29th Academy Awards

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29th Academy Awards
Date	27 March 1957
Site	RKO Pantages Theatre, Los Angeles, California, USA, NBC Century Theatre, New York, USA
Host	Jerry Lewis

During the 29th Academy Awards, the regular competitive category of Best Foreign Language film was introduced, instead of only being recognized as a special achievement Honorary Award or as a Best Picture nominee (as in 1938). The first winner in this new category was Federico Fellini's La Strada with Anthony Quinn and a second nomination for Original Screenplay. Its win would help to create an interest in foreign-language films - with subtitles. Another Fellini film, The Nights of Cabiria (1957) would win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the following year.

This was also the first year that all of the five Best Picture nominees were in color.

Another possible trend, signaled by the victory of Marty (1955), toward simpler, shorter, intimate dramas, did not occur again in 1956. Instead, there was the splashy emergence of wide-scale, expensive super-epics (colorful dramas, musicals, comedies, and costume pieces) all at least two hours long - mostly to compete with the resurgence of television.

All of the major awards winners were gigantic - Mike Todd's Around the World in 80 Days, The King and I, Anastasia, Giant, De Mille's The Ten Commandments - the highest grossing film of the year, King Vidor's War and Peace, and Wyler's Friendly Persuasion. [And the trend toward blockbusters and colorful spectaculars was established for years to come. The next three Best Picture winners proved the point: The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957), Gigi (1958), and Ben-Hur (1959).

The Best Original Story category had two interesting quirks this year. First, the Oscar for Best Original Story went to Robert Rich a.k.a. Dalton Trumbo for The Brave One. Trumbo was blacklisted at the time so he could not get screen credit under his own name. Second, Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman withdrew their names from consideration in this category for their work on High Society. The nomination was apparently intended for the musical starring Grace Kelly, but Bernds and Ullman had instead worked on a Bowery Boys movie of the same title. Indeed, this nomination was a double mistake. High Society was based on the play and movie The Philadelphia Story and probably would not have qualified as an original story anyway.