Best Actress: Helen Hayes

I have a weird history—beef, shall we say?—with The Sin of Madelon Claudet. 

gif by me

Fun fact: the first time around The Sin of Madelon Claudet was the last one on my list because it was impossible to find. Like, literal years of me scouring the internet for, ahem, sources and checking TCM's schedule and looking in the library and at stores that sold used DVDs, and I'd all but given up on finding this until one miraculous day it appeared on the TCM schedule! 

And now every time it pops up (which, to be fair, is rare but it feels like it's every other month) I get a little eye twitch at the angst of trying to watch it at all. 

The Sin of Madelon Claudet was Helen Hayes's first sound performance, and one could argue a real debut, because she'd only appeared in short reels or uncredited in three films. The stage was where she dominated, and she earned the nickname First Lady of the American Theatre. While, granted, I don't know much about Helen Hayes beyond a cursory Wikipedia/IMDb browse, if you see her list of credits and the list of awards she received throughout her 80-year career, you know that the Oscar was more than likely deserved. I mean, we're talking about the first woman to ever win a competitive EGOT, for crying out loud!

It's important to me that I make that distinction because I have to be honest: I dislike The Sin of Madelon Claudet. But Helen Hayes is fantastic, playing a tragic woman through her early years through to old age without it ever becoming caricatured or overwrought. If Mary Pickford was too aware of the fact she's in a sound movie, the same cannot be said for Helen Hayes, who was totally impressive in her ability to become Madelon Claudet. 

Without spoiling too much, Madelon Claudet is a young Frenchwoman who is left pregnant and destitute by an American boyfriend and has to give up her child to be raised by friends, marries a Count for the protection, then winds up in jail for a crime she didn't commit and later turns to prostitution because she needs the money to send her son to medical school. 

Helen does a lot of subtle work in shifting her performance based on what age Madelon is in each scene. In those final scenes, where she's reunited with her son (who doesn't know her true identity, and is played by a mustachioed Robert Young, which is just a funny visual overall), you know you're looking at an actress in her 30s but she's carrying herself with such caution that you feel that she's a much older actress who was accurately chosen to represent an older Helen Hayes. 

My favourite anecdotes about The Sin of Madelon Claudet are how Irving Thalberg reportedly thought it was crap but acknowledged that these types of movies win Oscars; how he thought the last seven minutes were garbage and ordered reshoots, and it's these scenes that earned Helen her Oscar; and that Helen was reportedly so disgusted by the film that she tried to buy it from the studio so she could destroy it. For all the trouble it took to find this movie, she might as well have!

Helen was nominated against Marie Dressler (Emma) and Lynn Fontanne (The Guardsman) and this is the first instance of me having watched all the films. I personally would've given the Oscar to Marie again, because Emma is such a tender movie; but I guess I understand why voters would've been clamouring to recognize Helen Hayes. 

This was Helen's first and only nomination for Best Actress but she was nominated and won in 1970 in the Best Supporting Actress category for Airport. I don't remember my immediate thoughts on that movie, but it has the airs of a legacy reward? If I ever get the urge to rewatch it, I'll add my thoughts here. 

DID I LIKE THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET? No, but I liked Helen Hayes. 
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Did you like The Sin of Madelon Claudet? What are your thoughts on Helen Hayes as an Oscar winner?

Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here!