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

Humphrey Bogart won his one and only Academy Award at the 1951 awards ceremony, held March 20, 1952, at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. It obviously rattled the famous tough guy, who had gone to the ceremony, he told friends, expecting Marlon Brando to win. But the unexpected had always been a fascinating ingredient of the Academy Awards story. No matter what fortunetellers, Ouija boards and the crystal ball may predict, every year seems to produce a lively upset or two to make Oscar-watching especially interesting. Said Bogart when he received the best actor award for The African Queen, "It’s a long way from the Belgian Congo to the Pantages Theatre, but I’d rather be here than there."

Another major surprise occurred in 1951 when Ronald Colman opened the sealed envelope and announced the musical An American in Paris as the year’s best picture; only twice before had a musical been voted the Academy’s highest accolade (The Broadway Melody in 1928-29, The Great Ziegfeld in 1936). Most awards-watchers predicted one of two heavy dramas—either A Streetcar Named Desire or A Place in the Sun—would be honored. Even M-G-M, producers of the winning film, were caught off guard, and ran a whimsical trade advertisement afterwards which had a caricature if the studio’s Leo the Lion trademark, looking modestly at an Oscar statue, saying with some embarrassment, "Honestly I was just standing in the Sun waiting for A Streetcar."

Danny Kaye was M.C. for the program; it was produced by Arthur Freed, with Johnny Green as musical director (and a set designed by Mitchell Leisen). A Streetcar Named Desire became the first motion picture to win three awards for acting: Vivian Leigh was named the year’s best actress, Karl Malden was chosen best supporting actor and Kim Hunter was announced as best supporting actress. Miss Leigh was in New York, co-starring with husband Laurence Olivier in a stage production of Antony and Cleopatra and heard the news via radio.

Special Oscars were voted to Japan’s Rashomon as the outstanding foreign language film, and to Gene Kelly for his screen contributions to An American in Paris. Paris and A Place in the Sun tied for the most wins of the night, with six each. No one knew it at the time, but something else unexpected was about to happen: after this year, television cameras would be a permanent part of the Academy Awards story.

Best Picture: An American in Paris (M-G-M; produced by Arthur Freed). Exuberant moviemaking at its do-re-mi best, An American in Paris proved-if proof was needed-that nobody could make a musical quite like Hollywood, especially those artists in the prolific Arthur Freed unit at M-G-M. Vincente Minnelli directed, the score was wall-to-wall Gershwin, and Gene Kelly starred with 19-year-old Leslie Caron from the Ballet des Champs Elysses in Paris (right, in a portion of a 17 1/2-minute ballet sequence which climaxed the film). The cast included Oscar Levant, Nina Foch and George Guetary; the finale features 120 dancers working in settings and styles patterned after paintings of Paris by Utrillo, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, Renoir, Rousseau, and Van Gogh.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner Bros; directed by Elia Kazan) was based on the powerful play by Tennessee Williams and became the first motion picture to win three Academy Awards for acting, for (at left) Best Actress: Vivien Leigh as Blanche du Bois, Best Supporting Actress: Kim Hunter (next to Leigh) as Stella Kowalski, and Best Supporting Actor: Karl Malden (at right of Leigh, Hunter and Peg Hillias). It marked the second Oscar for Viven Leigh, this tine as a desperate, faded beauty who hides her sexual maladjustments beneath a coquettish and ladylike surface then clashes with the animal honesty of her brother-in-law, played by Marlon Brando. Kim Hunter played her sister; Malden, a would-be suitor.

Special Award: Rashomon (Japanese; produced by Jingo Minoura) received an Oscar statuette from the Board of Governors as the outstanding foreign language film released during 1952. It starred Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo and told the story of a bandit attack and rape from three individual viewpoints. In 1964, director Martin Ritt used Rashomon as the basis for The Outrage with Paul Newman and Claire Bloom.