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 ...
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| 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.
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| George Brent and Myrna Loy await rescue |
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| Miniatures and matte work combine for the destructive flood |
