Best Special Effects, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

The Academy improved on its new(ish) category by singling out both visual technicians and sound technicians among the nominees.

The nominees were ... 

• The Blue Bird, photographic effects by Fred Sersen, sound effects by E.H. Hansen 
• Boom Town, photographic effects by A. Arnold Gillespie, sound effects by Douglas Shearer 
• The Boys From Syracuse, photographic effects by John P. Fulton, sound effects by Bernard B. Brown  Joseph Lapis 
• Dr. Cyclops, photographic effects by Gordon Jennings, Farciot Edouart 
• Foreign Correspondent, photographic effects by Paul Eagler, sound effects by Thomas T. Moulton 
• The Invisible Man Returns, photographic effects by John P. Fulton  sound effects by Bernard B. Brown, William Hedgecock 
• The Long Voyage Home, photographic effects by R.T. Layton, R.O. Binger, sound effects by Thomas T. Moulton 
• One Million B.C., photographic effects by Roy Seawright, sound effects by Elmer Raguse 
• Rebecca, photographic effects by Jack Cosgrove, sound effects by Arthur Johns 
• The Sea Hawk, photographic effects by Byron Haskin, sound effects by Nathan Levinson 
• Swiss Family Robinson, photographic effects by Vernon L. Walker, sound effects by John O. Aalberg  
• The Thief of Bagdad, photographic effects by Lawrence Butler, sound effects by Jack Whitney 
• Typhoon, photographic effects by Farciot Edouart, Gordon Jennings, sound effects by Loren Ryder 
• Women in War, photographic effects by Howard J. Lydecker, William Bradford, Ellis J. Thackery, sound effects by Herbert Norsch 

And the Oscar went to ... 

The Thief of Bagdad, photographic effects by Lawrence Butler, sound effects by Jack Whitney. 

Rex Ingram and Sabu in The Thief of Bagdad

Butler's great contribution to the special effects world is the pioneering use of chroma key compositing, the now-familiar bluescreen or greenscreen effect, in which figures perform against a blue or green backdrop, allowing them to be superimposed on another image. Butler used it to allow the genie, played by Rex Ingram, to become a giant in scenes with Abu, played by Sabu. Butler began his career with Alexander Korda, and after World War II became head of the special effects department at Columbia. Whitney, the chief sound engineer on The Thief of Bagdad, received most of his eight nominations in the sound recording category, and won a second Oscar for That Hamilton Woman.   

Best Art Direction,1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

If there were going to be separate awards for both color and black-and-white cinematography, the art directors argued, then there should be for art direction, too. And rightly so. If you've ever seen some of the attempts to "colorize" black-and-white films undertaken in the 1980s, you can tell how a production designer needs to keep different things in mind depending on whether the film is in color or not. I recall watching the colorized version of Casablanca and being startled by the paisley blouse Ingrid Bergman wears in one scene. It's completely suitable in black-and-white, but in the color version it looked as if Bergman was being eaten alive by giant paramecia. That's why, when the costumers finally got their Oscar a decade later, the division between black-and-white and color applied to them, too.

The nominees were ... 
(Black-and-White) 

• Lionel Banks, Robert Peterson, Arizona 
• James Basevi, The Westerner 
• Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright, Lillian Russell 
• Hans Dreier, Robert Usher, Arise, My Love  
• Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Pride and Prejudice 
• Alexander Golitzen, Foreign Correspondent 
• Anton Grot, The Sea Hawk 
• John Victor Mackay, The Dark Command 
• John Otterson, The Boys From Syracuse 
• Van Nest Polglase, Mark-Lee Kirk, My Favorite Wife 
• Lewis J. Rachmil, Our Town 
• John DuCasse Schulze, My Son, My Son!  
• Lyle Wheeler, Rebecca 

(Color) 

• Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright, Down Argentine Way 
• Hans Dreier, Roland Anderson, North West Mounted Police 
• Cedric Gibbons, John S. Detlie, Bitter Sweet 
• Vincent Korda, The Thief of Bagdad 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Pride and Prejudice. 

Janeites have always been appalled by the costuming (Adrian's) and decor (Edwin B. Willis is the credited set decorator) of this version of Pride and Prejudice. It has been moved up in time so that the women can be dressed in Victorian hoops and crinolines instead of Regency styles. The result, as Pauline Kael observed, is "more Dickens than Austen." But at least that's translating one kind of greatness into another. This was the first of three Oscars for Groesse, who also won for The Yearling and Little Women and was nominated eight more times. 

(Color) 

Vincent Korda, The Thief of Bagdad. 

