Honorary Awards, 1948

Awards presented March 24, 1949

Pierre Fresnay as Vincent de Paul, the seventeenth-century priest whose work among the poor during the Black Death eventually led to his canonization. The French film, directed by Maurice Cloche, was one of the first to be honored by the Academy before the creation of the competitive foreign language film award.

To Monsieur Vincent, voted by the Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1948.  

Ivan Jandl, with the miniature Oscar and Golden Globe
that he won for his performance in The Search

To Ivan Jandl, for the outstanding juvenile performance of 1948, as "Karel Malik" in The Search.

Jandl was a member of a radio choir in Prague, and had appeared in radio plays and a Czech film when he was selected by director Fred Zinnemann for his role in The Search as a boy whom Montgomery Clift helps reunite with his mother in the aftermath of World War II.  He was either unable to attend the awards ceremony or was prevented from doing so by the communist government, but his miniature Oscar and the Golden Globe he was also awarded were brought to him in Prague. Stories about his life after the award are often tinged by politics, and hence may not be entirely reliable: According to one story, he was forced to withdraw from university and to work as a laborer in a quarry because of his association with the capitalist Academy. He made only three more films, the last in 1951, but later in life returned to radio work. He died in 1987, at the age of fifty. 

Sid Grauman and Gene Tierney at Tierney's handprinting ceremony in 1946

Grauman left his own prints at the Chinese Theatre 

The Chinese Theatre forecourt today

To Sid Grauman, a master showman, who raised the standard of motion picture exhibition.

To Adolph Zukor, a man who has been called the father of the feature film in America, for his services to the industry over a period of forty years

To Walter Wanger for distinguished service to the industry in adding to its moral stature in the world community by his production of the picture Joan of Arc

To Jean Hersholt in recognition of his service to the Academy during four terms as president

Honorary Awards, 1947

Awards presented March 20, 1948

To James Baskett for his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and story teller to children of the world in Walt Disney's Song of the South.
(Pictured: Academy President Jean Hersholt, with Baskett and presenter Ingrid Bergman.)

To Bill and Coo, in which artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium of motion pictures.

To Shoe-Shine: The high quality of this motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity. 

To Colonel William N. Selig, Albert E. Smith, Thomas Armat, George K. Spoor, [among] the small group of pioneers whose belief in a new medium, and whose contributions to its development, blazed the trail along which the motion picture has progressed, in their lifetime, from obscurity to world-wide acclaim.

Selig (1864-1948; top left) began exhibiting films in Chicago in 1896; he soon moved into production and in 1909 was the first producer to locate in Hollywood. Smith (1875-1958; top right) cofounded the Vitagraph studio in 1896; it became one of the industry's most successful, with stars such as Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, and Adolphe Menjou, and was sold to the Warner brothers in 1925. Armat (1866-1948; bottom left) was an inventor whose projector was manufactured by Edison and began being sold as the Edison Vitascope in 1896. Spoor (1872-1953; bottom right) was a pioneering exhibitor who cofounded the Essanay production and distribution company in 1907; Wallace Beery was one of the studio's early stars, and Charles Chaplin worked for the company in 1915.  

Honorary Awards, 1946

Awards presented March 13, 1947

To Laurence Olivier for his outstanding achievement as actor, director and producer in bringing Henry V to the screen.

To Harold Russell for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives

To Ernst Lubitsch for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture

To Claude Jarman, Jr., outstanding child actor of 1946

Honorary Awards, 1945

Awards presented March 7, 1946

To Walter Wanger, for his six years service as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

To Peggy Ann Garner, outstanding child actress of 1945

To The House I Live In, tolerance short subject, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy; directed by Mervyn LeRoy; screenplay by Albert Maltz; song "The House I Live In," music by Earl Robinson, lyrics by Lewis Allan; starring Frank Sinatra; released by RKO Radio. 


To Republic Studio, Daniel J. Bloomberg and the Republic Studio Sound Department for the building of an outstanding musical scoring auditorium which provides optimum recording conditions and combines all elements of acoustic and engineering design.

Honorary Awards, 1944

Awards presented March 15, 1945

To Margaret O'Brien, outstanding child actress of 1944. 

To Bob Hope for his many services to the Academy. 

Bob Hope reads the citation before presenting her miniature Oscar to Margaret O'Brien. O'Brien's big-screen career lasted from a bit part in Babes on Broadway in 1941, when she was four years old, to 1949, when she played Mary in The Secret Garden and Beth in Little Women. Her first major role was as the titular orphan in the wartime weepie Journey for Margaret in 1942. She so identified with the character that she changed her name from Angela to Margaret. She had appeared in three films in 1944: Meet Me in St. Louis, The Canterville Ghost, and Music for Millions. Her film career stalled in the 1950s, but she continued to perform on television into the 1960s.
This was the second of Hope's honorary awards, installing him as a "life member" of the Academy.

Honorary Award, 1943

Awards presented March 2, 1944

To George Pal, for the development of novel methods and techniques in the production of short subjects known as Puppetoons.

