Best Writing, 1930-31

Awards presented November 10, 1931
(Films released from August 1, 1930 through July 31, 1931 were eligible.)

Writers have always been, or at least thought themselves to be, rather low on the totem pole of Hollywood, below studio heads, stars, producers, directors, cameramen, and even costume designers and makeup artists. Hence the old joke about the starlet who was so dumb she slept with the writer. But in the Academy, especially since the formation of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933, they have tended to throw around whatever weight they possess. So it was probably in response to writers' complaints that this year the Academy decided to subdivide the writing awards into "Adaptation" and "Original Story." This distinction was present at the first awards, when there was a third division, "Title Writing," that became obsolete with sound. The distinction was dropped for the next two years. But even the reinstated division, or at least the Academy's way of defining it, has never really satisfied the writers, as we shall see in the various permutations and definitions of the sub-categories over the years to come.  

The nominees were ... 

(Adaptation)

• Howard Estabrook, Cimarron 
• Francis Faragoh and Robert N. Lee, Little Caesar 
• Horace Jackson, Holiday 
• Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz, Skippy 
• Seton I. Miller and Fred Niblo Jr., The Criminal Code 

(Original Story) 

• John Bright and Kubec Glasmon, The Public Enemy 
• Rowland Brown, The Doorway to Hell 
• Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Douglas Doty, and Donald Ogden Stewart, Laughter  
• Lucien Hubbard and Joseph Jackson, Smart Money 
• John Monk Saunders, The Dawn Patrol 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Adaptation) 

Howard Estabrook

Cimarron

Turning a 400-page Edna Ferber novel about the 1893 land rush and settlement of Oklahoma, plus the marital and political fortunes of Yancy and Sabra Cravat, into a 123-minute film is a large order, especially since screenplays now demanded dialogue and not just intertitles. Admittedly, some of the dialogue is of the rather ripe order: "Wife and mother, stainless woman, hide me ... hide me in your love." Estabrook did what he could, and even if the resulting film is one of the weakest best-picture winners, the fault lies probably with Ferber more than Estabrook. He began his film career as an actor, worked as a studio executive, and directed several films before settling on screnwriting. He was nominated a year earlier for the screenplay of Street of Chance, and continued to work as a screenwriter until the 1950s. Among his later work is collaboration on the 1935 David Copperfield, another big book boiled down to its essence.

 (Original Story)

John Monk Saunders

The Dawn Patrol

The original "you can't send a kid up in a crate like that" film, about World War I flying aces, was directed by Howard Hawks, whose contributions to the dialogue are probably more significant than Saunders's story in keeping the film watchable today. Saunders was a flier himself, though he spent World War I -- to his regret -- as a flight instructor in Florida. He wrote the story for the first best-picture winner, Wings, but went unnominated for it. He continued to contribute story ideas of movies about flying -- The Last Flight, Devil Dogs of the Air, and so on -- until his death in 1940.