Ranking All The Movies Nominated At The 18th Academy Awards In 1946
“What are the best movies nominated for the 18th Academy Awards in 1946?” We looked at all 84 movies nominated for an Oscar in 1946 and ranked them again one another to answer that very question!
We took all 84 movies that were nominated for an Academy Award in 1946 and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked on our list below, with the full chart of rankings included at the bottom of the page. We did not use Metacritic scores because of the lack of data for older movies on that site. Metacritic scores will be included when we do rankings for other years in the future.
If you want to see the rankings for additional years you can visit our Academy Award Rankings page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top 1946 Academy Award Movie Rankings
82 Tie ) Along the Rainbow Trail
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
This 1946 entry in the “Movietone Adventures” series of shorts was in Technicolor when originally released. Narrated by Lowell Thomas, it is a trip from Medicine Hat in southern Utah down the rapids of the San Juan River ending with a view of the Rainbow Bridge, hence the title and the use of Tehnicolor.
82 Tie ) White Rhapsody
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
1945 film nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Short Subject, One-reel.
82 Tie ) Your National Gallery
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
1945 film nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Short Subject: One-reel.
80 Tie ) Hitchhike to Happiness
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
In this drama, an aspiring playwright gets a job in a New York City restaurant favored by celebrities in hopes of getting a break. Unfortunately, most of them believe that the waiter lacks the talent to make it big. Only an aspiring songwriter, and a former waitress who has become a famous Hollywood radio star, really believe in him. When the ex-waitress drops by the restaurant to say hello, she and the others decide to play a trick on an arrogant producer by making him believe the waiter has written a sure-fire hit. They succeed and the producer puts on the show. The singer gets to be the star. When the show becomes a smash, everyone is surprised. Songs include: “Hitchhike To Happiness,” “For You And Me,” “Sentimental,” and “My Pushover Heart.”
80 Tie ) Sing Your Way Home
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
In this musical comedy, an arrogant war journalist is sailing back to the Big Apple after the end of WW II. En route, he has been assigned to watch over a band of teenagers who were trapped in Europe four years ago while entertaining the troops. Their entrapment has done nothing to dim their enthusiasm for performing and while waiting for passage the crews entertain everyone at every opportunity. Songs include: “I’ll Buy That Dream” (sung by Anne Jeffreys), “Heaven Is a Place Called Home,” “Seven O’Clock in the Morning (Waking up Boogie),” “Somebody Stole My Poor Little Heart” (Herb Magidson, Allie Wrubel), and “The Lord’s Prayer” (arranged by Albert Hay Malotte).
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79 ) Rippling Romance
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
Oscar nominated 1945 Short Cartoon
78 ) Hitler Lives
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects (Win)
This short, produced at the end of WWII, warns that although Adolf Hitler is dead, his ideas live on in the German people. The world must stay ever vigilant, so that Germany cannot make war against the world again. We must not be duped by Germany, as we were in the past, to believe that it is a peace-loving nation. The USA must also be on guard against those in America who sympathized with Germany and preach race hatred and violence in this country. The film uses dramatized footage interspersed with historical footage and newsreels.
77 ) Three Is a Family
Nominated For:
- Best Sound, Recording
Based on a play by Phoebe and Henry Ephron, Three Is a Family is a 1940s farce that frequently substitutes noise for humor. Charlie Ruggles plays a hubby whose bungled business schemes force his wife Fay Bainter to enter the workplace. The couple’s daughter Marjorie Reynolds shows up with her twin babies in tow. Son Arthur Lake arrives with his pregnant wife (Jeff Donnell). And overbearing maiden aunt Helen Broderick also decides to move in. Because his wife is away at work, poor old Charlie Ruggles is not only housekeeper, but nursemaid and servant as well. If you like diaper and bottle-warmer jokes, you’ll love Three is a Family.
75 Tie ) Belle of the Yukon
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
Left by a con man (Randolph Scott), a dancer (Gypsy Rose Lee) finds him in gold-rush Alaska running an honest casino/dance hall.
