Remember in the mid-1990s when Academy Awards were given for the Best Original Musical or Comedy Score? Or maybe some of you recall that A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won an Oscar for Best Score-Adaptation or Treatment. Can you name the last film to win the award for Best B&W Cinematography? If these categories sound odd or unfamiliar, it’s because they don’t exist anymore. Keeping in the spirit of this week’s blogathon related to the Academy Awards, I thought I would take a look at categories that have been retired or radically changed. 

Once I started poking around the topic, I was surprised at how many changes there have been since the awards were created in 1927. Almost every year, the Academy has tweaked the rules, and every few years, there have been notable category adjustments. The category changes often parallel transformations in technology but sometimes they were the result of trends or fads that reveal something about film history. Not surprisingly, the latter category changes have been the least successful.

THE TRAVELING MINSTRELS FROM CAT BALLOU.

In 1969, the award went to the score for Hello Dolly, which was a much-maligned big- budget flop that year. At the time, a lot of press was generated about the irrelevancy of lavish, old-fashioned musicals in the face of the New Hollywood. Not surprisingly, the category for Best Score-Adaptation or Treatment was retired that year. (“Retired” is the word used by the Academy for the discarding of a category, as though it were a revered institution being honored for its worthiness. Instead, “retired” categories are merely tossed aside and forgotten.)

THE FULL MONTY WON FOR BEST SCORE FOR COMEDY OR MUSICAL.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS WON FOR ITS B&W CINEMATOGRAPHY.

Four years after this category was retired, the category for Best Animated Feature was adopted, with Shrek winning the first award. Any charm this film had for me, which was minimal, has been completely obliterated by endless sequels, pointing to the problem with this category. As with the Best Original Music or Comedy Score, there aren’t enough films to make up a worthy list of nominees. As much as I like animated features, I predict this category will be retired for this reason. Quick, let’s retire it before another Shrek is in development. 

From 1939 through 1966, Best Cinematography included separate awards for black and white and color films. (The exception was the year 1957 when only a color award was given. It went to Bridge over the River Kwai.)  The cinematography and editing categories are my favorites, because I think command of the visual language of cinema by the director and his cinematographer and his editor makes or breaks a film. Anyone with an affection for classic movies has a soft spot for black and white cinematography, and it was fun to peruse the list of winners and nominees in the B&W subcategory. The legendary Gregg Toland won in 1939 for Wuthering Heights but did not win two years later for Citizen Kane, which is now a textbook film on understanding how filmmaking techniques serve the material. During the time frame of the separate awards, Arthur C. Miller won the most awards for B&W cinematography, winning three for How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, and Anna and the King of Siam. Landmark black and white films that either broke new ground or were exquisite examples of standard Hollywood cinematography were awarded Oscars, including On the Waterfront, The Third Man, Great Expectations, Laura, and The Naked City. 

The last award for black-and-white cinematography went to Haskell Wexler for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, so this category went out with a bang not a whimper. Wexler’s documentary approach to the cinematography, with its unforgiving, unglamorous lighting, was the perfect choice to bring out the harsh side to the material. In a documentary about Hollywood cinematography called Visions of Light, Wexler admitted that some were skeptical about this stylistic decision, especially Richard Burton, who feared the documentary-style lighting would show his pock-marked cheeks. It did, but his performance was so riveting that I don’t think many noticed.

VIRGINIA WOOLF WAS THE LAST OSCAR WINNER FOR B&W CINEMATOGRAPHY.

The nominees for color films during this time frame made stunning use of Technicolor’s saturated colors and the high-key lighting necessary to bring them out. During the era of the separate cinematography awards, Leon Shamroy received the most awards for color, winning four for The Black Swan, Wilson, Leave Her to Heaven, and Cleopatra. The latter was a surprise considering the film’s reputation as an expensive flop. I have never been able to get through the whole film before zoning out and turning the channel, but the visual splendor of Shamroy’s work probably comes through much better on the big screen. Now that I know this, I will check out the film if I ever get a chance to see it in a theater. 

A LOSER AT THE BOX OFFICE BUT AN OSCAR-WINNER FOR COLOR CINEMATOGRAPHY.

 Best Motion Picture Story was one of the original categories established when the awards were created in 1927. Though the category name was changed, the category itself lasted off and on for 29 years before being permanently retired after the 1956 awards. Trying to acknowledge the difference between an original screenplay and an adaptation seems to have long confused the Academy. Back in 1927, the writing categories began as Adaptation and Original Story; then they were reduced to only Writing. By 1931, they were expanded to Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay. In 1937, Original Story once again replaced Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay became simply Screenplay, but three years later, the writing awards were further expanded to Original Story, Original Screenplay, and Screenplay.

 Confused? Well, we’re not through yet. In 1948, the writing awards were reduced to Screenplay and Motion Picture Story (as opposed to what? A radio story?) Still not satisfied, the Academy adjusted these categories the following year to Motion Picture Story, Screenplay, and a new category called Story and Screenplay. No kidding!  Battleground was the first film to win in the Story and Screenplay category, which was actually the new name for “original screenplay.” If you are confused by this, then so were Academy members. In 1956, for example, High Society was nominated for Original Screenplay even though it was an adaptation of The Philadelphia Story, which was itself adapted from a play. The award for Original Screenplay went to The Red Balloon, which has no dialogue. Finally in 1957, the writing categories became the now familiar Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay. No wonder screenwriters have always had a chip on their shoulders. 

THE FIRST WINNER FOR BEST STORY AND SCREENPLAY.

The short film categories have also gone through a lot of changes, reflecting trends and transformations in movie exhibition. At one time there were three short-film categories, Cartoon, Comedy, and Novelty, revealing the importance of comedy shorts in the industry. I wish this were still true. How great it would be to see a comedy short such as Laurel and Hardy’s Oscar-winning The Music Box before a feature film instead of the endless commercials that we have now. Later, the shorts became Cartoon, One Reel, and Two Reel. Disney dominated the Cartoon category, with such shorts as Three Little Pigs, Ferdinand the Bull, and Flowers and Trees all winning Oscars for Uncle Walt.

Also interesting to me were the categories that were proposed but not adopted. Some of these seem more viable to me than Best Animated Feature or Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. A Best Stunt Coordinator has been proposed twice, in 1999 and 2005, which seems a logical addition to me. But with all the computer-generated imagery doing most of the stunt work these days, perhaps this is a category past its time. Too bad, because I admire all of the legendary stuntmen — Yakima Canutt, Dar Robinson, Bud Ekins, Jackie Chan — and computer-enhanced stunts are neither exciting nor realistic.  I remember watching the flying sequences in the first Spiderman movie and wondering what all of the raving was about. They looked so flat and two-dimensional to me. Computer-generated or computer-enhanced stunts are only eye candy for adolescents who have numbed their sense of adventure with video games. Give me Jackie Chan any day! 

Best Title Design and Best Casting were also proposed and rejected in 1999. While the former is intriguing, because everyone loves a clever title sequence, the latter seems a self-serving category for casting directors that is irrelevant to many small-budget indie films that don’t use one.

 Other additions or changes have occurred since the creation of the Academy Awards, but I wanted to focus mainly on the retired categories. In analyzing the additions and deletions of awards, I discovered how the awards can reflect the trends and technological changes of the industry. 

Academy Awards website. www.oscars.com. 

Harkness, John. The Academy Awards Handbook. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1994. 

Shale, Richard. Academy Awards. New York: Frederick Unger Pub., 1982.