The nominees were ...
- James B. Clark, How Green Was My Valley
- William Holmes, Sergeant York
- Harold F. Kress, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Daniel Mandell, The Little Foxes
- Robert Wise, Citizen Kane
... when they should have been ...
- James B. Clark, How Green Was My Valley
- Stuart Gilmore, The Lady Eve
- William Holmes, Sergeant York
- Thomas Richards, The Maltese Falcon
- Robert Wise, Citizen Kane
And the Oscar went to ...
Given that this film produced Howard Hawks's only directing nomination, you might be tempted to make something of Holmes's contribution to the film's success. But Holmes was just a Warner Bros. staff editor assigned to the film, and this was his only win and only nomination. Hawks freelanced his way around the studio system, and when he was subjected to a strong-willed producer like Sergeant York's Hal Wallis, his work lost some of its edge and energy. It's an entertaining movie, but at two hours and fourteen minutes a little overlong. In other words, it could have used more editing, and I suspect that if Hawks's had had his way, some of the sentimentality and flag-waving would have been excised.
... when it should have gone to ...
 |
| Robert Wise |
Given the many visual and narrative innovations of Citizen Kane, Wise would have been an obvious choice, if an ironic one: He went on to the infamous editing chore on The Magnificent Ambersons after the studio took it out of Welles's hands. And he won two directing Oscars to Welles's none. He had begun quite literally in the mailroom at RKO, then apprenticed as a sound effects editor before working as an assistant film editor. In 1939 he became the sole editor on Bachelor Mother and My Favorite Wife. His first work as a director was, again ironically, on Ambersons, for which he was called on to reshoot certain scenes to ensure continuity in the heavily edited version. In 1944 he received his first credit as director on producer Val Lewton's stylish horror film The Curse of the Cat People, after the original director Gunther von Frisch was fired from the project.