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75 Tie ) Earl Carroll Vanities
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies. Carroll’s annual “Vanities” provided story material for three Hollywood films: Murder at the Vanities (34), A Night at Earl Carroll’s (40) and Earl Carroll Vanities (45). This last film was produced by Republic Pictures, a bread-and-butter studio specializing in Westerns and serials; Republic had made musicals before, but few of them were expensive enough to allow for lavish production numbers. Earl Carroll Vanities is likewise rather threadbare, though some of the individual musical highlights aren’t bad. The plot, such as it is, concerns financially strapped nightclub owner Eve Arden, who finagles Earl Carroll into staging one of his revues at her club.
74 ) Why Girls Leave Home
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
In this crime drama a young woman leaves her unhappy life at home to become a sophisticated night club singer. Her first job is nearly fatal when she entangles herself with the mobsters who own the joint and learns too much about their operation. Her boss decides to kill her and make it look like suicide. An intrepid reporter disbelieves the report and exposes the truth to the public.
72 Tie ) The Man Who Walked Alone
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
In this comedy drama a war hero returns home following a medical discharge and ends up entangled with a young woman speeding away from her wedding day in her fiance’s car. Seeing the soldier, she gives him a ride and explains her predicament. Things get sticky when the cops capture them and accuse the soldier of desertion. Fortunately, the truth comes out by the story’s end.
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72 Tie ) What Next, Corporal Hargrove?
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay
An Army corporal (Robert Walker) and his con-man sidekick (Keenan Wynn) take a shortcut to heroism in World War II France.
71 ) Jasper and the Beanstalk
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
The Scarecrow trades Jasper a handful of beans for his harmonica. Jasper plants the beans and climbs up the resulting beanstalk and, at the top, finds a beautiful girl in a golden cage playing a golden harp. Jasper rescues her from the Scarecrow, brings her down the beanstalk, and spends the rest of his days dancing to the music his girlfriend plays on the harp.
68 Tie ) Captain Eddie
Nominated For:
- Best Effects, Special Effects
WWI flyer Eddie Rickenbaker remembers his life which brought him from a car salesman, race driver and pilot in WWI, to an important person in the early years of civil airline service, after his plane crashed in the South Pacific in late 1942.
68 Tie ) The Poet & Peasant
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
Andy Panda conducts the “Hollywood Washbowl Orchestra” (an ensemble of farm animals, on a farm) in the title tune. After Andy removes a frog from under his wig, he begins. All is well until his shirt gets stuck on a nail; while he’s fighting it, the orchestra breaks into a swinging tune. Back under control, a talkative squirrel in the audience annoys the pig sitting next to him; the pig zips the squirrel’s mouth shut. A bird lands on Andy’s baton; he waves it, and 2, 3, 4, and 5 birds appear (apparently, his baton’s become a magic wand). He waves some more, and the birds disappear one by one, finally replaced with a very happy cat. Two ducks dance as ballerinas; then one fox and one duck, but the second duck is not as easily captured.
68 Tie ) The Unseen
Nominated For:
- Best Sound, Recording
A nanny taking care of two kids discover secrets hidden in an old spooky house in their neighborhood.
67 ) Sunbonnet Sue
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
Set in New York’s Lower East Side during the Gay ’90s, this lively low-budget musical follows the exploits of a feisty and talented saloon owner’s daughter who loves nothing more than to perform in her father’s tavern. Her late-night shenanigans appall her wealthy and socially conscious aunt who launches a secret campaign to shut down the bar and force her niece to reside in her palatial home.
66 ) Story of a Dog
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
We watch the life of a Coast Guard dog, from the dog’s point of view, from induction to graduation and then into a jungle to hunt for an enemy sniper. To pass muster, dogs must be of a certain size, then they go through basic training, canine calisthenics, carrying and leaping, attacking and assisting escapes, self-possession under gunfire, and working with various handlers. The handlers, too, learn skills. After graduation, the dog is ready for duty in a jungle across the Pacific. The dog’s keen eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell make it an ideal warrior.
62 Tie ) A Thousand and One Nights
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
- Best Effects, Special Effects
On the run after being found sweet-talking the Sultan’s daughter, Aladdin comes upon a lamp which, when rubbed, summons up Babs the genie. He uses it to return as a visiting prince asking for the princess’s hand. Unfortunately for him, the sultan’s wicked twin brother has secretly usurped the throne, someone else is after the lamp for his own ends, and Babs has taken a shine to Aladdin herself and is bent on wrecking his endeavours.
