Best Pictures - Facts and Trivia (continued):

Non-Hollywood Best Pictures:

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) was the first non-US made film to both earn a Best Picture nomination, and win an Oscar of any sort (Best Actor for Charles Laughton, in this case). The first non-Hollywood (foreign-made) film to win Best Picture was Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948).

At the 1928/29 Academy Awards (held in 1930), no film won more than one statuette (there were seven films honored in seven categories) - something that hasn't been duplicated since.

Pulitzer-Prize and Best Picture Winners:

Only two novels that were made into films have won both the Best Picture Oscar and the Pulitzer Prize:

• Gone With The Wind (1939)
• All the King's Men (1949)

Back-to-Back Appearances in Best Pictures:

Only a few actors have starred in the Oscar-winning Best Picture for two years in a row:

• Clark Gable in It Happened One Night (1934) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (Gable also starred in a third Best Picture a few years later, Gone With The Wind (1939))
• Walter Pidgeon in How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Mrs. Miniver (1942)
• Christopher Walken in Annie Hall (1977) and The Deer Hunter (1978)
• Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
• John Gielgud in Chariots of Fire (1981) and Gandhi (1982)
• Ian Charleson in Chariots of Fire (1981) and Gandhi (1982)
• Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000) and A Beautiful Mind (2001)
• Note that Talia Shire is the only actor to have starred in three consecutive even-year Best Picture winners: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Rocky (1976)

Appearances in Three Best Picture-Nominated Films in the Same Year:

Only four performers have starred in three Best Picture-nominated films in the same year:

• 1934: Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934), Cleopatra (1934), and Imitation of Life (1934)
• 1935: Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Les Miserables (1935), and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
• 1939: Thomas Mitchell in Gone With The Wind (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Stagecoach (1939)
• 2002: John C. Reilly in Chicago (2002), The Hours (2002), and Gangs of New York (2002)

Note: Colbert's, Laughton's and Mitchell's performances came at a time when there were 10 Best Picture nominees, while Reilly's was when there were only 5.

Best Picture Oscar Anomaly:

John Cazale appeared in only five films in his entire career - all of which were nominated for or won Best Picture:

• Fredo Corleone in The Godfather (1972)
• Stan in The Conversation (1974)
• Fredo Corleone in The Godfather, Part 2 (1974)
• Salvator "Sal" in Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
• Stanley 'Stosh' in The Deer Hunter (1978)

Color and Black and White Best Pictures:

Gone With the Wind (1939) was the first all-color film that won the Best Picture Oscar. [Broadway Melody (1928/29) contained a few sequences shot in two-color (red/green) Technicolor.] The next four Best Picture color films were: An American in Paris (1951), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Schindler's List (1993) was the first black-and-white film (although it had a few short segments in color) to win the top award since the all B&W The Apartment (1960). Only one Best Picture-winning film was originally a TV comedy drama: the black and white Marty (1955). [It was also the second Best Picture Oscar winner to also win the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or - the first to win the top prize was The Lost Weekend (1945).]

The first time all five Best Picture nominees were shot in color was 1956.

The first film to be released on home video before winning Best Picture was The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Foreign-Language Best Pictures Nominees:

It should be noted that 1956 was the first year that the regular competitive category of Best Foreign Language film was introduced. Foreign-language films would no longer be recognized with only a special achievement Honorary Award or with a Best Picture nomination (as in 1938) - see below. The first winner in this new category was Federico Fellini's La Strada (1956). Italy has the most Best Foreign Language Film Oscars - a total of 12 (as of 2003).

The first non-English film to be nominated for Best Picture was Grand Illusion (1938). The only foreign-language films nominated for Best Picture include:

• Grand Illusion (1938, France)
• Z (1969, Algeria) *
• The Emigrants (1972, Sweden)
• Cries and Whispers (1973, Sweden)
• The Postman (Il Postino) (1995, Italy)
• Life is Beautiful (1998, Italy) *
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Taiwan) *
• Letters from Iwo Jima (2006, Japanese)
  
  * Winner of Best Foreign Language Film

Z (1969), Life is Beautiful (1998) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) have been nominated for the simultaneous, double honors of Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film in the same year, all winning the latter. While The Emigrants (1972) had received a Best Foreign Language Film nomination the previous year - without winning. Bertolucci's Chinese/Italian-produced Best Picture winner The Last Emperor (1987) was not a Foreign-Language film nominee.

The Italian film The Battle of Algiers (1966) was the only film that earned nominations in two non-consecutive years:

• Best Foreign Language Film nominee in 1966
• Best Adapted Screenplay nominee in 1968

Foreign-language films with the most Oscar nominations include:

• Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - 6 nominations, 3 wins
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - 10 nominations, 4 wins
• Life is Beautiful (1998) - 7 nominations, 3 wins
• Fanny and Alexander (1983) - 6 nominations, 4 wins
• Das Boot (1982) - 6 nominations, 0 wins

So far, three partly foreign-language films have won Best Picture:

• The Godfather, Part II (1974)
• The Last Emperor (1987)
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Picture Genre Biases:

There are obvious biases in the selection of Best Picture winners by the Academy. Serious dramas or social-problem films with weighty themes, bio-pictures (inspired by real-life individuals or events), or films with literary pretensions are much more likely to be nominated than "popcorn" movies. Action-adventures, suspense-thrillers, Westerns, and comedies are mostly overlooked (although there are exceptions), as are independent productions.

See Analysis of Best Picture Genre Biases here.

