Ranking All The Movies Nominated At The 24th Academy Awards In 1952
“What are the best movies nominated for the 24th Academy Awards in 1952?” We looked at all 55 movies nominated for an Oscar in 1952 and ranked them again one another to answer that very question!
We took all 55 movies that were nominated for an Academy Award in 1952 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 1952 Academy Award Movie Rankings
53 ) Balzac
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel
Biopic on the work, life and loves of the French playwright and novelist Honoré de Balzac, his evolution as a writer and how his individual works fit into the design of «La comedie humaine». A documentary which uses contemporary sketches, paintings and photographs, to illustrate his achievements, alongside excerpts from his body of writings.
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53 ) The Seeing Eye
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects
An updated Technicolor followup to a black & white Broadway Brevity (1941) tour of the Morristown, New Jersey seeing eye dog training program. Much of the narration comes from the canine’s point of view.
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53 ) World of Kids
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel (Win)
Oscar winning short film from 1951
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52 ) Ridin’ the Rails
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
This is a Grantland Rice Sportscope from Paramount about hobbyists building steam locomotives, scaled one inch to the foot, by members of the Southern California branch of the Live Steam Model Locomotives Club. The models are powerful enough for the hobbyists to ride over the expensive-and-expansive tracks they also build to scale. Many of these models are perfect working replicas of of the locomotives used on the United States railway system. This short features Walt Disney, one of the experts on model-train building, working on his scaled-down ‘Diamond Slacker”, and taking kids to ride on his elaborate miniature system.
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50 ) Rich, Young and Pretty
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
A rancher’s daughter visits Paris to meet her mother and find love.
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50 ) Two Tickets to Broadway
Nominated For:
- Best Sound, Recording
Nancy Peterson and her friends wants to get a spot on Bob Crosby’s TV show, but their agent has linked them.
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49 ) Golden Girl
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
Against the background of the Civil War, sixteen-year-old song-and-dance artiste Lotta Crabtree works her way across America, becoming ever more popular.
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48 ) Danger Under the Sea
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel
Oscar nominated short film from 1951
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46 ) I Was a Communist for the F.B.I.
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Features
A fact-based story about a man who posed as an American Communist for years as part of a secret plan to infiltrate their organization.
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46 ) Too Young to Kiss
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
Eric Wainwright (Van Johnson), a busy impresario, is besieged by hordes of wannabe concert stars, eager for their big break. One of them is Cynthia Potter (June Allyson), a talented pianist… but she can’t get in to see him. When she learns that Wainwright is auditioning young musicians for a children’s concert tour, Cynthia dons braces and bobby sox and passes herself off as a child prodigy.
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45 ) The Strip
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of murder.
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43 ) David and Bathsheba
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Costume Design, Color
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay
David and Bathsheba is a 1951 historical epic film about King David made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Henry King, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, from a screenplay by Philip Dunne. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Leon Shamroy. King David was the second king of Israel and this film is based on the second Old Testament book of Samuel from the Bible. Gregory Peck stars as King David and the film follows King David’s life as he adjusts to ruling as a King, and about his relationship with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba (Susan Hayward). It was shot entirely in Nogales, Arizona. Goliath of Gath was portrayed by a Polish wrestler named Wladyslaw Talun.
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43 ) The Story of Time
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, One-reel
Mankind’s numerous ways of measuring the passage of time through history are depicted through stop-motion animation, from ancient sundials to simple mechanical devices, up through complex modern timepieces.
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42 ) I Want You
Nominated For:
- Best Sound, Recording
Upon beginning production on his Korean-war drama I Want You, producer Sam Goldwyn lamented “I’ve just brought those boys back from the war, and now I have to send them out again!” Goldwyn, of course, was referring to his Oscar-winning “homecoming” drama Best Years of Our Lives. He’d hoped that I Want You would be 1951’s “answer” to that post-WW II classic, and while the later film falls short of that goal, it still has much to recommend it. The scene is a small town in the Eastern United States, where the outbreak of hostilities in Korea has a profound effect on several people. WW II veteran Martin Greer (Dana Andrews) wants to re-enlist, much to the dismay of his wife Nancy (Dorothy McGuire).
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41 ) Teresa
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
An Italian war bride has problems dealing with her husband’s possessive mother.
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40 ) The Mudlark
Nominated For:
- Best Costume Design, Black-and-White
It’s 1875 and a young street urchin wants to see Queen Victoria…
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39 ) On the Riviera
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
In this fast-paced remake of the Muarice Chavlier vehicle Folies Bergere, talented Danny Kaye plays both a performer and a heroic French military pilot.
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36 ) Benjy
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects (Win)
Oscar winning documentary short from 1951
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36 ) One Who Came Back
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Short Subjects
US Army Corporal George Kritzman recounts the aftermath of what was his third combat wounding in the Korean War. A former LA police officer, Kritzman was under heavy sedation due to the severity of his leg injury, which was initially operated on at the 8055 MASH unit. Unaware of what would happen to him and what his long term prognosis was and would be, he, along with many of his fellow wounded, was transferred from hospital to hospital, each a little better equipped to deal with his injury. However, his ultimate goal was to make it back home to his wife and son, from who his thoughts were never far.
