The Academy’s decision to award Bancroft the Best Actress Oscar for this performance reflects what the Academy has generally valued most consistently: performances in which visible technique (the physicality, the vocal control, the specificity of gesture) is clearly in service of a clearly sympathetic character goal. Sullivan wants to reach Keller. The film makes visible the effort and the cost of that wanting. The Academy recognized it.
Whether Davis’s Baby Jane deserved the award more is a question that has no factual answer—”deserved” implies a standard of comparison that an anonymous aggregate vote cannot provide. What can be said is that Bancroft’s performance was of outstanding quality and that the Academy’s recognition of it was not unjust.
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THE ARRANGEMENTS FOR AN ABSENT WINNER: HOW PROXIES WORKED
The practice of absent Academy Award winners being represented by proxies at the ceremony was established long before 1963 and continues to the present. The mechanics of the arrangement have changed over the decades, but the basic situation—a winner who cannot attend sends someone to accept on their behalf—has been a regular feature of Oscar ceremonies throughout the Academy’s history.
In 1963, the specific mechanism for Crawford’s participation as Bancroft’s proxy was, according to the accounts that have survived, relatively straightforward: Crawford made herself available, communicated her availability to the absent nominees or their representatives, and was arranged in advance to accept the award if Bancroft—or any other absent winner—was named. She was not merely present in the auditorium and pressed into service spontaneously; the arrangement was made ahead of the ceremony.