Best Actress Oscar Winners of the 1960s

In a weak year for women’s roles, Elizabeth Taylor won as a disturbed call girl in Butterfield 8. She lost three consecutive nominations leading up to this inferior film, and got the sympathy nod after surviving an emergency tracheotomy. Shirley MacLaine was better as the quirky, appealing elevator operator Miss Kubelik in the year’s Best Picture, The Apartment. Deborah Kerr lost the last of her six failed nomination as a sheep rancher in The Sundowners, and Greer Garson lost her seventh and final career nomination for her role as Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. (She won in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver.) Lively Greek actress Melina Mercouri lost as an earthy, happy-go-lucky prostitute In Never on Sunday.

Luscious Sophia Loren won for her role as a desperate widow in a futile struggle to keep her teenage daughter from harm in wartime Rome, a rare Oscar win for a foreign-language performance. A fine role, but Audrey Hepburn is better remembered for her immortal Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as is Piper Laurie’s heartbreaking turn in the bleak pool hall masterpiece, The Hustler and Natalie Wood in the dramatic teenage love story Splendor in the Grass. (Wood was not nominated for her role in West Side Story the same year.) Also nominated but denied was Geraldine Page as a preacher’s daughter in Summer and Smoke.

Anne Bancroft won her only Oscar of five career nominations for the plucky Irish tutor in the story of deaf-blind Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker. She aced out Katharine Hepburn’s finely tuned performance in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Bette Davis’ courageously bizarre performance as a former child star gone mad in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Lee Remick also lost as the tragic alcoholic wife in Days of Wine and Roses, as did Geraldine Page as a fading movie queen in Sweet Bird of Youth. Rosalind Russell was denied a nomination for her superb Rose in Gypsy, and Joan Crawford was snubbed opposite Davis in Baby Jane.

Neal was searingly vulnerable as the middle-aged housekeeper brutalized by an amoral rancher in the edgy western, Hud. Also nominated were Shirley MacLaine as the French prostitute in Irma LaDouce; Rachel Roberts as a widowed British landlady in This Sporting Life; Leslie Caron as an unmarried, pregnant girl in The L-Shaped Room, and Natalie Wood, also unmarried and pregnant in Love With the Proper Stranger. A so-so year for actresses, with many big movies – like Best Picture Lawrence of Arabia – lacking big, juicy parts for actresses.

Everybody’s favorite magical nanny in took the top honors, besting Anne Bancroft’s betrayed wife in The Pumpkin Eater and Sophia Loren as the voluptuous mistress in Marriage Italian Style. Debbie Reynolds lost her only nomination as the enthusiastic title character in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Kim Stanley lost her second of two as a creepy psychic in Seance on a Wet Afternoon. The win must have been especially satisfying for Andrews, who played the lead in My Fair Lady on Broadway, saw the film role go to rival Audrey Hepburn (whose singing was dubbed). My Fair Lady took Best Picture in 1964, but Oscar failed to nominate Hepburn.

Christie’s dissolute, home-wrecking London model in Darling came from behind to win out over Julie Andrews’ chipper nun-turned-governess in The Sound of Music, the year’s Best Picture. (The latter film has stood the test of time far better than Darling.) Also losing were Elizabeth Hartman as a fragile blind girl falling in love with a black man in the daring-for-its-time A Patch of Blue, Simone Signoret as a junkie contessa in Ship of Fools and Samantha Eggar as the victim of a serial kidnapper/psycho in The Collector. Strangely, Christie was not nominated for her role in Dr. Zhivago, a memorable turn in one of the year’s biggest films.

Taylor’s shrewish, slovenly faculty wife in the famously foul-mouthed play took the honors, as she played opposite real-life love Richard Burton. Sisters Vanessa and Lyn Redgrave were each nominated – Lynn as the pudgy anti-heroine in the odd, mod Georgy Girl, and Vanessa in the largely forgotten Morgan! A Suitable Case for Treatment, the first of her six career nominations. An unknown Czech actress, Ida Kaminska, was nominated for The Shop on Main Street, and Frenchwoman Anouk Aimee lost for A Man and a Woman. Oscar snubbed Anne Bancroft’s fine work in Seven Women.

In a year of fine performances, Hepburn won opposite longtime love Spencer Tracy (in his last film) as parents struggling to come to terms with their daughter’s relationship with a black man, a daring topic for its time. The touching turn beat out Anne Bancroft’s superbly predatory Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate and Faye Dunaway’s breakout, murderous moll in Bonnie and Clyde. Delicate Audrey Hepburn lost her fifth and final nomination for one of her best performances, as a blind woman terrorized by thugs in Wait Until Dark. And glorious Dame Edith Evans lost the last of three failed career nominations for The Whisperers.

Never before had two actresses received exactly the same number of votes, but that’s what happened in 1968 when veteran Hepburn won her third Oscar for her fine, fierce portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter, and newcomer Barbra Streisand tied for the role she created on Broadway as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. They battled to a tie over three powerhouse performances from superb actresses: Vanessa Redgrave as free-spirited dancer Isadora Duncan; Patricia Neal as the mother of a disturbed WWII veteran in The Subject Was Roses, and Joanne Woodward as an isolated spinster in Rachel, Rachel. Oscar ignored Mia Farrow in the devilish classic Rosemary’s Baby.

Better known these days as Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts, Smith's Miss Brodie scored an upset win in 1968 over Jane Fonda's desperate dance hall contestant in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They and Genevieve Bujold's elegant work as the doomed wife of Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days. Smith’s role as a free-thinking but wrong-headed teacher also won over Liza Minnelli’s work as an oddball college student in The Sterile Cuckoo and Jean Simmons as a frustrated wife looking for The Happy Ending.