Held on April 3, 1930, the Second Annual Oscars award ceremony was held at the Cocoanut Grove lounge at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The awards ceremony honored achievements in films released from August 2, 1928 and July 31, 1929. The event was hosted by director William C. DeMille, the older brother of Cecil B. DeMille who co-hosted the Academy Awards the year before with actor Douglas Fairbanks.
The 1930 Academy Awards had several new elements, particularly in the handling of the nominations. The nominees were not announced ahead of time and instead read aloud just before the winner of each award was named.
The 1930 Best Picture Oscar
The winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture in April 1930 was The Broadway Melody, an MGM film directed by Harry Beaumont. The film tells the story of sisters Harriet "Hank" (Bessie) and Queenie (Anita Page) Mahoney who perform in a vaudeville act together. The pair accepts a part in a Broadway show and head to New York, where matters become complicated by the affections of two men, Eddie Keans (Charles King) and Jock Warriner (Kenneth Thompson.) The musical film featured the song "You Were Meant for Me" and "Give My Regards to Broadway."
The other nominees for the April 1930 Best Picture Academy Award were Alibi, directed by Roland West; In Old Arizona, directed by Irving Cummings; The Hollywood Revue of 1929, directed by Charles Reisner and The Patriot, directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
Best Actor Academy Awards in 1930
Actor Warner Baxter received the Best Actor Oscar in April 1930 for playing the bandit The Cisco Kid in the film In Old Arizona. Set in the wild West, the movie was based on a novel by O. Henry and revolved around a romance between The Cisco Kid and a woman in an Arizona town named Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess).
The other nominees in the category for the Best Actor Academy Award were Chester Morris for the film Alibi,
Lewis Stone for The Patriot, Paul Muni for The Valiant and George Bancroft for Thunderbolt.
The April 1930 Best Actress Oscar and the Mary Pickford Controversy
The winner of the Best Actress Academy Award in April 1930 was Mary Pickford for The Coquette. In the film, Pickford played a flirtatious Southern belle named Norma Besant whose father (John St. Polis) goes to great lengths to keep from her favored-suitor Michael Jeffery (Johnny Mack Brown). The award made Pickford the first winner of an Academy Award born outside the United States as the actress was born in Toronto, Canada.
Other nominees for the Best Actress Oscar were Bessie Love for the film The Broadway Melody, Ruther Chatterton for Madame X, Betty Compson for The Barker, Corinne Griffin for The Divine Lady and Jean Eagels for The Letter.
Mary Pickford's win proved controversial as many felt the award was more deserved by Love. At the time, rumors spread that Pickford won only because her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, had once been President of the Academy. In 2007, controversy surrounded Pickford's Oscar once more when the Academy sued the current owners of Pickford's statuette for trying to sell it. After a jury trial, the sale was ultimately blocked.
Academy Award for Best Director 1930
Not only did the Academy grant director Frank Lloyd the Best Directing Oscar in April 1930 for the movie The Divine Lady, they also gave him nominations for directing the films Drag and Weary River as well. The film that gave Lloyd the win was the historical fiction film about real-life British navy officer Admiral Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi).
Other nominees in the category included Irving Cummings for In Old Arizona, Lionel Barrymore for Madame X, Harry Beaumont for The Broadway Melody and Ernst Lubitsch for Weary River.
Summary of the 1930 Oscars
There are a number of important bits of trivia about the April 1930 Academy Awards, including:
- Categories were reduced from 12 to 7.
- Nominees were not announced prior to the ceremony.
- No film received more than one Academy Award, which has never happened since.
- The winner for Best Picture did not win any other awards, which has also never happened since.
- The awards were broadcast for the first time.
- Mary Pickford became the first foreign-born winner of the Best Actress Academy Award.
- A second awards took place later in 1930, making it the only calendar year that the Oscars were held twice.
Overall, In Old Arizona and The Patriot received the most Oscar nominations of the evening with five a piece. The Patriot won the Academy Award for Best Writing that evening.
Hayley Harrison - Hayley Harrison is a 2003 Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to courses in fiction and nonfiction writing, ...
