Another post-modern, information-age Academy Awards season… means another round of controversy and disqualifications for the potential contenders. Culprits so far this year include the disqualified score for The Dark Knight (bullshit) and disqualified documentary feature Young@Heart (makes more sense, but still a lame decision). Expect more to come between now and the nomination announcement in January. But, to help you kill time before the next annoying disqualification, Eric Snider has compiled his list of the Seven Outrageous Oscar Disqualifications from years past, including this unfortunate example:
2. Young Americans disqualified from Best Documentary category … after it already won. Whoops.
This is a sad case, and a unique one. The documentary, about the peppy Young Americans show choir, won the Oscar at the 1969 ceremony for being the best feature-length documentary of 1968. But a few weeks later, the Academy discovered that the film had screened at a theater in October 1967, making it eligible for that year’s awards and not for 1968. The Academy actually took back the Oscar statues from the filmmakers, Alex Grasshoff and Robert Cohn, and gave the award to the film that had been first runner-up. When Grasshoff died earlier this year, his widow told the Los Angeles Times how heartbroken he’d been. Can you imagine?
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