Best Short Film, 1931-32

Awards presented November 18, 1932
(Films released from August 1, 1931 through July 31, 1932 were eligible.)

Almost annually now, someone calls for the abolition of the short film category, though it's usually in the context of thinking up ways to shorten the televised awards ceremony. That didn't matter so much when, in its fifth Awards year, the Academy decided to honor short films -- or "short subjects" as they were called -- before it had even got around to honoring music, or film editing, or costume design, or makeup. Short films today are often the work of students aiming for their first feature job and short animated films are sometimes hors d'oeuvres from the spare time of animators at Pixar or Dreamworks, designed to whet our appetites for the next full-length feature. It's hard for us today, when the only other things besides the feature that you're likely to see on the screen are commercials and trailers, how central short films once were to the movie-going experience. A few of us remember the buzz of enthusiasm when a Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny cartoon began to appear on the screen -- or the mutters of disappointment when the short turned out to be an "as the sun sets slowly, we take our leave of" travelogue.  

The nominees were ... 
(Cartoon) 

• Flowers and Trees, Walt Disney, producer
• It's Got Me Again, Leon Schlesinger, producer 
• Mickey's Orphans, Walt Disney, producer 

(Comedy) 

• The Loud Mouth, Mack Sennett, producer 
• The Music Box, Hal Roach, producer 
• Scratch-As-Catch-Can, RKO Radio 

(Novelty) 

• Screen Souvenirs, Paramount Publix 
• Swing High, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 
• Wrestling Swordfish, Mack Sennett, producer 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Cartoon) 

Flowers and Trees, Walt Disney, producer. 

Lillian Disney holds her husband's first Oscar

(Comedy)

The Music Box, Hal Roach, producer.

Oliver Hardy, Hal Roach, and Stan Laurel 

(Novelty) 

Wrestling Swordfish, Mack Sennett, producer. 

Mack Sennett

The names of the winners were no secret in those days, so when Sennett learned that his short had lost by only three votes to Swing High, he protested: The Academy's rules indicated that a three-vote margin was a tie. So the Academy put it to a second vote, and Sennett's short, the second in a series called "Cannibals of the Deep," was the winner. Prints of it, however, seem to be unlocatable today.