For general comments on the new supporting player categories, go here. The supporting actress nominees were less diverse than the supporting actors. Bondi and Brady were established character players in movies, and while Ouspenskaya and Sondergaard were making their debuts, they would continue to play character roles. Granville was only fourteen at the time of the awards, and worked regularly as an actress for another decade and a half, then became producer of the "Lassie" TV series.
The nominees were ...
- Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy
- Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey
- Bonita Granville in These Three
- Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth
- Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse
... when they should have been ...
- Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey
- Judy Garland in Pigskin Parade
- Hattie McDaniel in Show Boat
- Edna May Oliver in Romeo and Juliet
- Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld
And the Oscar went to ...
Sondergaard was not only the first person to win a supporting actress award, she was also the first to win an acting Oscar for a debut. She had been on the Broadway stage, but came to Hollywood with her husband, director Herbert Biberman. Her award-winning role as the conniving Faith Paleologus caused her to be typecast as a villain or malicious gossip throughout the 1930s and '40s -- she was, for example, the first to be cast as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, but withdrew from the role because she didn't want to wear the ugly makeup. Her career was interrupted in the 1950s by blacklisting after Biberman refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was jailed as one of the Hollywood Ten.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne, Hattie McDaniel, and Helen Morgan in Show Boat |
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| Morgan, McDaniel, and Dunne |
Yes, another bandanna role: the cook aboard the Cotton Blossom. But as Queenie, McDaniel gets to do what she did very well: sing. She had started her career as a singer and made several recordings on the Okeh label, but the movies rarely gave her a chance to show that talent. Although the film version of the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical omits one of Queenie's numbers, "C'mon Folks (Queenie's Ballyhoo)," Kern and Hammerstein added a duet for Queenie and Joe, played by Paul Robeson, "Ah Still Suits Me." McDaniel also sings in the ensemble version of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." She had been in movies since 1932, sometimes supplementing her income by working as a maid. As she said, "I'd rather play a maid than be one." So casual was Hollywood about its treatment of her that she was often billed as "Hattie McDaniels," but she endured and overcame its indifference.
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