Mister Tee wrote
3) I confess I read Who Gets the Drumstick?, the true story of the amalgamation of two large families following spousal deaths that formed the basis of Yours, Mine and Ours. It was the kind of tripe that appealed to me when I was 13-14. I never did see the movie (my tastes had rapidly escalated by then), but I recall it was quite a large hit, and I presume headlining Lucy (still a huge TV star then) and Henry Fonda had something to do with it, along with its being an inoffensive family film. (Probably few of us have seen the Steve Martin Cheaper by the Dozen, but it was a substantial hit this millennium; there's an audience out there, remote from us, that loves this kind of crud.)
Well, I'm sure there is/was, but I think it's still appropriate to be surprised that The Producers failed even a nomination for Best Comedy or Musical Picture considering its Golden Globe nomination and eventual Oscar win for screenwriting. Then again, the DGA cited The Odd Couple over The Producers that year so what do I know.
I don't claim to much understand the dynamic of the 1968 Oscar race. Or the year. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In won "Best TV Show."
It seems to me that The Lion in Winter was the frontrunner on the basis of its Golden Globe -- Drama win, New York Film Critics Circle victory, and Directors Guild nomination and eventual win. The DGA nominated ten films so it's hard to parse out which films were taken seriously and which weren't. The Lion in Winter was the only Golden Globe Drama selection that was nominated for a DGA (the others being Charly, The Fixer, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Shoes of the Fisherman) and somehow Comedy or Musical fared better with three being nominated (Funny Girl, Oliver!, and The Odd Couple) and two not (Yours Mine and Ours and Finian's Rainbow). Of the two Foreign slates at the Golden Globe (both of which were very impressive), only Romeo and Juliet was nominated but it had five nominations, which would suggest a breakthrough hit. The charming Closely Watched Trains was nominated in the foreign categories the previous year and wouldn't have been a bad forerunner to the 1970s trend of a movie winning the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film one year and being nominated for a slew of nominations the next. Rachel, Rachel was nominated at the DGA and won Best Actress and Director but didn't have a Best Picture nomination. Rosemary's Baby had a DGA nomination and picked up four Golden Globe nominations (including Actress, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Score) but no Best Picture. And 2001 was [understandably] shut out. I understand that the Golden Globes didn't necessarily mean as much back then.
I didn't have this conclusion in my mind when I started writing this but I guess if presented with this information above, I would probably forecast nominations for Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, Oliver!, Rachel Rachel, and Romeo and Juliet. And, y'know, maybe one of them gets left off for Best Director and that slot would go to Stanley Kubrick. Maybe if one got left off, it would be Rachel, Rachel and the replacement might be I don't know... one of the other countless films listed above.