Oscars: Season 1965, Episode 1

1965 - 1: The 37th Annual Academy Awards

The 37th Academy Awards were held on April 5, 1965, to honor film achievements of 1964. The ceremony was produced by MGM's Joe Pasternak and hosted, for the 14th time, by Bob Hope. The Best Picture winner, George Cukor's My Fair Lady, was an adaptation of a 1956 stage musical of the same name, which was itself based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which had been nominated for Best Picture in 1938. Audrey Hepburn was controversially not nominated for Best Actress for her starring role as Eliza Doolittle; the unpopularity of her replacing Julie Andrews – who had originated the role on Broadway – as well as the revelation that the majority of her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (which wasn't approved by Hepburn herself) were seen as the main reasons for the snub. The ceremony saw the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, William J. Tuttle for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, albeit as an Honorary Award; it would not become a competitive category until 1981. This year was the first in which three films received 10 or more nominations (repeated at the 50th and 92nd Academy Awards), and the only time in Oscar history that three films received 12 or more nominations: Becket and My Fair Lady each received 12, while Mary Poppins received 13.