Best Director, 1942

Awards presented March 4, 1943

The nominees were ... 

• Michael Curtiz, Yankee Doodle Dandy 
• John Farrow, Wake Island 
• Mervyn LeRoy, Random Harvest 
• Sam Wood, Kings Row 
• William Wyler, Mrs. Miniver    

... when they should have been ... 

• Michael Curtiz, Yankee Doodle Dandy 
• Alfred Hitchcock, Saboteur 
• Ernst Lubitsch, To Be or Not to Be 
• Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels 
• Orson Welles, The Magnificent Ambersons 

And the Oscar went to ... 

William Wyler, Mrs. Miniver. 

Wyler, born in Germany, came to America in 1922 at the behest of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures, who was a distant relative of Wyler's mother. (Laemmle, notorious for putting family members on the Universal payroll, was the subject of a couplet by Ogden Nash: "Uncle Carl Laemmle / Has a very large faemmle.") Wyler began directing in 1925, when he was only twenty-three, and turned out dozens of silent Westerns. In the 1930s he was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn, who appreciated Wyler's perfectionism, and began to rack up a string of twelve nominations, making him the most-nominated director in Oscar history. Mrs. Miniver was the first of three wins. After it, he joined the army air force and made several wartime documentaries. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels. 

Or it could have been for The Palm Beach Story. That Sturges could have turned out two equally great, yet distinctly different, comic films in a single year is somewhat mind-blowing. But perhaps Sturges deserved it more for this one because of his difficulties with Veronica Lake, new to stardom, who neglected to tell him that she was six months pregnant when filming started. She was also at odds with her co-star, Joel McCrea, and with members of the crew.

Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels