died in 1987 at 50)
Won in 1948

Jandl also won his Oscar for his screen debut, starring opposite Montgomery Clift in The Search (he's so adorable in this movie-prepare to say "awe" multiple times).  Jandl was from the Czech Republic and didn't speak English, so he learned his lines phonetically.  While he made other films in the Czech Republic, this was his one and only American film (though once you've starred opposite Monty Clift, where else is there to go?).

Bobby Driscoll
Born 1937 (died in 1968 at 31)
Won in 1949

Like Judy, Bobby Driscoll had a pretty horrible life, but unlike Judy, he didn't remain in the spotlight throughout all of it (and it was decidedly shorter).  Driscoll was rumored for this award for his performance in Song of the South (as was his costar Luana Patten), but didn't win until three years later for his work in So Dear My Heart and The Window (you can see him receiving the award to the left from Donald O'Connor).  Driscoll was a huge star in his youth, and also made films like Treasure Island and was the voice of Disney's Peter Pan.  His career started to go south as an adult, however, and he eventually fell into the world of drugs and crumbling marriages.  He oddly got involved with Andy Warhol's Factory for a time in the 1960's, before becoming homeless and dying from drug-related heart failure.  As a sign of his fallen stature, it wasn't until over three years after his death that it was announced to the public, despite his Oscar-winning status.

Jon Whiteley
Born 1945 (still living)
Won in 1954

Also a young actor whose career petered out as he grew up, Jon Whiteley's life has had a much happier ending.  After winning for The Young Kidnappers (along with his costar Vincent Winter), Whiteley appeared in a couple of films before quitting the business all-together.  He went on to become a well-known art historian at Oxford, and to be happily married with two children.

Vincent Winter
Born 1947 (died in 1998 at 50)
Won in 1954

The second-youngest of all of the winners (after Temple), Winter was only seven when he won along with his costar for The Little Kidnappers, and is chronologically the youngest of all of the winners, despite another star winning six years later.  Winter also had a relatively happy adult life.  After moving away from the front of the camera in his early years, he went on to be a production manager on a number of high-profile films, regularly working with Steven Spielberg in the 1980's.  He passed away from a heart attack at age 50.

Hayley Mills
Born 1946 (still living)
Won in 1960

The daughter of the great British actor John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, acting was in the blood for Hayley Mills, one of the few child actors to rival Shirley Temple in her popularity, and therefore a perfect bookend for the awards.  Mills won her Oscar for her work in Pollyanna, a huge commercial success, and went on to have a string of hits with Disney, including The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, and The Moon Spinners.  While she had one big hit out the gate from Disney (The Trouble with Angels), her film career petered out and she largely left the film industry, only to return in the 1980's with work in television, most notably Good Morning, Miss Bliss, a short-lived series that nonetheless spawned the massively successful Saved by the Bell.  In an interesting side note, at the height of her fame, she was offered the title role in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, though Walt Disney insisted the role wasn't appropriate for her image, and the part went to Sue Lyon.

And those are the twelve winners.  Interestingly enough, despite the award being an option at the time, the Oscars still nominated a few child actors during this time period, including Bonita Granville, Brandon deWilde, Sal Mineo, and Patty McCormack (all of whom lost their competitive Oscars).  This all changed when Patty Duke pulled off the trophy for 1962's The Miracle Worker, and with proof that child actors could win the competitive Academy Award, the Oscars stopped giving out the Juvenile Oscar.  Since then, two actors under eighteen have won the award (Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin), and a myriad of actors have received nominations, including Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin, and last year's Quvenzhane Wallis.