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They didn't wait long to see the results of the new system, holding the next ceremony just seven months later, the only time in Oscar history awards were handed out twice in the same calendar year.
For a first exercise in democracy, the Academy did pretty well.
All Quiet On The Western Front — not just the best picture of the year, but one of the best pictures of any year — won both the top prize and an Oscar for its director, Lewis Milestone, the second Oscar of his career.
The Big House, a highly-regarded prison drama, nabbed a pair of awards, one for legendary screenwriter Frances Marion, the other for sound editor Douglas Shearer, the first of his fourteen career Oscars. And though I prefer Ronald Colman in his first talkie, George Arliss gave a solid performance in Disraeli, a role he had first crafted on Broadway.
The only controversy was generated by Norma Shearer's win for best actress in the movie The Divorcee.
"What do you expect," said Joan Crawford afterwards. "She sleeps with the boss," referring to Shearer's powerful husband, MGM producer Irving Thalberg.
Me, I like Norma. Well, pre-code Norma anyway. But more on that later ...
As I put together my own list of Katie Award winners, I realized that my only problem with All Quiet On The Western Front was that it was so good it obscured the fact that overall, 1929-30 was a very weak year for movies.
Silent films had all but disappeared from theaters, but unfortunately, the talkies that replaced them were saddled with a primitive technology that practically bolted the camera and the actors to the floor. Moreover, most directors clearly had no idea what to do with sound, treating it as a novelty rather than an opportunity, sticking in a song or two, or worse going overboard and cramming every nook and cranny with talk-talk-talk.
Things would get better ...
As always, click on the highlighted link to read more ...
1929-30
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: All Quiet On The Western Front (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
nominees: Anna Christie (prod. Clarence Brown); The Big House (prod. Irving Thalberg); Bulldog Drummond (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); City Girl (prod. William Fox); A Cottage On Dartmoor (prod. H. Bruce Woolfe)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Cocoanuts (prod. Monta Bella)
nominees: Applause (prod. Monta Bell); Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor); The Love Parade (prod. Ernst Lubitsch); The Skeleton Dance (prod. Walt Disney)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Pandora's Box (prod. Heinz Landsmann)
nominees: The Blood Of A Poet (prod. Le Vicomte de Noailles); The Blue Angel (prod. Erich Pommer); Diary Of A Lost Girl (prod. Georg Wilhelm Pabst); Earth (prod. VUFKU); Under the Roofs Of Paris (prod. Films Sonores Tobis)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Ronald Colman (Bulldog Drummond)
nominees: George Arliss (Disraeli); Lew Ayres (All Quiet On The Western Front); Charles Farrell (Lucky Star); Emil Jannings (The Blue Angel); Uno Henning (A Cottage On Dartmoor)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade)
nominees: Douglas Fairbanks (The Taming of the Shrew); William Haines (Speedway, Navy Blues and The Girl Said No); The Marx Brothers (The Cocoanuts); Albert Préjean (Under The Roofs Of Paris)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl)
nominees: Nora Baring (A Cottage On Dartmoor); Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel); Greta Garbo (Anna Christie); Norma Shearer (The Divorcee)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade)
nominees: Helen Morgan (Applause); Mary Pickford (The Taming of the Shrew)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front)
nominees: Anthony Asquith (A Cottage On Dartmoor); Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Earth); F.W. Murnau (City Girl); G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl); Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: King Vidor (Hallelujah!)
nominees: René Clair (Under The Roofs Of Paris); Ernst Lubitsch (The Love Parade); Rouben Mamoulian (Applause)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Louis Wolheim (All Quiet On The Western Front)
nominees: Claud Allister (Bulldog Drummond); Wallace Beery (The Big House); Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (Our Modern Maidens); Francis Lederer (Pandora's Box); Robert Montgomery (The Divorcee, The Big House and Our Blushing Brides)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Lupino Lane (The Love Parade)
nominees: Gaston Madot (Under the Roofs of Paris)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Anita Page (Our Modern Maidens and Our Blushing Brides)
nominees: Marie Dressler (Anna Christie); Leila Hyams (The Big House); Beryl Mercer (All Quiet on the Western Front); Seena Owen (Queen Kelly); Lilyan Tashman (Bulldog Drummond)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Nina Mae McKinney (Hallelujah!)
nominees: Margaret Dumont (The Cocoanuts)
SCREENPLAY
winner: George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson and Del Andrews; from a novel by Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet On The Western Front)
nominees: Frances Marion; additional dialogue by Joseph Farnham and Martin Flavin (The Big House); Elliott Lester; adaptation and scenario by Marion Orth and Gerthold Viertel; titles by H.H. Caldwell and Katherine Hilliker (City Girl); Rudolf Leonhardt, from the novel by Margarete Böhme (Diary of a Lost Girl)
SPECIAL AWARDS
"Swanee Shuffle" (Hallelujah!) (Best Song); Arthur Edeson (All Quiet On The Western Front) (Cinematography); C. Roy Hunter and Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound)
All Or Nothing Almost always, films nominated as Best Picture are also nominated in other categories. Even so, a few films received a nomination in the top category and no other. Among them is what 1934 historical drama starring George Arliss, Loretta Young and Boris Karloff?