Born in Hungary, Pal was a pioneer in stop-motion animation. He studied architecture in Budapest, but found his métier in the movies, first in Hungary and then at the UFA studios in Berlin. The rise of the Nazis kept Pal moving westward, first to Paris and then to Hollywood, where animator Walter Lantz helped him find employment at Paramount. His skills in animation led him ultimately to special effects for live action science-fiction feature films, and he produced such classics as Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, and the 1953 War of the Worlds. He also directed, as well as produced, tom thumb, The Time Machine, and the fairytale sections of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.  

Honorary Awards, 1942

Awards presented March 4, 1943

To Charles Boyer for his progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles as a source of reference for the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry

To Noël Coward for his outstanding production achievement in In Which We Serve

Coward in In Which We Serve

To Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for its achievement in representing the American Way of Life in the production of the "Andy Hardy" series of films.

Above: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, and Fay Holden in Love Finds Andy Hardy

Honorary Awards, 1941

Awards presented February 26, 1942

To Rey Scott for his extraordinary achievement in producing Kukan, the film record of China's struggle, including its photography with a 16 mm camera under the most difficult and dangerous conditions. 

Rey Scott pretends to film Li Ling-Ai, who helped produce Kukan: The Battle Cry of China. Scott, a freelance filmmaker and correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, shot his documentary about Chinese resistance to the invading Japanese using his hand-held camera. The film concluded with an aerial bombing attack on the city of Chongqing that Scott filmed from the roof of the United States Embassy. Despite its honorary Academy Award, the film was lost for many years until Hawaiian filmmaker Robin Lung discovered a print, which is now being restored by the Academy.

To the British Ministry of Information for its vivid and dramatic presentation of the heroism of the RAF in the documentary film Target for Tonight. 

Original American theatrical poster for Target for Tonight

To Leopold Stokowski and his associates for their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney's production, Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as entertainment and as an art form.

Leopold Stokowski with Disney sound engineer William Garity

To Walt Disney, William Garity, John N.A. Hawkins, and the RCA Manufacturing Company for their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia.

Honorary Awards, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

To Bob Hope, in recognition of his unselfish services to the Motion Picture Industry

Hope, who first hosted the Oscar award ceremony in 1940, during the presentation of the 1939 awards, is known for his many jokes about never receiving an Oscar. ("Welcome to the Academy Awards, or as it's known at my house, Passover.")  In fact, Hope is one of the most-honored people in the history of the awards, having taken home four honorary awards in addition to the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. This first of his honorary citations came with a silver plaque and not a statuette, but he received one of those with his third honorary award at the 1952 ceremonies. He continued to joke about not winning one, however.

 

To Col. Nathan Levinson for his outstanding service to the industry and the Army during the past nine years, which has made possible the present efficient mobilization of the motion picture industry facilities for the production of Army Training Films.

Jack Warner, Sid Grauman, Nathan Levinson, and Ray Schrock at the inauguration of sound equipment at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in 1927.

As a representative of Western Electric, it was Levinson who invited Sam Warner to a demonstration of the company's sound recording research. Warner was so impressed that he hired Levinson to help the Warner Bros. studio make its historic move toward synchronized sound. Levinson worked on not only the 1926 Don Juan, the first feature with synchronized music and sound effects, but also the 1927 feature in which Al Jolson assures us that we haven't heard anything yet, The Jazz Singer. He spent his long career at the studio, racking up one of the longest unbroken strings of nominations in Oscar history, but receiving only one Oscar, for Yankee Doodle Dandy. He also received two technical achievement awards. He served as a major in World War I, and was later promoted to colonel, so he was always known as "Col. Levinson" at the studio. As the honorary award notes, Levinson was involved with helping the Hollywood studios prepare for the wartime mobilization of the industry long before Pearl Harbor forced the United States into the war.

Honorary Awards, 1939

Awards presented February 29, 1940

Commemorative Award, recognizing the unique and outstanding contribution of Douglas Fairbanks, first president of the Academy, to the international development of the motion picture.

The award was posthumous: Fairbanks had died in December 1939.

Jean Hersholt

Ralph Morgan

Conrad Nagel

Ralph Block

To the Motion Picture Relief Fund, acknowledging the outstanding services to the industry of the Motion Picture Relief Fund and its progressive leadership. Presented to Jean Hersholt, President; Ralph Morgan, Chairman of the Executive Committee; Ralph Block, First Vice-President; and Conrad Nagel.

To Judy Garland for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year

To William Cameron Menzies for outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood in the production of Gone With the Wind.

William Cameron Menzies' storyboard for the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind

A Technicolor camera designed by Herbert Kalmus in the 1930s

To the Technicolor Company for its contributions in successfully bringing three-color feature production to the screen.

Honorary Awards, 1938

Awards presented February 23, 1939

To Deanna Durbin and Mickey Rooney for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement. 