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62 Tie ) Blood on the Sun
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White (Win)
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 1945 Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.
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62 Tie ) Screen Snapshots Series 25, No. 1: 25th Anniversary
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
A look back at 25 years of Columbia’s series of newsreels chronicling the film industry and the lives of Hollywood stars. Clips from earlier films in the series are featured, along with a montage of film greats who have passed away in the intervening years.
62 Tie ) Stairway to Light
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel (Win)
The story of 18th Century French physician Dr. Phillipe Pinel, whose initiated enlightened, humane treatment of the mentally ill.
57 Tie ) Frenchman’s Creek
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color (Win)
An English lady falls madly in love with a French Pirate after he kidnaps her from her ancestral home on the coast of Cornwall.
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57 Tie ) Guest in the House
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Evelyn (Anne Baxter), an emotionally vulnerable and unstable woman, stays at the home of her doctor Dan Proctor (Scott McKay). There she meets and falls in love with his brother, Douglas (Ralph Bellamy), who is happily married to Ann (Ruth Warrick). Evelyn then sets forth to break up the happy marriage and win the love of Douglas — with tragic results.
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57 Tie ) Gypsy Life
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
A Gypsy caravan travels across the countrieside. One night, as the Gypsy princess performs a dance, a bat-cat spies on the camp, flies back to his cave, and informs his colony, or whatever you call a group of bats. Anyway, they fly out, invade the camp and capture the Gypsies. The princess calls Mighty Mouse, who defeats the bats and wins the princess’s heart.
57 Tie ) Library of Congress
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects
1945 Oscar nominated short documentary about the Library Of Congress
57 Tie ) This Love of Ours
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
At a convention, medical researcher Michel Touzac goes with colleagues to see stage caricaturist Targel, whose assistant Florence recognizes him…and attempts suicide. Saved by Touzac’s new technique, Florence is revealed in a flashback as Michel’s abandoned wife Karin, whom their daughter Susette thinks is dead. Can Susette cope if they now re-unite?
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53 Tie ) G.I. Honeymoon
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
In this romantic comedy, set during WW II, an newlywed army couple are unable to consummate their marriage, as on their wedding night the husband is called away to sentry duty. Later they try again, but as he has just completed a 37-mile hike, he finds himself too tired to work up any enthusiasm for conjugal bliss. Fortunately, the bride’s understanding aunt intervenes with the young man’s colonel and the frustrated couple is at last able to share a night of love.
53 Tie ) Marie-Louise
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay (Win)
The titular Marie-Louise is a young French lass who is evacuated to Switzerland when her country is overrun by the Nazis. Suffering a nervous breakdown, she is given comfort and shelter by a wealthy family. Unfortunately, living in the lap of luxury turns Marie-Louise into a spoiled brat, so much so that she refuses to return to her newly-liberated homeland. Eventually the girl comes to her senses, but it isn’t easy.
53 Tie ) The Last Bomb
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Features
Documentary of the planning and delivery of the last great bomber attack on the city of Tokyo by the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.
53 Tie ) To the Shores of Iwo Jima
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects
Documentary short film depicting the American assault on the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima and the massive battle that raged on that key island in the Allied advance on Japan. Four cameramen died bringing this footage to the public
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52 ) Paris Underground
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Constance Bennett both produced and starred in the espionager Paris Underground. Bennett and Gracie Fields play, respectively, an American and an English citizen trapped in Paris when the Nazis invade. The women team up to help Allied aviators escape from the occupied city into Free French territory. The screenplay was based on the true wartime activities of Etta Shiber, who engineered the escape of nearly 300 Allied pilots. British fans of comedienne Gracie Fields were put off by the scenes in which she is tortured by the Gestapo, while Constance Bennett’s following had been rapidly dwindling since the 1930s; as a result, the heartfelt but tiresome Paris Underground failed to make a dent at the box-office. It would be Constance Bennett’s last starring film–and Gracie Fields’ last film, period.
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51 ) Tonight and Every Night
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
An American girl falls for an RAF pilot while performing at a British music hall.