Remakes, Sequel 'Best Pictures' and Trilogies:

• the first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture was The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), the sequel to the previous year's Going My Way (1944); other sequels (or second and third installments) that were nominated for Best Picture include The Godfather, Part II (1974) - a winner and the first sequel to win Best Picture, and The Godfather, Part III (1990) - a loser; also The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - a loser, but its 'sequel' The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) was a Best Picture winner; although The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was a 'sequel' of sorts, it was made under a different studio, production company, director, and set of actors
• the first film trilogy in Oscar history to have all three of its movies nominated for Best Picture was Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather pictures
• the second film trilogy to have all three of its parts nominated for Best Picture was Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy:The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (both lost), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (which won Best Picture)
• the first remake to win Best Picture was Mutiny On the Bounty (1935) (it was a remake of In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) starring Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian); it was remade as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) with Marlon Brando, and lost its Best Picture nomination
• Best Picture winner Ben-Hur (1959) was a remake of the silent era's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925); Best Picture nominee The Maltese Falcon (1941) was a remake of the 1931 version
• Best Picture nominee Pygmalion (1938) was remade as the Best Picture-winning My Fair Lady
• two more examples of Best Picture nominees (that lost) that were remakes of each other: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and Heaven Can Wait (1943) / Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Moulin Rouge (1952) and Moulin Rouge (2001)
• three versions of Shakespeare's tragic romantic tale were nominated for Best Picture: Romeo and Juliet (1936), the derivative West Side Story (1961) (a win), and Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Longest and Shortest:

• Gone With The Wind (1939) has been acclaimed as the longest Best Picture winner at almost 226 minutes (3 hours, 46 minutes) - with the Overture, Intermission, Entr'acte, and Walkout Music, it reaches 234 minutes (3 hours, 54 minutes). The second longest is Lawrence of Arabia (1962) at approximately 216 minutes with additional elements extending to approximately 227 minutes. [Other longest Best Picture winners are in order: Ben-Hur (1959) at 212 minutes, and The Godfather Part II (1974) at 200 minutes.] The longest Best Picture nominee was Cleopatra (1963) at just over 4 hours. The longest movie to ever win an Academy Award was Russia's War and Peace (1968) at 414 minutes, winner of Best Foreign Language Film.
• Marty (1955) is the shortest Best Picture winner at 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes), followed by Annie Hall (1977) at 93 minutes. The shortest Best Picture nominee is Mae West's She Done Him Wrong (1933) at 66 minutes.

Best Picture Winning-est Director:

William Wyler holds the record for directing more Best Picture nominees (13) and more Best Picture winners (3) than anyone else. The nominated and winning (marked with *) films were:

• Dodsworth (1936)
• Dead End (1937)
• Jezebel (1938)
• Wuthering Heights (1939)
• The Letter (1940)
• The Little Foxes (1941)
• Mrs. Miniver (1942)*
• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)*
• The Heiress (1949)
• Roman Holiday (1953)
• Friendly Persuasion (1956)
• Ben-Hur (1959)*
• Funny Girl (1968)

Best Picture Winners Without a Nomination for Best Director:

• Wings (1927/8)
• Grand Hotel (1931/2)
• Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

The Winning-est and Most-Nominated Best Picture Studios: 1927/28 to 1950

From 1927/28 through the 1950 Academy Awards, the Best Picture nomination went to the production company or studio that produced the film.

The Winning-est and Most-Nominated Best Picture Producers: 1951-present

From the 1951 Academy Awards through to the present, the Best Picture nomination went to the producer(s) credited on the film. The producers whose films have won the most Best Picture Oscars from 1951 to the present include:

• Sam Spiegel (4 nominations with 3 wins): On The Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (3 awards within 8 years!)
• Saul Zaentz (3 nominations with 3 wins): One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) (co-produced), Amadeus (1984), The English Patient (1996)
• Clint Eastwood (4 nominations with 2 wins): Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Arthur Freed (2 nominations with 2 wins): An American in Paris (1951) and Gigi (1958)
• Branko Lustig (2 nominations with 2 wins): Schindler's List (1993) and Gladiator (2000)
• Albert S. Ruddy (2 nominations with 2 wins): The Godfather (1972) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Robert Wise (3 nominations with 2 wins): West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965)
  

The producer(s) credited on the film who have received the most nominations for Best Picture from 1951 to the present include:

• Stanley Kramer (6 nominations with 0 wins):
• Steven Spielberg (6 nominations with 1 win): Schindler's List (1993)
• Francis Ford Coppola (5 nominations with 1 win): The Godfather, Part II (1974)
• Kathleen Kennedy (5 nominations with 0 wins):
• Sam Spiegel (4 nominations with 3 wins): On The Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Clint Eastwood (4 nominations with 2 wins): Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• James L. Brooks (4 nominations with 1 win): Terms of Endearment (1983)
• David Puttnam (4 nominations with 1 win): Chariots of Fire (1981)
• Irwin Winkler (4 nominations with 1 win): Rocky (1976)
• Warren Beatty (4 nominations with 0 wins):
• David Brown (4 nominations with 0 wins):
• Norman Jewison (4 nominations with 0 wins):
• Frank Marshall (4 nominations with 0 wins):
• George Stevens (4 nominations with 0 wins):

The first female Best Picture nominee and winner of a Best Picture Oscar was producer Julia Phillips for The Sting (1973). Curiously, in the decade of the 1950s, none of the Best Actress Oscar winners appeared in a Best Picture winning film!