Best Writing, 1931-32

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

The nominees were ... 
(Adaptation)

• Edwin Burke, Bad Girl 
• Percy Heath and Samuel Hoffenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
• Sidney Howard, Arrowsmith 

(Original Story) 

• Lucien Hubbard, The Star Witness 
• Grover Jones and William Slavens McNutt, Lady and Gent 
• Frances Marion, The Champ 
• Adela Rogers St. Johns and Jane Murfin, What Price Hollywood?  

... when they should have been ... 

(Adaptation)

• Ben Hecht, Scarface 
• Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson, The Smiling Lieutenant 
• Robert Lord and Byron Morgan, Five Star Final  

(Original Story) 

• René Clair, À Nous la Liberté  
• Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Henry Myers, Million Dollar Legs  
• Clarence Aaron "Tod" Robbins, Freaks 
• Adela Rogers St. Johns and Jane Murfin, What Price Hollywood? 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Adaptation) 

Edwin Burke, Bad Girl. Burke had been an actor and a playwright, mostly writing skits for vaudeville. In 1928, when his full-length play This Thing Called Love was optioned by the movies (it was filmed in 1929 and remade in 1940), he moved to Hollywood and began contributing dialogue to films. His first memorable work was his Oscar-winning screenplay, an adaptation of a novel by Viña Delmar (the husband-and-wife team of Alvina and Eugene Delmar). Aside from two Shirley Temple films, Bright Eyes and The Littlest Rebel, most of his others are forgotten.   

(Original Story) 

Frances Marion, The Champ. After her second Oscar, Marion received only one more nomination, for the 1933 film The Prizefighter and the Lady, but the films Dinner at Eight in 1933 and Camille in 1936, for which she also wrote the screenplays, are perhaps better-known. The Champ was unnecessarily remade by director Franco Zeffirelli in 1979, with Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, and Ricky Schroeder    

... when it should have gone to ... 

(Adaptation) 

Ben Hecht, Scarface. Hecht and Howard Hawks were an almost inevitable pairing. In addition to Scarface, they also collaborated on Twentieth Century (1934), Barbary Coast (1935), and Monkey Business (1952). His Girl Friday (1940)  was based on Hecht's play (with Charles MacArthur) The Front Page. Hawks was an uncredited writer on Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), for which Hecht wrote the story, and on Jack Conway's Viva Villa! (1934) which had a screenplay by Hecht. (Hawks began as director of the latter film but bowed out.) And Hawks and Hecht were both uncredited writers on The Thing From Another World (1951), on which Hawks was producer -- and even credited director Christian Nyby, an experienced film editor but a novice director, said that Hawks did a lot of the actual directing.   

(Original Story) 

René Clair, À Nous la Liberté. 

René Clair

Clair both wrote and directed this generally sweet-natured satire on industrialized modern life, though much of the dialogue was improvised. Then, five years later, Charles Chaplin did another satire on industrialized modern life, Modern Times, and Clair's distributor, Tobis, filed suit. Clair protested, gracefully acknowledging Chaplin's genius, but was unable to stop the lawsuit. After World War II, Chaplin's lawyers finally agreed to a settlement, but Clair had no part in it. À Nous la Liberté was the first foreign-made film to receive a nomination -- for Lazare Meerson's art direction. (Ironically, it was nominated in the same year that the cinematographers' branch voted to exclude foreign-made films from consideration.)  

Best Actor, 1931-32

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

The nominees were ... 

• Wallace Beery in The Champ 
• Alfred Lunt in The Guardsman 
• Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

... when they should have been ... 

• John Barrymore in Grand Hotel 
• Paul Muni in Scarface 
• Edward G. Robinson in Five Star Final 

And the Oscar went to ...

(Tie) Wallace Beery in The Champ and Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. March led Beery by one vote, which under the Academy rules at that time constituted a tie. In fact, up to a three-vote difference would be ruled a tie; before Pricewaterhouse Coopers -- at that time just Price Waterhouse -- took over the balloting in 1934, the Academy seemed to want a sizable margin of error. (Today, only an identical number of votes counts as a tie.) Beery had worked steadily as a heavy or a comic in silent pictures, starting in 1913, including a series of one-reel shorts in which he played a drag role: Sweedie, the Swedish maid. He became a star with the arrival of sound, though he owed his stardom to two women: Screenwriter Frances Marion had teamed him with Marie Dressler in Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie; Marion had also written the role in The Big House that earned Beery his first Oscar nomination. The teaming with Dressler ended with her death in 1934, after which Beery returned to supporting roles. March, who would go on to a long screen career, winning a second Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives, had been discovered by a Paramount scout in a touring production of The Royal Family, in which he parodied John Barrymore. He earned his first Oscar nomination when he re-created that role on screen. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

John Barrymore in Grand Hotel: 

with Joan Crawford

with Greta Garbo 

 Unlike his brother, Lionel, and his sister, Ethel, John Barrymore never won an Oscar. He was never even nominated for one. He had been acclaimed as a stage actor, particularly as Shakespeare's Richard III and Hamlet, but we have only the reviews to go by. His one turn at Shakespeare on screen was in the 1936 MGM Romeo and Juliet, with its superannuated teenagers:  thirty-six-year-old Norma Shearer as Juliet, forty-four-year-old Leslie Howard as Romeo, and fifty-four-year-old Barrymore as Mercutio. Even so, we have glimpses there of what Barrymore may have been like in his prime: His performance is amusingly over-the-top, containing the energy that the rest of the movie sorely needs. He had made silent films starting in 1914, but after a 1925 appearance as Hamlet in London, he gave up the stage and joined Lionel in Hollywood, where his good looks and rakish ways fit right in. His finest screen performance is probably in 1934's Twentieth Century, in which director Howard Hawks, the screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (plus some uncredited work by Preston Sturges), and an uninhibited performance by Carole Lombard brought out the madcap best in Barrymore. Grand Hotel, of course, is melodramatic to the point of absurdity, but Barrymore gives it a center and a measure of credibility, especially in his scenes with Garbo, Crawford, and particularly his brother, Lionel. Eventually, Barrymore's alcoholism began to destroy his career, however, and at the end he was playing small roles in throwaway movies, unable to memorize lines and relying on cue cards to get through his scenes.