Gladys Cooper

Both of the roles that brought Gladys Cooper an Academy Award nomination are women who rule somebody else's life. In Now, Voyager she is Mrs Henry Vale, the domineering aristocratic mother who lives with her daughter Charlotte in a Boston mansion; where the rest of the family are startled by the change in Charlotte on her return, she sets about recovering her hold, and the argument that follows Charlotte breaking off her engagement ends in a fatal heart attack. The American Film Institute notes that the film brought nominations to Cooper and to Bette Davis alike. In The Song of Bernadette she took Sister Marie Therese Vauzous, the nun who scolds Bernadette and tells her that in an earlier age she would have burned at the stake. That film produced two supporting actress nominations as well, hers and Anne Revere's.