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1940
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Actor:
JAMES STEWART in  "The
Philadelphia Story", Charles Chaplin in "The Great
Dictator", Henry Fonda in "The
Grapes of Wrath", Raymond Massey in "Abe Lincoln
in Illinois", Laurence Olivier in "Rebecca"
Actress:
GINGER ROGERS in "Kitty Foyle", Bette Davis in "The
Letter", Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca",
Katharine Hepburn in "The
Philadelphia Story", Martha Scott in "Our Town"
Supporting Actor:
WALTER BRENNAN in "The Westerner", Albert Basserman
in "Foreign Correspondent",
William Gargan in "They Knew What They Wanted", Jack
Oakie in "The Great Dictator", James Stephenson in "The
Letter"
Supporting Actress:
JANE DARWELL in "The
Grapes of Wrath", Judith Anderson in "Rebecca",
Ruth Hussey in "The
Philadelphia Story", Barbara O'Neil in "All This,
and Heaven Too", Marjorie Rambeau in "Primrose Path"
Director:
JOHN FORD for "The
Grapes of Wrath", George Cukor for "The
Philadelphia Story", Alfred Hitchcock for "Rebecca",
Sam Wood for "Kitty Foyle", William Wyler for "The
Letter"
 The
accounting firm of Price Waterhouse was hired to count the
ballots, after the fiasco of prematurely-leaked voting results
in 1939 by the Los Angeles Times. Therefore, the year
1940 was the first year that sealed envelopes were used to
keep secret the names of the winners. In fact, this was the
first year in which the winners remained secret until the moment
they won their awards. It brought about the famous phrase:
"May I have the Envelope, please." A new category
was added: Writing: Original Screenplay.
Independent producer David O. Selznick, who had
produced the previous year's big winner Gone
With The Wind (1939), also produced the Best Picture
winner in 1940 - and campaigned heavily for its win. Selznick
was the first to produce two consecutive winners of
the Best Picture Oscar. Rebecca was
based on Daphne du Maurier's popular novel about a shrinking,
child-like bride (Fontaine) who lives in the shadow of her
enigmatic widower husband's (Olivier) first wife at a somber
estate named Manderley (run by a mad, steely-eyed and devoted
housekeeper (Anderson)). Although Rebecca had
eleven nominations, it only won for Best Picture.
The film's studio - United Artists - was the
last of the original film studios (the others were MGM, Columbia,
20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Universal, and Paramount) to
win the Best Picture Oscar. Rebecca was
the first American-made film directed by British suspense
master Alfred Hitchcock.
Other strong nominees for Best Picture in 1940
included the following - two of which were very deserving comedies
--The Great Dictator and The
Philadelphia Story:
- director Anatole Litvak's version of Rachel
Field's best-selling novel, All This and Heaven Too (with
three nominations and no wins) about an 1840s governess in
a Parisian aristocrats home
- director Hitchcock's second-nominated film Foreign
Correspondent (with six nominations and no wins),
another thriller - an espionage tale set during World
War II in Europe that endorsed US entrance into the war
effort
- director John Ford's The
Grapes of Wrath (with seven nominations and two
wins - Best Supporting Actress and Best Director), an
adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic novel about migrating
Okies during the Great Depression
- producer/actor/writer Charles Chaplin's first "talkie", The
Great Dictator (with five nominations and no wins)
- a slapstick satire on Nazism
- director Sam Wood's Kitty Foyle (with
five nominations and one win - Best Actress) about a secretary
whose involvement with a married, upper-class man leads to
tremendous conflicts
- director William Wyler's melodramatic The
Letter (with seven nominations and no wins) based
on W. Somerset Maugham's novel about a woman who commits
murder
- director John Ford's second nominated film
- the screen adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's four one-act
plays titled The Long Voyage Home (with six nominations
and no wins) about merchant steamer crew members on shore
leave
- director Sam Wood's second Best Picture-nominee
- the film adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town (with
six nominations and no wins) about the lives and loves of
the inhabitants of a small town in New Hampshire
- director George Cukor's classic sophisticated
romantic comedy The
Philadelphia Story (with six nominations and two
wins - Best Actor and Best Screenplay)
John Ford received the second of his Best
Director Awards for The
Grapes of Wrath. The Best Picture winner - Rebecca was
the first American film of British director Alfred Hitchcock,
already known for earlier classics such as The
Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) (both
unnominated), but Hitchcock failed to win the Best Director
Award on his first - and on all subsequent attempts. [In his
entire career, Hitchcock was nominated five times but never won
a Best Director Award.]
James Stewart, after making 24 films over a five
year period in Hollywood, won the Best Actor award (with his
second nomination - it was his sole Oscar win in his entire
career) for his performance as Mike Connor - a young Spy
Magazine reporter sent to cover the marriage of a socialite
(Katharine Hepburn) in The
Philadelphia Story. His award was seen as compensation
for his loss the previous year for his performance as Jefferson
Smith in Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
The other deserving nominees for Best Actor included:
- Henry Fonda (with his first nomination) as
impoverished Tom Joad, part of a migrant family in The
Grapes of Wrath
- Raymond Massey (with his sole career nomination)
recreating his Broadway stage portrayal in the title role
in director John Cromwell's film biography Abe Lincoln
in Illinois (with two nominations and no wins)
- Laurence Olivier (with his second nomination)
as the tortured, autocratic master of the house Max de Winter
in Rebecca
- Charles Chaplin in dual roles as a Jewish
ghetto barber with amnesia who is mistaken for a Hitlerian
dictator (of Tomainia) named Adenoid Hynkel in the political
satire The Great Dictator.
