The nominees were ...
- Captain Eddie. Photographic effects by Fred Sersen, Sol Halprin; sound effects by Roger Heman, Harry Leonard
- Spellbound. Photographic effects by Jack Cosgrove
- They Were Expendable. Photographic effects by A. Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahraus, Robert A. MacDonald; sound effects by Michael Steinore
- A Thousand and One Nights. Photographic effects by Lawrence W. Butler; sound effects by Ray Bomba
- Wonder Man. Photographic effects by John Fulton; sound effects by Arthur W. Johns
And the Oscar went to ...
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| Entertainer Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen meet bookworm Danny Kaye in Wonder Man |
Danny Kaye plays twins, a nightclub entertainer and a shy bookworm. When the entertainer is killed by the mob, he returns as a ghost to haunt his timid brother into assuming his identity and avenging him. Vera-Ellen plays the partner in the entertainer's act, and Virginia Mayo is the bookworm's librarian girlfriend. A lot depends on how much you like -- or can tolerate -- Kaye's brand of comedy, since the setup gives him plenty of room for his shtick, including a scene in which he winds up onstage during an opera. (To my mind, the Marx Brothers did it better.) This was the first of three Oscar wins for Fulton, if you count The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which won the award though no individual effects technicians were named in the citation. Trained as a cameraman, Fulton became a special effects expert at Universal, where he supervised the camera trickery of many of the studio's great horror movies of the 1930s, including The Invisible Man and its several sequels. In 1953 he moved to Paramount as head of the special effects department. This was the only Oscar win for Johns, who had been nominated three times previously.
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