37th Academy Awards: History and Background

The 37th Academy Awards were held on April 5, 1965, to honor film achievements of 1964. The ceremony was produced by MGM's Joe Pasternak and hosted, for the 14th time, by Bob Hope.

The Best Picture winner, George Cukor's My Fair Lady, was an adaptation of a 1956 stage musical of the same name, which was itself based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which had been nominated for Best Picture in 1938. Audrey Hepburn was controversially not nominated for Best Actress for her starring role as Eliza Doolittle; the unpopularity of her replacing Julie Andrews—who had originated the role on Broadway, and who was seen by producer Jack Warner as having lacked star quality—as well as the revelation that the majority of her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (which wasn't approved by Hepburn herself) were seen as the main reasons for the snub. This was said to have "split the committee into two camps, pro and con, for and against the two ladies", and even led to talk of a write-in campaign for Hepburn. Despite her having not been nominated, Hepburn was in attendance at the ceremony, with camera work playing up the tension between the two considerably. Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar, but My Fair Lady was said to have "made off awfully well, too."

The ceremony saw the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, William J. Tuttle for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, albeit as an Honorary Award; it would not become a competitive category until 1981.

This year was the first in which three films received 10 or more nominations (repeated at the 50th, 92nd and 96th Academy Awards), and the only time in Oscar history that three films received 12 or more nominations: Becket and My Fair Lady each received 12, while Mary Poppins received 13. Also, the five Best Director nominees corresponded to their films in the Best Picture category, for only the second occurrence throughout the era (1944–2008) in Oscar history, where the latter category was limited to five nominees only. Additionally, for the first time all Best Picture nominees received corresponding directing and writing nominations.

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