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50 ) Guest Wife
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Christopher Price, a small-town bank executive, continues to be loyal to and idolize his boyhood friend, Joseph Jefferson Parker, a famous war correspondent. But Chris’s wife, Mary, is none to fond of Joe and tired of her husband’s idolizing. On the eve of the Price’s second-honeymoon trip to New York City, Joe arrives and tells Chris that he needs someone to pose as his wife in order to fool his boss in NYC, who thinks Joe got married to an overseas woman while on an assignment. Chris pushes Mary into posing as Joe’s wife. In New York, this leads to many complications and misunderstandings, with Mary finally deciding to teach Chris and Joe a lesson by making them believe she is in love with Joe.
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47 Tie ) A Medal for Benny
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Writing, Original Story
Benny’s girl friend (Dorothy Lamour) is being romanced by the town ne’er do well (Arturo de Cordova) who keeps coming up with get-rich-quick schemes. Benny’s father (J. Carrol Naish in an Oscar-nominated performance) is a simple man who is bewildered by the world at large.
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47 Tie ) Salty O’Rourke
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay
A gambler (Alan Ladd) and his buddy (William Demarest) find a wise-guy jockey for their long-shot horse.
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47 Tie ) The Spanish Main
Nominated For:
- Best Cinematography, Color
Laurent van Horn is the leader of a band of Dutch refugees on a ship seeking freedom in the Carolinas, when the ship is wrecked on the coast of Cartagene. governed by Don Juan Alvardo, Spainish ruler. Alvarado has Laurent thrown in prison, but the latter escapes, and five-years later is a pirate leader. He poses as the navigator on a ship in which Contessa Francesca, daughter of a Mexican noble, is traveling on her way to marry Alvarado, whom she has never seen. Laurent’s pirates capture the ship and Francesa, in order to save another ship, gives her hand-in-marriage to Laurent, who sails her to the pirate hideout. This irks the jealous Anne Bonney and,also, Captain Benjamin Black, who was already irked, anyway. They overpower Laurent and send Francesa to Alvarado, and then Mario du Billar, trusted right-hand man, makes a deal to deliver Laurent to Alvarado also.
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46 ) Can’t Help Singing
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
With the California Gold Rush beginning, Senator Frost’s singing daughter Caroline loves a young army officer; the Senator can’t stand him, and has him sent to California. Headstrong Caroline follows him by train, riverboat, and covered wagon, gaining companions en route: a vagrant Russian prince and gambler Johnny Lawlor, who just might take her mind off the army.
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44 Tie ) Incendiary Blonde
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
Paramount’s highly-fictionalized 1945 musical biography of Texas Guinan, the Roaring ’20s New York nightclub owner and celebrity with alleged underworld connections who famously greeted her customers with the phrase, “Hello, suckers!”
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44 Tie ) The Affairs of Susan
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Story
Susan is about to be married, but the wedding may get called off after her fiancee summons three former beaus. Each reveals a different portrait of Susan: one describes her as a naive country girl who reluctantly becomes an actress, another paints a picture of a gay party girl and and the third describes a serious intellectual. Which one is the real Susan?
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42 Tie ) A Gun in His Hand
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel
A young man graduates from the police academy at the top of his class. He then teams up with some local thieves and uses his knowledge of police procedures to commit several warehouse robberies. The police are baffled at first. But when a police officer is murdered during one of the robberies, they start to gather the evidence they need to solve the crimes.
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42 Tie ) San Antonio
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
- Best Music, Original Song
Rancher Clay Hardin arrives in San Antonio to search for and capture Roy Stuart, notorious leader of a gang of cattle rustlers. The vicious outlaw is indeed in the Texan town, intent on winning the affections of a beautiful chanteuse named Jeanne Starr. When the lovely lady meets and falls in love with the charismatic Hardin, the stakes for both men become higher.
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41 ) Flame of Barbary Coast
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
Duke Fergus falls for Ann ‘Flaxen’ Tarry in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Boss Tito Morell, goes home, learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune, he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer; but the 1906 quake destroys his place.
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40 ) The Jury Goes Round ‘n’ Round
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel
Vera is one of many of a group of jurors who must work together to come up with a decision whether or not a man is guilty of murder.
