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Andrea Leeds

A sensitive, appealing lead and second lead of the late 1930s, Leeds acted a few bit parts in films before being discovered by Howard Hawks, who cast her prominently in his and William Wyler's vivid "Come and Get It" (1936). By far her finest and best remembered film and performance, though, came with Gregory La Cava's marvelous seriocomic study of female friendship, "Stage Door" (1937). As part of a brilliant ensemble led by Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn, and featuring Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball and Eve Arden, Leeds was cast as Kaye, a gifted but unemployed and increasingly desperate actress who ultimately kills herself after losing a coveted part in a play. Theoretically, it was a very difficult role, potentially prone to unenlightened bathos, but, aided by delicate scripting and direction, Leeds gave a tremendously moving and entirely valid performance, for which she won an Oscar nomination.