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36 ) The Great Caruso
Nominated For:
- Best Costume Design, Color
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
- Best Sound, Recording (Win)
Loosely traces the life of tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). He loves Musetta, in his home town of Naples, and then Dorothy, the daughter of one of the Metropolitan Opera’s patrons. Caruso is unacceptable to both women’s fathers: to one, because he sings; to Dorothy’s, because he is a peasant. To New York patricians, Caruso is short, barrel chested, loud, emotional, unrefined. Their appreciation comes slowly. The film depicts Caruso’s lament that “the man does not have the voice, the voice has the man”: he cannot be places he wants to be, because he must be elsewhere singing, including the day his mother dies. Throughout, Mario Lanza and stars from the Met sing.
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34 ) Come Fill the Cup
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Director Gordon Douglas’ 1951 drama stars James Cagney as a newspaperman battling his alcoholism. The cast also includes Gig Young (Oscar nominee, Best Supporting Actor), Phyllis Thaxter, Raymond Massey, James Gleason, Selena Royle, Larry Keating, Sheldon Leonard and King Donovan.
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34 ) Here Comes the Groom
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song (Win)
- Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
Foreign correspondent Pete Garvey has 5 days to win back his former fiancée, or he’ll lose the orphans he adopted.
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33 ) The House on Telegraph Hill
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.
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31 ) Rooty Toot Toot
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
The story of Frankie and Johnny: Frankie walks into a bar, where she catches her boyfriend Johnny with the sensuous Nelly Bly and kills him in a fit of jealousy.
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31 ) When Worlds Collide
Nominated For:
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Effects, Special Effects (Win)
When a group of astronomers calculate a star is on a course to slam into Earth, a few days before, it’s accompanying planet will first pass close enough to the Earth to cause havoc on land and sea. They set about building a rocket so a few selected individuals can escape to the planet.
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29 ) The Frogmen
Nominated For:
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
The new commander of a Navy Underwater Demolition Team–nicknamed “Frogmen”–must earn the respect of the men in his unit, who are still grieving over the death of their former commander and resentful of the new one.
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29 ) The Mating Season
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Ellen McNulty leaves her New Jersey hamburger stand and heads west to pay a surprise visit to her son and his new bride. When Ellen arrives, her daughter-in-law mistakes her for the maid she has hired for a big party they are throwing. Rather than cause any embarrassment, Ellen goes along with the charade, which leads to many complications.
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28 ) Nature’s Half Acre
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Two-reel (Win)
Part of the “True-Life Adventure” series; follows wildlife in a meadow for a year. Won an Academy Award in 1952 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel)
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27 ) Bullfighter and the Lady
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
An American takes up bullfighting to impress the ladies but learns to respect the sport.
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25 ) Kind Lady
Nominated For:
- Best Costume Design, Black-and-White
Mary Herries has a passion for art and fine furniture. Even though she is getting on in years, she enjoys being around these priceless articles. One day she meets a strange young painter named Elcott, who uses his painting skill to enter into her life. Little does she expect that his only interest in Mary is to covet everything she has.
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25 ) Show Boat
Nominated For:
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
A dashing Mississippi river gambler wins the affections of the daughter of the owner of the Show Boat.
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24 ) Royal Wedding
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Original Song
Fred Astaire (Tom) and Jane Powell (Ellen) are asked to perform as a dance team in England at the time of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding. As brother and sister, each develops a British love interest, Ellen with Lord John Brindale (Peter Lawford) and Tom with dancer Anne Ashmond (Sarah Churchill–Winston’s daughter).
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23 ) The Well
Nominated For:
- Best Film Editing
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay
In a racially mixed American town, a 5-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?
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22 ) Go for Broke!
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay
A tribute to the U.S. 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed in 1943 by Presidential permission with Japanese-American volunteers. We follow the training of a platoon under the rueful command of Lt. Mike Grayson who shares common prejudices of the time. The 442nd serve in Italy, then France, distinguishing themselves in skirmishes and battles; gradually and naturally, Grayson’s prejudices evaporate with dawning realization that his men are better soldiers than he is.
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21 ) The Two Mouseketeers
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons (Win)
This Tom and Jerry cartoon is set in 18th century France. Tom, who is a soldier in a castle, is assigned to guard the food laid out on a banquet table. Jerry and a smaller mouse companion, two wandering “mouseketeers,” make the situation miserable for Tom as they abscond with (and occasionally eat) all the food they can.
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20 ) The Model and the Marriage Broker
Nominated For:
- Best Costume Design, Black-and-White
A marriage broker can’t resist meddling in the life of a model, with disastrous results.
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18 ) Lambert the Sheepish Lion
Nominated For:
- Best Short Subject, Cartoons
The stork mistakenly delivers Lambert, a baby lion, to a flock of sheep. The mother won’t let the stork take him back, so Lambert is raised as a sheep, but he just doesn’t fit in. He grows up cowardly, until the day his mother is chased by a wolf.
