After last week’s post [2]regarding the oldest and youngest winners of acting awards at the Oscars, I was curious what other Academy Awards-related trivia I could find. Below, I have compiled a list of some of the most interesting bits of trivia I discovered about the films and people nominated and awarded Oscars.
- 1) At the 1st Academy Awards, Best Picture was awarded to Wings [3], to date the only silent film to win.
- 2) At the 2nd Academy Awards, Best Picture was awarded to The Broadway Melody [4], the first film with sound to win.
- 3) At the 12th Academy Awards, Best Picture was given to Gone with the Wind [5], the first film in color to win. Gone with the Wind [5] also holds the record for the longest film to win Best Picture.
- 4) Only two sequels have won Best Picture: The Godfather Part II [6]and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [7].
- 5) No foreign-language film has ever won Best Picture.
- 6) France holds the records for the most foreign-language film nominations. However, Italy holds the record for the most foreign-language film wins (ten).
- 7) No film has ever won awards in all four acting categories, and only two films have won three of acting awards: A Streetcar Named Desire [8]and Network [9].
- 8) Only three films have won eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture: Ben-Hur [10], Titanic [11], The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [7] (The Return of the King also holds the record for winning every award for which it was nominated.)
- 9) Beauty and the Beast [12]remains the only traditional animated film to be nominated for Best Picture.
- 10) William Wyler holds the record for the most nominations for Best Director. He only won three times (Mrs. Miniver [13], The Best Years of Our Lives [14], Ben-Hur [10]). The record for most wins is held by director John Ford. He was awarded Best Director four times (The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath [15], How Green Was My Valley [16], The Quiet Man [17])
- 11) With seventeen nominations, Meryl Streep holds the record for the most acting nominations. She has only won three times (Kramer vs Kramer [18], Sophie’s Choice [19], The Iron Lady [20]).
- 12) Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most acting awards, winning Best Actress four times out of twelve nominations (Morning Glory [21], Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? [22], The Lion in Winter [23], On Golden Pond [24]).
- 13) Richard Burton holds the record for the most acting nominations (seven) with no win. Peter O’Toole was nominated for eight acting nominations without winning, but was given an honorary award.
- 14) Five people have won back to back acting awards:
- - Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld [25]in 1936 & The Good Earth [26]in 1937)
- - Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous [27]in 1937 & Boys Town [28] in 1938)
- - Katharine Hepburn (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? [22]in 1967 & The Lion in Winter [23]in 1968)
- - Jason Robards (All the President’s Men [29] in 1976 & Julia [30] in 1977)
- - Tom Hanks (Philadelphia [31] in 1993 & Forrest Gump [32] in 1994)
- 15) Only two people have been won an acting award posthumously: Peter Finch for Network [9] in 1976 and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight [33]in 2008.
If you are interested in reading more about the Academy Awards, each of these [34] websites [35] is full of fascinating facts. Or, check out Robert Osborne’s 80 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards [36].
Flickr CC [37]: Getting set for the Academy Awards on Hollywood Boulevard [38] Photo by: Loren Javier [39]
- Movies [40]
