The Best Actress 1944
by dziwnytenswiat | created - 1 month ago | updated - 1 month ago | PublicFrom my list: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls027086655/
1. Ella Raines
Actress | Phantom Lady
Ella Raines was born in Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, in 1920. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the University of Washington as a drama student and participated in many plays. Following graduation, she traveled to New York and the lights of Broadway. She was eventually signed by ...
2234 points
2. Shirley Temple
Actress | The Little Colonel
Shirley Temple was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in ...
1481 points
3. Lucile Watson
Actress | Watch on the Rhine
Unsmiling character player Lucile Watson was one of Hollywood's most indomitable mothers of the 1930s and 1940s...and you can take that both ways. The archetypal matriarch who enhanced scores of plush, soapy, Victorian-styled drama, her prickly pears could be insufferable indeed and heaven help ...
1440 points
4. Faye Emerson
Actress | Between Two Worlds
Synonymous with chic, the ever-fashionable Faye Emerson certainly qualified as one of the "first ladies" of TV glamour. Bedecked in sweeping, rather low-cut gowns and expensive, dangling jewelry, she was a highly poised and stylish presence on the small screen during its exciting "Golden Age". An ...
1427 points
5. Barbara Stanwyck
Actress | Double Indemnity
Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the ...
875 points
6. Ingrid Bergman
Actress | Casablanca
Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with ...
842 points
7. May Whitty
Actress | The Lady Vanishes
Born Mary Whitty on June 19, 1865, to a Liverpool newspaper editor and his wife, she became known as May Whitty to the world. She first stepped onto the London stage in 1882 at which she worked as an understudy at the St. James Theatre and then began playing leading roles when she joined a ...
842 points
8. Tallulah Bankhead
Actress | Lifeboat
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31, 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party who served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from June 4, 1936, to September 16, 1940. Tallulah had been interested in acting and, at age ...
813 points
9. Mary Anderson
Actress | Lifeboat
Mary Anderson was born on April 3, 1918 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She was an actress, known for Lifeboat (1944), Wilson (1944) and Gone with the Wind (1939). She was married to Leon Shamroy and Leonard Marion Behrens. She died on April 6, 2014 in Burbank, California, USA.
813 points
10. Gene Tierney
Actress | Laura
With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...
808 points
11. Joan Bennett
Actress | Suspiria
Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. ...
805 points
12. Bette Davis
Actress | All About Eve
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but...
804 points
13. Lauren Bacall
Actress | To Have and Have Not
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a ...
800 points
14. Dolores Moran
Actress | To Have and Have Not
Better known for her scandalous private life than for her mild film input, the story goes that blonde, extremely well-endowed Dolores Moran was checked out at an annual Sacramento Elks Lodge picnic in 1941 by a Warner Brothers talent scout in the early 40s and a starlet was born.
Born in Stockton, ...
800 points
15. Barbara Britton
Actress | The Fabulous Suzanne
Radiant to a tee, well-coiffed and well-dressed Barbara Britton looked like she stepped out of a magazine when she entered into our homes daily as the 'Revlon Girl' on 50s and 60s TV. She sparkled with the best of them and managed to capture that "perfect wife/perfect mother" image with, well, ...
782 points
16. Mai Zetterling
Actress | The Witches
Mai Zetterling was born in Sweden in 1925, and lived briefly in Australia while still a child. She's known as a director and actor and trained on the Stockholm repertory stage, she began appearing in war-era films starting in her teens. Following her debut in Lasse Maja (1941), she made quite an ...
779 points
17. Signe Hasso
Actress | Heaven Can Wait
Young Signe Larsson was only 12 when she started to work as a child extra at The Royal Dramatic Theater and was the youngest ever enrolled for acting studies there at 16. She quickly got leading roles in movies and always received very good reviews. In 1940 she went to Hollywood and signed a ...
774 points
18. Jessica Tandy
Actress | Driving Miss Daisy
A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy's career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that span of time, she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at age 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice ...
774 points
19. Anne Baxter
Actress | All About Eve
Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved ...
762 points
20. Selena Royle
Actress | The Heiress
The name may be unfamiliar, but MGM stock player Selena Royle was a lovely character actress who exuded warmth, kindness, sincerity, dedication and radiance throughout most of her 1940s Hollywood career. These inspiring traits extended into her outside life as well, where she contributed much of ...
762 points
21. Priscilla Lane
Actress | Arsenic and Old Lace
Priscilla Lane attended the Eagin School of Dramatic Arts in New York before she began touring with her sisters in the Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians Dance Band. She was a popular singer with her sisters and, after 5 years, she was signed to a Hollywood contract with Warner Brothers in 1937. ...
757 points
22. Judy Garland
Actress | The Wizard of Oz
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in ...
749 points
23. Mary Astor
Actress | The Maltese Falcon
Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to Helen Marie Vasconcellos, an American of Portuguese and Irish ancestry from Illinois, and Otto Ludwig Langhanke, a German immigrant. Mary's parents were very ambitious for her and wanted something better for her...
749 points
24. Lucille Bremer
Actress | Meet Me in St. Louis
Arthur Freed discovered Lucille when she was working in a nightclub doing a specialty dance act, and decided to cast her as Rose Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, and began building up her career which never really took off despite being put in 3 big musical productions at MGM. When she married, she ...