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18 ) Quo Vadis
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color
- Best Cinematography, Color
- Best Costume Design, Color
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Picture
Set against the back drop of Rome in crisis, General Marcus Vinicius returns to the city from the battle fields and falls in love with a Christian woman, Lygia. Caught in the grip of insanity, Nero’s atrocities become more extreme and he burns Rome, laying the blame on the Christians. Vinicius races to save Lygia from the wrath of Nero as the empire of Rome collapses around them.
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17 ) The Blue Veil
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Louise Mason is a young widow who fills her empty life with the task of becoming a children’s nurse. As the years pass, and the widow tries to find her own place in life, her young charges, the children of various employers, grow and soon find themselves ready to face the world. When it seems that she will be alone, the nurse finds that her ‘children’ have ideas of their own in regards to helping their beloved mentor.
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16 ) Seven Days to Noon
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Win)
An English scientist runs away from a research center with an atomic bomb. In a letter sent to the British Prime Minister he threatens to blow up the center of London if the Government don’t announce the end of any research in this field within a week. Special agents from Scotland Yard try to stop him, with help from the scientist’s assistant future son-in-law to find and stop the mad man.
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15 ) Bright Victory
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Sound, Recording
A soldier blinded in war returns home and attempts to adjust to civilian life. Director Mark Robson’s 1951 drama stars Arthur Kennedy (Academy Award nomination, Best Actor, for his performance), Peggy Dow, James Edwards, Will Geer, Nana Bryant, Julie Adams, Jim Backus, Richard Egan and Murray Hamilton.
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14 ) Death of a Salesman
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Based on Arthur Miller’s famous play. Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy’s long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.
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13 ) Detective Story
Nominated For:
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role
- Best Writing, Screenplay
- Best Director
tTells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod (Douglas), leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city’s lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
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11 ) Decision Before Dawn
Nominated For:
- Best Film Editing
- Best Picture
WWII is entering its last phase: Germany is in ruins, but does not yield. The US army lacks crucial knowledge about the German units operating on the opposite side of the Rhine, and decides to send two German prisoners to gather information. The scheme is risky: the Gestapo retains a terribly efficient network to identify and capture spies and deserters. Moreover, it is not clear that “Tiger”, who does not mind any dirty work as long as the price is right, and war-weary “Happy”, who might be easily betrayed by his feelings, are dependable agents. After Tiger and another American agent are successfully infiltrated, Happy is parachuted in Bavaria. His duty: find out the whereabouts of a powerful German armored unit moving towards the western front.
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11 ) Fourteen Hours
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
A young man, morally destroyed by his parents not loving him and by the fear of being not capable to make his girlfriend happy, rises on the ledge of a building with the intention of committing suicide. A policeman makes every effort to argue him out of it.
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10 ) The Tales of Hoffmann
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color
- Best Costume Design, Color
Hoffmann is a lovelorn young man in Nuremberg who is watching his latest love, Stella, dance in the ballet. In the interval he goes to the tavern where he tells his friends the tales of the three major loves of his life. Each story forms a separate act of this filmic version of the Offenbach opera.
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9 ) An American in Paris
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color (Win)
- Best Cinematography, Color (Win)
- Best Costume Design, Color (Win)
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Win)
- Best Picture (Win)
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay (Win)
- Best Director
Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who’s a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
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8 ) Alice in Wonderland
Nominated For:
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture
On a golden afternoon, young Alice follows a White Rabbit, who disappears down a nearby rabbit hole. Quickly following him, she tumbles into the burrow – and enters the merry, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland! Memorable songs and whimsical escapades highlight Alice’s journey, which culminates in a madcap encounter with the Queen of Hearts – and her army of playing cards!
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7 ) Kon-Tiki
Nominated For:
- Best Documentary, Features (Win)
“Kon-Tiki” was the name of a wooden raft used by six Scandinavian scientists, led by Thor Heyerdahl, to make a 101-day journey from South America to the Polynesian Islands. The purpose of the expedition was to prove Heyerdal’s theory that the Polynesian Islands were populated from the east—specifically Peru—rather than from the west (Asia) as had been the theory for hundreds of years. Heyerdahl made a study of the winds and tides in the Pacific, and by simulating conditions as closely as possible to those he theorized the Peruvians encountered, set out on the voyage.
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6 ) A Place in the Sun
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Win)
- Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (Win)
- Best Film Editing (Win)
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Win)
- Best Picture
- Best Writing, Screenplay (Win)
- Best Director (Win)
An ambitious young man wins an heiress’s heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend’s pregnancy.
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5 ) La ronde
Nominated For:
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
- Best Writing, Screenplay
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
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4 ) The African Queen
Nominated For:
- Best Director
- Best Actor in a Leading Role (Win)
- Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Best Writing, Screenplay
At the start of the first World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.
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2 ) A Streetcar Named Desire
Nominated For:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Win)
- Best Actress in a Leading Role (Win)
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Win)
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Win)
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Costume Design, Black-and-White
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Picture
- Best Sound, Recording
- Best Writing, Screenplay
- Best Director
Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.
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2 ) Ace in the Hole
Nominated For:
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay
A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus.
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1 ) Strangers on a Train
Nominated For:
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
A psychotic socialite confronts a pro tennis star with a theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder…a theory that he plans to implement.
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