10th Academy Awards

10th Academy Awards
DateMarch 10, 1938
SiteBiltmore Hotel
Hosted byBob Burns
Highlights
Best PictureThe Life of Emile Zola
Most awardsThe Life of Emile Zola (3)
Most nominationsThe Life of Emile Zola (10)

The 10th Academy Awards were held on March 10, 1938 to honor films released in 1937, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California and hosted by Bob Burns. Originally scheduled for March 3, 1938, the ceremony was postponed due to the Los Angeles flood of 1938.[1][2][3]

This was the last year for two Oscars categories: Best Dance Direction, which this year saw the only nomination ever received by a Marx Brothers film (Dave Gould for "All God's Children Got Rhythm" in A Day at the Races), and Best Assistant Director.

The Life of Emile Zola was the first film to receive ten nominations and the second consecutive biographical film to win Best Picture, following the previous year's The Great Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer received the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Good Earth, earning her the distinctions of being the first actor to win two Academy Awards and the first to win consecutive acting awards, following her win for The Great Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer, who didn't think anyone could win in two consecutive years, stayed at home with her husband, playwright Clifford Odets, on the night of the ceremony. She was informed of her win by telephone, hastily dressed herself up, and rushed out the door to collect her second Oscar, which was said to have "jinxed her".[4]

A Star Is Born was the first color film to receive a Best Picture nomination.

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length Technicolor animated feature film with sound and widely seen as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, received only one nomination, for Best Original Score. The following year, the Academy presented Disney an Honorary Academy Award (consisting of one full-size Oscar statuette and seven miniature statuettes on a stepped base) "for creating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [1937], recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon". This is a rare case of a film being recognized in two successive ceremonies.

This was the first year in which every film nominated for Best Picture received multiple nominations.

  1. ^ "Hollywood writers strike clouds Oscars". Reuters. January 23, 2008. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
  2. ^ "1937 Academy Awards Winners and History". filmsite.org. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
  3. ^ "The 10th Academy Awards (1938) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved August 9, 2011.
  4. ^ Wallechinsky, David; Wallace, Irving (1975). The People's Almanac. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 834. ISBN 0-385-04060-1.