The nominees were ...
- Ethel Barrymore in The Paradine Case
- Gloria Grahame in Crossfire
- Celeste Holm in Gentleman's Agreement
- Marjorie Main in The Egg and I
- Anne Revere in Gentleman's Agreement
... when they should have been ...
- Kathleen Byron in Black Narcissus
- Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux
- Jean Simmons in Great Expectations
- Shelley Winters in A Double Life
- Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street
And the Oscar went to ...
Always a welcome presence in movies, Holm had become a Broadway star in 1943 as Ado Annie in the original production of Oklahoma! She signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox and made her film debut in Three Little Girls in Blue in 1946. Her Oscar-winning role was characteristic of the parts that constituted most of her film career: the sensible, sophisticated woman, often the second lead as the star's confidante, as in All About Eve, which won her the third of her Oscar nominations.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Martha Raye |
Raye plays the vulgar Annabella Bonheur, one of a series of wealthy but unpleasant women whom Verdoux (Charles Chaplin) marries and murders -- although unlike the others, she proves remarkably and hilariously resistant to his attempts to bump her off. Today, unfortunately, Raye is mostly remembered for the denture-cleaner commercials she made in the 1980s, but she was a gifted comedian and a remarkably fine singer. The daughter of vaudevillians, she was on stage by the age of three and spent most of her childhood there, receiving little formal education. By the time she was in her teens, she was a featured vocalist with big bands, and she made her movie debut in 1934 as a nightclub singer in a short subject. Paramount signed her to a contract in 1936 when she appeared with Bing Crosby in Rhythm on the Range. The same year, she became a regular on Al Jolson's radio show, which gave her an opportunity to show off her singing ability, but her gift for clowning and her easily caricatured large mouth limited her screen appearances to comic roles. During World War II she began performing regularly with the USO in shows for the troops, a practice she continued during the Korean and Vietnam wars. This led to the Academy's awarding her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1969 and to the presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1993, a year before her death.
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| Raye and Charles Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux |
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