The nominees were ...
(Adaptation) - Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, The Thin Man
- Ben Hecht, Viva Villa!
- Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night
(Original Story)
- Arthur Caesar, Manhattan Melodrama
- Mauri Grashin, Hide-Out
- Norman Krasna, The Richest Girl in the World
... when they should have been ...
(Adaptation)
(Original Story)
And the Oscar went to ...
(Adaptation)
 |
| Robert Riskin |
When Columbia bought the rights to several plays he had written for Broadway, Riskin came to Hollywood where he teamed with Frank Capra for the first time on 1931's The Miracle Woman. Riskin received five nominations for films made by Capra: Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, and Here Comes the Groom. The last-named, however, was based on a previously unfilmed story by Riskin, who had split with Capra a decade earlier, accusing the director of taking credit for Riskin's work. After the split, Riskin did only a few more screenplays, including The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and Mister 880. IHON was his only Oscar-winner, but it's also probably his best work.
(Original Story)
Mauri was Maurice, and Hide-Out is his only story to be deemed Oscar-worthy, a forgettable movie about an injured gangster (Robert Montgomery) who hides out on a farm and falls in love with the farmer's daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan). Grashin got his start writing comedy shorts and moved into B-pictures. His last filmed story was for Elvis Presley's The Trouble With Girls (1969).
... when it should have gone to ...
(Original Story)
 |
| Frank Craven |
 |
| Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Charley Chase in Sons of the Desert |
Craven was primarily an actor, best-known for playing the Stage Manager in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938), a role he repeated in the 1940 film version, for which he also wrote the screenplay. His story for Sons of the Desert is hardly "original," based as it is on an old formula: Two henpecked husbands want to get away from their wives for a good time with the boys -- in this case the convention of the Shriners-like organization named in the title. (As usual with Laurel and Hardy, who were the Bert and Ernie of their day, it's easy to spot a gay subtext.) It's hard to know the extent of Craven's contribution to the film -- the screenplay based on his story was written by Byron Morgan, and Laurel, Hardy, and director William Seiter, among others, contributed to it. But Sons of the Desert is one of the best Laurel and Hardy films, chosen for the National Film Registry in 1912, and Hide-Out is mostly forgotten.
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