[Chaplin was the first to
receive simultaneous nominations for producer (Best Picture),
actor (Best Actor), and writer (Best Original Screenplay).
This feat was duplicated, and actually topped, the next year
when Orson Welles was nominated for the same honors (and
also Best Director!) for Citizen
Kane (1941), and co-won the Best Original Screenplay
Oscar with Herman J. Mankiewicz.]
Ginger Rogers never won an award for her best-remembered
dancing partnership (she had performed in nine musicals with
Fred Astaire by 1939), but the dark horse did win (with her
sole career nomination and Oscar win) the Best Actress award
for her dramatic role in the classic 'woman's picture' Kitty
Foyle as the title character/heroine. In an adaptation
of Christopher Morley's novel, she starts out as a white-collar
working girl who becomes a businesswoman and is forced to make
a romantic choice between a rich, married Philadelphia socialite
and a lower-class young doctor. After she loses a baby son,
she decides to strike out alone.
The other exceptional nominees for Best Actress
included:
- Bette Davis (with her fourth nomination) as
the murderous plantation owner's wife Leslie Crosbie in The
Letter
- Katharine Hepburn (with her third nomination)
as socialite Tracy Lord in The
Philadelphia Story
- Martha Scott (with her sole career nomination)
as Emily Webb in Our Town
- Joan Fontaine (with her first nomination)
as the "second Mrs. de Winter" - the confused young
bride in Rebecca [Joan
Fontaine's loss was compensated the following year by her
Best Actress win for a similar role in Hitchcock's thriller Suspicion.]
Walter Brennan won a Best Supporting Actor award
(it was his third nomination and his third award in
five years) for his performance as the notorious Judge Roy
Bean in love with Lily Langtry (Lilian Bond) in director William
Wyler's The Westerner (with three nominations and one
win). Brennan was the first performer to win three Academy
Awards - an unprecedented record he held for twenty-eight years
until Katharine Hepburn won her third Oscar in 1968 for The
Lion in Winter (1968). The Best Supporting Actor winner
was nominated only once more in the next year - for Sergeant
York (1941) - but he lost the award to Donald Crisp.
The other Best Supporting Actor nominees included:
- Albert Basserman (with his sole career nomination)
as kidnapped Dutch diplomat Van Meer in Foreign
Correspondent
- William Gargan (with his sole career nomination)
as foreman Joe who is romanced by Carole Lombard in director
Garson Kanin's They Knew What They Wanted (the film's
sole nomination)
- Jack Oakie (with his sole career nomination)
as Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria (resembling Mussolini)
in The Great Dictator
- James Stephenson (with his sole career nomination)
as Howard Joyce, Bette Davis' defense lawyer in The
Letter
Though the Best Supporting Actress award could
have gone to Australian-born actress Dame Judith Anderson (with
her sole career nomination) as the sinister, malevolent housekeeper
Mrs. Danvers ("Danny") who dies within the flames
of Manderley mansion in Rebecca,
it was awarded to Jane Darwell (with her sole career nomination)
for her outstanding, memorable portrayal of strong and understanding
earth-mother and migrant farm worker Ma Joad in an adaptation
of John Steinbeck's The
Grapes of Wrath.
The other three Best Supporting Actress nominees
were:
- Ruth Hussey (with her sole career nomination)
as magazine photographer Elizabeth Imbrie in The
Philadelphia Story
- Barbara O'Neil (with her sole career nomination)
as co-star Charles Boyer's neurotically-disturbed, possessive
wife Duchesse de Praslin in All This, and Heaven Too
- Marjorie Rambeau (with the first of two career
nominations) as wrong-side-of-the-tracks Mamie Adams - co-star
Ginger Rogers' mother in director Gregory La Cava's melodrama Primrose
Path (the film's sole nomination)
Preston Sturges won the first Original Screenplay
Award for the political screwball comedy spoof The Great
McGinty (the film's sole nomination and award) about city
hall graft, Sturges' directorial debut film. Walt Disney's
animated Pinocchio won the Best Original Score and Best
Song Awards (for "When You Wish Upon a Star").
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
A few of the most notable, unaccountable omissions
of the awards and nominations were:
- W. C. Fields, a hapless, henpecked husband
and the unemployed town drunk named Egbert Sousè in
his hilarious The Bank Dick
- producer/director Howard Hawks' fast-moving,
quintessential screwball comedy His
Girl Friday with an un-nominated Rosalind Russell
(as ace news reporter Hildy Johnson) and Cary Grant (as Russell's
ex-husband and ex-boss, fast-talking big-city newspaper editor
Walter Burns) in a superior remake of the 1930/1 nominated
Best Picture The Front Page
Unbelievably, Cary Grant was also snubbed and
not even nominated for his role as divorced, but dashing, colorful,
pompous, playboyish husband C. K. Dexter Haven in the screwball
comedy The
Philadelphia Story.
Although The Great Dictator,
Chaplin's first all-talking, all-sound film received five nominations:
Outstanding Production/Picture, Best Actor (Chaplin), Best
Writing (Original Screenplay) (Chaplin), Best Supporting Actor
(Jack Oakie) and Best Music (Original Score) (Meredith Willson),
it went away empty-handed.
Although James Stewart was successful in the
Best Actor category this year, he was not nominated for another
great role in The Shop Around the Corner - co-stars
Margaret Sullavan and Frank Morgan (as the tormented store
owner) were also overlooked.
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