Conspicuously absent from the year's sound recording nominees were the team behind Walt Disney's Fantasia, which pioneered the use of stereophonic sound, but they received an honorary award.
The nominees were ...
- Appointment for Love, Universal Studio Sound Department, Bernard B. Brown, sound director
- Ball of Fire, Samuel Goldwyn Studio Sound Department, Thomas T. Moulton, sound director
- The Chocolate Soldier, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas Shearer, sound director
- Citizen Kane, RKO Radio Studio Sound Department, John Aalberg, sound director
- The Devil Pays Off, Republic Studio Sound Department, Charles Lootens, sound director
- How Green Was My Valley, 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department, E.H. Hansen, sound director
- The Men in Her Life, Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary, sound director
- Sergeant York, Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, sound director
- Skylark, Paramount Studio Sound Department, Loren Ryder, sound director
- That Hamilton Woman, General Service Sound Department, Jack Whitney, sound director
- Topper Returns, Hal Roach Studio Sound Department, Elmer Raguse, sound director
And the Oscar went to ...
That Hamilton Woman, General Service Sound Department, Jack Whitney, sound director.
Vivien Leigh is Emma, Lady Hamilton, a woman of common origins whose beauty earned her a position as trophy wife to the British ambassador to Naples. Unfortunately, Lord Hamilton (Alan Mowbray) loves his art collection more than his wife, so when the dashing young Admiral Horatio Nelson (Laurence Olivier) comes to Naples to ask its king and queen for support in the fight against Napoleon, Emma and Horatio fall in love. But he is also married, and even when Lord Hamilton dies, Lady Nelson (Gladys Cooper) refuses to divorce him. He sets up Emma and their child in the country, but when he's killed at Trafalgar she's left penniless. Possibly to appease the censors and emphasize the consequences of adultery, the story is told in flashback by a raddled, alcoholic Emma in debtor's prison. But for most of the movie Emma and Horatio are Leigh and Olivier at their most luscious, and their love story is told against the backdrop of English heroics -- Nelson has a big speech about how the British have always fought against tyrants -- appropriate to the contemporary battle against the Nazis. Small wonder that it is said to have been Winston Churchill's favorite movie. Rumor has it that Churchill not only had a financial interest in the film but also wrote Nelson's speech about destroying dictators. Producer and director Alexander Korda made the movie in Hollywood, again with Churchill's encouragement because filmmaking was an effective cover for British spies in pre-Pearl Harbor America. This was Whitney's second Oscar in a row. He won the previous year for the special sound effects for Korda's The Thief of Bagdad.
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| Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier in That Hamilton Woman |
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