690 illustrations, 60 in full color 384 pages • 9 x 12" • Hardcover ISBN 0-7892-0484-3 • $65.00

A tie occurred for the first time at the 1931-32 awards ceremony, honoring films released between August 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932 in the Los Angeles area. Academy rules stated that duplicate awards were to be given when any contender came within three votes of a winner on the final ballot, and Wallace Beery, for his performance in The Champ, received only one less vote than Frederic March who starred in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so both officially shared recognition as the year’s best actor. Later, rules were changed so that a tie is declared only when nominees receive the exact same number of final votes.

The banquet was held November 18, 1932, in the Ambassador Hotel’s Fiesta Room, just eight days after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election as the thirty-second president of the Unites States in a landslide victory. The previous year’s best actor winner, Lionel Barrymore, was master of ceremonies, and the most honored films were The Champ and Bad Girl with two awards each. Grand Hotel was named best picture, Helen Hayes was best actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet, and Frank Borzage won his second award as director, for Bad Girl. The awards categories themselves had increased to a total of ten, with the addition of a new division honoring short subjects and won by Walt Disney to his cartoon Flowers and Trees. Disney also was given an honorary award for his creation of Mickey Mouse and, during his lifetime, was destined to win more Academy Awards than any other individual.

The year caused two particularly interesting happenings. The Academy, attempting to stimulate excellence in motion picture achievements from all countries and sources, had previously welcomed non-Hollywood product in its awards lists. However, some voters had been disturbed that the preceding year Tabu, filmed in the South Seas by the late German director F.W. Murnau, had received the Academy’s cinematography award over a home-town achievement. The Academy was asked to qualify the requirements for its 1931-1932 cinematography awards to read, "for the best achievement in cinematography of a black-and-white picture photographed in America under normal production conditions." (The 1931-32 nomination for the French-made A Nous La Liberte in the art direction category caused a similar qualification in 1932-33). In later years, however, as industry sentiments matured, the Academy again showed its respect for foreign-made films by according them equal status with domestic product.

The Frederic March-Wallace Beery tie also triggered the first of many "quotable quotes" given by Academy winners throughout the years. By coincidence, both actors had adopted children shortly before winning their awards. "Under the circumstances," said Mr. March during his acceptance speech, "it seems a little odd that Wally and I were both given awards for the best male performance of the year."

	Shanghai Express (Paramount), starred Marlene Dietrich and Clive Brook (left) as two passengers on a train journey to Shanghai, amid rebel unrest in China, sharing secrets and staterooms with the likes of Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette and others. It won an Academy Award for Lee Garmes’ atmospheric cinematography; Garmes had also photographed Miss Dietrich’s two previous American-made films, Morocco and Dishonored.
	Best Director: Frank Borzage for Bad Girl (Fox) starring Sally Eilers and James Dunn (left). Strangely mistitled, Bad Girl covered a year in the life of a likeable fellow and girl, from their first meeting, through marriage, to the birth of a son, set against the background of a New York tenement life.
	A new category, honoring short subjects, was inaugurated with the 1931-32 awards, with the award for the Best Comedy Short going to Hal Roach’s The Music Box starring Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel (right), a hilarious featurette in which the indefatigable comedy team battled the challenge of delivering a piano up a seemingly endless flight of Los Angeles hillside stairs. Ironically, for all the timeless comedy delivered on screen by Laurel and Hardy, this was their only movie which went on to receive an Academy award.