1939 Academy Awards®
Winners and HistoryNote: Oscar® and Academy Awards® and Oscar® design mark are the trademarks and service marks and the Oscar© statuette the copyrighted property, of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This site is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Academy Awards History (By Decade):
Introduction, 1927/8-39, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s,1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s
Academy Awards SummariesWinners Charts:
"Best Picture" Oscar®, "Best Director" Oscar®, "Best Actor" Oscar®, "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar®,
"Best Actress" Oscar®, "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar®, "Best Screenplay/Writer" Oscar®
1939
Picture:
"GONE WITH THE WIND", "Dark Victory","Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Ninotchka", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz", "Wuthering Heights"
Actor:
ROBERT DONAT in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", Clark Gable in "Gone With The Wind", Laurence Olivier in "Wuthering Heights", Mickey Rooney in "Babes in Arms", James Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"
Actress:
VIVIEN LEIGH in "Gone With The Wind", Bette Davis in "Dark Victory", Irene Dunne in "Love Affair", Greta Garbo in "Ninotchka", Greer Garson in"Goodbye, Mr. Chips"
Supporting Actor:
THOMAS MITCHELL in "Stagecoach", Brian Aherne in "Juarez", Harry Carey in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", Brian Donlevy in "Beau Geste", Claude Rains in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"
Supporting Actress:
HATTIE MCDANIEL in "Gone With The Wind", Olivia de Havilland in "Gone With The Wind", Geraldine Fitzgerald in "Wuthering Heights", Edna May Oliver in "Drums Along the Mohawk", Maria Ouspenskaya in "Love Affair"
Director:
VICTOR FLEMING for "Gone With The Wind", Frank Capra for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", John Ford for "Stagecoach", Sam Wood for"Goodbye, Mr. Chips", William Wyler for "Wuthering Heights"1939 is undoubtedly the most celebrated year in American film history - the year produced more outstanding films than any other 12-month period. It was bound to be difficult for the Academy to nominate or honor all the rich, outstanding films of the year.
This year, the first Oscar for Visual Effects (a new category) was given to The Rains Came, defeating Gone With the Wind's nomination (one of five that did not win) that included recognition for its remarkable burning of Atlanta sequence. The Wizard of Oz's nomination for Visual Effects (undoubtedly for its exceptional cyclone sequence) was also defeated. For the first time this year, the Cinematography award was divided into two categories: Black and White, and Color.
Director Victor Fleming's almost four-hour long blockbuster film was the longest feature film released up to that time - and it was the major Oscar winner of the year. It was also the first color film to win Best Picture. The epic was obsessed producer David O. Selznick's romantic costume melodrama Gone With the Wind, a story of the Civil War South (from Margaret Mitchell's best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel) told by following the story of a tempestuous, headstrong Southern heroine from the O'Hara family who was married three times and carried on an unconsummated love relationship with a Southern gentleman from the Wilkes family. It was the first Best Picture-winning film that was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (the second was All the King's Men (1949)).
The film had thirteen nominations and won eightcompetitive awards (and two special citations) - both records for the time. [It would hold this record until Gigi (1958) won a record 9 Oscars.] The blockbuster film was the number one box-office champion for many years. Its awards included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel - the firstAfrican-American performer to be nominated and win), Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing. The only major award it didn't win was Best Actor for Clark Gable, meaning that it wasn't able to sweep the "Top Five" awards categories. The credited screenwriter for Gone With The Wind was Sidney Howard - he received a posthumous Oscar and became the first posthumous winner.
