The Oscar Quest: Best Actress – 1953
And now for one of my personal favorite years and individual categories of the entire Oscar Quest — Best Actress 1953. I posted a list the last time I covered 1953, of all the great films that came out this year. That list is why it’s one of my favorite years for movies. As for this category, there are three films on this list that I love dearly, two extremely so, with the other two being particularly strong as well, leading to a category that, while easy to separate in terms of how I’d rank them, is still one of the strongest I’ve personally seen.
As for the rest of the year, From Here to Eternity pretty much swept everything. While it might not have been my personal choice as Best Picture of the year, it’s still a very good film, and it’s understandable why it won. Fred Zinnemann also winning Best Director HAD TO happen. The reason for that is, one, he directed the hell out of the picture. Two, he didn’t win the year before this for High Noon, which is kind of a shame. Though, John Ford won for The Quiet Man instead, which was a good decision, but everyone acknowledges that High Noon lost all its awards (except the Gary Cooper one, because who’s gonna dispute Gary Cooper?) because it’s clearly an anti-HUAC film and it was a weird time in their lives. So him winning this year was virtually assured. Frank Sinatra won Best Supporting Actor for the film, which I’ve talked about, and Donna Reed won Best Supporting Actress for it as well. Which only leaves two categories: Best Actor, which was William Holden for Stalag 17 (most likely due to a vote split from dueling From Here to Eternity nominations), and this one, which I’ll get into forthwith.
BEST ACTRESS – 1953
And the nominees were…
Leslie Caron, Lili
Ava Gardner, Mogambo
Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
Deborah Kerr, From Here to Eternity
Maggie McNamara, The Moon is Blue (more…)
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