39 ) Dillinger
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay
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38 ) Captain Kidd
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
The unhistorical adventures of pirate Captain Kidd revolve around treasure and treachery. In 1699, William Kidd (Charles Laughton), a pirate who has recently captured the ship The Twelve Apostles and killed its crew, presents himself at the court of King William III (Henry Daniell) as an honest shipmaster seeking royal backing. With this backing, he recruits a crew from the inmates of Newgate and Marshalsea prisons, promising them a royal pardon at the end of their voyage. Among the new recruits is the quarrelsome, though cultured Adam Mercy (Randolph Scott), whom Kidd makes his new master gunner because of his claimed prior service with a famous pirate.
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36 Tie ) Music for Millions
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay
Six year old “Mike” joins her sister Barbara Ainsworth who plays in a classical orchestra during WWII
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36 Tie ) The House on 92nd Street
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Original Story (Win)
The US Government tries to track down embedded Nazi agents in the States.
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35 ) Brewster’s Millions
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Monty Brewster is a pennyless, former U.S. Army soldier back from World War II Europe who learns that he has inherited $8 million from a distant relative. But there’s a catch: he must spend $1 million of that money in less than two months before his 30th birthday in order to inherit the rest.
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33 Tie ) Here Come the Waves
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
Show business twin sisters Rosemary and Susie, one serious and the other a scatterbrain, join the WAVES and both fall in love with crooner Johnny Cabot.
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33 Tie ) Rhapsody in Blue
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
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32 ) The Little Witch
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel
Olga San Juan is the singing and dancing star of a night club in a South America country,and is in love with Bob Graham, the orchestra leader and vocalist, whose wealthy parents are unaware of his club and musical activities. The parents, when told of the romance, think the girl is after the son’s future inheritance. A Paramount “Musical Parade” short.
31 ) Experiment Perilous
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
In 1903, Doctor Huntington Bailey (Brent) meets a friendly older lady during a train trip. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. Once in New York, Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died. Shortly afterward, he meets the strange couple and gets suspicious of Nick’s treatment of his wife.
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29 Tie ) A Song to Remember
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
- Best Writing, Original Story
Biography of Frederic Chopin. Vidor romanticizes Chopin’s patriotism in the film, which was produced during World War II. Chopin, played by Cornel Wilde, is first presented to the audience as a child prodigy playing a piece by Mozart, but suddenly starts
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29 Tie ) The Three Caballeros
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
For Donald’s birthday he receives a box with three gifts inside. The gifts, a movie projector, a pop-up book, and a pinata, each take Donald on wild adventures through Mexico and South America.
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28 ) Life with Feathers
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
A spurned love bird tries to get Sylvester to put him out of his misery.
27 ) Donald’s Crime
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
On the night he promised to take his girl-friend Daisy out, Donald Duck discovers he’s skinned. Desperate for spending money, he gets it in the last place he knows: his three nephews’ piggy bank. After the wild clubbing night, she thanks the ‘rich’ big spender, which only makes Donald remember how penniless and guilty he is. Images of merciless pursuit by the police and rotting jail finish him off, so he takes a dish washing job, all night, but will that make everything all-right?
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26 ) Love Letters
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
When a man asks another man more facile with words to do his wooing for him, there are always complications. The man with no talent for writing marries the girl, confesses one night he didn’t write the letters and ends up with a knife in his back. The writer of the letters fell in love with the woman he wrote to and wants to become her second husband even if she did murder husband number one. Singleton doesn’t remember the murder or anything about the first 22 years of her life as Victoria Remington. Then at her second wedding she wonders why she said “I take you, Roger,” instead of “I take you, Allen.”
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25 ) Lady on a Train
Nominated For:
- Best Sound, Recording
While waiting at a train station, Nikki Collins witnesses a murder from a nearby building. When she brings the police to the scene of the crime, they think she’s crazy since there’s no body. She then enlists a popular mystery writer to help with her sleuthing
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24 ) The True Glory
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Features (Win)
A documentary account of the allied invasion of Europe during World War II compiled from the footage shot by nearly 1400 cameramen. It opens as the assembled allied forces plan and train for the D-Day invasion at bases in Great Britain and covers all the major events of the war in Europe from the Normandy landings to the fall of Berlin.
