Best Writing, 1936

Awards presented March 4, 1937

The nominees were ... 
(Original Story) 

• Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, The Story of Louis Pasteur 
• Adele Comandini, Three Smart Girls 
• Robert Hopkins, San Francisco 
• Norman Krasna, Fury 
• William Anthony McGuire, The Great Ziegfeld 

(Screenplay) 

• Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, The Story of Louis Pasteur 
• Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, After the Thin Man 
• Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind, My Man Godfrey 
• Sidney Howard, Dodsworth 
• Robert Riskin, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 

... when they should have been ... 

(Original Story)

• Charles Chaplin, Modern Times 
• Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, The Story of Louis Pasteur 
• Robert Hopkins, San Francisco 
• Norman Krasna, Fury 
• Mary McCarthy, Theodora Goes Wild 

(Screenplay) 

• Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind, My Man Godfrey 
• Sidney Howard, Dodsworth 
• Jane Murfin and Jules Furthman, Come and Get It 
• Robert Riskin, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 
• Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, and George Oppenheimer, Libeled Lady 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Original Story)

Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, The Story of Louis Pasteur. 

(Screenplay)

Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, The Story of Louis Pasteur.

Collings and Gibney were the only writers to take home two writing Oscars for the same film, and were the first to be nominated in both writing categories. Previously there had been no overlap between the films nominated in the two categories, story and screenplay, but as this happened more and more often, the Academy began to rethink the divisions in the writing categories. Over time, this evolved into the current writing categories, one for screenplay written originally for the movies and one for adaptations from other media. Collings, who had been a screenwriter since 1925, died of pneumonia in the same year that he received the Oscars. Gibney served two terms as president of the Screen Writers Guild in the 1940s.

... when it should have gone to ... 

(Original Story) 

Charles Chaplin, Modern Times. 

Chaplin and Paulette Godard hit the road 

 Granted, René Clair's studio claimed that Chaplin ripped off À Nous la liberté for this particular "original story," but he claimed that his inspiration came from a conversation with Gandhi about the mechanization of modern life.  Modern Times was in fact an anomaly in the age of sound, though Chaplin originally planned it as a talkie, even writing dialogue for it before deciding that the humor in it should remain essentially visual. His voice is heard, however, in one scene in which he sings a song in gibberish. In any case, the Academy's neglect of the film, giving it no nominations in any category, was absurd.

(Screenplay) 

Sidney Howard, Dodsworth. 

In 1937 Sidney Howard was well known enough to make the cover of Time. Today he is remembered mainly by Oscar buffs who know that he won the award posthumously (he died in a tractor accident on his Massachusetts farm) for the screenplay of Gone With the Wind, even though it had been worked over by every writer in Hollywood from Ben Hecht to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Musical theater fans also know that his Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted was adapted by Frank Loesser into The Most Happy Fella. Howard was brought to Hollywood by the prestige-seeking producer Sam Goldwyn, for whom he adapted the Sinclair Lewis novels Arrowsmith and Dodsworth for the movies, having already had a Broadway success with a stage adaptation of the latter. Howard's plays are seldom performed today, but his Dodsworth screenplay is in many ways an improvement on Lewis's novel, being tighter and less didactic. His daughter, Jennifer Howard, married Samuel Goldwyn Jr., making Sidney Howard the grandfather of the actor Tony Goldwyn.  

Best Director, 1930-31

Awards presented November 10, 1931
(Films released from August 1, 1930 through July 31, 1931 were eligible.)

The nominees were ... 

• Clarence Brown, A Free Soul 
• Lewis Milestone, The Front Page 
• Wesley Ruggles, Cimarron 
• Norman Taurog, Skippy 
• Joseph Von Sternberg, Morocco 

... when they should have been ...

• Charles Chaplin, City Lights 
• Howard Hawks, The Dawn Patrol 
• Lewis Milestone, The Front Page 
• Joseph Von Sternberg, Morocco 
• William A. Wellman, The Public Enemy 

And the Oscar went to ... 

Norman Taurog, Skippy. Really? From such stylish directors as Clarence Brown (Garbo's favorite director) and Josef von Sternberg (Dietrich's star-maker), not to mention Lewis Milestone, who had already won two directing Oscars, and even Wesley Ruggles, who had handled the sweep of Cimarron, the Academy chose to give the award to the director of a family movie based on a comic strip? Taurog had been a child actor and began directing short films when he was twenty years old, then moved into features with the arrival of sound. A capable lightweight, he directed Spencer Tracy in his Oscar-winning performance in Boys Town, but his later career was spent working on movies starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis -- Jumping Jacks, The Stooge, The Caddy, Living It Up -- and Elvis Presley -- G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls!, It Happened at the World's Fair, and others.  

... when it should have gone to ... 

Charles Chaplin, City Lights 

Four years after sound arrived, Chaplin was sticking to what he knew: silent comedy with a thick overlay of pathos. He had actually begun City Lights in 1928 and, unconvinced that the talkies were here to stay, resisted the pressure to add dialogue -- though he did add music and some synchronized sound effects -- as all around him the film industry was converting to sound. The movie met with critical praise when it was finally released in January 1931, and has since been elevated to the status of a classic. The Academy, however, took no notice of it in any category. Perhaps there was widespread animus against Chaplin, but it's more likely that the Academy felt that honoring his film would be looked on as a step backward, an acknowledgement of the still-primitive state of talkies when compared with the finesse of the greatest silent films.

Honorary Awards, 1927-28

Awards presented May 16, 1929
(Films released from August 1, 1927 through August 1, 1928 were eligible.)

Charles Chaplin, for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus

The Academy first announced that Chaplin had been nominated as an actor and for comedy direction, but a dispute arose on the Board of Governors. Chaplin was perhaps the most famous person in the world at that time, and an acknowledged genius among film pioneers. What chance did anyone stand in competition with him? So they removed his name from competition and voted him a special award. His "collective achievements," the Academy told Chaplin in the citation, "place you in a class by yourself." Chaplin didn't show up to collect the award, which he may have interpreted as a snub. Which it may have been: Chaplin's next two films, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) were ignored in the nominations.

Warner Bros., for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry. 

Although Hollywood was in the throes of converting to sound by the time the first Academy Awards were presented in May 1929, the Academy decided to rule The Jazz Singer ineligible for competition for best picture, believing it unfair to let sound films compete with silents. The movie was nominated for Alfred Cohn's story adaptation, and Nugent Slaughter's nomination in the "engineering effects" category was primarily for his work on the film.