749 points
25. Claudette Colbert
Actress | It Happened One Night
One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three. As Claudette ...
741 points
26. Jennifer Jones
Actress | The Towering Inferno
One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring ...
741 points
27. Ginger Rogers
Actress | Kitty Foyle
Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri on July 16, 1911, the daughter of Lela E. Rogers (née Lela Emogene Owens) and William Eddins McMath. Her mother went to Independence to have Ginger away from her husband. She had a baby earlier in their marriage and he ...
740 points
28. Spring Byington
Actress | You Can't Take It with You
The possessor of one of Hollywood's gentlest faces and warmest voices, and about as sweet as Tupelo honey both on-and-off camera, character actress Spring Byington was seldom called upon to play callous or unsympathetic (she did once play a half-crazed housekeeper in Dragonwyck (1946)). Although ...
740 points
29. Ilse Werner
Soundtrack | Land of the Lost
Ilse Werner was born in Batavia (present-day Djakarta), the daughter of the Dutch merchant O.E.G. Still and his German wife, Lilly Werner. She spent her early childhood in Batavia, before the family moved her to Frankfurt to attend secondary school. In 1936, Ilse enrolled at the Max Reinhardt ...
740 points
30. Claire Trevor
Actress | Key Largo
Claire Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Fifth Avenue merchant-tailor Noel Wemlinger, an immigrant Frenchman from Paris who lost his business during the Depression, and his Belfast-born wife, Benjamina, known as "Betty". Young ...
740 points
31. Anne Shirley
Actress | Murder, My Sweet
They didn't come packaged any sweeter or lovelier than Anne Shirley, a gentle and gracious 1930s teen film actress who didn't quite reach the zenith of front-rank stardom and retired all too soon at age 26. On film as a toddler, she went through a small revolving door of marquee names before ...
740 points
32. Ruth Hussey
Actress | The Philadelphia Story
A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Drama, Ruth Hussey's first show-business job was as a fashion commentator on a local radio station. She journeyed to New York City, where she was signed as a model by the world-famous Powers agency. She obtained some stage roles with touring ...
733 points
33. Ann Richards
Actress | Sorry, Wrong Number
Ann Richards was born on December 13, 1917 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She was an actress, known for Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Love from a Stranger (1947) and Love Letters (1945). She was married to Paul Kramer and Edmond Angelo. She died on August 24, 2006 in Torrance, California, USA.
731 points
34. Myrna Loy
Actress | The Thin Man
Myrna Williams, later to become Myrna Loy, was born on August 2, 1905 in Helena, Montana. Her father was the youngest person ever elected to the Montana State legislature. Later on her family moved to Radersburg where she spent her youth on a cattle ranch. At the age of 13, Myrna's father died of ...
727 points
35. Gloria DeHaven
Actress | The Thin Man Goes Home
Gloria Mildred DeHaven was born on July 23, 1925 in Los Angeles to vaudeville headliners Carter and Flora DeHaven. Her parents made sure their daughter would be educated at the very best private schools. They also indulged her ambition to be in show business by packing her off to the Mar-Ken ...
727 points
36. Sheila Sim
Actress | A Canterbury Tale
Sheila Sim was born on June 5, 1922 in Liverpool, Lancashire [now in Merseyside], England, UK. She was an actress, known for A Canterbury Tale (1944), The Night My Number Came Up (1955) and West of Zanzibar (1954). She was married to Richard Attenborough. She died on January 19, 2016 in Denville ...
725 points
37. Michèle Morgan
Actress | La symphonie pastorale
A classic beauty, blonde French actress Michèle Morgan was one of her country's most popular leading ladies for over five decades. Born Simone Renee Roussel on Leap Year Day (February 29) in 1920, she ran away from home as a teenager and studied acting under René Simon, beginning her film career at...
717 points
38. Eleanor Parker
Actress | The Sound of Music
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer ...
717 points
39. Dolores Del Río
Actress | Las abandonadas
Dolores del Rio was the one of the first Mexican movie stars with international appeal and who had meteoric career in the 1920s/1930s Hollywood. Del Rio came from an aristocratic family in Durango. In the Mexican revolution of 1916, however, the family lost everything and emigrated to Mexico City, ...
716 points
40. Merle Oberon
Actress | Wuthering Heights
Estelle Merle Thompson was born in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) descent. She was educated in that country until the age of 17, when she left for London. She began her career in British films with mostly forgettable roles or bit parts. She appeared in an ...
713 points
41. Irene Dunne
Actress | The Awful Truth
Irene Marie Dunne was born on December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Joseph Dunne, who inspected steamships, and Adelaide Henry, a musician who prompted Irene in the arts. Her first production was in Louisville when she appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age...
711 points
42. Jean Heather
Actress | Double Indemnity
Jean Heather was born on February 21, 1921 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for Double Indemnity (1944), Going My Way (1944) and National Barn Dance (1944). She was married to Arthur Ferdinand Meier (John Stockton). She died on October 29, 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
710 points
43. Mady Christians
Actress | Heidi
Mady Christians was born in Vienna, Austria. Destined to be in films in both Germany and the US, she started out as a stage actress but soon found new challenges in the world of cinema. Her first film was at the age of 24 when she appeared in Audrey (1916). She remained in German films for the next...
703 points
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