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               ‘Rebecca' filmed in 1940, was a classic Alfred Hitchcock gothic thriller, and a compelling mystery about a tortured romance. It was Hitchcock’s first American project.

               The film creates a brooding atmosphere surrounding the tragic relationship of a naive, and innocent young woman Joan Fontaine, to a widower- an aristocratic, moody patriarch, Laurence Olivier, who lives in an estate named Manderley. ‘Rebecca’s’ screenplay was written by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison, and was based on a literal translation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name.

               The movie won two Academy Awards, Best Picture and Best Cinematography, out of a total of eleven nominations. Olivier, Fontaine and Anderson also were Oscar-nominated for their respective roles, as were Hitchcock and the screenwriters.

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               The year 1939 is undoubtedly the most celebrated year in American film history. It was bound to be difficult for the Academy to nominate or honour all the rich, outstanding films of the year.

               ‘Gone with the Wind’ was the kind of film that the Oscars seemed to be made for. in 1939, at the 12th Academy Awards, the movie received ten Academy Awards (eight competitive, two honorary) from thirteen nominations, including wins for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress. It set records for the total number of wins and nominations at the time.

               What is surprising about ‘Gone with the Wind’ is how long it has retained its glory. Director Victor Fleming’s almost four-hour long blockbuster film was the longest feature film released up to that time. It is the story of the American Civil War (from Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel) told by following the story of a headstrong heroine named Scarlett O’Hara.

 

 

              ‘You Can’t Take it with you’ the second Oscar-winning comedy after ‘It Happened One Night’ was also directed by Frank Capra. Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the film is about a man from a family of rich snobs who became engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family.

              The movie stars Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart and Edward Arnold. The film received two Academy Awards from seven nominations, Best Picture and Best Director, for Frank Capra. This was Capra’s third Oscar for Best Director in just five years, following ‘It Happened One Night’ (1934) and ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’ (1936). It was also the highest-grossing picture of the year.

              The 11th Academy Awards were held on 23rd February 1939. It was also the first ceremony in which a foreign language film, Jean Renoir’s ‘Grand Illusion’ was nominated for Best Picture.

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            The Tenth Academy Award, winning movie – ‘The Life of Emile Zola’ was a biopic based on the life of the famous French writer Emile Zola. It is the second Best Picture winner in a row to go to a biopic, although this film couldn’t be more different than ‘The Great Ziegfeld’.

            This biographical film opens with French novelist Emile Zola starving in an attic room. After struggling to establish himself, Zola wins success writing about the unsavory side of Paris. He is able to achieve both fame and fortune with the publication of Nana, an unadorned tale of a woman. The film stars Paul Muni as Zola, and is directed by William Dieterle.

           ‘The Life of Emile Zola’, was nominated for ten Oscars, which was then a record. It won three, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Joseph Schildkraut. Unlike many of the winners in the first decade of the Oscars’ existence, it has retained its critical acclaim, and was inducted into the US National Film Registry.

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             ‘The Great Ziegfeld’ won three Academy Awards in the year 1936, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Dance Direction. It was nominated for four other awards. The film was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, and produced by Hunt Stromberg. The movie stars William Powell, Luise Rainer, and Myrna Loy.

               It is a biopic about Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Broadway theatre’s most famous producer of his time. From humble beginnings, Ziegfeld reaches the heights of success, producing hit show after hit show, and staging the famous Ziegfeld Follies.

               The screenplay by William Anthony McGuire, was a “novelty” to the audience. The film was shot at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, mostly in the latter half of 1935. At the time of its release, the movie was acclaimed as the greatest musical biography to be made in Hollywood.

 

            ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ won in the Best Picture category at the 8th Academy Awards ceremony. It is one of the best adventure films of all time.

             The rousing, 18th century story of the Bounty’s mutiny, directed by Frank Lloyd, was adapted from the first two volumes of the novel ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ written by Charles Nordhoff-James and Norman Hall.

            ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ stars Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. The film was one of the biggest hits of its time. The film actually portrays the historical case of the Tahiti- bound British naval vessel HMS Bounty that suffered a famous mutiny in 1789 against its iron-fisted, sadistic commander Captain Bligh.

            The 8th Academy Awards were held on March 5th, 1936, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. This was the first year in which the gold statuettes were called “Oscars”.

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           Frank Capra’s movie ‘It Happened One Night’ is a romantic comedy. The film dominated and swept all major categories of the Academy Awards - Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay, in the year 1934.

            Adapted by Robert Riskin from a short story called ‘Night Bus’, the movie revolves around the unlikely romance between a spoiled socialite, Claudette Colbert travelling on a bus after running out on her wedding, and a reporter, Clark Gable on the hunt for a good story.

            The film illustrated that even a wealthy heiress could find happiness and adventure on the road among common folk. The film, composed mostly of a road trip by the couple, contains some of the most classic scenes ever made.

            It was the first time in Academy history that both male and female leads, Gable and Colbert, from the same film, won the top award for acting.

 

 

              ‘Cavalcade’ which is based on the Noel Coward play of the same name, became the third anti-war movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. The movie was directed by Frank Lloyd. The screenplay was written by Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien. The film stars Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook.

