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Ozcar Night

© Karen Barker Crowley

Bob Hope hosted. More than 1,200 representatives of the film industry attended. Records were set, and barriers were broken.

The Twelfth Annual Academy Awards ceremony, held at the Ambassador Hotel in February, 1940, was one of Oscar’s most memorable nights.

But it wasn’t all that special for The Wizard of Oz.

If The Wizard of Oz had been released in any other year, it might have swept the Academy Awards. 1939, however, has been called one of the greatest years in movie history, and Oz faced stiff competition. Although Oz received six nominations, the movie won only two awards.

In the Best Picture category, Oz competed against Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, and, of course, the winner, Gone With the Wind.

Gone With the Wind swept the Oscars that year, winning a record eight awards, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Hattie McDaniel, the first African American performer to be nominated for an Oscar.

GWTW beat out Oz in two of its nominated categories: Art Direction and Color Cinematography. In the Special Effects category, Oz lost to The Rains Came, which starred Myrna Loy and Tyrone Power and featured a dramatic earthquake and flood.

The Academy couldn’t ignore the music of Oz, however, and songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg received the Best Song award for "Over the Rainbow", and MGM Musical Director Herbert Stothart took home the award for Best Original Score.

Although she wasn’t nominated in any category, Judy Garland had her moment in the spotlight, too. Since 1935, the Academy had presented a special award for outstanding work by a juvenile performer. Past recipients included Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and Deanna Durbin. In 1939, the Academy chose to recognize Garland for her work in Oz and Babes in Arms.

Rooney presented Garland with a miniature statuette, which she later dubbed her "Munchkin Award." It was the only Academy Award Garland received during her long career, even though she was later nominated for Best Actress (A Star is Born, 1954) and Best Supporting Actress (Judgment at Nuremburg, 1961).

According to The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History, a magazine reporter covering the ceremony called Garland’s award one of the highlights of the evening. As the reporter described it, "It was charming to watch Mickey, with his new-found dignity upon him, presenting Judy with her Oscar, and then forgetting himself and kissing her with kid enthusiasm ... and Judy was never more persuasive than when she crooned 'Over the Rainbow' into the mikes, with a suspicious little quaver in her voice."