Stagecoach (1939)
What a year 1939 was for the movies! Not only did we get both David O. Selznick 's Gone With The Wind and Victor Fleming 's The Wizard of Oz (which need no introduction), but also several other films that, despite not being as instantly recognizable, have nevertheless left their mark in cinema history -- well, at least for me. William Dieterle 's The Hunchback of Notre Dame , for instance, headed by a bravura performance by Charles Laughton , remains to this day my favorite adaptation of Victor Hugo 's classic novel . The great Bette Davis managed to give two spectacular performances that year, one for which she was awarded a nod as Best Actress (her Judith Traherne in Edmund Goulding 's Dark Victory ), and other that, for me, remains one of the best in her career: the titular Virgin Queen in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex by Michael Curtiz -- her farewell scene with her beloved Essex, played by the eternal Robin Hood Errol Flynn , ra