9th Academy Awards: History and Background

The 9th Academy Awards were held on March 4, 1937, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California to honor films released in 1936. They were hosted by George Jessel, with music by the Victor Young Orchestra, with Spike Jones on drums. This year marked the introduction of the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories, and was the first year that the awards for directing and acting were fixed at five nominees per category.

Jessel assigned the wrong awards to the right winners of the newly-introduced supporting categories. The Great Ziegfeld was not a popular choice for Best Picture among members of the press, who felt that voters had been brainwashed by its lush gaudiness; they also felt that Luise Rainer's win of Best Actress for her performance was unjustified due to the short length of her role in the film.

My Man Godfrey became the first film to receive nominations in all four acting categories, but did not win in any category. It is the only such film to not receive a nomination for Best Picture, and was the only one to lose all of its acting nominations until Sunset Boulevard at the 23rd Academy Awards and the only one to not win any of its Oscar nominations at all until American Hustle at the 86th. It was also the first of four films to receive four acting nominations without one for Best Picture, followed by I Remember Mama (1948), Othello (1965), and Doubt (2008).

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