Sista…you’ve been on my mind.

Yes the results are here from my first ever poll. I asked who you felt deserved the Best Actress Oscar back in 1985. The results were hardly surprising, most people agree.
So in descending order:

5) With 4% of the votes we have Geraldine Page – A Trip to Bountiful
4) With 8% of the votes we have Anne Bancroft – Agnes of God
3) With 13% of the votes we have Jessica Lange – Sweet Dreams
2) With 27% of the votes we have Meryl Streep – Out of Africa
1) With a whopping 48% we have Whoopie Goldberg – The Color Purple.

Hardly surprising is it? This is one of those many cases where the Academy really messes up everything. Geraldine Page was of course the winner, and she won mainly because she had been nominated seven times before without a win. It was a sentimental vote. (not so for Peter O’Toole)
Whoopie Goldberg did win eventually for ‘Ghost’ as a kind of make up award, however that year it was at a loss to one of these amazing performances:
Annette Bening - The Grifters
Diane Ladd - Wild at Heart
Mary McDonnell - Dances with Wolves
(leaving out Brocco on purpose)

Can you imagine if they gave it to who was the best at the time? We would no longer have the 'make up award' (Damn you Helen Hunt!!! You stole Dame Judi's Oscar and now she has 'Shakespeare in Love' forever in the history books as her Oscar winning performance).

Anyway, enough of that. Back to the performance that should have won that year.

I remember seeing this movie as a young teenager (13 I think) and never before had an adult movie made be cry like a five year old girl. Until then it had been films like ‘Born Free’ that caused an uncontrollable amount of blubbering. Of course I can see how critics felt it was a little soppy, but I can always see past that, and it is because of the performances that I can.

When Mister takes Nettie away from Celie near the beginning of the film, pounding their hands with his fists as they try desperately to hold on to each other, it just breaks my heart. Their love for each other, and his hatred for that love, are almost too much to watch. From that point to when Celie finds the first letter from her sister I was constantly red eyed and tear stained.
(On a side note, the actress who played young Celie was fantastic as well...where did she go?)

Whoppie, for me, became Celie. Submissive, alone and broken. Her heart had been torn out, and she had resolved herself to this life of misery with the hope the heaven would be better and eternal.
“This life be over soon, heaven lasts always” she advises Sophia after Sophia was beaten by her husband. This is all she knows of life, the only happiness she had was taken away.
When Shug, Mister’s mistress, is bought into her life she begins to open up. Someone loves her, she is worth while.



(How this song did not win the Oscar is beyond me. 14 nominations and not one win!)
Hope enters her life with Shug, and the discovery of the fate of her beloved sister and the children that were taken away from her while she was still a child. She beings to strengthen. She stands up for herself and pride takes over. She is no longer afraid of the man who had spent decades beating her for not being who he wanted.



This is the scene when Whoopie shines. Every time I watch this film I am utterly amazed that this was her film debut. For me, no other debut performance has impressed me as much.

“I'm poor, black, I might even be ugly, but dear God, I'm here. I'm here.”

But she lost the Oscar because it was a debut (and because she is black), I guess the Academy wanted to see what else she could do. So much for a fair race.

As much as I love the woman, she has never really bettered this in my opinion. She has come close in movies like “A Long Walk Home” and “Girl, Interrupted ” (her and Brittany Murphy were the best things in that movie imho)
I wish she would come back with a serious dramatic performance and remind us of her talent. She has it in spades with both comedy and drama.
After her debut she went back to her comedy roots and had great box office success. She would occasionally throw us a drama bone, but these were few and far between and did not ever take away the ease in which she slipped into such a complex character. What she did in “The Color Purple” was nothing short of iconic.