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23 ) Star in the Night
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel (Win)
Nick, a motel owner who has lost faith in more than just the humanity of mankind, is visited by a kindly stranger on Christmas Eve. The motel’s guests are only concerned for themselves until a poor man and his wife drive up to the motel, unable to go any further. Out of rooms, Nick’s wife prepares a place for them in a shed under a neon star Nick had just finished hanging. Their plight brings out the generosity in everyone, including Nick, who remembers another family almost two thousand years earlier that also found a makeshift room at an inn under another kind of star.
22 ) State Fair
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song (Win)
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
During their annual visit to the Iowa State Fair, the Frake family enjoy many adventures. Proud patriarch Abel (Charles Winninger) has high hopes for his champion swine Blueboy; and his wife Melissa (Fay Bainter) enters the mincemeat and pickles contest…with hilarious results.
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20 Tie ) Anchors Aweigh
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Win)
- Best Picture
Two sailors, Joe (Kelly) and Clarence (Sinatra) have four days shore leave in spend their shore leave trying to get a girl for Clarence. Clarence has his eye on a girl with musical aspirations, and before Joe can stop him, promises to get her an audition with José Iturbi. But the trouble really starts when Joe realizes he’s falling for his buddy’s girl.
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20 Tie ) The Valley of Decision
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul’s engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.
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19 ) Quiet Please!
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons (Win)
The family dog warns Tom not to make any noise so he can take a nap. Jerry hears this and immediately devises plans to ensure that the dog’s nap will be interrupted (breaking plates, playing musical instruments, etc.). One of the few cartoons in the Tom and Jerry series in which one of the main characters speaks.
16 Tie ) Pride of the Marines
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Screenplay
Al Schmid is a happy go lucky guy in Philadephia in 1941. He likes his life, despite his landlady’s attempts to get him married off. One day he meets Ruth and she steals his heart. Pearl Harbor changes all their lives, as Al joins the Marines. His unit defeats a japanese attempt to retake gualcanal, but he is blinded in the action. Al has to struggle to adjust to life as a blind man and he breaks up with Ruth, but with the help of a red cross worker, his best friend Lee Diamond , he sees that his sacrifice was not in vain and he and Ruth are reunited
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16 Tie ) Story of G.I. Joe
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Writing, Screenplay
War correspondent Ernie Pyle joins Company C, 18th Infantry as this American army unit fights its way across North Africa in World War II. He comes to know the soldiers and finds much human interest material for his readers back in the States.
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16 Tie ) The Corn Is Green
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Schoolteacher Lilly Moffat is dismayed by conditions in a Welsh mining town. She sets up a school to teach fundamental education to the villagers. Her housekeeper and daughter oppose the project, as does the local Squire who will not rent her space. Using part of her own home, she goes ahead with Miss Moffat’s School. One of her students Morgan Evans turns from bully to brilliant student.
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15 ) Objective, Burma!
Nominated For:
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Writing, Original Story
A group of men parachute into Japanese-occupied Burma with a dangerous and important mission: to locate and blow up a radar station. They accomplish this well enough, but when they try to rendezvous at an old air-strip to be taken back to their base, they find Japanese waiting for them, and they must make a long, difficult walk back through enemy-occupied jungle.
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14 ) They Were Expendable
Nominated For:
- Best Effects, Special Effects
- Best Sound, Recording
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philippines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy’s attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.
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13 ) The Keys of the Kingdom
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
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12 ) The Bells of St. Mary’s
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Director
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Picture
- Best Sound, Recording (Win)
Father O’Malley the unconventional priest from ‘Going My Way’ continues his work for the Catholic Church. This time he is sent to St. Mary’s, a run-down parochial school on the verge of condemnation. He and Sister Benedict work together in an attempt to save the school, though their differing methods often lead to good-natured disagreements.
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11 ) The Southerner
Nominated For:
- Best Director
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
A sharecropper fights the elements to start his own farm.
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10 ) Wonder Man
Nominated For:
- Best Effects, Special Effects (Win)
- Best Music, Original Song
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
Boisterous nightclub entertainer Buzzy Bellew was the witness to a murder committed by gangster Ten Grand Jackson. One night, two of Jackson’s thugs kill Buzzy and dump his body in the lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Buzzy comes back as a ghost and summons his bookworm twin, Edwin Dingle, to Prospect Park so that he can help the police nail Jackson.
