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Greer Garson received no less than six Best Actress Academy Award nominations during a seven-year span (1939-1945). The Oscar record of MGM's First Lady of the 1940s is only matched by that of Warner Bros.' First Lady of the 1940s (and of the late 1930s), Bette Davis, who also earned six Best Actress nominations during a seven-year span (curiously, only one year ahead of Garson: 1938-1944). Addendum: I should have mentioned the obvious: Garson and Davis are the only two performers to have been nominated five years in a row; Garson from 1941-45, Davis from 1938-1942.

What about Meryl Streep, you ask. Well, it's true that Streep has earned several thousand nominations in the last three and a half decades, but never as many as Garson and Davis during such a short period. The closest Streep got to the two former First Ladies was in the 1980s, when she received six Best Actress nominations during an eight-year span — Falling in Love (1984) and Heartburn (1986) did her in.

This evening, Greer Garson fans — I'm one of them — can catch up with some of the actress' 1940s work on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM's "31 Days of Oscar Series" continues with the presentation of five Oscar-nominated Garson performances: Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Madame Curie (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944), and The Valley of Decision (1945). Walter Pidgeon co-stars with Garson in the first four; he was nominated for Mrs. Miniver and Madame Curie.