40th Academy Awards: History and Background

The 40th Academy Awards were held on April 10, 1968, to honor film achievements of 1967. Originally scheduled for April 8, the awards were postponed to two days later due to the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Bob Hope was once again the host of the ceremony.

This year, due to the waning popularity of black-and-white films, Best Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costume Design, previously divided into separate awards for color and monochrome films, were merged into single categories. This was the first Oscars since 1948 to feature clips from the Best Picture nominees.

This year marked the first of two times that three different films were nominated for the "Big Five" Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay): Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. While all three won major Oscars, Best Picture was awarded to Norman Jewison's thriller/mystery film, In the Heat of the Night. The same thing happened again at the ceremony for films from 1981 where the Best Picture winner was not one of the three films with "Big Five" nominations.

The Graduate became the seventh film to win Best Director and nothing else, and the last until Jane Campion won the award for The Power of the Dog at the 94th Academy Awards. For the first time since the introduction of the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1948, Edith Head did not receive a nomination, after tallying 30 nominations and 7 wins over the previous 18 years.

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