RULE CHANGES
· Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories introduced. Winners receive plaques rather than statuettes.
· "Color Short Subjects" added.
· Committee of 50 makes all nominations except for Dance Direction and Assistant Director Awards. Candidates for Interior Decoration, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound and Music Awards submit what they consider their best work to the Committee as well as recommending at least one other work.
· A third method for the Assistant Director Award -- Committee of 50 makes list of potential nominees from which Directors Branch culls the five final nominees.
· All English-language films, regardless of national origin, again eligible for nominations for Picture, Acting and Writing Awards.

ROLE REVERSALS:
Edward G. Robinson was initially cast as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, but when Leslie Howard threatened to quit unless he was accompanied by his fellow actor from the Broadway production, the part was given to Humphrey Bogart.

SINS OF OMISSION
Picture: Modern Times, My Man Godfrey, Fury, Show Boat, Swing Time
Director: Fritz Lang - Fury, Charles Chaplin - Modern Times
Actress: Claudette Colbert - Libeled Lady
Supporting Actor: Spencer Tracy - San Francisco, Frank Morgan - The Great Ziegfeld
Supporting Actress: Jean Harlow - Libeled Lady
Song: "Easy to Love," "A Fine Romance," "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "I'm an Old Cowhand"

UNMENTIONABLES
· There were only 25 actors left in the Academy, but being nominated was still considered an honor -- all the nominees showed up, with the exception of Luise Rainer, who had just driven in from San Francisco. The names of the winners had been given to reporters who had East Coast deadlines. After an MGM publicist poked his head in to check the results, he ran to the phone to tell Rainer to get to the ceremonies.
· There was a suspiciously high number of nominees who happened to be on the Nominating Committee. Among them were Carole Lombard and Frank Capra. Following ugly accusations, the nominating duties were returned to the general membership.
· When presenter Victor McLaglen finally got through his drunken introduction, Paul Muni grabbed a moment at the microphone and said, "I have the greatest thrill of my life getting this. I will try to continue to work to make myself worthy of the Academy's high and meaningful honor." "Me too," McLaglen added, getting in the last word.
· Backstage, Bette Davis was incensed that MC George Jessel had performed her role as presenter to Luise Rainer. He begged her forgiveness, claiming that he was momentarily thrown off after McLaglen had made a rambling shambles out of his Oscar® presentation to Muni.
· Luise Rainer had to repeat her acceptance speech 8 times for the newsreel cameras backstage. She finally turned to Frank Capra and asked, "Why don't you direct this?"
· While most in Hollywood conceded that Paul Muni was deserving of the Best Actor Oscar®, W.C. Fields had his reservations. "Any actor knows that comedy is more difficult, requires more artistry," Fields said. "It is pretty easy to fool an audience with a little crêpe hair and a dialect. It seems to me that a comedian who really makes people laugh should be as eligible for an award as a tragedian who makes people cry. This isn't a case of sour grapes with me because I didn't grow any grapes last year. I didn't even sow a wild oat."
· The MGM version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet starred Norma Shearer (36) and Leslie Howard (44) as the star-crossed teenagers.
· There were rumors of a secret pact between Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner: Mayer would strongly advise his employees to vote for Paul Muni if Warner would do likewise on behalf of The Great Ziegfeld.
· Mayer was incensed by the recent marriage of his star Luise Rainer to "that rotten Communist" playwright, Clifford Odets.
· Jean Harlow, who had become engaged to William Powell two weeks before the ceremonies, died of an inflamed gall bladder just two months after the Awards banquet. Her eccentric Christian Scientist mother refused to allow an operation, insisting that she would cure her through prayer.
· Blacklisted, along with her husband, director Herbert Biberman, following the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, Best Supporting Actress winner Gale Sondergaard made her last Hollywood film, East Side, West Side, in 1949.