Best Picture, 1935

Awards presented March 5, 1936

The nominees were ... 

• Alice Adams
• Broadway Melody of 1936
• Captain Blood 
• David Copperfield 
• The Informer 
• Lives of a Bengal Lancer 
• A Midsummer Night's Dream 
• Les Misérables 
• Mutiny on the Bounty 
• Naughty Marietta 
• Ruggles of Red Gap 
• Top Hat 

... when they should have been ...

• Alice Adams
• Bride of Frankenstein 
• Captain Blood 
• David Copperfield 
• Gold Diggers of 1935 
• The Informer 
• A Midsummer Night's Dream 
• Mutiny on the Bounty 
• A Night at the Opera 
• Ruggles of Red Gap 
• The 39 Steps 
• Top Hat 

And the Oscar went to ...
Mutiny on the Bounty. Not such a bad choice, all things considered. It's a rousing adventure story (though a little at odds with the historical facts about the mutiny), with a juicy performance by Charles Laughton as Capt. Bligh. But it's telling that this is the last film to win the best picture Oscar without winning in any other category.

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

Top Hat

In the picture above, Fred Astaire is singing one of Irving Berlin's greatest compositions, "Cheek to Cheek," to Ginger Rogers, and they are about to go into one of their greatest dance routines, in which Rogers's gown will shed some of its ostrich-feather trim. What more could any moviegoer want? What more could the Academy want? And there's also designer Carroll Clark's famous Big White Set; the comic support of Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, and Helen Broderick; and Astaire's signature number, "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails." There were other, more earnest contenders for the best picture (Alice Adams, David Copperfield, The Informer), as well as such unnominated gems as Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera. But honoring Top Hat would have more than made up for the enshrinement of Broadway Melody in Oscar annals.