Following up on my last post, I got curious about something. When was the last time that no movie at the Academy Awards was nominated in more than six categories?
Wikipedia has a page listing all the films that have had ten nominations or more, and I am going to assume that none of those films had more than three redundant nominations — in other words, I am going to assume that all of them had the potential to win at least seven actual awards. And after checking the various pages for the remaining years at the IMDB, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is …
1935.
That’s right, you have to go back 72 years to find the last time that no film was nominated in more than six categories.
And the film which got the most nominations that year was One Night of Love (1934), which also received a “technical achievement award” which, arguably, boosts the number of awards for which it was eligible up to seven.
One can’t help wondering how many of this year’s nominees will be as, uh, well-remembered 72 years from now as this film is now.
And keep in mind that the first Academy Awards ceremony ever was in 1929. So you basically have to go back to the very beginning to find a year in which the Academy was so lacking — or, shall we say, so diffused — in its enthusiasm for any one movie.
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