The Oscars have been up to their neck in controversy the past few years, so much so that it may lead one to wonder how this esteemed organization has fallen from grace. What may surprise you is the Oscars are no stranger to controversy, with one of their most divisive events taking place nearly a century ago, in 1934.
The story starts with the release of It Happened One Night, a film adaptation of the short story “Night Bus,” by Samuel Adams. The film was directed by Frank Capra and co-stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.
The film is a romantic comedy about a wealthy heiress Ellen Andrews (played by Colbert) and her journey to reach her fiance, King Westley, despite her fathers objections. She runs away from her father and makes her way to New York to meet Westley, along the way meeting Peter Warne (played by Gable), a recently unemployed reporter whom she falls in love with over the course of the film.
It was very well received across the country, garnering praise from coast to coast for its depiction of the struggles of the working man during the Great Depression.
The second player in this story is Of Human Bondage, a film adaptation of the 1915 novel by William S. Maugham, directed by John Cromwell and starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.
The film is a drama about Philip Carey (played by Howard) and his infatuation for Mildred Rogers (played by Davis), who is cold and manipulative throughout the film.
It was also fairly well received, propelling Davis’s career. Her performance as Mildred Rogers was widely praised, leading to widespread outcry when the nominees for Best Actress that year were announced, and she was not among them.
The outcry was so widespread that it pushed the academy to allow write-in voting for the first of only two times in history, allowing those who were upset at the exclusion of Bette Davis to vote for her despite her lack of official nomination. Even Claudette Colbert believed that Bette Davis was going to win the award, leading to her boarding a train to New York at the time that the winners were to be announced.
As it turned out, however, Davis’s supporters were a vocal minority, as Colbert managed to win the award, with Davis coming in fourth.
Colbert, quite surprised to be informed of this, was rushed to accept the award and then returned to board her train. It Happened One Night won five awards that day, marking the first of only three times in history that a single film has won Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best (adapted or original) Screenplay.
