RULE CHANGES
· First year of Awards for Costume Design
· Original Screenplay category dropped.
· "Original Story" becomes "Motion Picture Story."

ROLE REVERSALS
The Red Shoes was originally written as a star vehicle for Merle Oberon.

SINS OF OMISSION
Picture: Portrait of Jennie, Red River
Actor: Humphrey Bogart - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, John Wayne - Red River
Supporting Actor: Montgomery Clift - Red River, Edward G. Robinson - Key Largo
Supporting Actress: Coleen Grey - Red River
Song: "It's a Most Unusual Day," "A Couple of Swells," "Steppin' Out with My Baby"

ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID... Barbara Stanwyck kept her sense of humor despite her fourth loss. "If I get nominated next year, they'll have to give me the door prize, won't they?" she joked. She wasn't, and they didn't.

UNMENTIONABLES
· Academy president Jean Hersholt was livid at the studios' pulling their money out of the show and threatened to resign. He agreed to continue if the Academy would find a new president to take office immediately after the ceremonies.
· Due to budget constraints, the ceremony was moved from the 6,700-seat Shrine Auditorium to the 950-seat screening theater at the Academy.
· In a rare event for Los Angeles, it snowed on Oscar® Night.
· Jane Wyman had the sympathy vote going in: Before filming began on Johnny Belinda, she had lost her premature baby, and, by the time the production was over, she and husband Ronald Reagan were divorcing. Reagan was devastated. "I think I'll name Johnny Belinda co-respondent," he quipped.
· In his opening remarks, Jean Hersholt told the audience that his successor in office would be screenwriter/producer Charles Brackett.
· Edith Head was convinced she would win the Academy's first Award for Costume Design. "There was no doubt in my mind I would win that Oscar," she recounted in her memoirs. "I deserved it -- for longevity if nothing else. I had been doing motion pictures before the Oscar even existed... To my mind there was no way Ingrid Bergman's sackcloths and suits of armor could win over my Viennese finery." Academy voters were of a different mind.
· At the podium, John Huston lifted his Best Director statuette in the direction of his producer, saying, "If this were hollow and had a drink in it, I'd toast Henry Blanke."
· Jane Wyman's acceptance speech was short and sweet: "I accept this very gratefully for keeping my mouth shut for once. I think I'll do it again."
· Presenter Ethel Barrymore announced the Best Picture winner with noticeable distaste. She had publicly criticized Olivier's filmed Hamlet for not being on par with her brother John's stage production.
· Special Award winner Walter Wanger began advertising Joan of Arc as the "Academy Special Award Picture" until the Board of Governors told him to cut it out because it was he, not his movie, that had been honored.
· Wanger's losses on Joan of Arc eventually forced him into bankruptcy and, even worse, into signing a 3-picture deal with Monogram. Two years later Wanger became embroiled in a Hollywood scandal when, convinced that wife Joan Bennett was cheating on him, he shot her agent and supposed paramour, Jennings Lang, in a Beverly Hills parking lot in broad daylight.
· Hersholt waited until after the ceremony to reveal publicly that the Big Five studios had withdrawn their support for the Academy. Three smaller studios -- Universal-International, Republic and Columbia -- then announced that they, too, were pulling out. One Columbia exec told the press, "Columbia, for the past few years, never thought the Academy officials handled the Awards presentations in the right manner. It looks to us as if the Academy Awards is going to fold."
· But cooler heads prevailed, and the trade papers shamed the studios back into funding the Awards.