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9 ) The Picture of Dorian Gray
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Win)
Dorian Gray, wishing to remain young and handsome for eternity, essentially sells his soul so that a portrait can age instead of him. Over the course of the years, Dorian commits every sort of sin, heavily influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton. But as his life goes on, he slowly realises the emptiness and evil which he has succumbed to.
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8 ) The Enchanted Cottage
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
A homely maid and a scarred ex-GI meet at the cottage where she works and where he was to spend his honeymoon prior to his accident. The two develop a bond and agree to marry, more out of loneliness than love. The romantic spirit of the cottage, however, overtakes them. They soon begin to look beautiful to each other, but no one else.
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7 ) National Velvet
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Win)
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Director
- Best Film Editing (Win)
Mi Taylor was a young wanderer and opportunist whose father had given him “all the roads in the Kingdom” to travel. One of the roads, and a notation in his father’s journal, leads him to the quiet English country-side home of the Brown family. The youngest daughter, Velvet, has a passion for horses and when she wins the spirited steed Pie in a town lottery, Mi is encouraged to train the horse…
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6 ) Spellbound
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Director
- Best Effects, Special Effects
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Win)
- Best Picture
When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man’s murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.
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5 ) The Woman in the Window
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.
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4 ) Leave Her to Heaven
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
- Best Cinematography, Color (Win)
- Best Sound, Recording
A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife’s insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen’s emotions become uncontrollable.
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3 ) Mildred Pierce
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role (Win)
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Picture
- Best Writing, Screenplay
After her cheating husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful, but can’t win the approval of her spoiled daughter.
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2 ) The Lost Weekend
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role (Win)
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Director (Win)
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Picture (Win)
- Best Writing, Screenplay (Win)
Don Birnam, a long-time alcoholic, has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst… but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
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1 ) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Win)
- Best Writing, Screenplay
In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa’s alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy’s scandalous succession of “husbands”; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie’s desire to transfer to a better school…if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.
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The Best 18th Academy Award Rankings
