The 37th Academy Awards honored film achievements of 1964. For the first time, an award was presented in the field of makeup. All four acting awards went to non-American actors, something not repeated until the 80th Academy Awards were awarded for 2007.
The Best Picture winner of 1964, director George Cukor's My Fair Lady, was about the transformative training of a rough-speaking flower girl into a lady. The musical had run for many years on the stage (in both NYC and London). Audrey Hepburn, the female lead of the film, was controversially not nominated for Best Actress. The unpopularity of her replacement of Julie Andrews - the stage actress from the original play (and ironically the Best Actress winner of the year) - as well as the revelation that her singing performance was dubbed by Marni Nixon were seen as the main reasons for the snub.
The producer of the ceremony was MGM film producer Joe Pasternak. Bob Hope served as master of ceremonies. The awards show was star-studded with many top celebrities participating, including an appearance by Judy Garland, who sang a medley of Cole Porter songs in tribute to the composer who died in October, 1964.
This year marked the only time in Oscar history where 3 films got 12 or more nominations. Becket and My Fair Lady both with 12 nominations and Mary Poppins with 13.
Read more about 37th Academy Awards: Awards
Famous quotes containing the word academy:
“When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)