Best Picture, 1932-33

Awards presented March 16, 1934
(Films released from August 1, 1932 through December 31, 1933 were eligible.)

The nominees were ... 

• Cavalcade 
• A Farewell to Arms 
• 42nd Street 
• I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
• Lady for a Day 
• Little Women 
• The Private Life of Henry VIII
• She Done Him Wrong 
• Smilin' Through 
• State Fair

... when they should have been ...

• Dinner at Eight  
• Duck Soup 
• 42nd Street 
• Gold Diggers of 1933 
• I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
• King Kong
• Little Women 
• Love Me Tonight 
• Red Dust 
• Trouble in Paradise 

And the Oscar went to ...
Cavalcade. Early 20th-century history seen through its effect on a well-to-do English family and its servants. If that sounds like "Upstairs Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey," you've got it. But while the movie, based on a play by Noël Coward, touches on the same Anglophilia that made the TV series so popular, it remains one of the least-seen best picture winners. It's not bad, but on the other hand, it's been done better.

... when it should have gone to ...

King Kong

Let's face it: What other 1933 film has had a longer and stronger effect on Hollywood, inspiring more sequels, remakes, and ripoffs? Or has initiated more social, racial, or anthropological commentary? The special-effects industry owes everything to its success. Yet King Kong received not a single nomination in any category. (It was in good company in that regard: neither did Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow's Red Dust, the star-studded Dinner at Eight, or the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.) But 80 years have passed, and the myth of Kong and the beauty who killed the beast is still alive.