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1939
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 1939
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 eight competitive 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 first African-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 fashion
- director 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 Building
- director Ernst Lubitsch's delightful romantic
comedy Ninotchka (with
four nominations and no wins) about a cold Soviet official
sent to Paris
- director 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 characters
- director 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 Wind
- Mickey 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
Heights
- James 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. Chips
- Greta 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
Victory
- Irene 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 classic The 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 three appearances 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 same year,
in 1934: Cleopatra (1934), It
Happened One Night (1934), and Imitation of Life
(1934), and the second was Charles Laughton in 1935: Mutiny
on the Bounty (1935), Les Miserables (1935),
and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). The feat would be repeated
by John C. Reilly, in 2002: Chicago (2002), The Hours
(2002) and Gangs of New York (2002).]
The other four Best Supporting Actor nominees
included:
- Brian Aherne (with his sole career nomination)
as Emperor of Mexico Maximilian von Hapsburg in director
William Dieterle's story about revolutionary Mexican leader
Benito Pablo Juarez in Juarez (with two nominations
and no wins)
- Harry Carey (with his sole career nomination)
as the presiding President of the Senate in Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington
- Brian Donlevy (with his sole career nomination)
as sadistic Sergeant Markoff in director William Wellman's Beau
Geste (with two nominations and no wins)
- Claude Rains (with his first of four unsuccessful
career nominations) as the corrupt and deceitful Senator
Joseph Paine in Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington
Hattie McDaniel's Best Supporting Actress award
for her unforgettable role as Scarlett O'Hara's devoted but
sly Mammy in Gone
With The Wind was significant. She was the first African-American
Oscar nominee and winner - and she was the first black
guest to attend the awards ceremony. However, she was relegated
to a seat at the back of the Cocoanut Grove, away from her
colleagues on the film.
[It would be another 24 years until another
African American actor Sidney Poitier would win for Best
Actor in 1963 for Lilies of the Field. And it would
be over 50 years before another black woman would win an
acting award, Whoopi Goldberg's Best Supporting Actress award
for Ghost (1990), followed by Halle Berry's Best Actress
win for Monster's Ball (2001) and Jennifer
Hudson's Best Supporting Actress award for Dreamgirls
(2006). Male black actors who would later win acting
awards include Louis Gossett Jr. for Best Supporting Actor
for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Denzel Washington
for Best Supporting Actor for Glory (1989) and Best
Actor for Training Day (2001), Cuba Gooding, Jr. for
Best Supporting Actor for Jerry Maguire (1996), Morgan
Freeman for Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar
Baby (2004), Jamie Foxx for Best Actor for Ray
(2004), and Forest Whitaker for Best Actor for The
Last King of Scotland (2006).]
McDaniel defeated the following Best Supporting
Actress nominees:
- co-star Olivia de Havilland (with her first
nomination) as the frail, sweet and forgiving Melanie Hamilton
in Gone
With The Wind
- Geraldine Fitzgerald (with her sole career
nomination) as Isabella Linton, Heathcliff's second-choice
wife in Wuthering
Heights
- Edna May Oliver (with her sole career nomination)
as the widowed aunt - Mrs. Sarah McKlennar in director John
Ford's first color film about Mohawk Valley frontier settlers
in Revolutionary war days titled Drums Along the Mohawk (with
two nominations and no wins)
- Maria Ouspenskaya (with her second and last
unsuccessful nomination) as Grandmother Marnet (of co-star
Charles Boyer) in Love Affair
Disney won another Short Subject: Cartoon Oscar
for The Ugly Duckling - his eighth (and consecutive)
win in the category. His streak would be broken the next year,
when MGM won for Milky Way (1940), while Disney was
pre-occupied with Pinocchio (1940) (with
two nominations and two wins for Best Original Music Score
and Best Original Song).
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
In 1939, there were so many exceptional films
and actors that didn't receive nominations or Oscar wins:
- Charles Laughton as the deformed Quasimodo
and Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre
Dame (with only two nominations and no wins for Best
Sound and Best Score)
- Warner Bros' and director Michael Curtiz'
historical drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (with
five nominations and no wins) starring Bette Davis and Errol
Flynn
- director Rouben Mamoulian's Golden Boy (with
one nomination and no wins) with William Holden as a violinist/prizefighter
in his first major film role
- Intermezzo: A Love Story (with two
nominations and no wins) which introduced the Swedish actress
Ingrid Bergman in her first American film opposite co-star
Leslie Howard (un-nominated) as a middle-aged married musician
- director John Ford's classic Young Mr.
Lincoln (with one nomination for Best Original Screenplay
and no wins) with Henry Fonda in the unnominated lead role
- director Michael Leisen's Cinderella-tale
screwball comedy Midnight (completely overlooked,
and noted for its screenplay by Billy Wilder and partner
Charles Brackett, and its acting leads Don Ameche and Claudette
Colbert)
- Merle Oberon's performance as Cathy in Wuthering
Heights (with eight nominations and one win for
Best B/W Cinematography)
- director Ernst Lubitsch as Best Director for
Best Picture-nominated Ninotchka
Other notable films and/or actors without or
with very few nominations or awards:
- Howard Hawks' action/adventure film about
daredevil mail pilots, Only Angels
Have Wings with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, with
only one nomination for Best Visual Effects
- George Marshall's Destry
Rides Again (with Marlene Dietrich's great performance
as saloon singer and lusty hostess Frenchy)
- George Cukor's The Women (with a great
performance by Rosalind Russell as a screwball society wife)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles, an adaptation
of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, the first of fourteen
Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce
- director George Stevens' classic adventure
film Gunga Din (with one nomination and no wins)
- The
Wizard of Oz without nominations for 17 year-old
Judy Garland in her signature role as Dorothy (who sang "Somewhere
Over the Rainbow"), all her Yellow Brick Road companions
(Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley as the Tin Man,
and Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion), the Wizard himself
(Frank Morgan) and its director Victor Fleming, although
the latter took the honors for Gone
With The Wind
[Note: Instead, Judy Garland was the year's recipient of the
special juvenile Oscar.]
- both Jean Arthur as
James Stewart's secretary, and Thomas Mitchell (although
nominated in the supporting category) as the crotchety Washington
reporter for their roles in Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington
The only opportunity that actor Lon Chaney, Jr.
had of being nominated was for his performance as Lennie in Of
Mice and Men, but there were too many other competitors
and he was not nominated.
The Oscar for Best Visual Effects, awarded for
the flood disaster sequences in The Rains Came, should
have been awarded to either Gone
With The Wind's burning of Atlanta sequence, or the
flying monkeys sequence in The
Wizard of Oz.
The most identifiable of all film scores (Tara's
Theme in Gone
With The Wind) was composed by Max Steiner, but he
was defeated in the Best Original Score category by Herbert
Stothart for The
Wizard of Oz - not for the popular songs, but for
the film's incidental music (including the recognizable theme
music for Miss Gulch on her bicycle or the Wicked Witch on
her broom, and the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" instrumental
theme)!
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