Vincent Korda

The youngest of the three Hungarian Korda brothers who took the British film industry by storm in the 1930s, Vincent came to Britain with Alexander and Zoltan after studying at the Budapest Academy of Art. In addition to his Oscar-winning work on The Thief of Bagdad, he received nominations for That Hamilton Woman, the 1942 Jungle Book, and The Longest Day. His work on creating the haunted atmosphere of postwar Vienna for The Third Man, however, went curiously unnominated. The extent of his design work on The Thief of Bagdad is no doubt considerable, but some of the credit also should be shared with others including William Cameron Menzies and the matte artist Peter Ellenshaw. Together, they made the film one of the greatest of motion picture fantasies.

 

... when it should have gone to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

Lyle Wheeler, Rebecca. 

This would have been two in a row for Wheeler, after his win for Gone With the Wind, but for some reason he was passed over in favor of the rather twee designs of the MGM Pride and Prejudice. Certainly a great deal of the credit for the success of Rebecca should go to Wheeler's designs for Manderley, the DeWinter estate haunted by Rebecca and her sinister acolyte Mrs. Danvers.

Best Cinematography, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

The nominees were ... 
(Black-and-White) 

• George Barnes, Rebecca 
• Gaetano (Tony) Gaudio, The Letter 
• Ernest Haller, All This, and Heaven Too 
• James Wong Howe, Abe Lincoln in Illinois   
• Charles B. Lang Jr., Arise, My Love 
• Rudolph Maté, Foreign Correspondent 
• Harold Rosson, Boom Town 
• Joseph Ruttenberg, Waterloo Bridge 
• Gregg Toland, The Long Voyage Home 
• Joseph Valentine, Spring Parade 

(Color) 

• Oliver T. Marsh, Allen Davey, Bitter Sweet 
• Arthur Miller, Ray Rennahan, The Blue Bird  
• Victor Milner, W. Howard Greene, North West Mounted Police 
• Georges Périnal, The Thief of Bagdad 
• Leon Shamroy, Ray Rennahan, Down Argentine Way 
• Sidney Wagner, William V. Skall, Northwest Passage 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

George Barnes, Rebecca. 

George Barnes

 Barnes was a veteran cinematographer who started out as a still photographer and moved into director of photographer while working with the pioneer director Thomas Ince. During the 1920s he worked on Samuel Goldwyn's films and helped train and  launch the career of his fellow nominee Gregg Toland. He was nominated in the first year of the Oscars for two Goldwyn films, The Devil Dancer and The Magic Flame, and for Gloria Swanson's Sadie Thompson. He moved to Warner Bros. in the 1930s, providing some of the proto-noir look of that studio's films, but he also worked for Paramount and MGM. David O. Selznick tapped him for Rebecca and Spellbound, which earned him more nominations and his only Oscar. Although a specialist in the textures of light and shadow of black-and-white cinematography, he tried his hand at color as well, earning nominations for The Spanish Main and Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah.

Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) shows the new Mrs. DeWinter (Joan Fontaine) Rebecca's boudoir

Barnes's use of filtered light and shadow evoke the darkness that is Mrs. Danvers

Above and below: Angular light sources on Anderson and Fontaine

 

In this shot taken on the set of Rebecca, even Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance benefits from Barnes's use of light. Note the suggestion that the single bulb is illuminating George Sanders in the phone booth, and Hitchcock's fear of the police is suggested by the heavy shadow cast by the bobby.

(Color) 

Georges Périnal, The Thief of Bagdad. 

Georges Périnal

Périnal worked on some of the most celebrated French films of the late 1920s and early '30s, including Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet and René Clair's Sous les Toits de Paris, Le Million, and À Nous la Liberté, before being hired by producer Alexander Korda in 1933. He helped Korda advance the British film industry by shooting such films as The Private Life of Henry VIII and Things to Come, and with the advent of war and the fall of France in 1940 centered his career primarily in Great Britain. Périnal had been nominated along with Osmond Borradaile a year earlier for their color cinematography on The Four Feathers. Borradaile acted as associate photographer on The Thief of Bagdad.

Conrad Veidt as Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad. Veidt's performance clearly inspired the treatment of the same character in the Disney Aladdin many years later. 

Rex Ingram as the Djinn in The Thief of Bagdad

June Desprez as the Princess and John Justin as Ahmad in the Thief of Bagdad. Desprez was not producer Alexander Korda's first choice for the role, but Vivien Leigh foiled his plans by going to the United States to be with Laurence Olivier and star in Gone With the Wind. 

Sabu as Abu in the Thief of Bagdad