DVDs of classic films not only give us a window into a world of films that were made for most us before we were born, they also provide a picture of the world as it was at the time they were made. Taken in tandem, we can see not only what was good or bad about a particular film but what was good or bad about it in context with other works of the day. Take for example, the three worst films/performances to win Oscars in the Best Actress category.

Every year has its disappointments among the films, performances and other honors that the Academy bestows, but three years stand out in the this category, not just for who won but for who lost just as unfairly.

The worst performance by an actress to ever win an Oscar was by far Mary Pickford’s shockingly amateurish work in her talkie debut, the wooden Coquette in the second year of the awards, 1928/29.

Pickford had long been known as America’s Sweetheart, and abroad as The World’s Sweetheart. A star since the age of six, now in her late 30s, she could have anything she wanted and she decided she wanted an Oscar after refusing to be considered for one the previous year for her delightful performance in My Best Girl. The problem was the film she wanted one for wasn’t very good, but the then tightly controlled Board of Governors who ran the Academy saw little choice but to accommodate the most powerful woman in Hollywood.

Coquette had been a successful Broadway play in 1927 with Helen Hayes whose subtlety managed to put it over on stage, but there was nothing subtle about Pickford’s playing of the southern belle who causes tragedy. The middle aged Pickford is totally unbelievable as a young innocent and her obvious lying on the witness stand in the film’s climax is something we shouldn’t expect from a novice let alone the beloved star of 250 films.

What’s worse was that her win came at the expense of some very good performances. There were no official nominees that year. The performances listed in the Academy’s records as nominees are actually some of the performances that had also received votes in the single balloting that year. Among them were the highly praised performances of Ruth Chatterton in the first of three screen versions of Madame X and Jeanne Eagels in the first of two of The Letter. Either would have been a far better choice. Better still would have been either of two silent performances that were ignored, those of Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Lillian Gish in The Wind.

Falconetti was a French stage actress who specialized in comedic roles but whose highly dramatic portrayal of the French saint is considered by many critics to be the single greatest acting performance ever captured on film. Gish’s portrayal of the lonely pioneer wife in The Wind is considered one of the best performances of her illustrious career. Pickford may have been the silent screen’s biggest star, but Gish was its greatest actress by far.

Better received in its day, 1930’s The Divorcée was not only nominated for Best Actress, which it won, but Best Picture and Director (Robert Z, Leonard) as well. Considered very daring in its day, the story of a woman who decides to get even with her philandering husband by having flings of her own just seems silly now. What’s worse, Norma Shearer’s Oscar winning performance is highly annoying. It’s not the worse performance of her career, but it’s not remotely award worthy either, especially when you consider that her chief competition was Greta Garbo in her still thrilling talkie debut in Anna Christie. Again, however, it was politics that determined the outcome of the race.

The Academy was controlled by Louis B. Mayer whose production chief, Irving Thalberg was married to Shearer. Mayer simply decreed that Shearer should win over MGM contract player Garbo and so it was done. What’s worse, Mayer’s antipathy towards Garbo kept her from being nominated for an Oscar again until 1937’s Camille when Mayer’s duplicity again thwarted her front-runner chances by putting his weight behind Luise Rainer in MGM’s newer, more expensive The Good Earth. Ironically all three stars would leave MGM and Hollywood behind in just a few years.

Mayer was dead and gone when another MGM production won its contract player, Elizabeth Taylor, an undeserved Oscar for the 1960’s critically lambasted Butterfield 8, not because she was good in it, but because the Hollywood community felt sorry for her.

After her vilification in the press for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, Taylor had an emergency tracheotomy that saved her life in early 1961 while in Europe awaiting the start of the filming of Cleopatra. Even Taylor acknowledged that she won out of sympathy and not for the film she herself called a “crock”. Her performance was highlighted by the oft-mimicked line, “Mama, fact it. I was the slut of all time”.

Taylor’s competition that year included three truly great performances and one decent also-ran. The also-ran was Melina Mercouri’s spirited, but not especially deep portrayal of a happy-go-lucky Greek prostitute in Never on Sunday. The great performances were those of always an Oscar bridesmaid, never a bride, Deborah Kerr, nominated for the sixth and final time as the Australian Sheepherder’s wife in The Sundowners; former winner Greer Garson nominated for the seventh and final time as Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello and Shirley MacLaine nominated for what is still considered by many to be her greatest performance as the naïve mistress in The Apartment.

The win aside, 1960 was such a great year for actresses, that it’s a pity that Taylor and maybe even Mercouri were even nominated while Jean Simmons as the true believer in Elmer Gantry; Wendy Hiller as the overbearing mother in Sons and Lovers; Dorothy McGuire as the jilted wife in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; Eleanor Parker as the bitter wife in Home From the Hill; Lilli Palmer as the Catholic nun hiding Jewish children from the Nazis in Conspiracy of Hearts and Judy Holliday as the singing telephone operator in Bells Are Ringing were denied.

I’ll have more on the Oscars next week.

This week’s new releases include Dead Man Down and Spring Breakers.