GREER GARSON, JAMES CAGNEY | BEST ACTOR AND ACTRESS FOR 1942 (1943) Photo

[Los Angeles; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943]. Vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) black-and-white single weight glossy silver gelatin photo. Ink stamp photo number and minor soiling on verso, near fine.

Academy Awards’ Best Actress for MGM’s Mrs. Miniver Greer Garson, and Best Actor for Warner Brothers’ Yankee Doodle Dandy James Cagney, hold their statuettes as Cagney dabs Garson’s tears for the MGM photographer. Though the Academy had their official photographers, the studios — which basically ran and determined the winners at the time — were allowed to have their own images, too.

For the 1942 Awards, held in early-1943, the winners appear to have been given the gold statuettes. Later during the war years, winners would be given plaster versions which they were allowed to trade for gold statues after the end of World War II. Garson had, by then, become MGM’s reigning queen of grand dramatic films.