The nominees were ...
- Clem Beauchamp, The Last of the Mohicans
- William Cannon, Anthony Adverse
- Joseph Newman, San Francisco
- Eric G. Stacey, The Garden of Allah
- Jack Sullivan, The Charge of the Light Brigade
And the Oscar went to ...
It was a logical choice for an assistant director win, with its sequences depicting the campaigns of the Light Brigade and the final, fatal charge. Sullivan was the assistant director, with two second assistant directors, Frank Heath and Fred Tyler, and a second unit director, B. Reeves Eason (who also directed the short Give Me Liberty that won the 1936 Oscar for a short film in color). It was Eason who came in for the most criticism when the trip wires used to make the charging horses fall resulted in the deaths of many horses. The film's star, Errol Flynn, protested the deaths, but director Michael Curtiz reportedly shrugged off the complaint. Eventually, however, the uproar over the deaths of the horses led to a new industry standard for the treatment of animals, including a ban on trip wires. Although the controversy seemed to have no effect on the film's Oscar chances, Warners kept The Charge of the Light Brigade out of circulation for many years. This is also the film, incidentally, on which the Hungarian-born Curtiz is said to have issued the command "Bring on the empty horses" -- meaning riderless ones -- that David Niven used as the title of one of his books.
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