Best Sound, 1944

Awards presented March 15, 1945
The nominees were ...

• Brazil. Republic Studio Sound Department, Daniel J. Bloomberg, Sound Director
• Casanova Brown. Samuel Goldwyn Studio Sound Department, Thomas T. Moulton, Sound Director
• Cover Girl. Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary, Sound Director
• Double Indemnity. Paramount Studio Sound Department, Loren L. Ryder, Sound Director
• His Butler's Sister. Universal Studio Sound Department, Bernard B. Brown, Sound Director
• Hollywood Canteen. Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
• It Happened Tomorrow. Sound Service Inc., Jack Whitney, Sound Director
• Kismet. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas Shearer, Sound Director
• Music in Manhattan. RKO Radio Studio Sound Department, Stephen Dunn, Sound Director
• Voice in the Wind. RCA Sound, W.M. Dalgliesh, Sound Director
• Wilson. 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department, E.H. Hansen, Sound Director

... when they should have been ... 

• Brazil. Republic Studio Sound Department, Daniel J. Bloomberg, Sound Director
• Casanova Brown. Samuel Goldwyn Studio Sound Department, Thomas T. Moulton, Sound Director
• Cover Girl. Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary, Sound Director
• Double Indemnity. Paramount Studio Sound Department, Loren L. Ryder, Sound Director
• His Butler's Sister. Universal Studio Sound Department, Bernard B. Brown, Sound Director
• Hollywood Canteen. Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
• It Happened Tomorrow. Sound Service Inc., Jack Whitney, Sound Director
• Laura. 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department, Harry M. Leonard, E. Clayton Ward, sound technicians
• Meet Me in St. Louis. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas Shearer, Sound Director
• Music in Manhattan. RKO Radio Studio Sound Department, Stephen Dunn, Sound Director
• Voice in the Wind. RCA Sound, W.M. Dalgliesh, Sound Director

And the Oscar went to ... 

Wilson. 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department, E.H. Hansen, Sound Director.

Darryl F. Zanuck log-rolls another win for his pet project, but it was still a flop. This was the second of Hansen's two Oscars, out of fourteen nominations. It's also the last credit listed on his Internet Movie Database entry, although he lived until 1962. Did he retire at just over fifty years old and rest on his laurels? It would be nice to know. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

Meet Me in St. Louis. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas Shearer, Sound Director.

MGM's fondness for Kismet, which it nominated instead of Meet Me in St. Louis for both sound and art direction, the categories in which it was limited to a single choice, is puzzling. It remade Kismet after the Broadway musical version was a success in 1955, giving it two of the Freed unit's best directors, Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, though even that version isn't anything special and received no nominations. So I've replaced Kismet with a superior movie, which would have given Shearer another win -- not that he needed one. As for whether Meet Me in St. Louis deserved an award for sound? It had Judy Garland singing, didn't it?  

Best Special Effects, 1939

Awards presented February 29, 1940

The Academy had given out an "Engineering Effects" award to Roy Pomeroy for Wings at its very first ceremony, but had dropped the award until this year. One reason may have been that the industry was very much preoccupied with the major technological shifts caused by sound and color, so that focusing on the cinematic "tricks" that we call special effects seemed secondary. And it had also instituted its annual scientific and technical awards to recognize those responsible for the innovations that make such effects possible. But audiences were becoming sophisticated, and more and more they were drawn in by movies that showed them things they had never seen before. Unfortunately, this has often meant giving Oscars to films that dazzled with their effects rather than to films in which the effects may have been even more "special" but less ostentatious.

And the nominees were ...  

• Gone With the Wind, John R. Cosgrove, Fred Albin, Arthur Johns 
• Only Angels Have Wings, Roy Davidson, Edwin C. Hahn 
• The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Byron Haskin, Nathan Levinson 
• The Rains Came, Fred Sersen, E.H. Hansen 
• Topper Takes a Trip, Roy Seawright 
• Union Pacific, Farciot Edouart, Gordon Jennings, Loren Ryder 
• The Wizard of Oz, A. Arnold Gillespie, Douglas Shearer 

And the Oscar went to ... 

The Rains Came, Fred Sersen, E.H. Hansen. 

The rains come in The Rains Came

Gone With the Wind didn't win everything, the way today's blockbusters like Titanic seem to do. In the studio era, they liked to spread the awards around more, so Oscars went to films like When Tomorrow Comes and The Rains Came, which are largely forgotten today. GWTW was full of matte shots and other effects tricks, and probably employed more of them in service of the story and the performances than The Rains Came did. But even the burning of Atlanta wasn't as big a special-effects tour de force as the flood in The Rains Came. In the movie, Myrna Loy plays Lady Edwina Esketh, who falls in love with Major Rama Safti, played by Tyrone Power, and one just didn't do that sort of thing in India during the Raj, so the flood seems to be the script's way of punishing them. Sersen was 20th Century-Fox's chief visual effects man -- he had also staged the fire for In Old Chicago -- and would pick up another Oscar for Crash Dive as well as six more nominations. Hansen was head of the sound department at Fox, and would win an Oscar for sound recording on Wilson and get twelve more nominations, split between sound recording and special effects. The Rains Came would be remade in 1955 as The Rains of Ranchipur; many of its flood scenes were re-created and the Fox special effects department would get a nomination but lose to Paramount for The Bridges at Toko-Ri.  

George Brent and Myrna Loy await rescue

Miniatures and matte work combine for the destructive flood