Very confused- she even won the New York Film Critics award for Best Actress (1944) for this performance; back then, winning the NYC meant you were top of your class. How could the Academy Awards overlook this? It's her SIGNATURE role!
shareI think it was a Hitchcock backlash.
I was astonished to see Doris Day in Man Who Knew too Much as I didn't think she had it in her. she would later be nominated for PIllow Talk.
Clearly she was much better and memorable in Man Who Knew too Much.
Nearly all Hitchcock directed performances stand out over whatever was nominated or won for the years they were in.
The Best Actress category that year was insanely competitive: Ingrid Bergman won for GASLIGHT...and Barbara Stanwyck gave the performance of her career in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (the other three actresses: Bette Davis, Greer Garson & Claudette Colbert starred in more elitist "important" Hollywood films like MR. SKEFFINGTON, MRS. PARKINGTON and SINCE YOU WENT AWAY)...whatever! And I don't think there was Hitchcock backlash because he was nominated for Best Director for LIFEBOAT, plus several of his actors previously or subsequently either won or were nominated for Oscars (Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, Claude Rains & Janet Leigh to name a few!).
TALLULAH WAS ROBBED! And I loved Bergman in GASLIGHT (she deserved it among those five women aside from Stanwyck!).
She should have been nominated over Colbert. Her performance was extremely sappy in SYWA
shareYou have to look at the politicking of Oscar. It has always been a political gamble. Actors, Directors and Film makers that are members of the academy are "told" how to vote and who to vote for. Hitchcock was a non-conformist. He did things his own way and didn't conform to a defined outline set by Hollyweird.
However, if you watch the video, the studio was clearly pushing for oscar nods for Slezak, Hodiak and Bankhead. The opening credits have Steinbeck and Bankhead's names larger then all the rest. They wanted Hollyweird to notice that it was a Steinbeck script and Bankhead was the major star.
In order to answer you question one only needs to look at how long it took for Martin Scorcese to win an Oscar and it was for a movie that wasn't even his best work.
I felt both Bankhead and Walter Slezak as Willy deserved nominations. Slezak was the evil Nazi, of course, but I was impressed by the subtlety of his performance. He managed to keep the character rather ambiguous most of the film's length. Bankhead was wonderful in her most well-rounded screen role.
shareI agree. It probably didn't help that Bankhead was a New York stage actress and not part of the Hollywood film community.
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Half of the cast were a thousand times better than her pathetic performance.