Best Short Films, 1936

Awards presented March 4, 1937

The changes in the short film categories reveal several things about what's going on in the film industry. The obvious one is the arrival of color as a major filmmaking tool. In a few years, the Academy would yield to the pressure to divide the cinematography and art direction (and eventually costuming) categories into black-and-white and color, a division that would last until color became so ubiquitous that black-and-white would be used only for artistic reasons, as in Raging Bull, Schindler's List, and The Artist. A live action color film, La Cucaracha, had already won the award for short film "Novelty" in 1934, and cartoons were almost always in color. The other is that the division of short films into "Comedy" and "Novelty" categories seemed somehow arbitrary. All of the "Novelties" so far had been documentary shorts, but there was no category for documentaries yet, and makers of short musical and dramatic films protested at being put into competition with them. The result was to create categories for "one-reel" (about eleven minutes) and "two-reel" (about twenty to twenty-four minutes) shorts. Two-reelers would begin to fall out of favor once the double feature became popular.     

The nominees were ... 
(Cartoon) 

• The Country Cousin, Walt Disney, producer 
• Old Mill Pond, Harman-Ising 
• Sinbad the Sailor, Paramount [Note: Although the Academy Web site lists the title as Sinbad the Sailor, the nominated cartoon appears to be the one released by Paramount as Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor.]

(Color) 

• Give Me Liberty, Warner Bros. 
• La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, Lewis Lewyn, producer 
• Popular Science J-6-2, Paramount 

(One-reel) 

• Bored of Education, Hal Roach, producer 
• Moscow Moods, Paramount 
• Wanted, a Master, Pete Smith, producer 

(Two-reel) 

• Double or Nothing, Warner Bros.  
• Dummy Ache, RKO Radio 
• The Public Pays, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Cartoon) 

The Country Cousin, Walt Disney, producer.
Abner the Mouse visits his cousin Morty in the big city.

(Color)
Give Me Liberty, Warner Bros.
A two-reel short, centered on Patrick Henry's 1775 speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses. The film invents some tension between Henry (John Litel) and his wife (Nedda Harrigan) over whether he will speak. Directed by B. Reeves (Breezy) Eason, a well-known second-unit director who also filmed the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.



(One-reel)
Bored of Education, Hal Roach, producer.
The Our Gang kids contrive a way to get out of going to school.



(Two-reel)
The Public Pays, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
No. 8 in the Crime Does Not Pay series, a drama about a protection racket aimed at milk producers.  

Best Short Film, 1931-32

Awards presented November 18, 1932
(Films released from August 1, 1931 through July 31, 1932 were eligible.)

Almost annually now, someone calls for the abolition of the short film category, though it's usually in the context of thinking up ways to shorten the televised awards ceremony. That didn't matter so much when, in its fifth Awards year, the Academy decided to honor short films -- or "short subjects" as they were called -- before it had even got around to honoring music, or film editing, or costume design, or makeup. Short films today are often the work of students aiming for their first feature job and short animated films are sometimes hors d'oeuvres from the spare time of animators at Pixar or Dreamworks, designed to whet our appetites for the next full-length feature. It's hard for us today, when the only other things besides the feature that you're likely to see on the screen are commercials and trailers, how central short films once were to the movie-going experience. A few of us remember the buzz of enthusiasm when a Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny cartoon began to appear on the screen -- or the mutters of disappointment when the short turned out to be an "as the sun sets slowly, we take our leave of" travelogue.  

The nominees were ... 
(Cartoon) 

• Flowers and Trees, Walt Disney, producer
• It's Got Me Again, Leon Schlesinger, producer 
• Mickey's Orphans, Walt Disney, producer 

(Comedy) 

• The Loud Mouth, Mack Sennett, producer 
• The Music Box, Hal Roach, producer 
• Scratch-As-Catch-Can, RKO Radio 

(Novelty) 

• Screen Souvenirs, Paramount Publix 
• Swing High, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 
• Wrestling Swordfish, Mack Sennett, producer 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Cartoon) 

Flowers and Trees, Walt Disney, producer. 

Lillian Disney holds her husband's first Oscar

(Comedy)

The Music Box, Hal Roach, producer.

Oliver Hardy, Hal Roach, and Stan Laurel 

(Novelty) 

Wrestling Swordfish, Mack Sennett, producer. 

Mack Sennett

The names of the winners were no secret in those days, so when Sennett learned that his short had lost by only three votes to Swing High, he protested: The Academy's rules indicated that a three-vote margin was a tie. So the Academy put it to a second vote, and Sennett's short, the second in a series called "Cannibals of the Deep," was the winner. Prints of it, however, seem to be unlocatable today.