The nominees were ...
- Army Girl, Republic Studio Sound Department, Charles L. Lootens, Sound Director
- The Cowboy and the Lady, United Artists Studio Sound Department, Thomas T. Moulton, Sound Director
- Four Daughters, Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
- If I Were King, Paramount Studio Sound Department, Loren L. Ryder, Sound Director
- Merrily We Live, Hal Roach Studio Sound Department, Elmer A. Raguse, Sound Director
- Suez, 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department, Edmund H. Hansen, Sound Director
- Sweethearts, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas Shearer, Sound Director
- That Certain Age, Universal Studio Sound Department, Bernard B. Brown, Sound Director
- Vivacious Lady, RKO Radio Studio Sound Department, John Aalberg, Sound Director
- You Can't Take It With You, Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary, Sound Director
And the Oscar went to ...
The Cowboy and the Lady, United Artists Studio Sound Department, Thomas T. Moulton, Sound Director.
The original "high concept" movie: Producer Samuel Goldwyn, in need of a vehicle for contract players Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon, asked writer-director Leo McCarey for an idea. McCarey snatched the phrase "the cowboy and the lady" -- easy epithets for the screen personae of the two stars -- from thin air and improvised a story on the spot. Later, he realized he couldn't quite remember the plot he had told Goldwyn but managed to come up with an outline. Goldwyn then hired more than a dozen writers to try to produce a workable screenplay -- they included Alan Campbell, Dorothy Parker, Howard Estabrook, Gene Fowler, Lillian Hellman, Anita Loos, and Robert Riskin, and the credited screenwriters S.N. Behrman and Sonya Levien. The result never satisfied anyone, including the stars, and William Wyler, assigned to the project, managed to get himself fired from it and replaced by H.C. Potter. The film was a box-office bomb, but it won Moulton (or at least his sound department) his second consecutive Oscar.
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| Merle Oberon and Gary Cooper in The Cowboy and the Lady |
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