All the Best Picture nominated films were exceptional and unforgettable:
director Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory (with three nominations and no wins) about a young heiress who is slowly dying of a brain tumor and ultimately accepts her death in noble fashiondirector Sam Wood's Goodbye, Mr. Chips (with seven nominations and one win - Best Actor), a version of James Hilton's novel about a beloved Latin teacher/schoolmaster at an English public school (the Brookfield School for Boys)director Leo McCarey's tearjerker Love Affair(with five nominations and no wins) - that he later remade as An Affair to Remember (1957) - about two lovers who promise to meet atop the Empire State Buildingdirector Ernst Lubitsch's delightful romantic comedy Ninotchka (with four nominations and no wins) about a cold Soviet official sent to Parisdirector Lewis Milestone's adaptation of the classic John Steinbeck tragedy Of Mice and Men(with five nominations and no wins)director John Ford's version of Ernest Haycox's story Stage to Lordsburg, Stagecoach (with seven nominations and two wins - Best Supporting Actor and Best Score) - the director's first film with star John Wayne - about a stagecoach journey by a varied group of charactersdirector Victor Fleming's perennial favorite - the beloved fantasy film about a Kansas farm girl who journeys to a brightly colored world in The Wizard of Oz (with six nominations and only two wins - Best Song Over the Rainbow (almost cut from the film by MGM executives) and Best Original Score)director William Wyler's best film version of Emily Bronte's romantic novel about doomed lovers in Wuthering Heights (with eight nominations and only one win - Best Black and White Cinematography by Gregg Toland)director Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (with eleven nominations and only one win - Best Original story) of Lewis Foster's story about a naive and innocent junior Senator
A change in the Academy rules required that directors could be nominated for only one motion picture in a single year. Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, and Sam Wood - all great directors for Oscar-nominated films, couldn't overcome the almost-total sweep of Gone With The Wind. Best Director winner Victor Fleming also directed another Best Picture nominee in 1939, The Wizard of Oz.
One of the few categories where the celebrated Best Picture didn't win was Best Actor. British actor Robert Donat (with his second - and final - consecutive nomination and sole Oscar) won the Best Actor award for his touching performance as the shy British schoolmaster Mr. Charles Chipping at his beloved institution, who evolves from a novice to a respected headmaster in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (from James Hilton's novel). It appeared that he was being honored as much for his neglected performance in Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and for his Oscar-losing performance (to Spencer Tracy in Boys Town (1938)) in The Citadel (1938) from a year earlier as he was for the part of the schoolteacher.
The rest of the competition was fierce in the Best Actor category:
Clark Gable (with his third and last career nomination even though he made 27 more films in his career) as blockade runner Rhett Butler in Gone With The WindMickey Rooney (with his first of four unsuccessful nominations) as showbiz kid Mickey Moran (opposite Judy Garland in their first major film together) in Busby Berkeley-directed Babes in Arms (with two nominations and no wins)Laurence Olivier (with his first of ten career nominations - he attended the ceremony with fiancee Vivien Leigh) for his role as the brooding, tragic Heathcliff on the Yorkshire moors in Wuthering HeightsJames Stewart (with his first nomination) for one of his best, quintessential roles as innocent, crusading Senator Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. [Stewart won the Best Actor Oscar the following year, often considered a consolation prize for his loss for this great performance in 1939.]
Both lead acting awards were presented to British performers - for the first time in Academy history. Unknown 24 year old brunette actress Vivien Leigh was the first British female star to win the Best Actress award - for her role as the flirtatious, petulant Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind.
The other Best Actress nominees were a talented group:
Greer Garson (with her first nomination) in her film-debut performance as Katherine Ellis - Mr. Chips' sweet and vivacious wife in Goodbye, Mr. ChipsGreta Garbo (with her fourth and last unsuccessful nomination in her second-to-last film) as Lena Yakushova "Ninotchka", a cold Soviet agent who is seduced by a playboy and capitalism in the marvelous Ninotchka - the film advertised as the one in which 'Garbo laughs'Bette Davis (with her third nomination) as the dying Judith Traherne in Dark VictoryIrene Dunne as tragically-injured lover Terry McKay in the classic romance Love Affair
Thomas Mitchell (with his second and last career nomination and sole Oscar), who had played Scarlett O'Hara's father Gerald in Gone With The Wind, a grounded flyer Kid Dabb in Howard Hawks'Only Angels Have Wings (with two nominations and no wins), a newspaperman Diz Moore in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Clopin, the King of the Beggars in director William Dieterle's best version of the Victor Hugo classicThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (with two nominations and no wins) won the Best Supporting Actor award for another role: his whiskey-soaked, drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's celebrated Western, Stagecoach.
[Mitchell was the third performer to have threeappearances in Best Picture-nominated films - in 1939: Gone With the Wind (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Stagecoach (1939). Claudette Colbert was the first to star in three Best Picture-nominated films in the sameyear, in 1934: Cleopatra (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), and Imitation of Life (1934), and thesecond was Charles Laughton in 1935: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Les Miserables (1935), andRuggles of Red Gap (1935).
No comments:
Post a Comment