Best Actress, 1928-29

Awards presented April 3, 1930
(Films released from August 1, 1928 through July 31, 1929 were eligible.)

For the 1928-29 awards, only the winners were announced, and the runners-up received no official notice from the Academy. The records show who was under consideration, however, and they have traditionally been treated as if they were "official" nominees.  

The nominees were ...

• Ruth Chatterton in Madame X
• Betty Compson in The Barker 
• Jeanne Eagels in The Letter 
• Corinne Griffith in The Divine Lady 
• Bessie Love in The Broadway Melody 
• Mary Pickford in Coquette 

And the Oscar went to ... 

Mary Pickford in Coquette. It was kind of a foregone conclusion. Pickford had been the movies' first superstar, having started making movies in 1909, when she was seventeen, and playing a little girl until she was almost thirty. In 1919 she joined with her then-husband Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith to found United Artists, designed to release their independent productions. When she decided to cut off her golden curls, some of which are still in museums, and act her age, her career began to fade. After Coquette, she made only three more movies and retired. Realizing that "Little Mary" was at the end of her career, the Academy could either give her an honorary award or an Oscar (for one of her worst performances) to speed her out the door. It chose the latter, beginning a practice that it has indulged a little too often. 

... when it should have gone to ...

Jeanne Eagels in The Letter 

Eagels died of a heroin overdose on October 3, 1929, six months before the Oscars were announced. If she had won, and now that The Letter is on DVD we have persuasive evidence that she should have, she would have been the first posthumous winner. She had been a huge success on stage, particularly as Sadie Thompson in Rain, but her struggles with drink and drugs began to take their toll. She was planning to return to Broadway after The Letter earned her critical acclaim. It's often said that Bette Davis's performance in the 1940 film of The Letter was modeled on Eagels's and that Davis used her as the basis of her character in Dangerous, which won her the 1935 best actress Oscar.