Awards presented March 10, 1938
The nominees were ...
(Original Story)
(Screenplay)
- Viña Delmar, The Awful Truth
- John Lee Mahin, Marc Connelly, Dale Van Every, Captains Courageous
- Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, Robert Carson, A Star Is Born
- Norman Reilly Raine, Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, The Life of Emile Zola
- Morrie Ryskind, Anthony Veiller, Stage Door
... when they should have been ...
(Original Story)
(Screenplay)
And the Oscar went to ...
(Original Story)
 |
| William A. Wellman |
As the film's two remakes (and proposed third, with Beyoncé) suggest,
A Star Is Born captured a central Hollywood myth. But the Oscar for "Original Story" is a little odd, because Adela Rogers St. Johns and Jane Murfin had received nominations for a very similar story, for the film
What Price Hollywood?, five years earlier. And like this version of
A Star Is Born, that movie was also produced by David O. Selznick. Wellman claimed that he and Carson wrote the story and presented it to Selznick, who wasn't very interested until Wellman told Selznick's wife, Irene, about it. But both David and Irene said that the idea originated with Selznick, who wanted to do an updated version of
What Price Hollywood? but make it more dramatic and less satiric. Wellman, who also directed the film, added credence to the Selznick version when he accepted the Oscar for the story, saying the award really belonged to Selznick. Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, who were hired to help Carson write the screenplay, originally ended the film as Wellman and Carson had first planned, with Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor), distraught over the suicide of her mentor-husband, Norman (Fredric March), giving up her career and going home to Canada. But the current ending, in which Vicki accepts an Oscar and introduces herself by saying, "This is Mrs. Norman Maine," seems to have been crafted by other hands: Ring Lardner Jr., Budd Schulberg, and John Lee Mahin also worked on the film.
 |
| Janet Gaynor in A Star Is Born: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine." |
(Screenplay)
Raine was brought to Hollywood in 1930 because of his Saturday Evening Post stories about "Tugboat Annie," which became a popular hit in a film version starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. Herald, a German-born writer who had directed several silent films in Germany, received another nomination for another biopic, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet. Herczeg, born in Hungary, had been a playwright and a newspaper correspondent.
... when it should have gone to ...
(Screenplay)
 |
| Preston Sturges |
The Academy completely ignored this wonderful screwball comedy that centers on what happens when Edward Arnold throws his wife's expensive fur coat out of the window of their New York apartment and it lands on the head of penniless Jean Arthur. Sturges had been a successful playwright, lured to Hollywood to write dialogue for the talkies, starting with
The Big Pond in 1930. In 1933 his first original screenplay,
The Power and the Glory (not to be confused with the Graham Greene novel), was produced, but the film was unsuccessful. He was not given the directing reins until 1940 and
The Great McGinty, but director Mitchell Leisen captured the spirit of Sturges's later comedies -- and cast some of the actors, including William Demarest and Franklin Pangborn, who were to become part of Sturges's stock company.
 |
| Jean Arthur in Easy Living |
 |
| Arthur gets a sudden windfall |
 |
| Arthur at the Automat |
