This was simply the fifth Academy Awards. Plenty of trial and error was nonetheless happening to get to the Oscars we all know in the present day. This previous 12 months, 23 awards got out. Again in 1932, there have been simply 12. They’d no classes for modifying, music, costumes, or make-up. They hadn’t even cut up the appearing classes into lead and supporting but. Funnily sufficient, this 12 months noticed an enormous enhance within the variety of classes due to the introduction of three brief movie awards, so meaning function movies truly solely competed in 9. However that is not exactly true as a result of the Finest Sound class was awarded to a studio’s sound division and never a selected movie. Making issues even harder, there have been solely three nominees per class and never 5.
Besides one class noticed a serious enlargement in what number of movies have been nominated, and that was Finest Image, which grew from 5 nominees the earlier 12 months to eight. As a result of this class represented so many extra motion pictures than anyplace else on the ceremony, 4 of the Finest Image nominees have been utterly shut out elsewhere. Within the case of “Grand Resort,” a number of the snubs are comprehensible.
It is a giant, starry ensemble forged, and rallying round a efficiency to appoint proves troublesome when solely six actors get nominated with no differentiation between lead and supporting. For its tailored screenplay, William A. Drake, who wrote the play on which the movie relies, tailored his personal work, and although the movie obtained optimistic notices, it was usually thought to be a slight step down from what performed on Broadway. “Grand Resort” was a well-made, populist drama. Singling out particular superlatives is not what made it profitable. This was a movie emblematic of the phrase “higher than the sum of its elements.”