Best Director, 1930-31

Awards presented November 10, 1931
(Films released from August 1, 1930 through July 31, 1931 were eligible.)

The nominees were ... 

• Clarence Brown, A Free Soul 
• Lewis Milestone, The Front Page 
• Wesley Ruggles, Cimarron 
• Norman Taurog, Skippy 
• Joseph Von Sternberg, Morocco 

... when they should have been ...

• Charles Chaplin, City Lights 
• Howard Hawks, The Dawn Patrol 
• Lewis Milestone, The Front Page 
• Joseph Von Sternberg, Morocco 
• William A. Wellman, The Public Enemy 

And the Oscar went to ... 

Norman Taurog, Skippy. Really? From such stylish directors as Clarence Brown (Garbo's favorite director) and Josef von Sternberg (Dietrich's star-maker), not to mention Lewis Milestone, who had already won two directing Oscars, and even Wesley Ruggles, who had handled the sweep of Cimarron, the Academy chose to give the award to the director of a family movie based on a comic strip? Taurog had been a child actor and began directing short films when he was twenty years old, then moved into features with the arrival of sound. A capable lightweight, he directed Spencer Tracy in his Oscar-winning performance in Boys Town, but his later career was spent working on movies starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis -- Jumping Jacks, The Stooge, The Caddy, Living It Up -- and Elvis Presley -- G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls!, It Happened at the World's Fair, and others.  

... when it should have gone to ... 

Charles Chaplin, City Lights 

Four years after sound arrived, Chaplin was sticking to what he knew: silent comedy with a thick overlay of pathos. He had actually begun City Lights in 1928 and, unconvinced that the talkies were here to stay, resisted the pressure to add dialogue -- though he did add music and some synchronized sound effects -- as all around him the film industry was converting to sound. The movie met with critical praise when it was finally released in January 1931, and has since been elevated to the status of a classic. The Academy, however, took no notice of it in any category. Perhaps there was widespread animus against Chaplin, but it's more likely that the Academy felt that honoring his film would be looked on as a step backward, an acknowledgement of the still-primitive state of talkies when compared with the finesse of the greatest silent films.