Leaving aside such one-hit wonders as Maria Falconetti and Crissy Rock—taking the entire career into account, in other words—who’s the greatest film actress of all time. After much consideration, I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that it comes down to two contenders: Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck.
Despite her beauty, Bette Davis never traveled the ingénue rut: early in her career she made it abundantly clear that a meaty role was much more to her liking than a flattering one. She played haughty and mean like no one will ever, every match: *The Little Foxes * still makes me cower; *The Letter * leaves me pretty well wrung out, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. And of course, *All About Eve * leaves me chewed up and spit out.
Barbara Stanwyck’s face didn’t have the operatic expressiveness of Davis’s, so I don’t think she ever played a character who wasn’t, first and foremost, a beautiful woman, but she tackled the gamut from sweet as light to dark as poison. And was never less than utterly convincing: her trickster with a meltable heart in The Lady Eve; her fatalest of femmes in T*he Strange Love of Martha Ivers * and Double Indemnity; her abused but triumphant maneater in Baby Face.
All things considered, I think I’m gonna have to go with Bette. Stanwyck’s beauty, I think, ultimately limited the scope of her roles.
It seems a cliche choice, but if you stand back and take an honest look, Meryl Streep matches anyone who’s ever stepped in front of a camera. A perfect thespian.
Meryl Streep has a long way to go to even approach the achievements of Davis or Stanwyck. Her portrayals, like Dustin Hoffman’s, seem to come from the outside. She’s brilliant at marshalling an impressive array of technical tricks to build an almost lifelike portrayal, but she’s never achieved the depth, gotten the insides of a charachter, like Stanwyck or Davis.
Joan Crawford almost always crossed that hairline between pathos and bathos. The best Crawford films–MP included–have an air of camp about them; Davis and Stanwyck rarely, rarely fell into camp accidentally. Crawford very early on became mostly a parody of herself.
Stanwyck. Pitch-perfect performances in The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire to The Postman Always Rings Twice within just a few years? From screwball to noir without breaking a sweat? Bingo.
Of course, I’m straight and I think she’s volcano hot, so maybe I’m biased.
In which she’s so good you’d swear she’s Lana Turner.
I meant Double Indemnity. But while I’m double posting, allow me to mention her excellent performance in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, one of Capra’s odder movies.
I agree completely with Rick Jay about Meryl Streep possibly being the best actor (of either sex) of all time. Furthermore, I’m a little tired of hearing people complain about her use of accents, as though it were a minor “technical trick” and the sum total of her acting ability. IMO, her performance in Sophie’s Choice, is the most amazing piece of acting ever put on film. It’s miles more subtle and “lifelike” than anything Bette Davis ever did.
Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of Bette. She’s good; I particularly like The Petrified Forest and The Man Who Came to Dinner, but I’ve never seen exactly why people were/are so nuts about her. I’ve never found her particularly attractive, either. (For looks–from the thirties–give me Carole Lombard. She was no slouch as an actress, and far better at comedy than Bette.) I’m less familiar with Stanwyck, but I’m indebted to Interrobang!? for reminding me of The Lady Eve, one of my favorite comedies.
I’m in total agreement. And she didn’t just learn the accent for the role. She learned to speak Polish. I agree that it is the best performance on film.
Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter was also beyond what Bette and Barbara could do.
Nevertheless, I am a huge Bette Davis fan and will watch almost anything that she’s in. Jezabel is a favorite as is Now, Voyager. But I know that her acting is not realistic. That wasn’t expected at the time.
I’d say Katharine Hepburn. I’m tempted to add… ‘and that’s why she’s the only one to have won four Oscars in leading roles’, as if that bolstered my argument. Unfortunately, we all know that Oscars don’t always go to the most deserving parties. But I still think she was best. And her autobiography makes for very interesting reading.
Well of course, despite my conceit that the decision had been made and was beyond dispute (really, I was twirling my mustache), I do understand that there’s some subjectivity involved.
But to respond to the above responses, I have gone through my own phases of thinking Hepburn the greatest, and even have been pretty firmly in the Streep camp in my day. But having watched almost nothing but TCM, and rented up to 500 movies a year, for the last 5 or 6 years, I’ve come slowly to the inescapable conclusion it’s Bette, with Barbara as a close second. Every time I see a performance, for the first time, by either, my appreciation deepens. The more I see of Streep, the more I see of Streep, if you know what I mean. She’s come more and more to seem to me like a great copyist; someone who has immense technical talents for painting detailed copies of the great masterworks, but achieving ultimately only a brilliant surface, without much depth. YMMV.
Hepburn will always be a favorite, and she was capable of a lot of, for lack of a better metaphor, vertical depth, but not a lot of range. She could get deep into a character, as long as that character was pretty much Kate. She never went very far astray from the witty patrician woman who could out-think and out-talk any man. Sylvia Scarlett is probably my favorite of her performances, but it’s outlandish and unrealistic; SS is a comic opera without music. It was early in her career too. I wish she’d sought out more roles that flexed her musles, rather than usually playing it safe as she did. Don’t get me wrong; when the role fit her, NO ONE else could’ve done it better. But she never really got down and dirty like Bette, or snaky like Barbara.
I’m in the Hepburn camp after trying to watch Dark Victory. I couldn’t finish it. It was freakin’ unwatchable. That turned me off to Betty Davis forever. Kate all the way!
I loves me some Missy Stanwyck, but you can’t forget Claudette Colbert. Lillian Gish. Marlene Dietrich.
I have huge admiration for Davis, Crawford and Hepburn (indeed, I will defend Joannie to the death, as you all know), but they were all highly mannered–not that that’s a bad thing, but it bit into their versatlity.
(Shrug) That’s your opinion. I just don’t see it on the screen. You can’t see an actor’s guts - you see their physical performance and hear their voice performance and that implies what’s inside. And Streep’s as good at that as anyone I’ve ever seen, and her range is outstanding.
I’m not sure Streep’s work of late has been anything to write home about, but I’m looking at the peak performances of the various candidates, and I still pick her #1.
Between Stanwyck and Davis, I’ve also got Stanwyck - in my opinion, by a noticeable margin.
By the way, Vickie Wilson (a former editor at Knopf) is writing a biography of Stanwyck, to be out in the next year or so. Sounds promising, Vickie is not a hack. There have been enough bios of Bette, most of them worse than the previous . . . Claudette Colbert would be tough to write about, as she was so private, had no scandals (at least none that got out!) and the Keeper of Her Flame is a very difficult woman, I hear.