Notable Firsts and Records

[OscarGuy]

My dates are all the first fully known date for each film. I did not track approximate dates. And those were the dates known several years ago. More information may have come to light in the interim.

I also didn't mention that in those early years the Oscars weren't in February or March, so your mileage may vary depending on what the interested outcome would be.

It's weird that I would typo both of The Godfather films, so someone must have had the dates on IMDb wrong to start. I always went with the first NY or LA release date.

[Big Magilla]

As long as we're talking accuracy, 1/21/43 was the Los Angeles release date for Casablanca. It had originally been released in New York in October 1942 but was held back from expanding by Warner Bros. who coordinated its expansion with the date of the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin meeting in Casablanca to achieve maximum publicity.

In Old Chicago was released prior to April all right, but it was released in 1938, not 1937. The last day of Oscar eligibility for 1937 was January 12, 1938, the day of its world premiere in Los Angeles making it the Oscar year's last release, not one of the first.

[Mister Tee]

Just for accuracy: you mean the original The Godfather opened in March 1972; Part II opened in December of 1974.

This list brings back for me the glorious time when movies-for-grownups was a year-round thing, not a specialty industry from September to December.

[OscarGuy]

Best Picture Winners Released Prior to April:
Cavalcade (1/5/33)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1/10/52)
Casablanca (1/23/43)
Cimarron (1/26/31)
The Silence of the Lambs (1/30/91)
The Broadway Melody (2/1/29)
Patton (2/4/70)
It Happened One Night (2/22/34)
The Sound of Music (3/2/65)
The Godfather, Part II (3/12/74)
The Great Ziegfeld (3/22/36)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (3/25/22)
Rebecca (3/27/40)


Best Picture Nominees Released Prior to April (Not digging out the dates, but these are in release date order):

In Old Chicago
Kitty Foyle
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
David Copperfield
In Old Arizona
A Letter to Three Wives
The Grapes of Wrath
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
M*A*S*H
State Fair
The Good Earth
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The Story of Louis Pasteur
Shanghai Express
Kings Row
Trader Horn
Hannah and Her Sisters
Taxi Driver
Witness
She Done Him Wrong
Missing
Judas and the Black Messiah
Cabaret
Stagecoach
Coming Home
Black Panther
How the West Was Won
Get Out
Z
The Father
East Lynne
Norma Rae
Lost Horizon
Tender Mercies
The Invaders
Airport
An Unmarried Woman
Coal Miner's Daughter
A Room with a View
The Grand Budapest Hotel
42nd Street
Ruggles of Red Gap
The Emigrants
Fargo
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Jezebel
Becket
Howards End
The House of Rothschild
Love Affair
Erin Brockovich
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Front Page
Naughty Marietta
One Hour With You
Room at the Top

[Eenusch]

EEAAO was released in March 2022 which must be one of the earliest calendar releases for a Best Picture winner since Silence of the Lambs?

[Eenusch]

I mentioned this in the General Ceremony Discussion; but, Going My Way technically has 6 as its screenplay won awards both for story and screenplay.

You are right - Going My Way with 2 writing awards to match the weirdness of two acting nominations for Barry Fitzgerald.

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
This year, all four Oscar acting winners also completely matched all four SAG acting winners, which didn't happen in Slumdog Millionaire's year.

Oh you were talking about every category? Maybe if Kate Winslet was nominated in the appropriate category. But yes, I think you're right.

[Greg]

Greg wrote
Is this the first time there was complete agreement with the Oscars and all of PGA, DGA, WGA, and SAG?

Slumdog Millionaire swept all of those.

This year, all four Oscar acting winners also completely matched all four SAG acting winners, which didn't happen in Slumdog Millionaire's year.

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
Is this the first time there was complete agreement with the Oscars and all of PGA, DGA, WGA, and SAG?

Slumdog Millionaire swept all of those.

The Banshees of Inisherin is the fifth biggest Oscar loser of the new Millennium going 0/9. Tied for first place are American Hustle, Gangs of New York, The Irishman, and True Grit. Elvis is the sixth biggest, and The Fabelmans is tied for seventh.

Steven Spielberg's films have amassed fifty-five nominations in the twenty-first century and just four wins.

[Greg]

Is this the first time there was complete agreement with the Oscars and all of PGA, DGA, WGA, and SAG?

[Greg]

Everything, Everywhere All At Once is the first film to win 6 above the line categories (Picture, Director, three acting wins and Screenplay), breaking the record of It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

The films below were tied for 5 above the line wins:

1934 - It Happened One Night
1939 - Gone with the Wind
1942 - Mrs. Miniver
1944 - Going My Way
1946 - The Best Years of Our Lives
1953 - From Here to Eternity
1954 - On the Waterfront
1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1979 - Kramer vs. Kramer
1983 - Terms of Endearment
1991 - The Silence of the Lambs

I mentioned this in the General Ceremony Discussion; but, Going My Way technically has 6 as its screenplay won awards both for story and screenplay.

[Eenusch]

Everything, Everywhere All At Once is the first film to win 6 above the line categories (Picture, Director, three acting wins and Screenplay), breaking the record of It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

The films below were tied for 5 above the line wins:

1934 - It Happened One Night
1939 - Gone with the Wind
1942 - Mrs. Miniver
1944 - Going My Way
1946 - The Best Years of Our Lives
1953 - From Here to Eternity
1954 - On the Waterfront
1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1979 - Kramer vs. Kramer
1983 - Terms of Endearment
1991 - The Silence of the Lambs

[jack]

Also, though this might happen more often than I realise, the Best Short Film winner An Irish Goodbye was directed by a due. So we had two two-person directing teams winning the same night.

[dws1982]

To be pedantic (which is what a thread like this is all about), Robbins and Wise were not really a team, absolutely hated each other, Wise was the driving force behind firing Robbins from West Side Story, and Wise only kept Robbins involved in the film after he had him fired because he knew the film would never come together otherwise. Neither acknowledged the other in their Oscar acceptance speeches.

Also, I don't think Asian-descent is the same thing as Asian. Cher was born and raised in Southern California. (Plus Armenia carries its own questions of whether it is European or Asian geographically; culturally it is more European.) Angelina Jolie doesn't even have Asian descent; her Cambodian citizenship was given as an honor due to her humanitarian work.

[jack]

This likely doesn't count, and I'm only mentioning it because I live in the country, but Bulgaria are claiming Navalny to be the first Bulgarian film to win an Academy Award. This is likely due to the involvement of Christo Grozev, who was on Bulgarian TV this morning talking about how he financed the film in the beginning of it's production.