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1946
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Actor:
FREDRIC MARCH in  "The
Best Years of Our Lives", Laurence Olivier in "Henry
V", Larry Parks in "The Jolson Story", Gregory
Peck in "The Yearling", James Stewart in "It's
A Wonderful Life"
Actress:
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND in "To Each His Own", Celia Johnson
in "Brief Encounter", Jennifer
Jones in "Duel in the Sun",
Rosalind Russell in "Sister Kenny", Jane Wyman in "The
Yearling"
Supporting Actor:
HAROLD RUSSELL in "The
Best Years of Our Lives", Charles Coburn in "The
Green Years", William Demarest in "The Jolson Story",
Claude Rains in "Notorious",
Clifton Webb in "The Razor's Edge"
Supporting Actress:
ANNE BAXTER in "The Razor's Edge", Ethel Barrymore
in "The Spiral Staircase", Lillian Gish in "Duel
in the Sun", Flora Robson in "Saratoga Trunk",
Gale Sondergaard in "Anna and the King of Siam"
Director:
WILLIAM WYLER for "The
Best Years of Our Lives", Clarence Brown for "The
Yearling", Frank Capra for "It's
A Wonderful Life", David Lean for "Brief
Encounter", Robert Siodmak for "The
Killers"
 For
the first time, a number of foreign-made films and stars from
overseas were found in the various categories - a foreshadowing
of things to come.
The Best Picture winner of the year was the
three-hour long The
Best Years of Our Lives (with eight nominations and
seven wins), a war-related film about the rough adjustment
of returning and damaged WWII veterans (a hard-drinking ex-sergeant,
a sailor with prosthetic hooks for hands, and an air force
officer) to peacetime.
With a total of seven awards, director William
Wyler's film won in all major categories in which it was nominated
including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor,
Best Director, Best Screenplay, Film Editing, and Best Scoring
of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.
It was the last collaborative work of
director William Wyler and independent producer Goldwyn. The
award would be the first and only competitive
Oscar that producer Samuel Goldwyn would ever win. [Given Goldwyn's
long and distinguished involvement in some of the best films
ever made, including Arrowsmith (1931/32), Dodsworth
(1936), Dead End (1937), Wuthering
Heights (1939), The Little Foxes (1941), The
Pride of the Yankees (1942), and The Bishop's Wife (1947),
it is remarkable that The
Best Years of Our Lives was the only production
of his to ever receive the top award.]
Director William Wyler had previously directed
and received his first Oscar for the award-winning 1942 Best
Picture Mrs. Miniver - another film detailing homefront
courage in Britain. Wyler's 1946 tale of three returning servicemen
(including Oscar-winning Best Actor Fredric March and Best
Supporting Actor Harold Russell) to the homefront following
WW II and their painful re-adjustments was an intelligent,
moving, almost three hour-long, post-war drama. [It set the
standard for future award-winning films about returning veterans
and the aftermath of war, including Best Picture winner The
Deer Hunter (1978) and its acclaimed competitor Coming
Home (1978).]
The Best Picture winner defeated Laurence Olivier's
involvement (as producer, actor, and director) of the experimental
Shakespearean cinematic masterpiece from the UK, Henry V (with
four nominations and no wins) - about the medieval monarch
who defeated the French at Agincourt. [Olivier also received
a special Honorary Oscar Award for his "outstanding achievement...in
bringing Henry V to the screen" - but was denied
a nomination as Best Director.] It was Olivier's first and
most successful directorial effort, for the stylized Technicolor
film.
The other Best Picture nominees were:
- Somerset Maugham's tale, by director Edmund
Goulding, The Razor's Edge (with four nominations
and one win - Best Supporting Actress) of a wealthy young
man's (Tyrone Power) search in the world for the truth about
life
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' heartwarming tale The
Yearling (with seven nominations and two wins - Best
Color Cinematography and Best Color Interior Decoration)
about a young boy's love for a yearling fawn in the post-Civil
War period
- Frank Capra's own favorite film, the inspirational
and heartwarming It's
A Wonderful Life (with five nominations and no wins),
the classic film about a man who is ultimately saved from
suicide and realizes how important his life has really been.
[This last-mentioned film had five nominations (Best Picture,
Best Actor, Best Director, Best Sound Recording, and Best
Film Editing) but it was unable to capture a single award!]
It must be noted that four performances in two
years with characters who were alcoholic were honored with
lead and supporting awards:
- 1945: Ray Milland, Best Actor for The
Lost Weekend (1945); James Dunn, Best Supporting
Actor for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
- 1946: Fredric March, Best Actor for The
Best Years of Our Lives; Anne Baxter, Best Supporting
Actress for The Razor's Edge
In the Best Actor category, 49 year-old Fredric
March (with his fourth of five career nominations) made a comeback
by winning his second Best Actor award (his first was
fourteen years earlier for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931/32))
as anguished, middle-aged, banking executive - and returning
war veteran and ex-sergeant Al Stephenson in The
Best Years of Our Lives.