               ‘Cavalcade’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Frank Lloyd won the Academy Award for Best Director, and the Academy Award for Best Art Direction went to William S. Darling. Diana Wynyard was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress but lost to Katharine Hepburn for ‘Morning Glory’.

               ‘Cavalcade’ tells the story of two upper-middle class British families from 1899 to 1933. Throughout the film, the passage of years is indicated by dates on title cards, with a medieval cavalcade marching in the background.

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          ‘Grand Hotel’ won an Oscar at the Academy Awards in the year 1931-32. It is a classic movie, and an all-star epic with high-powered stars of the early 1930s. This classic movie was directed by Edmund Goulding.

            ‘Grand Hotel’ was nominated only in one category that is Best Picture. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category. William A. Drake’s screenplay was based on his own play adaptation of Vicki Baum’s novel ‘Menschen im Hotel’.

            The film, set in Berlin’s famous Grand Hotel, tells the multiple-narrative story of the crisscrossing of the lives of five guests, whose fates intertwine at the hotel.

            Doctor Otternschlag, a disfigured veteran of World War I and a permanent resident of the hotel, observes, “People coming, going. Nothing ever happens”.

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            ‘Cimarron’ was the first film to receive more than six Academy Awards nominations and nominated for the Big Five awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing). Among these, the movie won the Best Picture in the year 1930-31. Although it didn’t win Best Director, it won most of the major non-acting awards. It is, technically, the first film to win ‘Best Picture’ as previously, in the first three years, the award had been termed ‘Best Production’.

            Based on Edna Ferber’s novel, it is about a typical American frontier family, and the rise of Oklahoma to statehood. The movie was directed by Wesley Ruggles.

            ‘Cimarron’ starred Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, and featured Estelle Taylor and Roscoe Ates. Epic in scope, spanning forty years from 1889 to 1929, it was a critical success, although the movie did not regain its production costs during its initial run in 1931.

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               The award for the Best Picture in the year 1929-30, was won by the movie called ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. It was the first major anti-war film of the sound era, faithfully based upon the timeless, best-selling novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who had experienced the war first-hand as a young German soldier.

               The film won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The other two nominations were Best Writing, and Best Cinematography. It was the first film to win both Best Picture and Best Director, a feat that became common in later years. This movie was directed by Lewis Milestone. The movie stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.

               The film includes a series of scenes that portray the futility of war from the sympathetic point of view of young German soldiers in the trenches during the Great War.

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               ‘The Broadway Melody’ of 1929, establishing an archetype for decades of movie musicals to follow, became the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. The film won the second Academy award in the year 1930. The film was Hollywood’s first all-talking musical.

               ‘The Broadway Melody’ was a substantial success. It was the top grossing picture of 1929. The movie was written by Norman Houston and James Gleason from a story by Edmund Goulding, and directed by Harry Beaumont. Its original music was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, including the popular hit “You Were Meant for Me”.

               ‘The Broadway Melody’, follows the adventures of the Mahoney Sisters, Hank (Bessie Love) and Queenie (Anita Page). Bessie Love was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

               The movie was mainly appreciated by the jazz lovers of Hollywood.

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               William Wellman’s ‘Wings’ was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

               It was a silent movie, which marks an era of heightened melodrama, when filmmaking hadn’t yet fancied itself subtle. The movie was the only fully silent film that won an Academy Award.

               This 1927 war movie, which starred Clara Bow, Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen, was screened at the ceremony, accompanied by a live organ. The film’s background was that of World War I. The movie revolves around two couples, and how their lives are disrupted by World War I.

               The film’s director, William Wellman, was a prominent figure in Hollywood. His two best remembered films are ‘Wings’ and the 1937 version of ‘A Star Is Born’.

               The movie was produced by Lucien Hubbard, and released by Paramount Pictures.

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               The first Academy Awards ceremony was organised on May 16th, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, away from the public eye. It was a very private affair, with only two hundred and seventy people as guests. The awards were given out at a banquet, set up at the hotel’s Blossom Room. The tickets for each of the guests, cost five dollars.

               The first Oscar ceremony comprised of 12 categories, apart from two special honours. The awards were meant to honour people responsible for cinematic achievements in 1927 and 1928. There was very little element of surprise at the first Oscar Awards ceremony, as the names of the winners had already been declared three months earlier. The ceremony ran for just 15 minutes.

               Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11:00 pm on the night of the awards. The Academy has, since 1941, used a sealed envelope to reveal the name of the winners.

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               The Academy Awards, affectionately known as the Oscars are the most coveted awards in the film world. The Oscar ceremony is one of the most awaited events of the year.

               The Academy Awards are a set of 24 awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry, given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), located in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

               The most recognised trophy in the world, the Oscar statuette has stood on the mantels of the greatest film-makers of the world since 1929.

               Winners are chosen from 24 categories that include best picture, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, directing, original screenplay, adapted screenplay, cinematography, production design, editing, original score, original song, costume design, makeup and hair-styling, sound mixing, sound editing, visual effects, foreign-language film, animated feature film, animated short film, live-action short film, documentary feature, and documentary short subject.