Best Sound, 1932-33

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

After two years in which the Academy decided not to name names, it returned the sound category -- Sound Recording -- to one in which specific films were cited and the names of the studio sound directors were listed. 

The nominees were ... 

• A Farewell to Arms, Paramount Studio Sound Department, Franklin B. Hansen, Sound Director
• 42nd Street, Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
• Gold Diggers of 1933,  Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
• I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director

And the Oscar went to ... 

A Farewell to Arms, Paramount Studio Sound Department, Franklin B. Hansen, Sound Director.

Franklin B. Hansen

This was Hansen's only Oscar win. He had been nominated before, for The Love Parade (1929-30), and would receive three more nominations, for Cleopatra (1934), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), and The Texas Rangers (1936). After that, his name disappears from film credits until after World War II when he re-emerges as a sound recording engineer on B pictures, though his later credits include more important films such as Pal Joey (1957) and By Love Possessed (1961), as well as some TV work. He is not to be confused with the head of the 20th Century-Fox sound department, Edmund H. Hansen, to whom he seems to have been unrelated. 

It strikes me as odd that the Academy overlooked two films that made significant use of sound. King Kong had innovative sound effects under the direction of Murray Spivack, who would later win an Oscar for Hello, Dolly! (1969). And the remarkable "Isn't It Romantic" montage in Love Me Tonight carries the song from location to location and singer to singer, a sound recording and editing tour de force that seems to have been accomplished under the supervision of the uncredited M.M. Paggi. In the latter case, the Oscar would have gone to the studio sound department head -- Franklin B. Hansen.