BEST ACTRESS 1929/30: The Depression sent a lot of women to the movies while their husbands were trying to get work, a cheap way to stay indoors and get fed full of dreams, and one of the most attractive fantasies was that of the "modern woman". NORMA SHEARER played most of them, though the nominations she racked up, making her the first actor to hold an Oscar record, were mostly for period pieces. THE DIVORCEE was the only one to earn her an Oscar, the story of a modern gal who (gasp!) decides to dump her husband when she discovers he's been (GASP!) unfaithful; think of Mia Farrow lusting after a white telephone in The Purple Rose of Cairo and you can be pretty sure this would be one of the movies that would inspire her. The film is a pre-code soaper in which a woman's most serious ruminations are, naturally, done while donning skimpy negligees in case the audience drags their husband along, but it does show off what made Shearer so wonderful, an exuberant and witty energy that was always possessed with good-natured common sense. The Montreal-born actress, dubbed the "Queen of MGM", beat out herself in the film Their Own Desire (Academy records show her only winning for the one movie), Nancy Carroll in The Devil's Holiday, Ruth Chatterton for Sarah and Son and Gloria Swanson for The Trespasser, the last two the first actresses to receive a second nomination, and for the first time, the great Greta Garbo, up for two films, Anna Christie and Romance. Like Swanson, Garbo would also never win a competitive Oscar, though unlike Swanson she would receive an Honorary Award before her death. Shearer, whose brother Douglas was the multi-Oscared dynamo in MGM's sound department, was also nominated for A Free Soul (1930/31), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Marie Antoinette (1938). She was inspired to retire from filmmaking a few years after the death of her husband, producer Irving Thalberg, making her last film in 1942. She died in 1983. MyOldAddiction.com #NormaShearer #Bestactress #Oscars #AcademyAwards
1989: Scandal