Best Short Film, 1934

Awards presented February 27, 1935  

The nominees were ... 
(Cartoon) 

• Holiday Land, Charles Mintz, producer 
• Jolly Little Elves, Walter Lantz, producer
• The Tortoise and the Hare, Walt Disney, producer 

(Comedy) 

• La Cucaracha, Kenneth Macgowan, producer 
• Men in Black, Jules White, producer 
• What, No Men! Warner Bros. 

(Novelty) 

• Bosom Friends, Skibo Productions 
• City of Wax, Stacy Woodard and Horace Woodard, producers
• Strikes and Spares, Pete Smith, producer

And the Oscar went to ...  

(Cartoon) 

The Tortoise and the Hare, Walt Disney, producer.

(Comedy) 

La Cucaracha, Kenneth Macgowan, producer

Kenneth Macgowan

Macgowan had been a drama critic and one of the producers at the Provincetown Playhouse, where he formed a close friendship with Eugene O'Neill. He came to Hollywood in 1928 as a story editor and moved into producing in 1932. Among his films are the 1933 Little Women with Katharine Hepburn, Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) with Henry Fonda, and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). In 1947 he left Hollywood for the University of California at Berkeley, where he founded and became the chairman of the Department of Theater Arts. La Cucaracha was one of the first -- if not the first, for there's a dispute about this -- live action films the three-strip Technicolor. He also produced the first full-length three-strip Technicolor feature, Becky Sharp (1935).


(Novelty) 

City of Wax, Stacy Woodard and Horace Woodard, producers.   
The Woodard brothers, Stacy and Howard, produced a series of nature films under the rubric "Struggle to Live." This one, about the life cycle of a bee, is hard to locate today.