The other Best Actor nominees were:
- Laurence Olivier (with his third nomination)
as young King Henry V of England in Henry V
- Larry Parks (with his sole career nomination)
as the legendary singer Al Jolson in director Alfred E. Green's
biopic The Jolson Story (with six nominations and
two wins - Best Sound Recording and Best Musical Score);
Parks received the nomination, but mostly lip-synched while
Jolson provided the singing
- Gregory Peck (with his second nomination)
as Florida farmer Pa Baxter in The Yearling
- James Stewart (with his third nomination)
in his most memorable and famous role as George Bailey in
one of the most-loved fantasy films ever made - although
it was less popular at the time of its release - It's
A Wonderful Life. [Although Gregory Peck was nominated
for The Yearling, he should have been nominated instead
for his role as the bad son, Lewt McCanles, in Duel
in the Sun.]
Olivia de Havilland (with her third nomination
of five career nominations) received her first Oscar
for her teary, sentimental performance as middle-aged business-woman
Josephine Harris who becomes a self-sacrificing unwed mother
to her own illegitimate child (John Lund, who believes she
is his aunt, played both roles - the pilot by whom she has
the baby AND her grown son) in Paramount's soap opera by director
Mitchell Leisen To Each His Own (with two nominations
and one win - Best Actress). De Havilland had previously lost
two other times (as Best Supporting Actress in Gone
With The Wind (1939), and as Best Actress in Hold
Back the Dawn (1941)), one of them to her sister Joan Fontaine
for Suspicion (1941) five years earlier. Her award would
turn out to be the first of the star's two career Best
Actress Oscars out of a total of five nominations (her other
Best Actress win was for The Heiress
(1949)). In contrast, Joan Fontaine won only one career
Oscar out of three Best Actress nominations. (Fontaine was
nominated three times, for Rebecca
(1940), Suspicion (1941) and The
Constant Nymph (1946), and only won in 1941.)
In particular, De Havilland faced strong competition
in 1946 from the favored Rosalind Russell (with her second
of four unsuccessful nominations) for her title role in director
Dudley Nichols' Sister Kenny (the film's sole nomination)
- the film biography of the legendary Australian nurse who
treated infantile paralysis. The other Best Actress competitors
included:
- Jennifer Jones (with her fourth nomination)
as the sultry, impestuous half-breed Pearl Chavez in Selznick's
heavily-promoted melodramatic Western by director King Vidor
titled Duel in the Sun (with
two nominations and no wins)
- English actress Celia Johnson (with her sole
career nomination) for her performance as Laura Jesson -
the long-suffering housewife longing for love in director
David Lean's Brief Encounter (with
three nominations and no wins)
- Jane Wyman (with her first nomination) as
Ma Baxter (Gregory Peck's wife) in The Yearling
Real-life amputee Harold Russell, with hands
replaced by hooks -- a sentimental favorite -- won the Best
Supporting Actor award in his portrayal of courageous and resourceful
returning sailor Homer Parrish. He also received an Honorary
Oscar (probably designed to be a consolation prize because
it was assumed that he would lose the bigger award) - he became
the only performer to take home two Oscars for a single role
in one film. It would be Russell's first and only screen
appearance until 1980, when he played a small part in Inside
Moves. [Russell's win marked the first time that
an actor had ever won a Best Supporting Actor award in his first film.]
Other Best Supporting Actor nominees were:
- Charles Coburn (with his third and last nomination)
as Alexander Gow (Dean Stockwell's great-grandfather) in The
Green Years (with two nominations and no wins)
- William Demarest (with his sole career nomination)
as Al Jolson's friend/mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson
Story
- Clifton Webb (with his second unsuccessful
career nomination) as snide socialite Elliott Templeton in The
Razor's Edge
- Claude Rains (with his fourth and last unsuccessful
career nomination) in one of his greatest roles as the tortured
yet treacherous spy/husband Alexander Sebastian in Alfred
Hitchcock's excellent thriller, Notorious (with
two nominations and no wins)
The Best Supporting Actress Oscar went to 23
year-old Anne Baxter (with her first nomination) for her performance
as the tragic, alcoholic Sophie Nelson after her family is
killed in The Razor's Edge. Other Best Supporting Actress
nominees were:
- legendary film actress Lillian Gish, whose
career spanned films from 1912 to 1987, with her sole Oscar
career nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles (cattle
baron Lionel Barrymore's wife) in Duel
in the Sun. [Much later, Gish received an Honorary
Award in 1970 by the Academy, her only Academy laurel.]