Deanna Durbin

Mickey Rooney

When Durbin died this year at the age of ninety-one, there were featured obits in the larger newspapers, but most people alive today have never seen a Durbin movie. One reason may be that her light-classical soprano repertoire has long since gone out of style. Another may be that the sweet teenager she played in her most successful films has also gone out of style. In 1935 she had signed a contract option at MGM and made a short, Every Sunday, in 1936 alongside Judy Garland. But when the option expired, she accepted an offer from Universal to star in a feature, Three Smart Girls. The movie was a hit, and the series of Durbin girl-next-door musicals in the last years of the 1930s were so successful that Durbin is sometimes credited with having saved Universal from bankruptcy. In 1941, Joe Pasternak, who had produced Durbin's movies, left Universal for MGM, and Durbin, now in her 20s, began to battle with the studio over the direction of her career. Her attempts to break away from the ingenue roles, such as the oddly mistitled film noir Christmas Holiday in 1944, were not well-received by her musical fans. She made her last movies in 1948, and moved to France with her third husband.

Rooney has suffered no such career eclipse. A performer almost from birth, the son of vaudevillian Joseph Yule, he started making movies in 1926, starring in a series of dozens of shorts as Mickey McGuire, moving from silents into talkies. He signed a contract with MGM in 1934, the year in which he played the young Blackie Gallagher (the grownup character was played by Clark Gable) in Manhattan Melodrama. On loan-out to Warner Bros., he gave a remarkable performance as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935, and in 1937 he became Andy Hardy in the film A Family Affair, a role that would recur through thirteen more movies. A career that would earn him four Oscar nominations, and in 1983 a second honorary award, was just beginning. The Internet Movie Database credits Rooney with appearances in 337 films.

To Harry M. Warner in recognition of patriotic service
 in the production of historical short subjects
 presenting significant episodes in the early struggle
of the American people for liberty.
(Warner Bros.' Declaration of Independence
won the Oscar for best two-reel short of 1938.)

To Walt Disney for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon.

Shirley Temple presents Walt Disney the honorary award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: a full-size Oscar and seven miniatures

To Oliver Marsh and Allen Davey for the color cinematography of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, Sweethearts.

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Sweethearts. This was the last time an honorary award for color cinematography would be presented. Beginning with the 1939 awards, the cinematography awards would be divided into color and black-and-white categories.

For outstanding achievement in creating Special Photographic and Sound Effects in the Paramount production, Spawn of the North. Special Effects by Gordon Jennings, assisted by Jan Domela, Dev Jennings, Irmin Roberts and Art Smith. Transparencies by Farciot Edouart, assisted by Loyal Griggs. Sound Effects by Loren Ryder, assisted by Harry Mills, Louis H. Mesenkop and Walter Oberst.

George Raft, right, in Spawn of the North
An "Engineering Effects" award had been presented at the first Academy Awards, but outstanding special effects had not been regularly honored until this special award. Beginning with the 1939 Oscars, special effects would become a regular competitive category.  

To J. Arthur Ball for his outstanding contributions to the advancement of color in Motion Picture Photography. 

J. Arthur Ball with the Technicolor camera he devised. Ball, a pioneering color cinematographer, was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Honorary Awards, 1937

Awards presented March 10, 1938

W.C. Fields hands the award to Mack Sennett as Frank Capra looks on

To Mack Sennett, "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius -- Mack Sennett."

To Edgar Bergen, for his outstanding comedy creation, Charlie McCarthy

To the Museum of Modern Art Film Library for its significant work in collecting films dating from 1895 to the present and for the first time making available to the public the means of studying the historical and aesthetic development of the motion picture as one of the major arts. 

To W. Howard Greene for the color photography of A Star Is Born. (This award was recommended by a committee of leading cinematographers after viewing all the color pictures made during the year.) 

Honorary Awards, 1936

Awards presented March 4, 1937

To The March of Time for its significance to motion pictures and for having revolutionized one of the most important branches of the industry -- the newsreel.

To W. Howard Greene and Harold Rosson for the color cinematography of the Selznick International Production, The Garden of Allah.

Marlene Dietrich in The Garden of Allah

Charles Boyer and Dietrich

Dietrich and Basil Rathbone

The color in The Garden of Allah is undeniably breathtaking, and it emboldened David O. Selznick to shoot Gone With the Wind in Technicolor, in which Selznick's backer, multimillionaire Jock Whitney, owned stock. Unfortunately, the film itself is a tired piece of high camp from a novel by Robert Hitchens that had been filmed twice as a silent. Marlene Dietrich plays a rich woman sojourning in the desert, where she meets and marries Charles Boyer, who turns out to be a Trappist monk who fled the monastery and is drawn back to it by pangs of conscience. Both Boyer and Dietrich regretted making the movie. "It's twash, isn't it?" Dietrich asked dialogue director Joshua Logan, who had been brought in to tame the accents of the stars. The award to Greene and Rosson was the first of a series of honorary awards to cinematographers making color films. Color had been around for years in one form or another: Greene was a pioneer who had used two-color Technicolor for a sequence in the 1925 Ben-Hur. The expense of converting to sound, and the rather limited palette of the two-color process, had deterred the studios from making color films. But when Technicolor developed its three-color process in the mid-1930s, a greater willingness to experiment with it began. Greene would win an Oscar for The Phantom of the Opera (1943) after the award became competitive. Rosson, a veteran with a career as cinematographer stretching back to 1915, never won a competitive Oscar, though he was nominated five times. Only one of his nominations, for The Wizard of Oz, was for a color film.