17. The 1937 movie "The Life of Emile Zola" won the Best Picture Oscar ahead of - I won't lie to you - a sparkling comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. What was that movie called?
From Quiz Best Picture Winners and Some They Beat: 1935-1964
Answer:
The Awful Truth
"The Life of Emile Zola" was a film biography of the great nineteenth century French novelist and campaigner. Paul Muni played the title role and the movie was directed by William Dieterle. It told the story of Zola's life from struggling in a garret with Paul Cezanne, through to his hard-hitting stories of the underbelly of French society. It featured Zola's brave campaign to clear the name of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, who had been convicted of treason and imprisoned on Devil's Island. Despite this being a notorious example in the history of antisemitism, it is noticeable that no reference was made to Dreyfus's Jewishness in the movie.
"The Awful Truth" is a screwball comedy about a married couple set on divorce due to mutual distrust, who proceed to sabotage each other's attempts to find romance elsewhere, and end up reconciling in the nick of time. Director Leo McCarey won an Academy Award. Irene Dunne, some say Grant's best movie partner, with whom he made two further movies, as the wife, and Ralph Bellamy as her new love interest, were both nominated for Oscars. Cary Grant, the husband, missed out on Academy recognition. Mind you, the competition that year was fierce: Spencer Tracy ("Captains Courageous") won ahead of Paul Muni ("The Life of Emile Zola"), Fredric March ("A Star Is Born"), Charles Boyer ("Conquest") and Robert Montgomery ("Night Must Fall").
Other 1937 Best Picture nominations included: "Lost Horizon" and "A Star is Born".