1946 Academy Award Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| The Lost Weekend | 1 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Mildred Pierce | 14 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Leave Her to Heaven | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| The Woman in the Window | 7 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Spellbound | 14 | 9 | 10 | 6 | 6 |
| National Velvet | 1 | 13 | 13 | 14 | 7 |
| The Enchanted Cottage | 14 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 8 |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | 10 | 17 | 10 | 6 | 9 |
| Wonder Man | 1 | 7 | 22 | 19 | 10 |
| The Southerner | 10 | 13 | 19 | 9 | 11 |
| The Bells of St. Mary’s | 9 | 13 | 13 | 19 | 12 |
| The Keys of the Kingdom | 21 | 5 | 19 | 14 | 13 |
| They Were Expendable | 12 | 20 | 19 | 9 | 14 |
| Objective, Burma! | 21 | 21 | 13 | 6 | 15 |
| Pride of the Marines | 21 | 18 | 13 | 14 | 16 |
| Story of G.I. Joe | 18 | 21 | 13 | 14 | 16 |
| The Corn Is Green | 21 | 18 | 8 | 19 | 16 |
| Quiet Please! | 21 | 37 | 4 | 9 | 19 |
| Anchors Aweigh | 19 | 12 | 22 | 19 | 20 |
| The Valley of Decision | 21 | 11 | 13 | 27 | 20 |
| State Fair | 17 | 13 | 27 | 19 | 22 |
| Star in the Night | 21 | 46 | 4 | 14 | 23 |
| The True Glory | 21 | 31 | 22 | 19 | 24 |
| Lady on a Train | 21 | 23 | 33 | 19 | 25 |
| Love Letters | 21 | 27 | 22 | 27 | 26 |
| Donald’s Crime | 21 | 46 | 22 | 9 | 27 |
| Life with Feathers | 21 | 46 | 30 | 19 | 28 |
| A Song to Remember | 21 | 28 | 36 | 33 | 29 |
| The Three Caballeros | 13 | 25 | 47 | 33 | 29 |
| Experiment Perilous | 1 | 38 | 47 | 33 | 31 |
| The Little Witch | 21 | 46 | 8 | 45 | 32 |
| Rhapsody in Blue | 21 | 46 | 27 | 27 | 33 |
| Here Come the Waves | 21 | 1 | 54 | 45 | 33 |
| Brewster’s Millions | 21 | 35 | 39 | 27 | 35 |
| The House on 92nd Street | 20 | 29 | 36 | 41 | 36 |
| Music for Millions | 21 | 24 | 36 | 45 | 36 |
| Captain Kidd | 1 | 34 | 54 | 41 | 38 |
| Dillinger | 21 | 36 | 42 | 33 | 39 |
| The Jury Goes Round ‘n’ Round | 21 | 46 | 27 | 45 | 40 |
| Flame of Barbary Coast | 21 | 38 | 54 | 27 | 41 |
| A Gun in His Hand | 21 | 46 | 47 | 27 | 42 |
| San Antonio | 21 | 26 | 61 | 33 | 42 |
| Incendiary Blonde | 21 | 46 | 30 | 45 | 44 |
| The Affairs of Susan | 21 | 46 | 30 | 45 | 44 |
| Can’t Help Singing | 21 | 31 | 47 | 45 | 46 |
| The Spanish Main | 21 | 30 | 54 | 41 | 47 |
| A Medal for Benny | 21 | 46 | 33 | 45 | 47 |
| Salty O’Rourke | 21 | 46 | 33 | 45 | 47 |
| Guest Wife | 21 | 41 | 39 | 45 | 50 |
| Tonight and Every Night | 21 | 41 | 54 | 33 | 51 |
| Paris Underground | 21 | 46 | 39 | 45 | 52 |
| G.I. Honeymoon | 21 | 46 | 42 | 45 | 53 |
| Marie-Louise | 21 | 46 | 42 | 45 | 53 |
| The Last Bomb | 21 | 46 | 42 | 45 | 53 |
| To the Shores of Iwo Jima | 21 | 46 | 42 | 45 | 53 |
| Frenchman’s Creek | 21 | 44 | 61 | 33 | 57 |
| Guest in the House | 21 | 41 | 64 | 33 | 57 |
| Gypsy Life | 21 | 46 | 47 | 45 | 57 |
| Library of Congress | 21 | 46 | 47 | 45 | 57 |
| This Love of Ours | 21 | 46 | 47 | 45 | 57 |
| Blood on the Sun | 21 | 40 | 64 | 41 | 62 |
| Screen Snapshots Series 25, No. 1: 25th Anniversary | 21 | 46 | 54 | 45 | 62 |
| Stairway to Light | 21 | 46 | 54 | 45 | 62 |
| A Thousand and One Nights | 21 | 33 | 67 | 45 | 62 |
| Story of a Dog | 21 | 46 | 61 | 45 | 66 |
| Sunbonnet Sue | 21 | 46 | 64 | 45 | 67 |
| Captain Eddie | 21 | 46 | 67 | 45 | 68 |
| The Poet & Peasant | 21 | 46 | 67 | 45 | 68 |
| The Unseen | 21 | 46 | 67 | 45 | 68 |
| Jasper and the Beanstalk | 21 | 46 | 71 | 45 | 71 |
| The Man Who Walked Alone | 21 | 46 | 72 | 45 | 72 |
| What Next, Corporal Hargrove? | 21 | 46 | 72 | 45 | 72 |
| Why Girls Leave Home | 21 | 46 | 74 | 45 | 74 |
| Earl Carroll Vanities | 21 | 46 | 75 | 45 | 75 |
| Belle of the Yukon | 21 | 45 | 76 | 45 | 75 |
| Three Is a Family | 21 | 46 | 76 | 45 | 77 |
| Hitler Lives | 21 | 46 | 78 | 45 | 78 |
| Rippling Romance | 21 | 46 | 79 | 45 | 79 |
| Hitchhike to Happiness | 21 | 46 | 80 | 45 | 80 |
| Sing Your Way Home | 21 | 46 | 80 | 45 | 80 |
| Along the Rainbow Trail | 21 | 46 | 82 | 45 | 82 |
| White Rhapsody | 21 | 46 | 82 | 45 | 82 |
| Your National Gallery | 21 | 46 | 82 | 45 | 82 |