- Ethel Barrymore (with her second of four career
nominations in the 1940s) as dowager Mrs. Warren who lives
in a spooky house in director Richard Siodmak's gothic suspense
thriller The Spiral Staircase (the film's sole nomination)
- British actress Flora Robson as mulatto servant
Angelique Buiton in director Sam Wood's version of Edna Ferber's
romantic novel titled Saratoga Trunk (the film's sole
nomination)
- Gale Sondergaard (with her second and last
career nomination) as Lady Thiang (King of Siam's - Rex Harrison's
- wife) in director John Cromwell's non-musical version of Anna
and the King of Siam (with five nominations and two wins
- Best B/W Cinematography and Best B/W Interior Decoration)
Six English films exerted their influence on
Hollywood in 1946, receiving a total of eleven nominations
among them. Besides Henry V and Brief
Encounter, there were four others: Perfect Strangers (US
title: Vacation From Marriage), The Seventh Veil, Caesar
and Cleopatra, and Blithe Spirit. The group of British
films won three Oscars (Special Visual Effects for Blithe
Spirit, Original Screenplay for The Seventh Veil,
and Original Story for Vacation From Marriage). Two
other foreign films received screenplay nominations: one of
the masterpieces of French cinema, Children of Paradise,
and Federico Fellini's first nomination for Open City,
a landmark Italian film known for creating the neo-realistic
movement in post-war Italian cinema.
Ernst Lubitsch, known for his "Lubitsch" touch
and sophisticated comedies, was awarded a Special Honorary
Award for "his distinguished contributions to the art
of the motion picture." His last directed film was his
first Technicolored film from three years earlier, Heaven
Can Wait (1943), with three nominations for Best Picture,
Best Director and Best Color Cinematography.
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
British director David Lean's first nomination
as director was for one of the greatest romantic tearjerkers
ever made, the superb small-scale but effective Brief
Encounter, but the film was denied a Best Picture nomination.
(It was a very different work from his future epics, such as The
Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence
of Arabia (1962).) Another British film - from Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Stairway to Heaven (aka A
Matter of Life and Death) was entirely overlooked. As already
mentioned, Laurence Olivier received a special Honorary Oscar
Award for his "outstanding achievement...in bringing Henry
V to the screen" - but was denied a nomination as
Best Director.
Citizen
Kane's (1941) cinematographer, Gregg Toland, was
responsible for the outstanding deep-focus photographic
work in the Best Picture winner of 1946, but he was not
nominated for his achievement. In the Best Picture race, The
Razor's Edge and The Yearling were given nominations
while a number of other pictures should have been. One
of Alfred Hitchcock's finest films, Notorious was
denied a nomination for Best Picture (it received only two
losing nominations, Claude Rains for Best Supporting Actor
and Ben Hecht for Best Original Screenplay). And where
was recognition for either Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman
in truly unforgettable roles? Bergman's performance in Notorious was
much better than her Oscar-winning role in Gaslight
(1944).
One of the most obvious omissions of the year
was the lack of nominations for Gilda,
the sexy film noir starring a ravishing Rita Hayworth as femme
fatale Gilda (noted for her memorable "Put the Blame on
Mame" glove-striptease) engaged in a perverse menage
a trois between Glenn Ford and George Macready.
Many of the roles in The
Best Years of Our Lives were denied possible acting
or supporting acting nominations:
- Myrna Loy (never nominated) as Fredric March's
loving and faithful wife
- Dana Andrews (never nominated) as the returning
Air Force officer
- Virginia Mayo as Dana Andrews' strumpet wife
- Teresa Wright as March's proud daughter
Other roles, all in It's
A Wonderful Life, that went unnominated included
Donna Reed as James Stewart's girlfriend/wife Mary Hatch/Bailey,
Beulah Bondi as Stewart's mother, Lionel Barrymore as the
miserly, mean, and arrogant wheelchair-bound Mr. Potter,
and Henry Travers as Clarence the angel.
Films which were bypassed for nominations include
the un-nominated The
Big Sleep (both Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall deserved
nods) and John Ford's My
Darling Clementine (Henry Fonda certainly was due an
Oscar nomination). [Raymond Chandler was nominated for his
original screenplay for The Blue Dahlia, but The
Big Sleep, based on a Chandler novel, received no such
recognition.]
In the Best Director race, Hitchcock was denied
a nomination for Notorious.
And Best Director nominee Robert Siodmak's under-appreciated
film noir The Killers (with
four unrewarded nominations) introduced actor Burt Lancaster
in his first film role as the Swede, and featured Ava
Gardner as a ravishing femme fatale. And director Tay
Garnett's film noir drama The Postman
Always Rings Twice, based on James Cain's 1934 crime
novel, received no nominations -- ignoring Lana Turner's white-hot,
but icy role as femme fatale Cora Smith who enticed
diner worker/drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) to murder
her elderly, jovial husband Nick (Cecil Kellaway).
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