RULE CHANGES
· All members of Actors, Directors and Writers Guilds nominate and vote. Extras vote on final ballot.
· Only Academy branch members nominated and voted Awards for Interior Decoration, Cinematography, Sound Recording and Film Editing.
· Every studio guaranteed a nomination for Interior Decoration, Sound Recording and Score simply by submitting an entry.
· Voting on Score Award restricted to working members.
· Directors again eligible for Writing Awards.
· Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award added.

SINS OF OMISSION
Picture: Camille, The Hurricane, Nothing Sacred, Stella Dallas, Shall We Dance, A Day at the Races
Director: George Cukor - Camille
Actor: Cary Grant - The Awful Truth
Actress: Carole Lombard - Nothing Sacred, Katharine Hepburn - Stage Door, Ginger Rogers - Stage Door
Song: "A Foggy Day," "They All Laughed," "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," "In the Still of the Night," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," "Nice Work If You Can Get It," "September in the Rain," "Someday My Prince Will Come"

UNMENTIONABLES
· Floods in Southern California stranded members in their homes, and the Awards banquet had to be postponed a week. $750 worth of flowers was donated to area hospitals. George Jessel, slated to emcee the ceremony, fell ill by the time the floodwaters receded, and was replaced by hillbilly comedian Bob "Bazooka" Burns.
· There was a loud gasp in the room when C. Aubrey Smith announced that the Best Actress winner was Luise Rainer. Frances Marion remembers, "The crowd at the dinner was amazed that Garbo lost to Rainer."
· Spencer Tracy was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy. Louis B. Mayer accepted on his behalf. "It is a privilege to be the stand-in for Spencer Tracy," said Mayer at the podium. "Tracy is a fine actor, but he is most important because he understands why it is necessary to take orders from the front office." (When he heard Mayer's tribute later, Tracy asked, "Was that a compliment or a threat?")
· A mystery man accepted the Best Supporting Actress Oscar® on behalf of the bedridden Alice Brady and ran off with it. The thief was never discovered and her statuette was replaced 12 days after the Awards.
· When "Wild Bill" Wellman accepted his Oscar® for the Best Original Story for A Star Is Born, he held up the statuette and told David O. Selznick, "Here, David, you take it; you wrote more of it than I did."
· A new charter made it official: The Academy would not become involved in labor vs. management issues. Academy President Frank Capra got rid of the Academy's 50-man nominating committee and invited all guild members to vote, whether they were members of the Academy or not. Even extras got to vote on the final ballot for Best Picture, Best Acting and Best Song awards.
· When "Sweet Leilani" won Best Song over "They Can't Take That Away from Me," the buzz at the banquet was that the Gershwins were just too sophisticated for the new voters, the extras.
· When John Lee Mahin -- president of the Screen Playwrights, Inc., a group of writers who had splintered from the Screen Writers Guild, which Mahin believed evinced Communist leanings -- announced that he was refusing his Screenplay nomination, Capra wrote him: "In regard to the charge of unfair discrimination which your organization is belly-aching about, you know very well that you were given the same opportunity to participate in the Awards Committee as any other organization in Hollywood." Capra added that Mahin's nomination stood as a matter of record. "We don't care whether you accept it or throw it away or deposit it in that well-known place where everything is consigned in Hollywood."
· In a step toward reconciliation just prior to the ceremonies, Dudley Nichols accepted the Oscar® for The Informer's screenplay that he had turned down two years earlier.
· Self proclaimed "King of Comedy" Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Kops, was washed up and verging on bankruptcy by the time he received his Honorary Oscar® in 1938.
· At Louis B. Mayer's insistence, Greta Garbo reluctantly agreed to attend the Hollywood premiere of Camille. She wore pajamas under a fur coat. She waved to her fans, walked through the front door, and out the back without bothering to watch the film.
· Luise Rainer's marriage to playwright Clifford Odets ended after a shady therapist convinced Odets that sex would drain him of his creativity.