Picture Perfect Leon Shamroy is tied for both the total number of nominations for Best Cinematography (18, tied with Charles B. Lang, Jr.) and wins in the category (four, tied with Joseph Ruttenberg). What 1942 swashbuckler starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara was among his wins?
Playing Out The String In the history of the Academy Awards, only two women have been nominated as Best Actress five years in a row. Bette Davis is one, who is the other?
And remember, you can check out TCM's entire "31 Days of Oscar" schedule here.
Six days after the April 3, 1930 Oscar ceremony in honor of the best movies of 1928-29—a public-relations debacle where a five-member panel of Louis B. Mayer's hand-chosen lackeys handed all the statues to insiders and Mayer's own entry for best picture—the Academy junked the Central Board of Judges and for the first time set in place procedures to leave the task of selecting winners to the full membership of the Academy itself. They didn't wait long to see the results of the new system, holding the next ceremony just seven months later, the only time in Oscar history awards were handed out twice in the same calendar year.
For a first exercise in democracy, the Academy did pretty well.
All Quiet On The Western Front, not just the best picture of the year, but one of the best pictures of any year, won both the top prize and an Oscar for its director, Lewis Milestone, the second Oscar of his career. George Arliss was the best actor with a solid performance in Disraeli, a role he had first crafted on Broadway. And The Big House, a highly-regarded prison drama, nabbed a pair of awards, one for legendary screenwriter Frances Marion, the other for sound editor Douglas Shearer, the first of his fourteen career Oscars.
The only controversy was generated by Norma Shearer's win for best actress in the movie The Divorcee. "What do you expect," said Joan Crawford afterwards. "She sleeps with the boss," referring to powerful MGM producer Irving Thalberg.
Whether you agree with Crawford's assessment may depend in part on your opinion of Shearer's abilities as an actress. Katie-Bar-The-Door can't stand her, but judging by the number of complimentary postings about her on various sites, somebody must love her. I myself have, at best, mixed feelings about Norma Shearer and will later share them at some length in a pair of postings, one about Shearer the actress, the other about Shearer and Thalberg as Hollywood's quintessential power couple.
As I put together my own list of Katie Award nominees, I realized that my only problem with All Quiet On The Western Front was that it was so good it obscured the fact that overall, 1929-30 was a very weak year for movies. Silent movies had all but disappeared from theaters, but unfortunately, the talkies that replaced them were saddled with a primitive technology that practically bolted the camera and the actors to the floor. Moreover, most directors clearly had no idea what to do with sound, treating it as a novelty rather than an opportunity, sticking in a song or two, or worse going overboard and cramming every nook and cranny with talk-talk-talk.
To fill out the roster of nominees, I had to range far and wide, drawing heavily from the German film industry for three best picture nominees and from the few remaining silent pictures for nominees in the acting and screenwriting categories. As for nominees from the pool of sound pictures, at times I based my picks as much on how well they overcame the limitations of the new medium as on their objective merits. But I believe that by the time I am done handing out Katies to this year's crop of nominees, the winners will be those who have established their worth through the ages.
At least I hope so.
PICTURE:
All Quiet On The Western Front (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
The Blue Angel (prod. Erich Pommer)
Diary Of A Lost Girl (prod. Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor)
Pandora's Box (prod. Heinz Landsmann)
ACTOR:
Lew Ayres (All Quiet On The Western Front)
Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade)
Ronald Colman (Bulldog Drummond)
Gary Cooper (The Virginian)
ACTRESS:
Louise Brooks (Diary Of A Lost Girl and Pandora's Box)
Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel)
Greta Garbo (Anna Christie)
Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade)
DIRECTOR:
Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front)
Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel)
King Vidor (Hallelujah!)
SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Wallace Beery (The Big House)
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (Our Modern Maidens)
Louis Wolheim (All Quiet On The Western Front)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Marie Dressler (Anna Christie)
Nina Mae McKinney (Hallelujah!)
Seena Owen (Queen Kelly)
SCREENPLAY:
George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson and Del Andrews (All Quiet On The Western Front)
Elliott Lester; adaptation and scenario by Marion Orth and Gerthold Viertel; titles by H.H. Caldwell and Katherine Hilliker (City Girl)
Frances Marion; additional dialogue by Joseph Farnham and Martin Flavin (The Big House)
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