11th Academy Awards

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11th Academy Awards
DateFebruary 23, 1939
Site Biltmore Hotel
Hosted by Frank Capra
Highlights
Best Picture You Can't Take It with You
Most awards The Adventures of Robin Hood (3)
Most nominationsYou Can't Take it with You (7)
Harry Cohn and Frank Capra Harry Cohn and Frank Capra Oscar 1938.jpg
Harry Cohn and Frank Capra

The 11th Academy Awards were held on February 23, 1939, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California, [1] and hosted by Frank Capra. [2]

Contents

Frank Capra became the first person to win three Best Director awards, to be followed by John Ford (who would go on to win four) and William Wyler. La Grande Illusion was the first non-English language film to be nominated for Best Picture.

This was the first of only two times in Oscar history in which three of the four acting winners had won before; only Fay Bainter was a first-time award winner. The only other time that this happened was at the 67th Academy Awards in 1994. Fay Bainter was the first performer in the Oscars history to receive two acting nominations in the same year, while Spencer Tracy became the first of two actors to win Best Actor two years in a row; the other, Tom Hanks, also did so in 1994.

George Bernard Shaw's screenplay win for Pygmalion made him the first—and, for over 60 years, only—person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award until Bob Dylan received Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 after having won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2001. Shaw protested his win, roaring, from London:

It's an insult! It's perfect nonsense. My position as playwright is known throughout the world. To offer me an award of this sort is an insult, as if they have never heard of me before—and it's very likely they never have. [3] [4] [n 1]

Radio coverage was banned at the ceremony. A reporter, George Fischer from Los Angeles' Mutual Radio Network station, KHJ, which had been reporting from the Academy Awards since 1930, locked himself in a booth and was able to broadcast for about 12 minutes before security guards broke down the door. Partial radio coverage was subsequently permitted again, beginning with the 1942 ceremony. [7]

Winners and nominees

Frank Capra.jpg
Frank Capra; Best Picture and Best Director winner
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Spencer Tracy; Best Actor winner
Bette Davis - portrait.jpg
Bette Davis; Best Actress winner
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Walter Brennan; Best Supporting Actor winner
Fay Bainter circa 1950s.jpg
Fay Bainter; Best Supporting Actress winner
Bernard-Shaw-ILN-1911-original.jpg
George Bernard Shaw; Best Screenplay co-winner
Erich Wolfgang Korngold 01.jpg
Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Best Original Score winner
Walt Disney 1946.JPG
Walt Disney; Honorary Academy Award recipient
Harry Warner - Feb 1919 MPW.jpg
Harry Warner; Honorary Academy Award recipient
Deanna Durbin in Yank Magazine.jpg
Deanna Durbin; Juvenile Academy Award recipient
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Mickey Rooney; Juvenile Academy Award recipient

Awards

Nominees were announced on February 5, 1939. Winners are listed first and highlighted in boldface.

Special Awards

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

Multiple nominations and awards

Films with multiple nominations
NominationsFilm
7 You Can't Take It with You
6 Alexander's Ragtime Band
5 Boys Town
Four Daughters
Jezebel
Merrily We Live
4 The Adventures of Robin Hood
Algiers
The Citadel
If I Were King
Mad About Music
Marie Antoinette
Pygmalion
3 Angels with Dirty Faces , Army Girl
Carefree
The Cowboy and the Lady
The Great Waltz
Suez
Test Pilot
The Young in Heart
2 Blockade
The Goldwyn Follies
Sweethearts
That Certain Age
Vivacious Lady
Films with multiple awards
AwardsFilm
3 The Adventures of Robin Hood
2 Boys Town
Jezebel
You Can't Take It with You

See also

References

  1. "The 11th Academy Awards (1939) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved August 10, 2011.
  2. "Every Oscar Host in History: See the Full List From Douglas Fairbanks to Jimmy Kimmel". Oscars.org (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).
  3. Wallechinsky, David; Wallace, Irving (1975). The People's Almanac. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 834. ISBN   0-385-04060-1.
  4. Holroyd, Michael (1997). Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN   978-0-7011-6279-5.
  5. Pascal, Valerie (1971). The Disciple and his Devil: Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw . London: Michael Joseph. OCLC   740749440.
  6. Burton, Alan; Chibnall, Steve (July 11, 2013). Historical Dictionary of British Cinema. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 715. ISBN   978-0-81-088026-9.
  7. Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Revised ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN   978-0-19-507678-3 . Retrieved September 10, 2019.

Notes

  1. This did not prevent him from putting the award—a golden figurine—on his mantelpiece. [5] Shaw was one of four to receive the award, along with Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W. P. Lipscomb, who had also worked on adapting Shaw's text. [6]