Oscars 1950: Upset Victory

“[T]his marvelously clever young actress so richly conveys the attitudes and the vocal intonations of a native of the sidewalks of New York that it is art,” New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote about Judy Holliday’s performance in Born Yesterday. “More than that,” he added, “she illuminates so brightly the elemental wit and honesty of her blankly unlettered young lady that she puts pathos and respect into the role.”

The casting for the part of Billie Dawn, the dumb blonde ex-showgirl who gradually wakes up to the corrupt doings of her boorish junk dealer boyfriend, was full of false starts and happenstance. Garson Kanin wrote the play with Jean Arthur in mind. When Arthur dropped out just prior to its Broadway opening, Holliday took over and became the darling of both critics and audiences. But Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn had other ideas and bought the property for Rita Hayworth. Hayworth had ideas of her own, preferring the real-life role of Prince Aly Kahn’s new wife over the role of Billie Dawn.

Cohn was finally convinced to put Holliday in the picture after Katharine Hepburn planted gossip column items that early footage of Adam’s Rib revealed that Holliday was stealing scenes from Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. On Oscar night, many camps were wondering which acting behemoth—All About Eve’s Bette Davis or Sunset Boulevard’s Gloria Swanson—would take home the Best Actress prize. When Broderick Crawford announced Holliday as the winner, Swanson (above, with José Ferrer and Holliday) reportedly gave her a hug and said to her, “Darling, why couldn’t you have waited until next year?” In her memoirs, Swanson reflected, “Judy Holliday, when she dared to look at me, seemed to be pleading forgiveness.”

BEST PICTURE
All About Eve

BEST DIRECTOR
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, All About Eve

BEST ACTOR
José Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac

BEST ACTRESS
Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
George Sanders, All About Eve

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Josephine Hull, Harvey

October 17

Rita Hayworth is born Margarita Carmen Cansino in Brooklyn, 1918. In an early role, she played Barbara Stanwyck’s sister in A Message to Garcia (1936) at Fox. Few people saw her performance, as her scenes were cut Darryl F. Zanuck after a test screening. Her manager and first husband Edward Judson maneuvered her to Columbia, where studio head Harry Cohn had her hairline raised through electrolysis and gave her a new name. She attracted attention in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), became a star with You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) and reached the heights with Gilda (1946), a movie that was a blessing and curse in one. “Every man I have ever known has fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with me,” Hayworth once said. “No one can be Gilda 24 hours a day.”

Ten Beautiful Women

The task of selecting ten lookers from an industry that is a hotbed of physical beauty is a fool's mission—obnoxiously subjective on our part and destined to be dismally incomplete. But we did it anyway, and left several gorgeous creatures on the cutting room floor. Let us know who you would put on the list.

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." — Hedy Lamarr

"I never really thought of myself as a sex goddess; I felt I was more a comedian who could dance." — Rita Hayworth

"No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't." — Marilyn Monroe

"Every time you picture is taken, you lose a part of your soul." — Anna May Wong

"I don't have sex appeal and I know it. As a matter of fact, I think I'm rather funny looking. My teeth are funny, for one thing, and I have none of the attributes usually required for a movie queen, including the shapeliness." — Audrey Hepburn

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked." — Lena Horne

"After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, 'She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!'" — Ava Gardner

"I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face." — Grace Kelly

"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got." — Sophia Loren

"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman. I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt." — Elizabeth Taylor