Oscar recognized non-English language films in the Best Picture category for the first time with Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion included among the ten films nominated for the honor in 1938. It lost to the classic comedy, You Can’t Take It with You. Other films nominated that year included The Adventures of Robin Hood, Boys Town, The Citadel, and Jezebel, fine films all, but the only other comedy nominated was Pygmalion. Notably absence from the list were two legendary comedies, Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, both starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

1939, long considered the “greatest year in the history of the movies” saw Oscar nominate another ten films including Gone with the Wind, which won 8 of the 13 awards it was nominated for. Other greats that were nominated included The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and Ninotchka. Still, they managed to miss a such gems as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Only Angels Have Wings, Gunga Din, Beau Geste, and The Women.

1940 was another great year and Oscar made the most of it, nominating The Grapes of Wrath, Rebecca (which won), The Philadelphia Story, Our Town, and The Letter among the ten films nominated for Best Picture. All the same, they managed to overlook such equally memorable ones as The Shop Around the Corner, His Girl Friday, Destry Rides Again, The Mortal Storm, The Thief of Bagdad, The Mark of Zorro, and My Favorite Wife.

1941 will forever be remembered as the year Citizen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley. The ten nominated films also included The Little Foxes, Here Comes Mr. Jordan and The Maltese Falcon. Missing from the lineup were Ball of Fire, The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, and Penny Serenade.

1942’s slate of ten nominees included Mrs. Miniver (which won), Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Pride of the Yankees, Random Harvest, and The Magnificent Ambersons. Missing were Sullivan’s Travels, To Be or Not to Be, Now Voyager, and Woman of the Year.

1943 gave us a list of nominees that included Casablanca (which won), The Song of Bernadette, The More the Merrier, The Human Comedy, and The Ox-Bow Incident among the ten nominees. The most glaring omission was Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock’s personal favorite among all his films.

1944 reduced the nominees to five, giving the win to Going My Way over Double Indemnity while ignoring Meet Me in St. Louis and Laura among others.

1945 gave nominations to The Lost Weekend (which won), The Bells of St. Mary’s, and Mildred Pierce while ignoring The Keys of the Kingdom and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

1946 rightfully honored The Best Years of Our Lives as the year’s Best Picture and nominated It’s a Wonderful Life and The Razor’s Edge, while ignoring Notorious and Rome, Open City.

1947 saw Gentleman’s Agreement take Best Picture over Miracle on 34th Street and Great Expectations, while Black Narcissus had to settle for nominations for Cinematography and Art Direction, both of which it won.

FILMS THE ACADEMY SHOULD HAVE NOMINATED BUT DIDN’T

BRINGING UP BABY, directed by Howard Hawks (1938)

Screwball comedy reached its zenith with this often copied but never equaled madcap film about a professor, a society dame, and a leopard, the “baby” of the title. A notorious flop on its initial release, it has long since been seen as the best film legendary director Hawks ever made and one of the best Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made either together or apart. It flopped so badly that it was withdrawn from Radio City Music Hall after just one week and replaced by Jezebel which has crowds lined up around the corner in a blizzard. May Robson, Charlie Ruggles, Walter Catlett, and Barry Fitzgerald lead the supporting cast.

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, directed by Vincente Minnelli (1944)

Minnelli’s second film as well as his second musical was a valentine to family life at the turn of the 20th Century. Judy Garland led the starry cast, supported by the likes of Margaret O’Brien, the year’s juvenile Oscar winner, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Joan Carroll, Marjorie Main, Harry Davenport, and June Lockhart. The film’s glorious score includes such treasures as “The Boy Next Door”, “The Trolley Song” (which was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar), and the holiday song that has long since eclipsed that song’s popularity, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sung by Garland to a distraught O’Brien.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, directed by Elia Kazan (1945)

Kazan’s first film was one of his best. The story of an impoverished family circa 1914 is beautifully brought to life by Dorothy McGuire as the stern but loving mother, Best Supporting Actor James Dunn as the lovable alcoholic father who can’t hold down a job, Joan Blondell as the aunt who works in a condom factory (all references to that being cut from the release print), and the splendid Peggy Ann Garner who won the award for the year’s best juvenile performer as the 12-year-old girl who like the titled tree, grows up in Brooklyn. Ted Donaldson as Garner’s little brother, Lloyd Nolan, James Gleason, and Ruth Nelson also shine in support.

NOTORIOUS, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1946)

Arguably Hitchcock’s best film of the era, Ingrid Bergman gave perhaps her greatest performance as the daughter of a Nazi spy recruited by the American Secret Service to infiltrate a group of scientists working on a project in South America. Cary Grant also gave one of his best performances as her handler while Claude Rains topped all his previous work as the head spy who Bergman charms into marrying her. Leopoldine Konstantin is chilling as Rains’ mother who is slowly poisoning Bergman. Surprisingly, the film received only two Oscar nominations, one for Ben Hecht’s screenplay and the other for Rains’ heartbreaking performance.

BLACK NARCISSUS, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1947)

Hollywood films about Catholic priests and nuns such as The Song of BernadetteGoing My Way, The Keys of the Kingdom, and The Bells of St. Mary’s dominated the box-office in the mid-1940s while this British import about a group of Anglican nuns in the Himalayas was initially less popular. Heavily censored in its initial release, it has endured primarily due to its Oscar-winning cinematography and Deborah Kerr’s New York Film Critics award-winning performance heading a superb cast that included Jean Simmons, Flora Robson, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar, and Sabu.