Best Picture: It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night also won Academy Awards for Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), Directing (Frank Capra), and Writing – Adaptation (Robert Riskin)
The Academy was bombarded with protests when the nominees were announced; it was the first time there had been such a negative reaction to the selections.
People were upset that Bette Davis and Myrna Loy had not been chosen as candidates for Best Actress.
On January 16, 1935, the Academy announced that voters could disregard the printed ballot and write in any name.
Music was honored for the first time in two categories: Scoring and Song.
An award for film editing was also inaugurated.
On January 7, 1934, the first Flash Gordon comic strip was published.
In May 1934, the first Three Stooges short, Woman Haters, was released.
On May 23, 1934, a team of police officers, led by former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, ambushed bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow near Gibsland, Louisiana, killing them both.
On May 28, 1934, the Dionne Quintuplets were born in Ontario, Canada and became the first known surviving quintuplets.
On July 22, 1934, Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger was mortally wounded by FBI agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
On August 2, 1934, Adolf Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany, thereby becoming head of state as well as chancellor.
In August 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived on Alcatraz, which previously had been a military prison.
On December 25, 1934, actor Lionel Barrymore began what would become an annual tradition of the Golden Age of Radio – playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in dramatizations of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
Special Award
To Shirley Temple, in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934.